OPINION:
In news from the crazy land of America’s colleges and universities, first place in the race of hypocrisy and self-refutation goes to Northwestern University, a school once considered among our nation’s finest. Writing for The College Fix, David Glasser reports the story as follows.
“After prominent author and critic of critical race theory James Lindsay delivered a speech at Northwestern on May 2, the university’s student government froze the funds to the Republican organization on campus that co-hosted the event.” In the week that followed Mr. Lindsay‘s speech, Mr. Glasser writes, “Northwestern University’s Associated Student Government voted to [defund] the Northwestern University College Republicans chapter using ‘emergency legislation’” to do so.
Defending this blatant punishment of conservative students for daring to speak out of turn, Northwestern student government co-President Molly Whalen stated: “We can’t prevent a speaker from coming to campus. … That’s done by the administration. We focused on the part that we could control, which is student group conduct and student group finances.”
Apparently sympathizing with Ms. Whalen’s apparent quest to censor unwanted thought, Northwestern University spokesman Jon Yates made sure to tell the world that while Mr. Lindsay‘s views are unfortunately “protected by free speech,” such thinking does “not align with Northwestern’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.”
One can only assume that Mr. Yates is clearly saying that if it weren’t for our Constitution’s dastardly First Amendment, he and the rest of Northwestern University’s administration would gladly side with its fragile snowflakes in student government by excluding all uncomfortable debate from the campus. All under the banner of diversity and inclusion, of course.
How did this lunacy happen so fast? It seems like only yesterday that the American academy was the envy of the world. Students from every continent and nearly every country chose the United States as their destination for higher education. Schools such as Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale and, yes, Northwestern were considered synonyms for academic excellence and intellectual liberty. My land, the University of California, Berkeley, was even nicknamed the “birthplace of free speech.”
What happened? How in the world did the ivory tower turn into the tower of babble almost overnight?
The answer is simple. Our nation’s schools have elevated feelings over facts. Education is no longer about pursuing truth; rather, it’s now about protecting opinions.
Today’s schools are frankly a mess. At every turn, we hear endless calls for acceptance and inclusion. The incessant drumbeat for tolerance is overwhelming. Any talk of truth is dismissed as a relic of toxic masculinity, colonialism and white privilege.
The result is that enablement now trumps education, and if any courageous teacher ever dares to break rank and tell our little darlings that they are not the final measure of all that is right and wrong in the world, Mommy and Daddy are quick to load up their proverbial helicopter and head off to the school to set that teacher straight.
And on and on it goes. The cycle continues. Students are coddled. Feelings are elevated over facts. Diplomas are handed out for opinions. What could go wrong?
A brief refresher course on the law of noncontradiction might be in order here. When two people hold mutually exclusive views, one is wrong, and the other is right, or both could be wrong. But both cannot be right.
For example, if we are riding together in a car and we’ve just driven out of Michigan and I claim we have entered Ohio, and you say, no, it’s Indiana, we cannot both be right. These are mutually exclusive claims. Either one of us is right and the other is wrong, or we are both wrong because we’re in Canada.
The facts are the facts. Truth does not yield to emotion. You can pretend until the cows come home that because you’re a Hoosier, you feel like you’re in Indiana, but your feeling doesn’t matter. Ohio is Ohio, and Canada is Canada. Your opinion about where we are is irrelevant.
Our educational establishment has disparaged this basic common sense for several decades as being closed-minded and intolerant. Over and over again, we have heard the mantras: “All paths lead to the same summit.” “All religions are the same.” “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as it works for you.”
This elevation of feelings over facts is the foundational battleground of the culture wars. On one side are those willing to acknowledge that gravity exists and that our emotional distaste for falling changes nothing. On the other side are those who want to remake the world according to their “narratives” and “social constructs” and pretend they can fly.
The result is that our courtrooms, our Congress and our colleges are plagued with a malignancy of mind that threatens the very existence of our constitutional republic to the extent that even Northwestern University, a school that still claims the words “Whatsoever things are true” (Philippians 4:8) as its official motto now censors speakers like James Lindsay simply because he dared to hurt their feelings by telling them what was true.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host.
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