In this time of widespread protests at American universities, it would be wise for the academic world as a whole to reconsider what these universities have become and why they are so vulnerable to student disruptions.  And then it will discover that instead of being places for quiet contemplation and study and discourse, universities have become another fundamental institution taken over by a do-gooding liberalism (or often wokeism) that is supposed to have “diverse” leaders treating its students as mollycoddled babies deserving protection from life’s realities and nurtured in simplistic views of a complicated world.

It is time for an end to that. Cancel Culture Diction... Failla, Jimmy Best Price: $8.85 Buy New $17.24 (as of 09:31 UTC - Details)

Time for universities to say that protests are not allowed.  We are not an open space for any group to gather and voice discontent for any cause and thus disrupt the essential purpose for which we exist, to foster learning and encourage research in a peaceful atmosphere where scholars in traditional disciplines open up to respectful students the world of thought and study so that they may be useful citizens in useful careers in a complex life.

There is no “right” to protest here, the constitution does not apply to academic institutions but to governments only—go look at the First Amendment, “to assemble and to petition Government”—and we have determined that they would interfere with our obligation to give you a place where you are free to study and learn.  As to other points of that amendment, you have no “right” to free speech, either, and we allow dissent and disagreement within the classroom only lest it similarly disrupt

You are paying us money so that we may provide faculty and administrators to provide convenient classes to teach you the essentials of a Western education, not so that you can speak abut anything at all or protest whatever displeases you.  Final.

If universities would understand themselves this way, they would warn students from the start that disruptive protest will not be allowed and if you engage in one you will be arrested, fined, and disciplined, including expulsion from the university,  forfeiting whatever fees and tuition you have paid.  You had better rethink what rights you have here and what you gave up when you agreed to be a member of this community. 5-Minute Core Exercise... Dzenitis, Tami Brehse Best Price: $3.69 Buy New $6.99 (as of 10:02 UTC - Details)

Not that I think that this will happen at most places.  The kind of administrations fostered these days believe in the tenets liberalism has given them, including free speech and willful assembly. The fact that also so many of them are led by women does not encourage the idea that strong discipline for protest on campus is likely, since it is a simple truism that women are less likely to be disciplinarians within a family than men. (“Wait till your father comes home!”)  This has proved true so far this spring.

It is worth trying to get our universities to start thinking along these lines, nonetheless.  No point in not trying to return the academy to what it was supposed to be all along.

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of 19 books over 60 years, including SDS, a history of a student activist movement in the 1960’s.

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