Everett Piper: Fighting cancel culture in our classrooms and universities. Here’s how we restore freedom
If your hope is that the ivory tower is still going strong, then you can dispel those hopes. It collapsed. Consider Exhibit A in the case of Sane vs. Snowflakes at the University of Virginia.
On April 8, Kieran Bhattacharya was forced to seek the intervention of a federal judge to protect his legal right to ask questions – yes, that’s right, just ask questions – in the hallowed halls of Thomas Jefferson’s pride and joy.
The problems for Bhattacharya began in 2018 when, as a sophomore medical student, he decided to take part in a panel discussion on microaggression. During the talk he asked the moderator, Deputy Dean Beverly Cowell Adams, if only “marginalized groups” could be victims of such thought crimes.
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When Adams replied “no”, Bhattacharya challenged her by pointing out that the slides she had used so far in her presentation indicated the exact opposite and that she was “inconsistent”.
A Professionality Concern Card has been filed against Bhattacharya to commit the heinous failure of challenging inconsistencies and to engage in what was formerly known as healthy debate. He was then brought before the Academic Standards and Achievement Committee and charged with “aggressive and inappropriate interactions in multiple situations.”
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The committee then informed Bhattacharya that he would have to undergo a psychological examination before he could return to class. When he asked under what authority the school could request this, Bhattacharya was unceremoniously suspended from the school.
And there you have it. This sums up the state of the education company today pretty well.
Our academic institutions have become eternal kindergartens in every way, where both faculty and students are stuck in chronic childhood shouting, “You have offended me!” every time someone dares to question their thinking or come up with a contrary idea.
This is not an education. This is a joke. A very youthful joke.
In my new book “Growing up! Life is not safe, but it’s good” I challenge the current childhood fixation of our culture on feelings about facts:
The solution to this egocentric navel gaze can be found in a 2,000 year old letter entitled 1 Corinthians: “Put these childish things aside” and “grow up!”
“It seems that hardly a day goes by when the call for safe spaces and language codes is not a headline. Every day our colleges and universities seem to trip upon themselves to prove that they are more bastions of ideological fascism than bulwarks Freedom of speech. Places where students and faculty tend to limit debate rather than defend the freedom to disagree. ”
The answer to this immaturity of the mind does not lie in childish whining of false “tolerance” or in the ideological security of “triggering warnings”. It is not found in more restrictions and more legalism. It is not to be found in enforced language codes or innumerable rules against “microaggressions”. It is not found in schoolyard ridicules of “me and me” and “us against them”.
No, the solution to this egocentric navel gaze can be found in a 2,000 year old letter entitled 1 Corinthians: “Put these childish things aside” and “grow up!”
The academy is not supposed to be a safe space. It should be a place to learn. To learn that a debate is good, that disagreements are good, that a little bit of dissonance is good, that pursuing the truth rather than protecting your opinions is good, that academic freedom is good, and ideological fascism is bad!
Education – the best education – shouldn’t be safe, it should be good!
I know it’s rude to say “I told you”, but – I told you! In my 2017 book, No Daycare: The Disastrous Consequences of Leaving the Truth, I warned that this immaturity would not stay in Berkeley, Brown, or the University of Virginia, but would end up in our boardrooms, our congress, our congressional courtrooms and our living room.
I kept saying that what is being taught in our classrooms today will be practiced in our culture tomorrow. I said ideas have consequences. Garbage in, garbage out.
Teach narcissism and self-absorption and you will get narcissistic and self-absorbent people. Teach security about freedom and you will have a nation willing to give up all of its freedoms under the guise of the security of all.
I warned about all of this and, to be honest, here we are. The snowflakes have graduated and brought their culture of demolition with them. And in their new role as “fact checker” they are overturning freedom of speech, expression, discussion, and even the freedom to ask questions, all under the banner of their youthful screams, “You” hurt my feelings “and” I feel not sure. ”
But all is not lost. There is a solution to this nonsense, and it is very simple. You can find the answer in the classroom.
The cure for this mental illness lies in conveying good ideas. Ideas that make more sense than nonsense.
Ideas like natural law instead of narcissism, self-evident truths instead of self-realization.
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Superior ideas, like the content of your own character that is more important than the color of someone else’s skin. Ideas like the priority of freedom over security and the importance of the sacred over the self.
The answer to madness is that students and faculty alike are growing up! Answering questions may not be safe, but they are good.
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