Social Injustice On College Campuses

In a situation that is becoming far too common on college campuses today, a politically conservative speaker was treated differently and held to different standards than other public speakers. In the world of education, college campuses should be places where open-mindedness and freedom to exchange different points of view is the highest priority. Sadly, they have become institutes of one-sided, liberal-leaning, political indoctrination. If social injustice is the “unfair treatment of individuals with differing traits” then why, as a society, have we decided to only treat people fairly if they believe just as we believe? This bias against people with differing political viewpoints is exactly the situation that Ben Shapiro, a political

The UC Berkley Chancellor sent equally mixed messages to the student body prior to Mr Shapiro’s speech stating publicly that while the 1st Amendment protects “speech that most of us would find hateful, abhorrent and odious,” that public expression of “sharply divergent points of view is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a university” (UC Berkeley). Instead of telling students what to think, he should just encourage them to think for themselves. This kind of negative approach sets up an expectation of offense and confrontation and in no way encourages the free exchange of diverse points of view. As with the UConn speaking engagement, the university offered counseling to those who felt threatened by what the conservative speaker had to say. These are the same “fragile” students and faculty that in reaction to an upcoming conservative speaker in February of that year, caused over $100,000 in damage to the Berkeley campus by throwing rocks and fireworks at police and lighting several buildings on fire, including their own library (Park and Kyung). This violent protest was before the controversial speaker, Milo Yiannopoulos, even arrived at the location on