For far too long colleges and universities have been stifling free speech on campus, contrary to the notion that higher education is supposed to promote a free flow of ideas. Thanks to political correctness spreading like a noxious weed from one liberal campus to the next, free speech has been under assault.
The good guys — College Republicans and everyone else who values the free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution — notched a victory this week at Amherst College when its president shot down its own Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s “Common Language Guide” it emailed to students which laid out PC definitions for everything from capitalism to transgenderism to how to address illegal immigrants, or as they prefer it, “undocumented persons.”
Amherst College’s PC polemic frowned upon differentiating between legal and illegal immigration status, don’t like assimilation and derided capitalism as an “economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than by the state. This system leads to exploitative labor practices which affect marginalized groups disproportionately.”
Never mind that under socialism in Venezuela right now, millions of poverty stricken citizens are starving and in desperate need of humanitarian relief. That reality doesn’t matter to the campus diversity police as they seek to indoctrinate impressionable students with far-left political and cultural themes and ideologies under the guise of being “inclusive.”
Yeah, right.
Amherst’s College Republicans protested, and college president Biddy Martin astonishingly agreed — setting herself apart as a flicker of common sense in American academia today — issuing a statement saying the document should never have gone out to the student body, as “it runs counter to the core academic values of freedom of thought and expression. I was not aware that the document was being produced and I did not approve its circulation. It cuts against our efforts to foster open exchange and independent thinking.”
That’s a lesson a lot of university administrators — and students — could benefit from.
But President Trump might be the one who really gets their attention. He fired a salvo Thursday signing an executive order threatening to withhold billions of dollars in federal research grants to colleges and universities that stifle free speech.
That’s two wins this week, and a cause for celebration for First Amendment enthusiasts everywhere.
