If this Harvard University student got her way, free speech on campus would be abolished and professors with dissenting views fired, because radical leftism is the only permissible political philosophy and the First Amendment is a barrier preventing modern colleges from fulfilling their proper role as indoctrination camps.
Her name is Sandra Korn. She is a senior at Harvard and columnist for the Harvard Crimson.
In a recent column, Korn unambiguously insisted that the university should stop guaranteeing professors and students the right to hold controversial views and pursue research that challenges liberalism.
“If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals?” asked Korn in her column.
The column’s subtitle was even more direct: “Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice.”
Korn cited several instances of perspectives that clashed with her own being banned from campus as triumphant examples of the way Harvard should be run. The firing of Subramanian Swamy, a Harvard summer school instructor who was dismissed for his anti-Islamic views, was one such triumph.
She also invoked the academic boycott of Israel — something condemned by Harvard President Drew Faust and numerous other university presidents — as an example of the kind of tactics leftists should defend and use in order to get their way on campus.
Korn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her sharp rejection of intellectual freedom — a value enshrined by U.S. law and central to the success of American institutions of higher learning — is common among left-wing activists at elite colleges. Last week, Erin Ching, a sophomore at Swarthmore College, took a similar view when she criticized her university for committing the unforgivable crime of allowing a conservative — Christian thinker Robert George — to speak on campus.
“What really bothered me is, the whole idea is that at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion,” she said, according to the Daily Gazette. “I don’t think we should be tolerating [George’s] conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society.”
George, a Swarthmore alumnus, came to campus to debate Cornell West.
Pro-life students at the University of Alabama were victims of a similar belief that conservative views should not be publicly espoused on campus. (RELATED: U. of Alabama censors pro-life students for ‘offensive’ poster)
And at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, merely emailing an inoffensive .gif of President Barack Obama kicking a door triggers an investigation. The perpetrator was forced to apologize for committing a racial insensitivity. (RELATED: Student forced to apologize for emailing pic of Obama kicking a door, because RACISM)
