Free speech is under attack on college campuses across the United States.
While protests are messy and disruptive, they aren’t nearly as dangerous as the impulse to shut down free expression by sending in riot cops.
In one of the more ominous signs of the chilling effect rightwing House Republicans are having on speech, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was granted a reprieve from appearing before a House panel after the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia broke up an encampment at George Washington University.
In other words, if you send in police to break up the protests, you won’t get hauled before the likes of U.S. Representatives James Comer and Elise Stefanik.
There are, of course, other issues tied to these protests and the crackdowns by college presidents—the militarization of our country’s police and politicians attempting to score political points in an election year to name just two.
Bogus “safety” arguments given by school administrators serve as Orwellian cover while police fire rubber bullets and violent counter-protesters attack student demonstrators.
First it was presidents of Ivy League universities, now administrators from primary and secondary school districts are being summoned to Congressional hearings to explain the error of their ways.
(Fortunately, they managed to hold their own.)
As much as some politicians try to blame campus protests on anti-semitism and leftist policies run amuck, U.S. complicity in an Israeli military campaign that has left 34,000 Palestinians dead may have something to do with this.