Finneran: Found - A Grown-Up on Campus

Friday, September 02, 2016

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

What was once considered utterly normal is now considered radical and revolutionary.

Let’s hear three cheers for the University of Chicago where a grown-up seems to have wandered into the upper ranks of the University’s leadership. It is all at once a development which is refreshing, long overdue, and worthy of emulation. Might we hear the same from Harvard, Boston College, Boston University and others? I’m not holding my breath in anticipation.

I speak of a “welcoming letter” from the Dean of Students to the incoming freshmen class at the University of Chicago. Two paragraphs in the dean’s letter are bright lights in the gulag-like darkness which now suffocates too many college campuses.

I quote: “Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn without fear of censorship. Civility and mutual respect are vital to all of us, and freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others.” My response—I think that I’m in need of smelling salts. I feel light-headed and giddy.

I further quote: “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings”, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” My response—labored breathing, racing pulse, signs of hallucination.

Need I remind you of the pampered phonies on countless campuses—campuses such as Brown, Yale, Brandeis, Oberlin, and others—whose response to spoiled and bratty children, posing as adults, was to give them bubbles, pillows, and Play-Doh in order to shield them from differences of opinion. Such campuses are prisons of intellectual conformity. And the surrender of adults to the tantrums of millennial mobs is the antithesis of leadership.

That the policies which U. of Chicago has spelled out are seen as revolutionary tells you all you need to know about contemporary campus culture. Brainwashing, shunning, shaming, harassment, and intimidation are the tools of the trade, to be used at the whim of anyone who is ever “offended” by anything. And of course it would not be 2016 unless the denunciations for legitimate differences of opinion were not accompanied by such labels as racist, homophobic, xenophobic, or hateful.

How any university president or administrator believes that such an atmosphere prepares anyone for the realities of life is far beyond me. What it actually prepares one for is the perpetual seeking out of victimhood, for the making of excuses, and for whining about various “privileges” as all-encompassing reasons for one’s mediocrity.

The evidence abounds. Consider the sad hilarity of students at Yale---the ultimate bastion of privilege---as being in need of “warnings” about Halloween costumes and ethnic sensitivities, screaming in the faces of politically correct and routinely intimidated counsellors and professors about the students’ need for protected safe spaces.

As gratifying as it might be to encounter a responsible adult in college administration we must bear in mind three things:

1) The University of Chicago will set you back almost $ 75,000.00 a year for the privilege of attending; at that price, normal people and parents should quite reasonably expect that a serious education is being provided rather than the psycho-babble on micro-aggressions which dominates elsewhere;

2) The University’s welcoming letter should have referenced expulsion as the default decision for anyone violating the University’s principles of freedom of expression and academic inquiry; let’s make sure that little Johnny, masquerading as an aggrieved intellectual, suffers the sting that he would impart to others whose opinions he does not share;

3) Nat Hentoff, legendary liberal and columnist, would be thrilled by the University’s statement of principles and astounded by the stark necessity of its issuance; Nat famously bemoaned the habit of liberals and academics to proclaim their First Amendment rights while simultaneously denouncing and denying those rights to their critics; Nat’s depictive phrase of this habit was “First Amendment for me, but not for thee”. Nat knew hypocrisy when he saw it and he saw it far too often. He would be appalled by today’s thought police.

So give three cheers to Chicago. They have struck a blow for freedom. May there be many more.

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.