At a high school in Des Moines, Iowa in September 2015, a soon-to-be-unemployed man addressed a room full of students.
“I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view,” he said. “Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, ‘You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.’ That’s not the way we learn either.”
The man in question was Barack Obama, then still president of the United States.
It says a lot that even Obama, well to the Left and far more supportive of identity politics than many moderate Democrats, thinks there’s a problem on America’s college campuses. But he’s not alone. Many of the voices now joining conservatives in their critique of coddled students are moderate liberal ones: Jonathan Chait, Judith Shulevitz, and Jonathan Haidt to name a few.240
In May 2016, Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist, who once published an article titled, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” and, more recently, “Trump Embarrasses Himself And Our Country,” released a rare admission that progressive intolerance had gone too far on college campuses.
We progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table—er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.
Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.241
Although he moderated his opening by saying that it might be a “little harsh,” Kristof went on to conclude that:
Universities should be a hubbub of the full range of political perspectives from A to Z, not just from V to Z. So maybe we progressives could take a brief break from attacking the other side and more broadly incorporate values that we supposedly cherish—like diversity—in our own dominions.
If Nicholas Kristof and Donald Trump (who called student protesters at the University of Missouri “babies” and criticized the college’s “weak, ineffective leadership” for caving in to their demands) agree that there’s a problem with out-of-control lefties on college campuses, then we truly have a broad consensus. The question is, what next?
Putting pressure on colleges to follow the University of Chicago’s lead would be a good start. Chicago told its 2016 intake of students point-blank not to expect any trigger warnings or safe spaces at their educational establishment.
“Fostering a free exchange of ideas reinforces a related University priority—building a campus that welcomes people of all backgrounds,” wrote the Dean of Students, Jay Ellison, in a letter to freshmen. “Diversity of opinion and background is a fundamental strength of our community. The members of our community must have the freedom to espouse and explore a wide range of ideas.”
The University of Chicago is distinguishing itself as a home of free expression, with feisty professors like medievalist Rachel Fulton Brown, who writes the popular blog Fencing Bear.
When colleges start to take intellectual and political diversity as seriously as they take the more superficial forms of diversity, then there will no longer be a need for Milo. Until then, look for the Dangerous Faggot at a campus near you. In America and beyond, I will continue to fight for my vision of campus life; one of constant intellectual and political simulation, where dangerous ideas are welcomed rather than shunned. Where violating some great taboo will lead to spirited debate, not a trip to the office of an Orwellian “Bias Task Force.” I will fight for the sound of laughter in the hallways and quads.
Colleges should be aware that there’s a price for quashing free speech and caving in to the radical, hateful activists of the regressive Left. If you let things get as bad as Berkeley, you might see your campus set on fire, be denounced by the President, and have to cooperate with an FBI investigation. You might see a MILO Bill show up in your state legislature.
In some cases the government won’t even need to get involved. Just look at the University of Missouri, which became the poster child for left-wing radicalism in 2015 after activists forced the resignation of the college president and demanded the administration submit all students in all departments to a “racial awareness and inclusion curriculum,” created and overseen by a board composed of “students, staff, and faculty of color.”242 In the wake of protests, and the university’s decision to cave in to them, Missouri suffered a massive shortfall in enrolments and alumni donations. Its lack of enrollments forced it to shutter two residence halls, which were ironically called “Respect” and “Excellence.”243 The lesson? Stand up to political bullies, or lose Respect and Excellence.
There are already signs that UC Berkeley might become afflicted by the Mizzou disease. Soon after the riots on campus, and the woeful response from campus police, Scott Adams, the creator of the syndicated comic strip Dilbert, himself a Berkeley alumnus, announced he would no longer donate to the college.244 Here’s another lesson colleges need to learn: if you lose your balls, your money will follow.
During my college tour, I learned that not all millennial students are pampered, sheltered snowflakes. There are thousands upon thousands of students up and down the country ready to fight back against the intellectually stifling environment that surrounds them. Students who are no longer willing to sit back and be bullied by administrators, faculty members, and leftist activists who want to shut their views down.
We can’t assume that the entire millennial generation is made up of snowflakes. Remember, some of the social justice Left’s greatest foes are millennials themselves. Just look at Lauren Southern: she was still a college student when she almost single-handedly destroyed the feminist “slut walk” movement with a series of viral counter-protests. Not satisfied, she went on to cause the resignations of a number of social justice warriors in the Libertarian Party of Canada, stalling its descent into hand-wringing leftism. Now she’s a rising star of the Right, producing powerful journalism on the Islamic takeover of Europe. If the millennial generation can produce women like Southern, it’s hardly fair to call them all “snowflakes.”