By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--May 23, 2017
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A few dozen virtue-signaling graduates and their family members made some kind of political statement by walking out on Vice President Mike Pence as he started delivering a commencement address on his home turf at Indiana’s Notre Dame University on Sunday.
The event provides yet another reason why America’s thought-stifling universities should be defunded and the ground sown with salt.
Spokes-whiner and valedictorian Caleb Joshua Pine took a cheap shot at President Trump as he exhorted his fellow graduates to “stand against scapegoating of Muslims.” Tedious stuff.
In his speech, the former Indiana governor took aim at the Left and the rampant, un-American totalitarianism of the nation’s institutions of higher education.Just as Notre Dame has stood strong to protect its religious liberty, I’m proud that this president just took steps to ensure that this university and the Little Sisters of the Poor could not be forced to violate their consciences to fully participate in American civic life. And just as Notre Dame has stood for those who are persecuted for their faith around the world, just a short while ago in Saudi Arabia, this president spoke out against religious persecution of all people, of all faiths. And on the world stage, he condemned, in his words, “the murder of innocent Muslims, the oppression of women, the persecution of Jews, and the slaughter of Christians.”While Notre Dame respects free speech, it is an anomaly in the academy nowadays, he said.
If the emanations of free speech were charted on a map like infrared heat signatures, one would hope that universities would be the hottest places — red and purple with dispute; not dark blue and white — frozen into cant, orthodoxy, and intellectual stasis.
If such a map were to exist, Notre Dame would burn bright with the glow of vibrant discussion. This university is a vanguard of freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas at a time, sadly, when free speech and civility are waning on campuses across America. Notre Dame is a campus where deliberation is welcomed — where opposing views are debated and where every speaker, no matter how unpopular or unfashionable, is afforded the right to air their views in the open for all to hear.Pence called Notre Dame “an exception — an island in a sea of conformity, so far spared from the noxious wave that seems to be rushing over much of academia.”
While this institution has maintained an atmosphere of civility and open debate, far too many campuses across America have become characterized by speech codes, safe zones, tone policing, administration-sanctioned political correctness — all of which amounts to nothing less than suppression of the freedom of speech. These all-too-common practices are destructive of learning and the pursuit of knowledge. And they are wholly outside the American tradition.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
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