Thursday, November 16, 2017

FYI …

 The Right to Tell People What They Do Not Want to Hear’ – Lingua Franca - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

 If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. 
That dictum is highly relevant today. It has no truck with the notion of “safe spaces” where topics are prohibited lest offense be caused to those of a differing persuasion; it opposes not just government censorship but also voluntary segregation into isolated media bubbles; it offers no comfort to the idea of trigger warnings permitting unwelcome subjects to be evaded; it rejects the strategy of keeping unpopular speakers off campus.
All true. Which is why the bad press universities have been getting is not unjustified. The article in the Economist has more to do with the students' views, not the administrators' actions: "University administrators, whose job it is to promote harmony and diversity on campus, often find the easiest way to do so is to placate the intolerant fifth,the article says. Well, not really. Their job is to do the right thing, and tolerating intolerance is not the way to do that.

See also: Unpopular opinions are in danger of extinction – but you can change that.
Yes. she is Evelyn Waugh's granddaughter.

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