Free speech: For me, not for thee
MIT needed a speaker for its prestigious annual John Carlson Lecture on climate science this fall, said Michael Powell in The New York Times, and University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot “seemed a natural choice.” But in addition to studying climate change and creating mathematical models to analyze other planets’ atmospheres for signs of extraterrestrial life, Abbot has written and spoken about his opposition to affirmative action and diversity initiatives on college campuses. An advocate of choosing professors and students by merit, he has objected to, in his words, “treating people as members of a group rather than as individuals.” His invitation to speak about his scientific work caused “a swell of angry resistance,” and MIT decided to disinvite him. Abbot’s affirmativeaction stance is “not outside the mainstream,” said Robby Soave in Reason.com. Last year, 56 percent of voters in liberal California cast ballots to oppose race-based preferences. But in academia, there are now “rigid ideological requirements” for free speech, and dissenting views are not tolerated.
Princeton hosted Abbot’s lecture last week, an outcome that might make this look like “a big storm in a small teacup,” said Yascha Mounk in TheAtlantic.com. Still, the principle behind MIT’s disinvitation is “deeply worrying.” Abbot was scheduled to speak about physical science, not race or affirmative action. If all academics—and professionals in other fields—can be shunned or silenced for “controversial political speech,” we will no longer live in a free society. It’s already happening, said Lawrence Krauss in The Wall Street Journal. Many universities’ departments of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” have grown so powerful that job applicants must submit statements detailing what they’ve done to further the cause of racial justice. Berkeley’s life sciences department rejected 76 percent of its 2018–19 applicants because it deemed their commitment to diversity insufficient.
Campus illiberalism is a real problem, said Jonathan Zimmerman in NYDailyNews.com, but even as the Right denounces “cancel culture” on a daily basis, it welcomes conservatives acting as censors. Right-wingers across the country are now banning schools from teaching “critical race theory”— which has come to mean anything about America’s history of racism, including Alice Walker’s fiction. “I’ve got a modest proposal: Conservatives will agree to stop censoring K-12 schools, on the condition that liberals stop censoring higher education.” You either believe in free speech or you don’t.