Thursday, April 21, 2016

How campus speech codes silence the pro-Israel community along with all others.

Jerusalem Post  "College students today are facing the most serious threats to their civil liberties."

DEMONSTRATORS PROTEST at Brandeis University.

"The infamous Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns and “apartheid week” displays on college campuses are not the only threat to Jewish students. A much greater threat looms: the inability for students to publicly defend their beliefs. While universities claim to be havens of open debate and intellectual curiosity, they are in reality black holes of political correctness. On campus, only certain ideas are worthy of consideration and Zionism is definitely not one of them. This culture doesn’t just threaten members of the Jewish community, who are terrified to challenge those who accuse Israel of the most heinous crimes. Rather, it threatens all of us who value free speech and its ability to encourage criticism, debate, and original thought on college campuses.

"While speech codes are thought to be a thing of the 90s, the truth is that college students today are facing the most serious threats to their civil liberties. From “trigger warnings” to “free speech zones,” universities are slowly training students to become hypersensitive and incapable of deviating from ideologies that are in vogue. " . . .

This is a much-discussed topic, including here:
American colleges sweep 'Jefferson Muzzle Awards'  . . . "So the question we should be asking is, are these just islands of intolerance, or is the cancer spreading across the country?  I think we know the answer to that question.  Led by the rabid left and aided by the Democratic Party, there is a steepening price for conservatives to speak their mind anywhere.  And it's likely to get a lot worse before there's a chance for it to get better.

"When political opponents can be throttled by accusing them of using "hate speech," we approach the reality of a one-party dictatorship.  Criminalizing freedom of expression has already begun and, as Germany's descent into Nazism showed, it is not a huge leap from jailing people for expressing unpopular thoughts to jailing people for opposition to a leader. 
"The American people would barely look up from their smartphones to notice they've become slaves."


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