Several liberal writers and commentators have come out aggressively against political correctness following nationally watched events involving racism and free speech on college campuses.
While college-age liberals have been arguing that they are offended by certain speech heard on campus, liberal New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof wrote Wednesday that the tendency to shut down anything deemed “offensive” is a gross pattern on the Left.
“This is sensitivity but also intolerance, and it is disproportionately an instinct on the Left,” wrote Kristof. “I’m a pro-choice liberal who has been invited to infect evangelical Christian universities with progressive thoughts, and to address Catholic universities where I’ve praised condoms and birth control programs. I’m sure I discomfited many students on these conservative campuses, but it’s a tribute to them that they were willing to be challenged.”
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This week, an online video showed students protesting issues involving race at the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, Mo. The protestors are seen in the video confronting a student photographer who was trying to cover a part of the protest in an outdoor public area.
“Hey hey, ho ho, reporters have got to go!” the students chant at one point, telling the photographer that they don’t want their photos taken.
Jonathan Chait, a liberal writer for New York magazine, wrote on Tuesday that the protestors’ behavior was “incompatible with liberalism.”
“They are carrying out the ideals of a movement that regards the delegitimization of dissent as a first-order goal,” Chait said. “People on the left need to stop evading the question of political correctness — by laughing it off as college goofs, or interrogating the motives of P.C. critics, or ignoring it — and make a decision on whether they agree with it.”
At Yale University in October, a controversy started when some students publicly cautioned their peers against donning Halloween costumes or engaging in behavior that threatens “our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.”
A professor at the school responded in an email to the students, asking, “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?”
The incident led to campus-wide protests and confrontations between students and faculty members.
Mark Oppenheimer, a liberal columnist for The New York Times who also teaches at Yale, wrote Tuesday that it was behavior more fitting for children than young adults.
“[I]n general, our students have the sexual and alcoholic prerogatives of grown-ups, but the work responsibilities of children; they have the intellects of grown-ups, but are coddled with the grading expectations afforded children; they have the opinions of grown-ups, but give their elders the deference we typically expect from children,” Oppenheimer wrote. “I want nothing more than for them to claim their adulthood, challenge me, challenge each other. Yet they show obsequious fealty.”
Liberal comedian Bill Maher also addressed the Yale controversy on his HBO show “Real Time.”
“The fake outrage people get 364 days a year to be hypersensitive about everything,” he said. “There has to be one day where going too far isn’t just okay, it’s celebrated. Halloween is supposed to be politically incorrect; that’s why we say ‘trick or treat’ instead of ‘placate and coddle.'”
