Wellesley College Insulates Students From Ideologically Noncompliant Speakers

Wellesley College Insulates Students From Ideologically Noncompliant Speakers

Shrillary’s alma mater is doubling down on the common college practice of not allowing speakers deemed not to be sufficiently left-wing:

In an email to fellow faculty [Monday] afternoon, a committee of Wellesley College professors made several startling recommendations about how they think future campus speakers should be chosen. If implemented, the proposals by the faculty Commission for Ethnicity, Race, and Equity would have a profound impact on the quality and quantity of voices Wellesley students would be permitted to hear.

Any speaker not meticulously compliant with the up-to-minute requirements of political correctness would likely be regarded as beyond the pale.

While paying lip service to free speech, the email is remarkable in its contempt for free and open dialogue on campus. Asserting that controversial speakers “impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty at Wellesley,” the committee members lament the fact that such speakers negatively impact students by forcing them to “invest time and energy in rebutting the speakers’ arguments.”

Working up that much energy could generate enough heat to melt the precious snowflakes.

They point specifically to a recent appearance by Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis, a self-described feminist who has criticized Title IX implementation and a “culture of sexual paranoia” on campuses.

Calling yourself a feminist does not make you politically correct if you fail to revere Title IX and its insane applications.

The committee recommends that those inviting any future speakers “consider whether, in their zeal for promoting debate, they might, in fact, stifle productive debate by enabling the bullying of disempowered groups” …

It would be difficult to take Orwellian doubletalk to a further extreme of self-parody. Allowing debate stifles debate, because those who are in a position to determine what can or cannot be said are “disempowered,” and saying anything they don’t like constitutes “bullying” them.

Kipnis disagrees that she was bullying the disempowered:

“I’m going to go further and say — as someone who’s been teaching for a long time, and wants to see my students able to function in the world post-graduation — that protecting students from the ‘distress’ of someone’s ideas isn’t education, it’s a $67,000 babysitting bill.”

Let’s not exaggerate. The cost of attending Wellesley College is actually only $66,984 per year. For the money, you are assured hermetic insulation from anything that might challenge your liberal point of view.

melting snowflakes
Snowflakes that tried to rebut a speaker’s arguments.

On a tip from Greg O. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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