President Obama once more reminded students during Sunday’s commencement address at Rutgers University that they shouldn’t shout down speakers they disagree with:
Robby Soave, writing for Reason, is unconvinced that the president can be taken at his word.
“His own Department of Education has played a pivotal role in empowering easily-offended students to censor their opponents and beseech university administrators to help them,” Soave wrote.
In explaining the department’s Office of Civil Rights broad definition of sexual harassment, Soave references an open letter signed by 21 law professors and distributed by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments which is “working for evidence-based solutions to end sexual assault and domestic violence.”
Obama has time to live up to his word by “remind[ing] OCR that administrative guidance does not supersede the Constitution. Obama should should instruct his Education Department to inform universities that their federal funding is not at risk—or better yet, that their federal funding is only at risk if they violate students’ free speech and due process rights.”
Until then, “said commitment remains hollow.”
Soave reported on similar comments from the president at an Iowa town hall in September, when Obama said it’s “not the way we learn” when speakers are silenced or disinvited so students can “be coddled and protected from different points of view.”
When speaking about the University of Missouri protests in November, the president encouraged students to “just out-argue” those with opposing views rather than to say “my only recourse is to shut them up, avoid them, push them away, call on a higher power to protect me from that.”
