A rather uneventful college commencement season full of the usual platitudes and bromides was shaken up by British novelist Ian McEwan’s refreshingly challenging the zeitgeist of trigger warnings, free-speech zones, and campus censorship at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania this week. McEwan did not shy away from addressing the current temper on campus, choosing to focus on the creeping group-think in faculty lounges and discussion sections instead of the all too easy targets of Russian crackdowns on free speech or the “industrial scale” state-sponsored censorship in China. McEwan directly confronted the problem of a country rooted in the tradition of free expression under the First Amendment meekly submitting to what he called “bi-polar thinking” — the eagerness of some to “not side with Charlie Hebdo because it might seem as if we’re endorsing George Bush’s War on Terror.” McEwan criticized the cowardly behavior of six writers who withdrew from the PEN American Center’s annual gala over their discomfort with the organization’s support for Charlie Hebdo. He argued that the time to “remember your Voltaire” is precisely when confronted with scathing speech that “might not be to your taste” and said he was disappointed that “so many authors could not stand with courageous fellow writers and artists at a time of tragedy.” Self-censorship or forced censorship on college campuses is growing, with recent instances of progressive speech suppression ranging from protests against Bill Maher at Berkeley to Brandeis University’s reneging on the conferral of an honorary doctorate to the Somali-born feminist and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali over their criticism of Islam. Rejecting the accusations of racism leveled at Hirsi Ali, McEwan forcefully expounded that “all thought systems, all claims to truth — especially the grand claims to truth — must be open to criticism, satire, even, sometimes, mockery.”
Source Article:http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418613/british-novelist-american-grads-theres-nothing-virtuous-about-being-offended-mark
Speech Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxVWzYAcKo
"It can be a little too easy sometimes to dismiss arguments you don't like as hate speech, or to complain that this or that speaker makes you feel... disrespected. Being offended is not to be confused with a state of grace. It's the occasional price we pay for living in an open society."
Here's a video sharing a few words of wisdom about the importance of free speech, the cost of 'intellectual tribalism', and the dubious trend of treating offense as a sense of entitlement from author Ian McEwan at the 2015 Commencement Speech at Dickinson College. A few words I feel many of us in our society and indeed this most political website, need to be reminded of.
Consider it a reflection on the modern current of extremism and ideological excommunication that many of our universities and places of higher-education (and otherwise) are plagued with as of late. As more and more speakers are becoming pushed off the educational podium of many universities, it is of utmost importance to remember that considering and listening to differing ideologies helps not only strengthen your understanding of your view, but allows it to remain non-stagnant, as excluding those who challenge your ideals offers nothing but the strangulation of intellectual exercise, so to say. As the speaker says in the speech, "When you meet a Flat-Earther, or a Creationist, it can be useful to be made to remember why you think the Earth is round, or whether your capable of making the case for natural selection."
I guess what it all comes down to is "Remember Your Voltaire", Nationstates.
