University U-Turn   

Part 1 of 2

   Where have they gone, our proud universities that encouraged students to be inquisitive and think for themselves? 

   Part of the answer lies with leftist faculty's very human desire for honor, power, money and superiority (James, chapter 4). This weakness opens the way for dark spirits to inhabit their thoughts, all to bring down the world's chief sponsor of freedom.

   Walter Williams, professor of economics at George Mason Univ., writes that leftist faculty "teach immature young people nonsense that contradicts common sense and the principles of liberty." They attack free speech by prohibiting "hate speech" and "microaggressions." 

   He says freedom of ideas made the U.S. and other Western nations leaders "in every area of human endeavor. A monopoly of ideas is just as dangerous as a monopoly" of any other activity. 

   "The Philadelphia Statement," signed by more than 12,000 conservative-leaning professors and other leaders, states that colleges "impose speech regulations to make students 'safe,' not from harm but from challenges to campus orthodoxy." 

   They foster (group think) and train students to respond to challenges with a form of censorship. Williams: "A society that allows people to be shamed into self-censorship ... will not survive for long." 

   "A flourishing, open marketplace of ideas is the fairest and most effective way to separate falsehood from truth," he says. "Frederick Douglass (former slave) said freedom of speech is the 'great renovator of society and government.'" 

   (His statue recently was torn down.)

   Back in 1991, the Yale president warned: "The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind." 

Tomorrow: Power cannot tolerate free speech

      Jimmy