Free Speech on College Campuses: Can We Take a Joke?

Most important insight here: most recently, it is the students and not the administrators who demand censorship.

Why is this? First, the “liberal” students are less and less traditional liberals who favor free expression, and more and more social justice warriors, utterly sure of their own righteousness, and utterly intolerant of other views.

We see this among the Marquette students who blocked traffic on Wisconsin Avenue, who lamented “violence” in Marquette classrooms. But nobody has been physically assaulted in a Marquette classroom (and least not within memory), and “violence” must simply mean students are hearing things they disagree with.

On their side was a certain Zoe Del Colle, who put together a list of supposed “racist” posts on Yik Yak. The vast majority were not racist at all, but merely at odds with the views of the self-righteous activists. (Facebook login required to see the page.)

And then we have young alumnus Aaron Ledesma, who wrote a blog post explicitly calling for opposition to gay marriage to be banned and shut up at Marquette.

But then the issue is: where do these folks come from? Some of it might be leftist parents. But it might also reflect the increasing political correctness in elementary and secondary schools. Education schools have become a hostile environment for conservative students.

These intolerant students are typically not the majority of any given student body, but this loud minority are the people petted, pampered and pandered to by university administrators. This certainly happened at Marquette, when University President Michael Lovell and Provost Daniel Myers protested with students demonstrating in sympathy with students at the University of Missouri (in other words, a bunch of bullies), and with the family of Dontre Hamilton (a mentally ill man who attacked a police officer with the officer’s nightstick and got shot).

It has been PanderFest at Marquette.