Freedom of speech is one of the most important rights that we Americans have. It’s sad to see that today’s college students are so ignorant of the nature and cost of our freedoms that they would surrender those freedoms for a twisted view of “diversity”.
A resolution that called for a robust defense of free speech at the University of Michigan has been voted down by its student government.
Some students who voted against the measure cited concerns that, if approved, it’s essentially “legitimizing certain hate speech,” “delegitimizing minorities on campus” and “putting people at risk,” according to the minutes of the March 28 Central Student Government meeting.
The resolution was brought forth by student Deion Kathawa, the Michigan Review editor-in-chief and a College Fix contributor, who said he was motivated to lobby for his “Resolution That Commits Robustly Both This Body and the University as a Whole to Free Speech, or, the ‘Dangerous School’ Resolution” to bolster an institutional commitment to free speech.
It called on the student government to release a statement reaffirming its commitment to the First Amendment, to make it clear to the campus community that protests are allowed as long as they don’t deprive other students of their free speech rights, endorse the Chicago Principles of Free Expression, and support viewpoint diversity — particularly political diversity — in campus efforts to advance diversity in the curriculum and by other means.
Kathawa, writing on his resolution’s defeat in the Michigan Review, expressed disappointment at the results:
That there is not broad agreement that free speech ought to be a universally beloved value serves only to show how coarsened our shared political life has become, how politicized even our university—and universities across the country—has become. Free speech is not a partisan, Left-Right issue. It is, rather, the “great leveler”; it allows all persons, without regard for social identity—whether “oppressed” or “privileged”—to speak, persuade, and learn. It is because of free speech that our society may identify problems, discuss them candidly, come to a consensus about what to do, and then continue to survive. …