A recent survey of 1,500 college students by “One Class” has found that Republican and Democrat students alike agree on one thing: that Republican students are, in fact, oppressed on campuses across the United States.
The survey found that Republicans on college campuses feel unwelcome, afraid, unsafe, secretive, and powerless. The numbers show that both sides know this is a fact. The only thing they disagreed on was whether student government seats are politically biased.
An op-ed in the student newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis called “It’s Okay that Conservatives Don’t Feel Welcome” proclaimed that there’s nothing wrong with suppressing conservative thought on college campuses. The incredibly narcissistic and egomaniacal article demanded the silencing of conservative ideas while at the same time declaring that conservative students aren’t “oppressed.”
To say that conservative students somehow deserve special consideration is to misunderstand what an academic community is supposed to be. Rather than stifling debate, dismissing unproductive conservative ideas can open up our opportunities for meaningful discussion.
(But of course that meaningful discussion will only have people with the same views participating. In other words, an echo chamber.)
It’s a logistical fact of living in human society that not every idea is fit for the public forum…In general, it’s taken for granted that some belief systems are either unnecessary or detrimental to serious discourse, and that’s especially important in an academic environment.
Because college students can’t possibly be exposed to “dangerous” ideas for fear they might purchase bow ties and protest high taxes. The horror!
We don’t make it socially acceptable for chemists to talk seriously about alchemy, for example. Our highly-regarded medical school isn’t highly-regarded because of its openness to using leeches to treat disease…Similarly, there’s no reason to actively accommodate conservatives—especially fans of the president—because their ideas add little value to our discourse.
While it’s true that the Republican Party tended to use leeches like Bill Kristol to pretend to advance conservative ideas, I think it might be a slight exaggeration to compare normal conservative politics to medieval medicine. Author Sean Lundergan does not present any conservative ideas that “add little value” to discourse, but in fact makes some up out of thin air.
Conservative ideas do not deserve equal consideration to that afforded liberal and left ideas, because conservative ideas are not equal to liberal and left ideas. There is no legitimate argument for supporting Donald Trump and his allies, at least not one that holds up in any academic community worth its salt. Advocating nativism, sexism, government by oligarchic graft and anything else the president represents is not productive in a space meant to contribute ideas to the world.
It’s a good thing we have Lundergan to tell us all what to think and whose ideas are valid. I truly don’t know how I survived forty-two years without his sage contributions to the world (which, by a quick Google search, his this column and a beer distributor internship). Clearly, everything I thought I knew is wrong and I’m heading out tomorrow to buy a cruelty-free kale soy latte and some carbon credits to atone for my sins.
It’s funny that Lundergan says there’s “no legitimate argument… that holds up in any academic community,” because every time any legitimate conservative, like Ben Shapiro, tries to speak on campus, he is thrown offstage or interrupted by violent riots. And God forbid you wear a MAGA hat on campus. Someone will slug you for that. It doesn’t appear that any of these open-minded, lefty college campuses are trying very hard to hear any “legitimate” arguments.
President Trump’s executive order to deny federal funding to colleges that don’t have free speech for all on campus is clearly needed. But according to leftists like Lundergan, it’s perfectly fine for conservative kids to be treated like pariahs at schools that American parents pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to so they can be “educated” by smug leftists who genuinely believe conservatives think “people should die because they are poor.” For real.
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