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Once bastions of first amendment freedom, universities have become tyrannical places of enforced conformity and repressed ideas. At The American Spectator, John Glynn explains the spinelessness of Middlebury College in Vermont. Famed Polish philosopher and politician, Ryszard Legutko was scheduled to speak at the college’s Alexander Hamilton Forum, but was canceled by the ravings of the tyrannical leftists who have seized control of Middlebury. Glynn writes (abridged):
Of all the colleges in the United States, perhaps Middlebury is the most spineless. On the 24th of April, Ryszard Legutko, a Polish philosopher and member of the European Parliament, was scheduled to speak at the invitation of Middlebury’s Alexander Hamilton Forum. Interestingly, the forum’s site states the following:
We seek to offer students an opportunity to think critically about the relevance of political and constitutional theory to a range of contemporary debates in American public life.
Essential to this mission is our aspiration to contribute to a culture of reasoned, civil discussion and debate across political and intellectual differences.
Clearly, these rules didn’t apply last Wednesday. Legutko, a renowned scholar of classical political philosophy, once served as both Minister of Education and Secretary of State in his home country of Poland. Somewhat ironically, Legutko planned to deliver a lecture on the subject of totalitarianism. Little did he know that his talk would be derailed by tantrum throwing tyrants.
Legutko, in their eyes, posed a credible threat. The lunatics are now running the asylum. The normally peaceful campus of Middlebury College, with its mountainous backdrop, once had a pristine reputation. Those days are long gone.
On college campuses across the land, the very notion of diversity appears to be a moral end in itself. Nevertheless, when a member of the “oppressive” majority comes to town, the doors of diversity are closed quicker than you can say ‘white man bad.’ In the world of social justice warriors, diversity of opinion is forbidden: opposition to the doctrines of social justice is never reasonable opinion, but malevolent “hate speech.” The extreme left’s idea of diversity is narrowly defined; it has only the slightest of connections with the actual definition of the word.
This shouldn’t surprise us. The wheels of madness have been in motion for quite some time.
In 2016, for example, students at the University of Pennsylvania removed a portrait of Shakespeare. Why? Because Willy Shakespeare is not sufficiently diverse. The disgruntled students replaced the portrait with another portrait of a black lesbian poet.
In this age of diversity, an increasing number of third level institutions have committed themselves to dogmatic, all too myopic ideologies.
Read more here.
Abigail Adams Institute Annual Lecture: The Demon in Democracy, Ryszard Legutko
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