Students benefiting from a liberal education exhibit a discouraging anti-liberal attitude toward freedom at UCLA, where activism aims to limit free speech at the university.
The outrage, writes Conor Friedersdorf for The Atlantic, resulted from a “Kanye Western” theme party.
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Critics accused students at the party, thrown by a Greek organization on campus, of wearing blackface, though they lack evidence for the claims. Had blackface actually occurred, the outrage would be justified, though not relevant as an argument for restricting freedom of expression.
The Huffington Post published pictures of students, taken from Instagram, who attended the party. Sigma Phi Epsilon has apologized for the party, saying that they lacked judgment in not recognizing how offensive the costumes would be.
Friedersdorf goes into the arguments on both sides about cultural appropriation, but universities face the danger of conflating multiculturalism (and its discontents) with free speech and expression.
Too often, individual freedom gets sacrificed at universities to avoid uncomfortable conversations about race and culture. Even worse, university officials are more than willing to accommodate calls to limit expression:
Beyond the restrictions, universities taking those actions make themselves liable to lawsuits for abridging freedom of speech, as UCLA’s actions were probably unconstitutional.
The desire to restrict disagreeable speech has even reached the debate around the incident itself in the Daily Bruin, the campus newspaper, as students label opinion letters “hate speech” and call for the university to investigate.
The desire for authority to restrict the actions, thoughts, and expressions that one finds disagreeable is infantilizing. It silences debate instead of encourages it. It threatens an open, intellectual atmosphere to address serious issues in society. It undermines the societal value of the university itself.
As Friedersdorf sums it up, “Students who value fundamental human rights, protecting unpopular activism, or safeguarding the political liberties of the least powerful among us ought to be lobbying for the most stringent free-speech protections possible, not undermining core human rights that have benefitted generations of marginalized people as a salve for outrage at a frat party.”
G.K. Chesterton wrote that a reformer should not clear away a fence until they understand the use of it in the first place. For students who want to restrict speech, they should take heed and understand the importance of open and free expression before rushing to the authorities to demand silence.
