Conservatives have been battling bias on college campuses for decades, though in recent years that fight has been dominated by the movement to restore free speech. Free speech is a necessary priority for proponents of fairness in higher education, but it’s really only half the battle.
Yesterday I wrote about an effort at Sewanee to undermine Christina Hoff Sommers’ upcoming lecture on campus. Unlike at many universities, feminists at Sewanee are not striving to censor Sommers or shut down her speech. Instead, they’ve distributed a fact sheet that attempts to rebut her work on sex and gender, and they plan to host a panel after her lecture to air their disagreements. As I noted, that’s a fair approach and a refreshing departure from reflexive thrusts for censorship.
Judging by several responses to the article, some thought these students deserved a pat on the back for not seeking to silence Sommers. But that’s really just a sign of how low the bar has gotten.
Long before speakers who subvert progressive dogma had to fight just to open their mouths on college campuses, the battle against bias in higher education was focused mostly on the abject lack of ideological balance in curricula. Winning the fight for free speech would be no small victory, but it won’t change how professors present political and cultural topics in their classrooms.
At Sewanee, it’s telling to note the university’s Women and Gender Studies department is involved the formal efforts to rebut Sommers’ work. In an educational environment where conflicting theories and beliefs are presented to students fairly, Sommers would be essential reading. Alongside Judith Butler and bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw, students should be directed to consider the ideas of feminists such as Sommers and Camille Paglia, whose work advocates for the advancement of women, but disagrees with the poststructuralist theories that dominate the field.
All of that is without even discussing the feminist academic establishment’s decision to cut science out of its curricula in order to teach students that gender is all or mostly just a social construct.
Certainly, we must fight vigorously to restore free speech to higher education. But students and academics should not be led to believe the simple act of allowing a nonprogressive to open their mouth on a college campus means they’re champions of fairness. Once they’re allowed to be heard, it will be incumbent upon professors to ensure those voices that subvert academic orthodoxy are presented fairly for students to consider.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
