Free Speech So Bad on Campus, Even Janet Napolitano is Worried

But as we will see, she helped create the monster she's now fighting.

10.4.2016

Janet Napolitano, former secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama and current president of the University of California, is fed up with how far college campuses have moved away from free thought and expression. In an op-ed for The Boston Globe, Napolitano argues for the sanctity of free speech and how universities should be its incubator.

“It’s a free country,” she writes reminiscently about a bygone era comeback against attempts at censorship. But now, Napolitano has recognized “how far we have moved from freedom of speech on campuses to freedom from speech.”

“If it hurts, if it’s controversial, if it articulates an extreme point of view, then speech has become the new bête noire of the academy. Speakers are disinvited, faculty are vilified, and administrators like me are constantly asked to intervene,” Napolitano laments.

The UC president notes how the campus she oversees has changed over the years. It’s more diverse than ever before; students are “self-identifying [sexually] in myriad ways,” and the school has also rolled out the red carpet for undocumented students.

“You can call these 'safe space,’ but I call them a good idea,” Napolitano stated without noting how these various sensitivities have increased tensions on campus with those who disagree with these progressive ideas. And even though she admits that she disagrees with much of the resistance, she still believes “more speech” is needed, not less:

The goal of our university education today should be to prepare students who are thoughtful, well-informed, and resilient. The world needs more critical, creative thinkers, and American higher education does a better job of producing them than any other higher education system in the world. We seek to make the world a better place for the next generation, and teaching the values and responsibilities of free speech is inextricably linked with this goal...

Consider this my own trigger warning. Just sayin’.

Though Napolitano makes a case for the value of free speech, she forgets her previous decisions as university president that have led to this point. In a previous installment here at TruthRevolt, we noted how under her leadership, the University of California offered faculty training on identifying and correcting implicit bias and microaggressions. In her efforts to help “UC campuses build and sustain a culture of inclusion,” Napolitano helped created the beast she now fights. That’s called sweet justice and is a lesson for another day.