YALE’S QUIET MAJORITY IN FAVOR OF FREE SPEECH:
At last, there’s hopeful news on intellectual liberty from a college campus. A new survey of students at Yale finds that a large majority favor free speech. Perhaps the kids can now also persuade the school’s administration of the virtues of academic freedom.
Your humble correspondent is an alumnus of the school and serves on the board of the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale, which commissioned the survey of 872 Yale undergraduates. Conducted from April 17th to the 23rd by the polling firm McLaughlin & Associates, the survey found that 72% of respondents oppose the idea of Yale “having speech codes to regulate speech for students and faculty,” while 16% favor the idea. Of course depending on one’s point of view, it can seem reassuring that free speech still wins in a landslide or disturbing that 16% of students actually want to surrender their right to express themselves. This column prefers to view the glass as 72% full. . . .
These findings are particularly encouraging because in 2015 Yale became infamous for some hypersensitive students who were unable to tolerate Halloween costumes. The costume kerfuffle and the recent removal of the name of alumnus John C. Calhoun from a residential college at Yale were among the campus events that inspired a recent episode of “The Simpsons.” In the fictional Fox sit-com, a Yale administrator informs a wealthy alumnus that “our students are highly entitled wusses.” Another Yale official then urges the alum to fund a chair in the “non-narrative cinema of self-identified pansexuals.”
But the new poll suggests that the intolerant few who publicly berated Yale faculty over Halloween costumes—and even forced the resignation of those who wouldn’t embrace their extremism—do not speak for most Yale undergrads.
No, but they speak for a lot of administrators whose pawns they are. The other students — and alumni, and legislators for public universities — need to rein those administrators in. Or, better yet, get rid of most of them, since they contribute nothing of value and in fact are undermining higher education.