Students Demand Censorship of George Will, Won’t Listen to Someone They Don’t Like

Another day, another group of
insolent students demanding that their university censor a
prominent speaker and deprive the rest of campus of the opportunity
to learn from him.

George Will is slated to give Michigan State University’s fall
semester commencement address on December 13th and receive an
honorary degree from the university. But because one of the
thousands of columns he has written in his life
was deemed controversial by those on the far-left side of the
campus sexual assault issue, some students want him disinvited from
campus.

Will strikes me as conservative with some good libertarian
instincts; as such, I don’t agree with everything he says. I will
note, however, that he has recently made very smart contributions
to the cause of criminal justice reform. In a
column lamenting the brutality that caused Eric Garner’s death
and the miscarriage of justice evident in the grand jury’s decision
not to indict, Will wrote, “Overcriminalization has become a
national plague.” He explicitly described solitary confinement as
“torture.”

(Perhaps he should have just written #BlackLivesMatter and
stopped at that—the
only parlance deemed acceptable by campus crusaders.)

Of course, whether one agrees with an invited speaker entirely,
partly, or not at all is beside the point. In fact, a strong case
can be made that it is even more important to hear from
notable people whose views differ from one’s own—especially on
campuses, where opportunities to hear opinions critical of
liberalism are in short supply.

Some students, however, took a different view, according to

Bloomberg:

About 30 protestors gathered in the administration building and
delivered a petition calling for Will’s invitation to be rescinded,
said Jason Cody, a spokesman for the university in East
Lansing.

MSU President Lou Anna Simon said in astatement yesterday that Will was picked
because he would offer a different viewpoint from another speaker,
documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, and that Will was chosen long
before his controversialcolumn was published
on June 6. Will wrote then that colleges are learning “that when
they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges,
victims proliferate.”

“We refuse to be silent,” said Emily Kollaritsch, 21, one of
about six or seven of the protestors who went into Simon’s office.
“We’re going to have our voices heard.”

More than 70,000 people signed the petition, started by the
women’s rights advocacy group UltraViolet, which has called Will a
“rape apologist.”

MSU President Lou Anna Simon, at least, has refused to disinvite
Will, noting that “Great universities are committed to serving the
public good by creating space for discourse and exchange of ideas,
though that exchange may be uncomfortable and will sometimes
challenge values and beliefs.” This sets her apart from some other
university presidents who caved under pressure to disinvite
controversial speakers.

Indeed, “disinvitation
season,” as Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
President Greg Lukianoff calls it, shows no sign of winding down.
The problem of universities cancelling speakers on behalf of
censorship-inclined students may even be
worsening.

If a liberal arts education has any purpose, it is to teach
students the importance of Enlightenment values like free speech,
tolerance, and rational debate. When students demand that
authorities silence dissenting views, they unintentionally
demonstrate that they don’t deserve the diplomas they are about to
receive.

Related:
As I argued yesterday, college has become bumper bowling and
degrees are participant ribbons.