Freedom Vote Sends Speech Police Packing at University of Wisconsin

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 13, 1999 | by Ralph R. Reiland

In his book Illiberal Education, Dinesh D'Souza writes of being confronted by a self-described "sensitivity coalition," some fully outfitted in the rattling chains of slavery, during a speech at Tufts University. Before D'Souza took the podium in an auditorium protected by armed police, professor Donald Klein, acting on university instructions, warned student activists to abstain from throwing things at the speaker or shouting him down. After his speech, D'Souza was approached by an outraged Afro-American studies professor who accused him of both "logocentrism" (the "white man's obsession with big words") and of having a "white perspective" (a preference for "rationality" and "sexual restraint").

Standing alone, D'Souza's campus account of his encounter with the folly of ethnic tribalism and mindless groupthink is sufficient to underline why the recent Wisconsin faculty vote is so notable and so overdue.

Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh and coauthor of Mom & Pop vs. the Dreambusters: The Small Business Revolt Against Big Government