A university president makes a case against cowardice

Some of that so-called activism seems to be closer to suppressing any thoughts someone dislikes. Removing that from university life is not cool, that „activism“ itself went off the rails too.

Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and it's a fair price.

Being annoyed, inconvenienced, or even negatively impacted by the speech acts of others is by design. To throw that out is to make a calculation that without freedom of speech, your perspective will be the natural default without activism to upset it. A dangerous assumption.

Problem is that in the past two decades university admins gave in to various deplatforming causes and enforced codes. If they had stood firm before, the arguments against them wouldn't be nearly as strong. Unfortunately, they didn't. So when they now use the "free speech" argument themselves it rings hollow.

Those policies were designed to promote free speech from vulnerable groups. Political vulnerability has a huge influence on free speech (and freedom), and that's what they have been addressing.

(Picking two random groups:) If you are Pakistani and are in a room of all Indian people, and the others say how horrible Pakistanis are and how research shows that Pakistanis are less intelligent or prone to violence, that is a very intimidating atmosphere and it would be hard to endure, much less speak up.

If that one Pakistani says the same about Indians, it's obnoxious and annoying, but it's no threat to anyone. The many Indians are not vulnerable. That's the difference.

Furthermore, the dominant groups in a culture tend to create systems and knowledge that support them to the exclusion of others - sometimes explicitly and intentionally. That's systemic discrimination - the system naturally generates it if you follow the usual path. It takes some effort to create space for other points of view.

Whether the typical DEI policies are optimal is another question. I haven't heard anyone come up with a great solution. Some pretend it's not a problem and there is no prejudice, which is absurd and not a solution; it's just sticking one's head in the sand - because they can, because they are not vulnerable.

> (Picking two random groups:) If you are Pakistani and are in a room of all Indian people, and the others say how horrible Pakistanis are and how research shows that Pakistanis are less intelligent or prone to violence, that is a very intimidating atmosphere and it would be hard to endure, much less speak up.

Much like a right-winger or a Christian at one of these universities.

The policies didn't help the groups they were supposedly about helping, they helped the groups that were already dominant (race and religion matter a lot less in a group that's all upper class), whether by design or because they evolved to.