At Brown University, a group of students have gone underground in order to have free and open discussions about topics now deemed too sensitive by campus crybullies.
And just so we’re absolutely clear: Yes, Brown University is in America and not in, say, North Korea.
National Review Senior Editor Jay Nordlinger traveled to the university to interview two students, including founder Chris Robotham, of the underground group known as Reason@Brown. Robotham created a Facebook group for students who wished to discuss issues that should be allowed for discussion on the campus, but currently aren’t.
“I am willing to put my neck on the line and if people want to say I am some kind of ist, or a violent oppressor on account of my white masculinity, etc., that’s fine, that’s their prerogative, but I think there are a lot of people, including my freshman-year self, who would not be comfortable putting their neck on the line but who, to be perfectly frank, deserve to have the intellectual discussions promised to them in Brown’s advertising and for which they may be paying some six-figure amount,” Robotham told National Review.
Robotham says the students who meet underground to practice Free Speech (there are around 100 in the group now) are “more conservative than the general Brown population, which isn’t saying much.” There are members who support Donald Trump for president and members who support Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and anyone in between. Robotham believes most will be voting for the Democratic nominee next year.
Which should tell us something about the liberalism of the campus protesters — they are on the fringe.
One member of the group, Marie Willersrud, who is originally from Oslo, Norway, said the culling of Free Speech is “not what I signed up for.”
“I have a lot of fun conversations with Americans except when it comes to politics,” Willersrud said. “I find myself in a place where a large percentage of the student body wants to shut down debates that include unpopular opinions, and the university backs them. This is not what I signed up for.”
Nordlinger asked the students whether it was really true that they couldn’t speak openly on campus, to which Willersrud replied that she knows “very well in what company I can talk freely about things and in what company I should keep my mouth shut.”
Nordlinger points to a group at Brown that has protested a campus newspaper for allegedly perpetrating “violences … against Native and indigenous peoples, and broader communities of color.” The reasoning behind this alleged “violence” is that the newspaper apparently has mostly white writers.
Robotham gave a rather different perspective on exactly why the protesting students are acting out in the name of alleged grievances.
“These ideologies rose to power because of the safe haven that the ivory tower afforded them. They were allowed to flourish on campus. Now that the adherents to these ideologies control the campus, they want the rules changed. They don’t want a safe haven for their critics,” Robotham said. “They climbed the ladder, and now they want to kick it away, before the next person can climb it.”
If you don’t have a subscription (or don’t want to pay for the article), Nordlinger has a handy companion piece for you here.
