Something strange is happening in colleges across America. There is a new movement arising at elite institutions. Administrators and professors continue to promote a liberal agenda of big government and social justice. Furthermore, progressive academics are trying to shield students from sensitive topics, ideas, and language that might cause offense.
A wave of political correctness is spreading like wildfire across universities. Students today are ever-more protected from and intolerant of dissenting (conservative) opinions. Last week, Campus Reform reported that the politically-correct faculty at a Catholic college are trying to oust Professor Anthony Esolen for arguing that spiritual unity is undermined by an excessive focus on ethnic differences, which prompted a protest accusing him of racism.
Additionally, since the election, Virginia Tech and Georgetown University are among the many schools nationwide that are offering counseling services to students triggered by Trump’s election as president. And finally here at Wake, the University’s decades-old rule that forbids students from hanging or posting anything in their window is currently under scrutiny following an incident regarding a pro-Trump flag and a “F*CK TRUMP” sign. So, what does this mean for conservatives?
Fighting For Free Speech
We are at war, and not the usual kind. This is a war for our first amendment rights. The Left, at least for the past two years during my time at Wake Forest, has begun an effort to scrub this school of conservative culture and thought. This is the “politically-correct” culture they envision. Their modus operandi for silencing us is by weaponizing speech, the very basic medium of expression. The three biggest weapons in their arsenal are microaggressions, triggers, and privilege.
Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask a minority “Where are you from?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American.
Triggers, or to “trigger” someone, or even to be “triggered” is the act of saying, writing, or even wearing something that might cause a strong emotional response. The Donald Trump flag was a grade-A trigger. Even this article, or the many others, might be just too much for the Left.
Today’s students… are more intolerant and openly hostile of free speech and conservatives than any previous generation.
And finally, privilege is a social theory that special rights or advantages are available only to a particular person or group of people. For the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), being able to attend Wake Forest is automatic proof of one’s privilege. You can find these warriors studying in a coffee shop, macchiato in one hand, iPhone in the other.
These three tools have been weaponized in order to police speech and thought on our campuses and is slowly being institutionalized. As reported in The Atlantic, during the 2014–15 school year, the University of California faculty were presented by administrators with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity ” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”
Today’s students support these measures, and are more intolerant and openly hostile of free speech and conservatives than any previous generation.
In February, the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles released a survey 141,189 full-time, first-year students attending about 200 public and private undergraduate institutions around the country. What did it show? About 71 percent said they agreed with the statement that “colleges should prohibit speech on campus.”
Student groups from at least 76 schools have now issued their own demands related to increasing diversity. Among them include greater diversity of professors and students and more diversity sensitivity training. But many demands also involved speech codes, public apologies and resignations, such as what students at Yale forced last October.
But that’s Yale! What possibly could happen here at Wake Forest?
The Progressive Wake Forest
The most progressive initiative at Wake Forest is the Bias Report System. It is undoubtedly the most controversial policy here at Wake Forest, and for a good reason. This system allows students to anonymously report any incident in which they felt clear bias against a culture, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or even political ideology.
The Bias Report System is the greatest threat to freedom of speech here on campus. It does not specify the criteria for incidents that constitute “bias” nor does it even define the word “bias.” Instead, students are pressured to submit a report anytime they believe they are encountering an incident of hate or bias – which has the potential of opening the floodgates for students to report incidents without cause.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is an independent organization that is dedicated to defending and sustaining individual rights at colleges and universities. FIRE give Wake Forest a “red light” speech code rating, due to the this policy that clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech. Duke University and the University of North Carolina are the only two schools in North Carolina that have earned FIRE’s “green light” rating.
So what do we, as conservatives, do now?
Why We Exist
College is a time for intellectual curiosity, or at least it used to be. As liberals have increasingly dominated the academic profession, college has been transformed into safe spaces. Attempts to shield students from speech, thought, and even people that might cause them “emotional harm” are bad for us as students.
They aren’t preparing us for the real world, which doesn’t have safe spaces or trigger warnings. Wake Forest should equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control. But until the University does so, The Wake Forest Review will provide a free-thinking conservative voice on campus to defend principles while challenging progressive thought and political correctness.
Now more than ever, we must defend conservatism. According to Harvard Political Review, nearly two-thirds of college students identify as “Democratic” or “liberal.” This is troublesome for our generation, which will soon inherit this country. Our defense, as conservative students, requires a confident explanation of why conservatism is better for America over liberalism.
Conservative columnist George F. Will puts it simply, “‘liberalism’s goal of achieving greater equality of condition leads to a larger scope for interventionist government to circumscribe the market’s role in allocating wealth and opportunity. Liberalism increasingly seeks to deliver equality in the form of equal dependence … on government.” On the other hand, Will states that conservatism “argues, as did the Founders, that self-interestedness is universal among individuals, but the dignity of individuals is bound up with the exercise of self-reliance and personal responsibility in pursuing one’s interests.”
We at The Review will continue to defend self-reliance and limited government, because that is what breeds prosperity for individuals. And we will continue to defend these principles as they are viciously attacked by Leftists at this University who are trying to indoctrinate us into becoming an entire generation of social justice and dependency.
Additionally, The Wake Forest Review will challenge the rising progressive thought at Wake Forest, along with the movement towards political correctness. We respect the right to speak and promote liberalism, and we even encourage the dialogue, but there needs to be a conservative voice on campus to have that dialogue in the first place. The classroom is not the best space for a conversation. Professors are biased and students are intimidated by potential vitriol from their liberal peers.
If I can agree with President Obama on one thing, it’s when he called America’s college students “coddled.” Wake Forest students are becoming coddled at the hands of the administration. The University should not be training students about sensitivity, privilege, and trigger warnings. But as long as it continues to promote a progressive agenda while building a fantasy land of PC-culture, The Wake Forest Review will offer the important conservative critique to promote dialogue.
You’ll notice I included a picture of William F. Buckley in this article. The founder of National Review, Buckley was one of the greatest conservative thinkers in this country’s history. He once stated, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
