At Wellesley College, only approved speech is welcome

Wellesley College has decided that “free speech” that infringes on another’s “liberty” (as they choose to define it) is inappropriate and should not be allowed on campus.  To be precise, six guardians of truth, justice and the Wellesley Way (i.e. the faculty members of the Commission on Race, Ethnicity and Equity, aka CREE) at Wellesley use this as their standard (taken from the statement they issued):

However, as historian W. Jelani Cobb notes, “The freedom to offend the powerful is not equivalent to the freedom to bully the relatively disempowered. The enlightenment principles that undergird free speech also prescribed that the natural limits of one’s liberty lie at the precise point at which it begins to impose upon the liberty of another.”

A couple of points.  The “enlightenment principles” that “undergird free speech” certainly did not, in any way, recognize a “right not to be offended”.  Being offended is as subjective and arbitrary as one can get.  And, frankly, if you don’t protect offensive speech, you don’t have “free speech”.   Obviously, depending on who is defining what is “offensive”, all speech could be barred on those grounds.

Of course you could beat this silliness to death in multiple ways, but it is obvious that the 6 who signed the statement have very little use for ideas that are upsetting and might offend or “free speech” and instead are ready to impose draconian rules to limit such ideas or speech.

In fact, if they have their way, the new standard at Wellesley will be “approved speech”.  That is only speech that conforms with the ideas put forward by six guardians of the Wellesley Way should be welcomed on campus.  To give you an idea of what they don’t want, they get specific:

Second, standards of respect and rigor must remain paramount when considering whether a speaker is actually qualified for the platform granted by an invitation to Wellesley. In the case of an academic speaker, we ask that the Wellesley host not only consider whether the speaker holds credentials, but whether the presenter has standing in his/her/their discipline. This is not a matter of ideological bias. Pseudoscience suggesting that men are more naturally equipped to excel in STEM fields than women, for example, has no place at Wellesley. Similar arguments pertaining to race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and other identity markers are equally inappropriate.

So, no credentials (or at least credentials they choose to recognize), no platform.  Additionally unapproved or challenging “arguments” pertaining to “race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion” or “other identity markers” are deemed “inappropriate”.   Nice.  Another way of saying this is “we don’t welcome any arguments that might challenge our preconceived ideological notions”.  But in the same paragraph they tell you it has nothing to do with “ideological bias”.  Instead they simply and preemptively smear a thought they don’t like as “pseudoscience” instead of challenging it with a well thought out and supported argument.  Nope, arguments of that sort are not welcome at Wellesley.

How does one call themselves an intellectual, much less a professor, when they produce drivel like this?  The intellectual “earplugs” the faculty would like to impose upon students to prevent your child from thinking, challenging and learning have another purpose.   To prepare them for ideological indoctrination.  And it only costs you a cool $67,000 a year.

~McQ