Orwellianism Stalks the Land of the Free

Prejudiced Ignorance

Kirsten Powers has written an important expose on the reign of intolerance in college campuses across the United States.  However, she begs a number of questions, which she does not address.  

1.  Why has this happened?

2.  What does it represent?

3.  What is the right tactical response?

4.  What is the right strategic response?

We will endeavour to deal with these questions below Powers's piece.

How Liberals Ruined College

College should be a place of new ideas and challenging views. Instead, liberals have made it a place of fear and intimidation.

Kirsten Powers
The Daily Beast

The root of nearly every free-speech infringement on campuses across the country is that someone—almost always a liberal—has been offended or has sniffed out a potential offense in the making. Then, the silencing campaign begins. The offender must be punished, not just for justice’s sake, but also to send the message to anyone else on campus that should he or she stray off the leftist script, they too might find themselves investigated, harassed, ostracized, or even expelled. If the illiberal left can preemptively silence opposing speakers or opposing groups— such as getting a speech or event canceled, or denying campus recognition for a group—even better.


In a 2014 interview with New York magazine, comedian Chris Rock told journalist Frank Rich that he had stopped playing college campuses because of how easily the audiences were offended. Rock said he realized some time around 2006 that “This is not as much fun as it used to be” and noted George Carlin had felt the same way before he died. Rock attributed it to “Kids raised on a culture of ‘We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.’ Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say ‘the black kid over there.’ No, it’s ‘the guy with the red shoes.’ You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.” Sadly, Rock admitted that the climate of hypersensitivity had forced him and other comedians into self-censorship.

This Orwellian climate of intimidation and fear chills free speech and thought. On college campuses it is particularly insidious. Higher education should provide an environment to test new ideas, debate theories, encounter challenging information, and figure out what one believes. Campuses should be places where students are able to make mistakes without fear of retribution. If there is no margin for error, it is impossible to receive a meaningful education. 

Academic freedom is declining. The belief that free speech rights don’t include the right to speak offensively is now firmly entrenched on campuses and enforced by repressive speech or harassment codes.

Instead, the politically correct university is a world of land mines, where faculty and students have no idea what innocuous comment might be seen as an offense. In December 2014, the president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, sent an email to the student body in the wake of the outcry over two different grand juries failing to indict police officers who killed African-American men. The subject heading read “All Lives Matter” and the email opened with, “As members of the Smith community we are struggling, and we are hurting.” She wrote, “We raise our voices in protest.” She outlined campus actions that would be taken to “heal those in pain” and to “teach, learn and share what we know” and to “work for equity and justice.”

Close to 60 percent of the four hundred–plus colleges they surveyed “seriously infringe upon the free speech rights of students.”

Shortly thereafter, McCartney sent another email. This one was to apologize for the first. What had she done? She explained she had been informed by students “the phrase/hashtag ‘all lives matter’ has been used by some to draw attention away from the focus on institutional violence against black people.” She quoted two students, one of whom said, “The black students at this school deserve to have their specific struggles and pain recognized, not dissolved into the larger student body.” The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported that a Smith sophomore complained that by writing “All Lives Matter,” “It felt like [McCartney] was invalidating the experience of black lives.” Another Smith sophomore told the Gazette, “A lot of my news feed was negative remarks about her as a person.” In her apology email McCartney closed by affirming her commitment to “working as a white ally.”

McCartney clearly was trying to support the students and was sympathetic to their concerns and issues. Despite the best of intentions, she caused grievous offense. The result of a simple mistake was personal condemnation by students. If nefarious motives are imputed in this situation, it’s not hard to extrapolate what would, and does, happen to actual critics who are not obsequiously affirming the illiberal left.

In an article in the Atlantic, Wendy Kaminer—a lawyer and free-speech advocate—declared, “Academic freedom is declining. The belief that free speech rights don’t include the right to speak offensively is now firmly entrenched on campuses and enforced by repressive speech or harassment codes. Campus censors don’t generally riot in response to presumptively offensive speech, but they do steal newspapers containing articles they don’t like, vandalize displays they find offensive, and disrupt speeches they’d rather not hear.  They insist that hate speech isn’t free speech and that people who indulge in it should be punished. No one should be surprised when a professor at an elite university calls for the arrest of ‘Sam Bacile’ [who made the YouTube video The Innocence of Muslims] while simultaneously claiming to value the First Amendment.”

