Students Are the Real Victims of Censorship

Article here. Excerpt:

'The 2015-16 academic year has opened with a predictable collection of demands for banning certain views, often involving sexual or racial matters. Many are couched in convoluted claims that disagreeable speech is making students feel "unsafe."

Much of the squelching aims to fend off challenges to some of the more ludicrous theories of victimization. Well-constructed thoughts on social injustice can be defended in debates.

But the concern here goes beyond the issue of free speech. What do these bizarre definitions of sexual or racial harassment do to the students' heads? They, too, are free speech, but when they are shielded from counterarguments, they take on the air of "facts." The students leave school with "givens" that are not givens 5 feet outside the campus gates.

Case in point is the story of Ellen Pao. A hotshot Harvard-educated lawyer, Pao sued her Silicon Valley venture capital employer for gender discrimination. As evidence, she cited a partner's referring to a porn star on a private jet.

Where would an otherwise worldly woman come to see a mere mention of porn-watching as evidence of sexual bias? No need to answer.

Brown University just issued another survey "finding" that about 1 in 4 of its undergraduate women have suffered "nonconsensual sexual contact." It's hard to know what the heck that means, but you wonder how the throngs of unescorted high-school girls roaming nearby Thayer Street manage to survive the evening.'