More than a year before Milo Yiannopoulos, “the Kane West of Journalism,” was silenced at DePaul University by Black Lives Matter activists and school officials who refused to provide adequate security, the Chicago-based school had already been silencing conservative students.
In 2015, a conservative freshman named Jacob was silenced by his English professor during a discussion on the riots in Ferguson, the student’s hometown.
Jacob told the class that he was concerned violent protests would break out near the mall where his family lived and worried about their safety. Rather than trying to understand the freshman’s fears, the English professor mocked him in class and sent an email asking him to hold off on voicing his opinion in the future.
“Did you notice that the same thing happened again yesterday where we were trying to generate a discussion on one issue — the Justice Department & the Ferguson PD — and you changed it to something else?” the professors email stated. “Your distaste for particular kinds of protests? Your local mall?”
“I need to ask you again to take a moment before you speak up in class and ask yourself if the timing seems appropriate and on topic,” the professor’s email continued. “In terms of active listening, it is good practice to look at the person who is speaking and, if you’ll be adding to what they are saying, acknowledging and checking your understanding of what she or he just said.”
In a post on Reddit, Jacob said he felt that he was being told not to speak up in class about police brutality and Black Lives Matter because he is white.
“What I find ironic about this email, is that my English professor is saying that because of the color of my skin I need to make sure I am not shutting down the ideas or opinions of others with different skin colors and backgrounds,” Jacob said in his Reddit post. “But that’s exactly what this email is doing to me. It’s saying that you may not speak up because you are white and I may offend someone else or discourage an open discussion.”
Jacob confronted his professor on the matter, but was intimidated when the English teacher contacted the Dean of Students and set up a meeting.
His fellow students were shocked by the teacher’s emails and said the messages were over the line. Still the professor’s tactics worked; Jacob confessed that he became a lot more timid in class discussions after the ordeal with the Dean of Students.
“I am worried my grades will suffer for saying what I believe and as a result I have resolved to not speaking up at all,” Jacob continued. “I’ll slap my Bernie Sanders pin on and be a good little socialist if it means graduating.”
There’s something to be said of a university that enjoys diversity of everything besides opinion.
