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PATEL: Illiberal hypocrisy

It is important to consider the external forces driving ordinarily liberal students toward illiberal policies

Opinion columnist Matt Winesett recently penned a column titled “Thought Police at the Gates” which decried the growing propensity among college students and liberals to desire the restriction of First Amendment free speech rights, especially on college campuses. Student activists have expressed the desire to remove professors for holding opinions contrary to the prevailing beliefs of students, to pressure administrators to condemn the acts of reactionary groups, to discipline “thought criminals” and reeducate them. While these are all dangerous ideas, Winesett misses the underlying frustration with working within the system that drives usually liberal student activists to these strikingly near-fascist ideas. Free speech rights are already restricted in narrow cases and it is hypocritical to condone this in some instances while condemning it in others.

To begin with, First Amendment rights are already somewhat curtailed in the United States, as they are restricted in situations of danger, in public schools and at airports. The U.S. government does in fact infringe on freedom of speech rights in certain circumstances because the clear and present danger posed by individuals exercising their free speech rights in such instances outweighs the right to free speech.

With this precedent in mind, it is important to look at the situation through the viewpoint of these students. We can assume the reason many of these student groups are fighting for these changes is because they feel marginalized by the broader student body and administration. In the eyes of many of these students, the basic law of the country allows other students to create an unsafe learning environment for them and their peers through hate speech. It can seem as if the administration and those in power are complicit in the hate and lack of response after every demand for action is met by a defense of free speech.

The fact that the nation has been growing more conservative and more likely to deny the prevalence of racism only hurts students who are witnessing colleges go from being bastions of liberal thought to more reactionary institutions with students increasingly shifting away from the liberal arts toward pre-professional majors. To many liberal students, it is as if the ground is shifting beneath their feet and racism and reactionaries are all around.

The marginalization of these groups seems to frustrate and radicalize them to the point where they feel as if the only way to fix the situation is through the restriction of free speech rights. The same people who criticize students for these flaws are the ones who drove them to this predicament in the first place. While these students’ solution is obviously flawed, it is important to look at the path that brought us to this point. If college administrators across the nation and those in power had realized the critical nature of these problems earlier and worked to resolve them in a much more pragmatic manner, they would have generated a more inclusive environment where free speech could be respected. Instead, the issues came to a boiling point.

Furthermore, many of the same conservatives who decry these tendencies toward the restriction of rights themselves advocate for the restrictions of other rights, revealing the hypocrisy inherent in their criticism for similar restrictions on rights. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan has documented the 20-plus times major Republican figures attacked dissent — the same as voicing an unpopular opinion — following 9/11 regarding the War on Terror. Similar hypocrisy can be seen in Republican support for the Patriot Act, which contained a provision making it illegal for citizens to provide any material support or advice for any group unilaterally designated a terrorist group by the Secretary of State, even if the actions themselves are lawful. In essence, the act restricted the freedom to peacefully assemble, guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

As a result, certain activities by groups such as the nonprofit Humanitarian Law Project are considered illegal under U.S. law for working with groups such as the Kurdistani Workers Party. Even if those actions are peaceful and legal, those found to have assisted such groups can be prosecuted for doing so. This is a drastic curtailment of freedom of speech and association supported by conservative lawmakers who are now criticizing similar illiberal tendencies of college students for forcing out professors and attempting to curb the racist tendencies of fellow students.

While the goals of these student activist groups are admirable, their illiberal tendencies are restrictive and untenable. However, blanket criticism of these groups for restricting freedom of speech is unfair in a society where it is already restricted in cases of necessity. To say the struggles of minority and poor students are not great enough to be considered on par with other instances of the restriction of speech is wrong without a thorough evaluation and a relativistic approach. Any critical analysis must take into account these relevant sociopolitical trends in order to understand these groups. Even if the methodology of these groups is objectively condemnable, outright criticism is nothing short of hypocrisy.

Sawan Patel is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at s.patel@cavalierdaily.com.

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