So now they're all Diogenes with a hammer looking for a nail, and the nail that sticks out will get hammered down. Authoritarian systems work by creating a sufficient climate of fear that people police themselves; the thought police cometh. There is nothing either liberal or conservative in what is happening.
My suspicion is that there's two key factors going on here.
1. Culture war exhaustion. Regardless of one's position on any of these 6 hot button topics, there's an awareness that a prominent guest speaker speaking on it is likely to bring a lot of chaos and disruption and heated divisions to their college. Likely a lot of students simply don't want *the fallout* from people speaking on these topics, regardless of their position on the topic itself.
2. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." Many conservatives feel like being free speech absolutists just leads to them getting the worst of both worlds - their political rivals get to take advantage of their free speech principles while many of their political rivals *also* get to shut down unwanted conservative speech.
An analogy I would use here is a game of sports. Think of uniform free speech absolutism being similar to a ref consistently calling the game with a lot of leeway for both teams - only the most flagrant of violations get penalized. Now, think of Team A enjoying such leeway while the other team (Team B) has the rulebook called very strictly on them. This is obviously to Team B's disadvantage, regardless of how the players feel about how strictly the rules should be followed in an universal sense. "If they refuse to not be strict on our team, then we need to convince the refs to be strict on *both* teams."
Sadly, I think the fight for free speech is going to get increasingly hard in the years to come, as both of the factors I mentioned will play on the minds of many conservative and right-leaning people.
It seems titles were targeted - many inappropriately, sure. The “scholar” was not the target. Not knowing or caring for any of the titles, I’m agnostic on the point if the Academy ever needed them at all. Maybe, maybe not. To take this further, shouldn’t the Academy be required to purchase all publications for all “scholars”, otherwise aren’t they targeting said “scholars” by NOT having a copy of their work?
So now they're all Diogenes with a hammer looking for a nail, and the nail that sticks out will get hammered down. Authoritarian systems work by creating a sufficient climate of fear that people police themselves; the thought police cometh. There is nothing either liberal or conservative in what is happening.
My suspicion is that there's two key factors going on here.
1. Culture war exhaustion. Regardless of one's position on any of these 6 hot button topics, there's an awareness that a prominent guest speaker speaking on it is likely to bring a lot of chaos and disruption and heated divisions to their college. Likely a lot of students simply don't want *the fallout* from people speaking on these topics, regardless of their position on the topic itself.
2. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." Many conservatives feel like being free speech absolutists just leads to them getting the worst of both worlds - their political rivals get to take advantage of their free speech principles while many of their political rivals *also* get to shut down unwanted conservative speech.
An analogy I would use here is a game of sports. Think of uniform free speech absolutism being similar to a ref consistently calling the game with a lot of leeway for both teams - only the most flagrant of violations get penalized. Now, think of Team A enjoying such leeway while the other team (Team B) has the rulebook called very strictly on them. This is obviously to Team B's disadvantage, regardless of how the players feel about how strictly the rules should be followed in an universal sense. "If they refuse to not be strict on our team, then we need to convince the refs to be strict on *both* teams."
Sadly, I think the fight for free speech is going to get increasingly hard in the years to come, as both of the factors I mentioned will play on the minds of many conservative and right-leaning people.
It seems titles were targeted - many inappropriately, sure. The “scholar” was not the target. Not knowing or caring for any of the titles, I’m agnostic on the point if the Academy ever needed them at all. Maybe, maybe not. To take this further, shouldn’t the Academy be required to purchase all publications for all “scholars”, otherwise aren’t they targeting said “scholars” by NOT having a copy of their work?
are there enough conservative students for these data to matter, or is it like N=10
Over 2300 conservative students in 2020, and more in subsequent years.