On today’s campuses, left-leaning administrators, professors, and students are working overtime in their campaign of silencing dissent, and their unofficial tactics of ostracizing, smearing, and humiliation are highly effective. But what is even more chilling—and more far reaching—is the official power they abuse to ensure the silencing of views they don’t like. They’ve invented a labyrinth of anti-free speech tools that include “speech codes,” “free speech zones,” censorship, investigations by campus “diversity and tolerance offices,” and denial of due process. They craft “anti-harassment policies” and “anti-violence policies” that are speech codes in disguise. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s (FIRE) 2014 report on campus free speech, “Spotlight on Speech Codes,” close to 60 percent of the four hundred–plus colleges they surveyed “seriously infringe upon the free speech rights of students.” Only 16 of the schools reviewed in 2014 had no policies restricting protected speech. Their 2015 report found that of the 437 schools they surveyed, “more than 55 percent maintain severely restrictive, ‘red light’ speech codes—policies that clearly and substantially prohibit protected speech.” FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff attributed the slight drop to outside pressure from free-speech groups and lawsuits.

For many Americans the term “speech code” sends shivers up the spine. Yet these noxious and un-American codes have become commonplace on college campuses across the United States. They are typically so broad that they could include literally anything and are subject to the interpretation of school administrators, who frequently fail to operate as honest brokers. In the hands of the illiberal left, the speech codes are weapons to silence anyone—professors, students, visiting speakers—who expresses a view that deviates from the left’s worldview or ideology. Speech that offends them is redefined as “harassment” or “hate speech” both of which are barred by most campus speech codes. At Colorado College, a private liberal arts college, administrators invented a “violence” policy that was used to punish non-violent speech. The consequences of violating a speech code are serious: it can often lead to public shaming, censoring, firings, suspensions, or expulsions, often with no due process.

Some reflections.  Why has this happened?  Doubtless the causes are manifold and complex, but one major cause is that the Left is afflicted with moral doubt and epistemological uncertainty.  Since it does not officially believe in absolute truth of any sort, it must invent certainty in other ways, for comfort's sake.  The current Orwellianism in American universities is the direct result of the need for self-righteous certainty about something--namely, itself.  Since Leftist philosophies and ideologies stymie argument and reason from the get-go, the only recourse is to employ force and intimidation of opponents.  By these means the Left  persuades itself that it is both right and righteous.  But what is actually on display is profound angst and weakness.  Therefore, Christians and others should be encouraged and emboldened in the face of this nonsense.

The story is told of the preacher who used to shout and thunder at the congregation when he felt his argument was weak.  Noise and verbal intimidation substituted for truth, reason and powerful argument.  Herein is the end game of liberalism and the radical relativism upon which it it has built its castle of straw.

Secondly, What does it represent?  This stifling of free speech and contrary argument represents the eclipse of learning and the progressive ignorance of liberal culture and civilisation.  The liberal mind has closed shut--upon vacuities and emptiness.  Knock on the liberal head and you will hear an empty, echoing sound.  There is nothing inside.  It is full of heat and no light.  That's where the radical scepticism of post-modernism leads.  Don't bother arguing or engaging: there is nothing to argue against; nothing to engage with.  That's why Chris Rock was smart to stop going to perform at colleges.  Don't waste breath and time upon the invincibly ignorant who have substituted vacuous slogans for thought, discussion, and debate.

Thirdly, What is the right tactical response?  We believe the right tactical response is mockery and laughter.  Colleges and liberals need to be ridiculed--justly ridiculed.  When the ancient Israelites took a  piece of log home, threw half in the fire to warm the house, but with the other half carved out an idol, then bowed down and worshipped the image they had just created, the prophets shredded them with mockery.  A similar tactic needs to be employed at this juncture in our collective history.  There are a thousand ways to do this.  How about a national award for the most ignorantly prejudiced college in the land?  Call it the Orwellian Cup.  Such folly calls out for parody and ridicule.  Let's give it to them in spades.

Fourthly, What is the right strategic response?  Longer term, our response to prejudiced illiberal liberal colleges needs to include continuing to build our own institutions of learning.  We are particularly blessed to live in an age of electronic information, which opens up the possibilities of a superb education not reliant upon spacious grounds, grand buildings, and Bloombergian endowed alumni funds.  In our case, we want to see more and more Christian schools and colleges founded upon the true truth of the Scriptures--and therefore free to debate and discuss everything in creation, either with reasoned approbation or disapprobation.

Kirsten Powers does us great service exposing the hypocritical vacuity of the Liberal mind.  But the epistemologically self-aware Christian will be murmuring, "No surprises there."