There is a significant difference between the defense of free speech, and the empowerment of random speech.
I was listening to the Joe Rogan podcast with Nicholas Christakis and they briefly discussed his problems with Yale's Halloween debacle. As soon as they started talking about the rights of free speech of 20 year olds, the conversation went right to the matter of them being old enough to serve in war, and I'm thinking there's something terribly wrong with this argument. It seems to me that the point of the rights in the context of free speech in academia in particular is to facilitate the expansion of knowledge. And while you never know where the next groundbreaking argument is coming from, the last place on earth one should encourage babble is in the university.
I should start by pointing out my bias against the state of collegiate education. I am always fond of the aphorism that the British Navy conquered the world without the use of electronic calculators. There is much greatness to be found in the exploits of people who never attended college, but I am convinced that most of that greatness is of the sort not generally found in 20 year olds, or in undergrads. The American middle class is no easy place to survive given our economy and culture, but it also doesn't require a great amount of original thought. What it does require is some respectful attention and understanding of the theories under which America provides its structure that enables its citizens, and this study of Western Civilization has been neglected recently. I think much of that neglect comes at the behest of undergraduates who feel empowered by their very presence on campus. Of course they are empowered, universities empower them by accepting them and by heeding their complaints, mostly those about what their mere presence at university signifies. I tend to characterize this state of affairs as a matter of boorish bourgeois privilege and arrogance unworthy of any meritocracy, and have determined by my own brilliant insight that universities do not provide so much meritocracy, especially in the Humanities. It's rather sad to graduate such children into the harsh maw of market forces, and sad to watch the slow calamity of so many bean bag & ping pong businesses acquired industry by industry into oligopoly. As Pink Floyd said, 'Welcome to the Machine'.
This is not about political left or right, it is about the proper authority of a university as a certifier of knowledge. If you, as an undergraduate, are capable of unseating the intellectual authority of a professor, then fine. But it seems to me that there is only one way of accomplishing that if the process of university education is correct - that is the process of becoming a professor. So are Humanities professors defending or abandoning the process that matriculated them?
Let me use the following analogy. When you are a freshman, you are like a white belt in judo. You are instructed by black belts. If you think you can beat up a black belt, because the human body can assume an infinity of positions, then you are welcome to try and defeat your instructor. If you can defeat your instructor by smashing his head with a crowbar, you don't get a black belt - what you are doing is not judo and cannot be certified by the judo school. There should be absolutely no question about this.
The right of free speech is exactly like the right to challenge your instructor in a judo match. Use of a crowbar is random speech - it is not a credible position in the world of judo. You cannot win that way. And no white belt should be empowered to use such non-judo methods. The point of the right to challenge is so that even black belts can learn. The point of free speech and free inquiry is so that even professors can learn.
If a college professor is fired by the empowerment of undergraduates who in any other context is not considered professor material, then you undermine the very purpose of university. This is what's happening, and this is an abuse of the term 'free speech'.
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