By Professor Doom
It’s no secret
that our campuses no longer believe in free speech. Ok, that’s a bit
hyperbolic, but the riots on campus whenever speakers with a certain point of
view try to talk do seem to be a bit more common than in days past.
One of the more
recent riots (I’m hesitant to say “most recent” because that might become
inaccurate in the days between I write and post) was at Middlebury College.
Professor Charles Murray was scheduled to speak, and even tried to do so in a
venue specially secured from our ever more violently opposed-to-free-speech
students. Even at his “safe space” (it works both ways, right?), the rioters
were just too threatened by his ideas, and so he left rather than try to talk
over their shouting.
Their logic
was that since I am a racist, a white supremacist, a white nationalist, a
pseudoscientist whose work has been discredited, a sexist, a eugenicist, and
(this is a new one) anti-gay, I did not deserve a platform for my hate speech,
and hence it was appropriate to keep me from speaking.
--Professor Murray explaining the “pep rally” leading up
to his cancelled speech. When will
this level of ridiculous name-calling be fundamentally discredited?
Not content with
simply preventing the man from speaking, the rioters persisted. The professor
was physically attacked, and the one who invited him was even injured by the
liberals. Professor
Murray himself can give more details, in case the gentle readers missed it
(it’s weird how every Trump tweet generates weeks of screeching by the media,
while actual violence in direct opposition to a fundamental American value
seems to merit a day of “news” at most).
For what it’s
worth, Murray’s work suggests that America is somewhat breaking apart along
economic lines. In short, America now has a sub-class of relatively wealthy
people who live in a bubble, with little exposure to the realities of an
America where 15% of the population is on food stamps, and over half the
population doesn’t have even
$1,000 to spend, even for an emergency.
These
bubble-people send their children to college, of course, and they’re wealthy
enough to send them to the more expensive colleges. What they’re paying for is
to keep their kids in the bubble…in other words, the very kids who attacked
Murray were the ones he’s trying to warn everyone else about.
Hey, that actually
makes some level of sense.
Murray is hardly
the only target, of course, as I’ve documented quite a few speakers who’ve
found their speeches canceled, and, I dare conjecture, would find themselves at
risk of bodily harm had they shown up on campus. It really is discouraging to
find free speech so violently discouraged these days.
I’m sure some campuses are a bit more liberal
(er, in the sense that they’re open to free speech, which is the opposite of
what liberal means today) than others. I’m also sure there are parents out
there who might want their kids exposed to other ideas besides those of failed
ideologies. Can I help these parents find such schools? It’s not like school
brochures have bloody pictures of “this is what happened to people to want to
talk about ideas we don’t like” in them. Naturally, I’m inclined to use
mathematics to help answering this question.
The one thing statisticians always ask for
is “more data.” It’s the nature of the business, and we actually have an
advantage now that shutting down free speech is a regular event. So many
speakers have been cancelled that some clever people tabulated the data, and came
up with a result:
Source (a worthy
read)
All the dots are institutions of higher
education in America. Of interest in the above chart is the collection of red
dots: these are places where speakers have found themselves “disinvited.”
This particular
chart rates these colleges based on the proportion of students in the utmost,
or lowest, economic situation. Even a casual inspection reveals that
institutions with a relatively high proportion of “bubble kids” seem to be far
more inclined to rebuke speakers attempting to pierce that bubble. The cluster of red dots once you get above 50%
of the students being from wealthy families is quite clear.
Not provided
here, but fairly implicit, is the more expensive schools (tuition at
Middlebury, for example, is over $40,000 a year) will have kids from wealthier
families…likewise, kids who are on the lower end of the economic spectrum are
more likely to go to cheaper schools. While I don’t supply data to support that notion, let’s just take it as an axiom.
Even though the
chart suggests a strong positive correlation between tuition and hostility to
free speech, I feel the need to point out correlation isn’t necessarily
causation (albeit I’m hard pressed to wrap my mind around the possibility that
hostility to free speech would increase tuition). Such pedantic concerns are
irrelevant, however. Parents are plunking down $200,000 or more to pay for 4
(if they’re very lucky) years of education at these places, an education that
will only reinforce terrible ideas that have led to much suffering of humanity.
Friend:
“Yes, they are total ripoffs, but they’ll get screwed less there!”
--a friend
had issues with my documenting what a fraud many community colleges are. I
highlight his best point, above.
I’d love to tie
this in to the student loan scam, but that scam only explains why the tuition
is so high, not the weird ideology that, clearly, correlates well with the
expense of the institution. Oh well, I can’t win them all.
Bottom line: if
you’re wanting to give your child a well-rounded education, particularly when
it comes to exposure to a variety of political ideas, avoid the more expensive
schools. It’s clear such schools are converging into exorbitant indoctrination
centers. That the ideology of the indoctrination is paid for by the student
loan tax dollars of a country diametrically opposed to the ideology is simply
an additional insult.
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