Deseret News Op-Ed: Campus chill

In the Deseret News magazine, Buckley Institute Founder and Executive Director Lauren Noble ’11 wrote about how cancel culture has created a climate of fear at Yale and on campuses across the country. 

Though conservatives are more worried about being canceled, progressive students are also concerned. Liberals (64%) were only 2% less likely than conservative students (66%) to report being intimidated from sharing an opinion in class because of their fellow students. Neither age, nor race, nor public or private university enrollment brought the share of those intimidated by classmates below 53%.

This isn’t just numbers and data points though. The climate of fear impacts the best and brightest at Yale:

He related that one fellow student began harassing him over an op-ed he wrote and demanded Ravin issue an apology. The student then said Ravin would “bear his grief” unless Ravin donated to a fundraiser for “black, transgender, homeless youth.”

Yale’s administrators seem uninterested in pushing for free speech. Indeed, they often actively make the campus less tolerant to diverse perspectives:

Yale administrators are a “part of the problem. They are often willing to humor attempts from other students attempting to censor speech, and will not affirm the importance of intellectual diversity or free speech.”

Ultimately, though legislative and other policy proposals to curb DEI are admirable, we need to better educate America’s undergraduates about the value of free speech:

Demonstrating that diverse viewpoints aren’t dangerous viewpoints will create a student body welcoming to ideas that challenge rather than conform.

Read the full op-ed.