Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Friday, February 24, 2017

Hundreds of campuses encourage students to turn in fellow students for offensive speech

Universities are the cradle of free speech, where ideologies and ideas clash, where academics and activists can agree, disagree, or be disagreeable. This is particularly true in the United States, where the First Amendment zealously guards against government surveillance and intrusion into free speech.

Yet at hundreds of campuses across the country, administrators encourage students to report one another, or their professors, for speech protected by the First Amendment, or even mere political disagreements. The so-called "Bias Response Teams" reviewing these (often anonymous) reports typically include police officers, student conduct administrators and public relations staff who scrutinize the speech of activists and academics.

This sounds like the stuff of Orwell, although even he might have found the name "Bias Response Team" to be over-the-top.

Over the past year, I surveyed more than 230 such reporting systems for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and asked dozens of schools for records about their Bias Response Teams. What I found is detailed in a new report describing how universities broadly define "bias" to include virtually any speech, protected or not, that subjectively offends anyone. On many campuses, administrators are called upon to referee whether speech is polite.

More

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Should also ask them to turn in those who have expired VISA's and are illegal.

Anonymous said...

Snowflakes turning them into Nazi camps.

Anonymous said...

Democrat Nazi party.

Anonymous said...

This is the same thing that happened in Nazi controlled Germany, you were to turn in anyone, including family, that spoke in any form against the government. In this case anything that you don't like is to be reported...no more free speech on university campuses unless you are liberal or a person of color then anything goes!

Anonymous said...

Nazi's on parade. Really, this is very scary. I guarantee you, those under 60 years old don't have a clue about this. They have NO point of reference regarding American or World History. This really makes the stupid and ignorant. SAD

Anonymous said...

Illegals should have to wear a Mexico flag on their clothes.

Anonymous said...

Yes start by turning in your professors

Anonymous said...

Should start turning in people for willfully violating others constitutional rights of free speech

Anonymous said...

I know how to create jobs. Put all the libtards to work building more prisons and hire more police, then when the libs say something offensive we put them in the jails they built.