{"id":23386,"date":"2015-12-18T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=23386"},"modified":"2015-12-18T22:13:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T03:13:08","slug":"blow-up-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/23386\/blow-up-the-first-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"Yalies Say: Blow Up the First Amendment!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yale University last month was the scene of student protests against what Time<\/em> magazine described<\/a> delicately as “the racial insensitivity of the school\u2019s administration.”<\/p>\n

To recap: In October, lecturer and associate master Erika Christakis sent an email to her students at one of the university’s residential colleges responding to a campus-wide letter on culturally sensitive Halloween costumes. \u201cIs there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious,” she wrote, “…a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?\u201d<\/p>\n

Her students’ short answer: No.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/em>Filmmaker and satirist Ami Horowitz decided to visit Yale “to take this campus free speech debate to its logical conclusion.” Horowitz asked students if they would sign a petition to repeal the First Amendment. No tricks. No funny wording. The pitch couldn’t have been more straightforward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result was this unbelievable display of total stupidity,\u201d Horowitz told Fox News.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe not so unbelievable, as Kevin D. Williamson chronicled<\/a> at National Review <\/em>when the lunacy in New Haven was near its peak.<\/p>\n

In any case,\u00a0watch Horowitz’s video<\/a> and see for yourself.<\/p>\n

Yale spokesman Tom Conroy questioned the veracity<\/a> of the video, telling the Daily Beast<\/em>: “There are a number of heavily edited prank videos like this one circulating lately in which someone surreptitiously records people while pretending to support a position that they actually oppose, and trying to get the individuals they speak with to agree with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

(That Daily Beast<\/em> story is best read in its entirety. Horowitz offers many interesting insights on the video, including this: \u201cOne girl had the honesty to say, \u2018I don\u2019t know what\u2019s in the First Amendment,\u2019\u201d recalled Horowitz… \u201cShe pulled it up on her phone, read it thoughtfully, and said \u2018Okay, I\u2019ll sign this,\u2019\u201d said Horowitz. \u201cThat one blew me away.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, Harvard’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and the Freshman Dean\u2019s Office last week began distributing what The College Fix describes<\/a> as \u201choliday placemats for social justice\u201d in college dining halls.<\/p>\n

According to The Harvard Crimson<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

[T]he placemats pose hypothetical statements on those topics and offer a \u201cresponse\u201d to each of those in a question and answer format. For example, under a section entitled \u201cYale\/Student Activism,\u201d the placemat poses the question, \u201cWhy are Black students complaining? Shouldn\u2019t they be happy to be in college?\u201d and suggests that students respond by saying, \u201cWhen I hear students expressing their experiences on campus I don\u2019t hear complaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the center of the placemat are what it calls \u201ctips for talking to families,\u201d with recommendations such as \u201cListen mindfully before formulating a thoughtful response\u201d and \u201cBreathe.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s good advice to parents, too. Take a deep, cleansing breath and remember you’re only spending $60,000 a year for this hokum. Then have another eggnog. Maybe make it a double.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yale University last month was the scene of student protests against what Time magazine described delicately as “the racial insensitivity of the school\u2019s administration.” To recap: In October, lecturer and associate master Erika Christakis sent an email to her students at one of the university’s residential colleges responding to a campus-wide letter on culturally sensitive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[716,503,487,1243,4804],"class_list":["post-23386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-first-amendment","tag-free-speech","tag-harvard","tag-political-correctness","tag-yale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23386"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23412,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23386\/revisions\/23412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}