I’m intimately familiar with the right-wing tactic of framing anything less than free speech absolutism as “against free speech,” in part because I practiced this tactic as a conservative college student. But as we are seeing with Berkeley, the reality is that “free speech on campus” is not resource-neutral. “It’s a cost that the university is bearing to protect the speakers but also to protect the value of free speech,” she said. Which is why spending seven figures’ worth of student fees and taxpayer money to host Mr. Yiannopoulos is less about defending free speech than it is about supporting provocation for its own sake. But a free speech movement that has elevated expensive provocateurs over conservative intellectuals has only undermined the cause of campus intellectual diversity.

Source: New York Times September 25, 2017 02:26 UTC