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Free Speech has become the enemy on most American college campuses---disdained by evolved, enlightened progressives.
Last week, amid the furor of the "collusion delusion," President Trump signed a significant executive order that has gone all but unnoticed---except for the universities who are about to pay for their sins.
No free speech---no government money. We're talking "billions" of dollars.
And speaking of the "collusion delusion"---some thoughts for the day after.
Be informed.
In the midst of the "Mueller Report" run up, President Trump signed an executive order to authorize the denial of federal funds to colleges that suppress student free speech rights. Students who'd expressed conservative ideas, planted crosses for aborted children, or passed out Valentine's Day cards that say "Jesus Loves You," have been denounced by angry professors or sent off to so-called "free-speech zones."
No more. The President says no free speech for Christians and conservatives---no more money.
But first, The West Wing (at the White House) publishes several stories each day. Yesterday, which was, essentially, "the day after" the Mueller report failed to achieve the goal of bringing down the President, this is part of what the editorial board at the Washington Examiner said---I encourage to read the entire article. It's about a 2 minute read.:
Democrats have been consumed for two years with a flimsy conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimizing a presidential election they lost.
But now its over. An exhaustive federal investigation just put the nail in the coffin of collusion delusion.
If the Democrats and our major media are capable of shame, they will be chastened by this experience...
That charge has been investigated exhaustively and debunked. Can the Democrats move on?
This story on education reform would be the leading news story if the Mueller Report had not been released this past weekend.
Left-leaning POLITICO said last week that President Trump is expected to sign an executive order that addresses campus free speech as well as other education issues.
The Left's anticipation of what they thought the President might do---and why it's a bad idea.
Early last week, Politico said Trump's order will require "colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars."
They also opined that Trump has already threatened to withdraw federal funding to the University of California, Berkeley and said he wants "very costly" penalties for schools who don't "support free speech."
They also note that during his speech to CPAC---the conservative political action committee---the President actually "brought to the stage Hayden Williams, a conservative activist who was punched in the face while recruiting on the UC Berkeley campus for the conservative youth group Turning Point USA."
To further suggest Trump's anticipated executive order was really intended to help Christians, Politico "exposed" the fact that Kristen Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, has been in the White House lately talking about how Christian pro-life kids are discriminated against because of their beliefs.
In fact, Politico revealed that Hawkins has met two separate times with Vice President Mike Pence on the matter.
There's more, but that's the direction the mainstream news is going on this issue.
What the executive order really does.
F.H. Buckley, a law professor at Scalia Law School, wrote in the New York Post,
"American colleges used to pride themselves on their commitment to free speech and free inquiry. That's the only way learning takes place, we thought, and you'd have to go back to the Dark Ages to find people who disagreed, Only now the Dark Ages have returned, with college speech codes, barking-mad left-wing student mobs and faculties that refuse to hire open conservatives."
"This week," he wrote, "President Trump took a big step to stop the madness with one of the most important speeches of his presidency."
To drive the point home, he had both Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in the room.
Buckley wrote this:
It’s going to be fun to watch the critics on the left turn themselves in circles about this. These were the people who 50 years ago defended free-speech rights on campus when professors were asked to sign loyalty oaths. That’s against the First Amendment, they said. But when the shoe is on the other foot, when the same people became deans and professors, they turned around to silence conservative voices.
Now I’m waiting to hear them tell us that there’s a First Amendment problem with Trump’s executive order, that if you take the time to understand things through the proper social justice prism, the First Amendment really bans free speech.
Trump said the executive order is just a first step, and so it is. In time it’s going to drive a stake at the heart of the corrupt bargain in modern university education.
Formerly university administrators monitored the professoriate and fired the crazies. Today, however, the bargain takes this form: You let us pay ourselves million-buck salaries, say the college presidents, and we won’t bother you. Teach whatever you want, and get your jollies from attacking conservatives, it’s all the same to us.
Except that won’t continue if there’s a financial penalty to the suppression of the political and religious beliefs of college students.
The recent scandals where parents paid to get their kids into a good college should disabuse you of the notion that head-in-the-clouds academics don’t pay attention to filthy lucre. The truth is that nobody lusts for money more than college administrators, and you can be sure they took notice of Trump’s speech.
Who knows, the college presidents might even realize that there’s something to be said for a bit of intellectual diversity among the faculty. The reason why the intolerant liberal bully feels free to humiliate conservative students is because he’ll never encounter a conservative colleague. If he did, you’d see less extremism and fewer academic lynch mobs.
But I’m saving the best for last. Trump noted that current student indebtedness exceeds $1 trillion, with 43 million people owing an average of $35,000 in student debt. Some students owe as much as $200,000 and will never be able to dig themselves out. The universities took the federal loan program and used it as an excuse to run up tuition far in excess of the cost of living, and then gave their students a social justice education that made them unemployable.
President Trump's motive for his action.
Trump said that he wants to rescue the highly leveraged students of today from what amounts to debt slavery. How to do so? Right now students can’t discharge their educational loans in bankruptcy, and that would have to change. Better still, Trump wants the colleges to bear some of the cost of default. “They have to have skin in the game,” he said. "They have to care about making their students employable."
That won’t hurt universities that keep tuition low and whose students get jobs. The community colleges, the decent state schools — they won’t be affected. As for high-cost, social justice-focused schools that make their kids unemployable, it’ll be good to see them pay a price.
This executive order will set in motion a PR plague of biblical proportion.
Trump, as Moses once said, is telling a deeply corrupted and broken public education system, "Let My Children Go."
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Blessed. Be Free.