A plea for true tolerance

Recently I watched a video in which Benno Schmidt, former president of Yale, was interviewed regarding academic freedom. He had some interesting things to say.

First, he said academic freedom used to be for the protection of faculty from outside influences. Trustees leaned on professors to adhere to a particular “ism,” so the faculty needed protection.

But now the problem is interference from within the university. Suppression has come from faculty members themselves. Teachers have had their careers ruined, their tenures postponed or never established, their names besmirched because their ideology didn’t match what others wanted it to be.  In addition, speakers representing unpopular views have been heckled or refused the chance to share their ideas.

Students themselves have become targets. Faculty often punish them or make fun of them for views their professors don’t agree with. Many teachers try to indoctrinate those in their classrooms.

Schmidt sees the need for trustees to defend academic freedom from the new totalitarians in administration and the faculty. It’s ironic that those on the left who espouse tolerance are the ones behind most of these new witch hunts. Schmidt ends by asking for true tolerance, rather than blind adherence to the fad of the day.

I say, “Good luck.” The left will never agree to this because they are right, don’t you see. It’s not a struggle of two viewpoints to them—it’s right versus wrong. I don’t see this changing soon. The American university is now firmly in the hands of leftists with a serious agenda to wipe out all dissent.