Daniel Mael, a student at Brandeis University, recently found himself threatened with disciplinary action for reporting on another student’s tweets celebrating the murder of two New York City police officers. Two years earlier, he was charged with “bullying” for having written an article taking issue with critics of Israel. His experience, writes Abraham H. Miller, is symptomatic of the decline of free speech in American universities:
Before the creation of so-called speech and decency codes, a campus dean would have advised [Mael’s “victim”] to engage Mael in a public exchange, beginning, perhaps, with the student newspaper. Today, however, universities have become hypersensitive about students’ feelings. . . . To ensure students never experience the discomfort of having their ideas openly challenged, universities have instituted speech and decency codes. . . .
The codes require the establishment of an entire bureaucracy to monitor and enforce them. As prison guards need prisoners, the bureaucracy needs violators. To create a steady population of violators, the bar for offenses has to be continually lowered; new violations have to be created, and sometimes victims have to be sought out and taught they are victims.
Read more on New York Observer: http://observer.com/2015/01/the-brandeis-scandal-and-the-rise-of-the-shadow-university/