But according to an essay in Bloomberg View last week by Stephen Carter, a professor of law at Yale, the impulse
to squelch upsetting words with “odious behavior” is so common “that it’s tempting to greet it with a shrug.”
“The downshouters will go on behaving deplorably,” Carter wrote, “and reminding the rest of us
that the true harbinger of an authoritarian future lives not in the White House but in the groves of academe.”
I wouldn’t go that far.
“When something becomes a religion, we don’t choose the actions
that are most likely to solve the problem,” said Haidt, the author of the 2012 best seller “The Righteous Mind” and a professor at New York University.
The Dangerous Safety of College -
The moral of the recent melee at Middlebury College, where students shouted down
and chased away a controversial social scientist, isn’t just about free speech, though that’s the rubric under which the ugly incident has been tucked.
“Certain things are not to be discussed,” said John McWhorter, a Columbia University professor who teaches linguistics and philosophy, speaking of a rigid political correctness
that transcends college campuses but that he is especially disturbed to see there.
Many jammed the auditorium where he was supposed to be interviewed — by, mind you, a liberal professor — and stood with their backs to him.
