Reddit reviews Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

Students, professors, and administrators have been increasingly accustomed to censorship over the past few decades, with the proliferation of speech codes. Now many students don't even know what their rights are, or they think they have a right not to be offended. I think one of the saddest trends is that more and more students are trying to censor their peers, and these administrators who don't understand the law are acquiescing to those requests for censorship.

FIRE's president, Greg Lukianoff, has more on the history of speech codes here and in his book, Unlearning Liberty.

I also read that book and I know it refers to 2013 but digging a little deeper reveals more: Greg Lukianoff wrote a book called "Unlearning Liberty," which came out in March 2014 (pre-gamergate, which many others attribute as the shifting point). That book is about many things happening on campus that we're now all aware of — sensitivity training, cultish political correctness and impediments on free speech nationwide. In that book, Lukianoff hangs it on the "Dear Colleague" letter which was sent out in 2011 (and apparently a directive guided by Vice President Joe Biden). After that point, administration staff exploded and began affecting students by 2012/2013.

It's strange to think that one letter may have kicked off this whole thing.

> There have been a handful of provocative events canceled for public safety concerns.

That's only if you haven't been paying attention for the last 15 years. The FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) have been proponents of protecting these rights in the face of administrative overreach. Their president; Greg Lukianoff, wrote in a book (Unlearning Liberty) about the increasing levels of censorship coming down from school administrators over the last 10 years. I highly recommend the book if you're interested in the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Unlearning-Liberty-Campus-Censorship-American/dp/1594037302/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503186611&sr=8-1&keywords=unlearning+liberty

If you don't have time to read to the book, they also post a number of videos on YouTube about some of the cases that they represent:

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheFIREorg/videos

Greg also does a number of personal speaking engagements with Q&A that detail the broader issue of campus censorship and the specific cases they have handled:

https://youtu.be/Autfo3H6Dss

One of the cases that caught my interest was the case of Keith John Sampson; a student-janitor at IUPUI, who was threatened with a finding of "racial harassment" for reading a book titled "Notre Dame vs. The Klan" on his lunch break merely because the cover of the book showed Klansmen marching against a backdrop of the University of Notre Dame. The book is actually a historical account of an actual fight that took place between the Klan and students at Notre Dame. Even more, the best part of the case is that the book; "Notre Dame vs. the Klan" was available to check out from the IUPUI library. The case was eventually dropped when the FIRE stepped in to help represent Keith John Sampson. IUPUI literally attempted to trample on someone's rights based on the cover of a book.

https://youtu.be/0ZHnB3jyrHI

Edit: I'm not a shill for either the FIRE or Greg Lukianoff. I'm not associated with the organization. I just personally think they're fighting for good causes on college campuses much in the same way the ACLU fights for (most) of our other rights.

>a few examples of overreactions

Greg Lukianoff wrote an entire book focusing on just campus administrators overreacting. In fact when he gave a talk in the wake of the Yale issue I previously linked, Lukianoff says that the response from the student base was so vicious "you would think she sent an email about burning down an indian village." Which two minutes later resulted in an angry man offended that Lukianoff had suggested he was in favor of burning Indian villages.

I find your use of the word "hyperbolic" interesting, because I'm pretty much just relaying things that have actually happened. It just so happens that these headlines read like something you'd see in The Onion.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting is because I took issue with your last paragraph that claimed the ridiculous people of tumblr are "strawman" arguments. When in fact there are countless examples of these real-life examples affecting America's Education system, and America's comedy scene. Lifelong professionals have had their careers tarnished by this childishness, and to have you pretend it's not real is bullshit.

I'm 21. I'm not sure what my favorite is, and there's a bunch of books that I haven't finished that I've enjoyed reading quite a bit.

I really enjoyed Unlearning Liberty by FIRE President Greg Lukianoff when I read it about 18 months ago.

I also really enjoyed David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which basically inspired the show The Wire. It's pretty high on the list, maybe my favorite book that I've read so far.

I've been reading Adam Smith's book The Theory of Moral Sentiments since I heard a podcast interview with Russ Roberts, who wrote a book that's essentially about making Smith's ideas in the book more accessible to a modern audience. Smith's book is pretty tough to read because it's not very well organized and it was written in 1759, with a revised version published in 1790. I have found it a very interesting read so far.

For political correctness on college campuses, FIRE founder Greg Lukanioff wrote a book about it (Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. Their website mentions University of Pennsylvania's 1993 "water buffalo" incident.

They also interview Donald Downs who says 1987 is noteworthy:

>1987 has been a talked about as sort of a turning point year. It was a year that speech codes started percolating. There was a whole network of administrators around the country and university presidents sort of got on the speech code bandwagon. The climate started changing. You could really feel it. A former student of mine that was in law school at the time said that it was almost like a new weather front coming through that you could feel. (More from him: http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2012/11/firesingesthecensors/#more-878 and here http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/liberal-academics-let-censorship-happen/17549)