4/12/2016: In the Washington Post, here:
The San Diego Union-Tribune (Debbi Baker) reports on a controversy about pro-Donald Trump sidewalk chalking at the University of California at San Diego, which drew this response from Prof. Ivan Evans, the provost of one of the six UC-San Diego undergraduate colleges (Eleanor Roosevelt College):
ERC Condemns Vandalism On Campus
It is with dismay that the ERC community and the campus at large learned that vandals, as yet unknown, defaced university property on Friday by chalking offensive comments on the sidewalks close to the Raza Resource Centro and on Library Walk. … Whoever furtively inflicted this incident on campus does not deserve the attention they cannot receive through rational discourse and open debate. In condemning the incident, ERC expects that any violation of UCSD’s Code of Conduct will be treated with the greatest seriousness and draw the fullest sanctions that may apply.
In 2010 former UO GC Randy Geller tried to get the UO Senate to include a ban on chalk in the facilities use policy, except when authorized by the president:
We rejected this proposal. But what would Eleanor Roosevelt say? I’m not sure. While the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights that she negotiated with the Soviets does include free speech, it doesn’t specifically address furtive water-soluble chalking.
4/8/2016: President joins student protest for free speech right to chalk
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has the story on Emory President James Wagner, here:
I was glad to see pro-Trump messages chalked outside the EMU earlier this week. Not because I support Trump, but because I welcome opposing viewpoints on this campus (conservative, liberal. and moderate) and hope we can all come together in a spirit of mutual understanding and respect to dialogue over important and relevant issues.
I’m seeing way too much from the left that effectively ends up as censorship of messages they don’t agree with. Fascism is fascism, censorship is censorship, from the left or the right. One person’s safe space is another person’s exclusion zone.
Case in point:
http://www.progressivestoday.com/chaos-sjw-students-crash-students-trump-meeting/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ50XmALd54
Excellent example of political action — they were good and loud! http://www.dailyemerald.com/2016/04/08/students-protest-to-educate-high-school-students-and-protest-anti-immigrant-measures/
There is very little of real freedom of expression on most American campuses these days. The political correctness that permeates American Society is one of the big drivers of Trump’s success. (I am not myself a sopporter of Trump.)
Very few Trump supporters know anything at all about the intellectual climate on college campuses that hasn’t been fed to them by Fox News. And that faction of American conservatism has been beating the drum about the un-American behavior of spoiled college kids at least as far back as Vietnam.
I’m afraid you illustrate very nicely a part of what I am talking about. “Joe, shut up, you’re stupid and you have no business disagreeing with me.” The poor slobs are getting sick of it.
OK, I’ll take the bait. The Wall Street Journal–which used to be a respectable conservative publication–recently reproduced 217 out-of-context words from a single article produced by a UO professor as part of an extended project funded by a five-year NSF Career grant.
The WSJ took this cheap and irresponsible shot for the express purpose of stoking outrage about NSF funding for “politically correctness.” Anyone who bothered to actually read this professor’s NSF proposal would probably agree that the project was sensible and worth funding, but that’s not what the WSJ figures the “poor slobs” want to hear. If you doubt that, google “glaciology root for trump” and see what you get.
I’m not linking to anything or mentioning names because I think what the WSJ did was so cynical and manipulative that it should be appalling, except that it happens all the time lately. If you want to blame somebody for Trump, you’re looking in exactly the wrong place.
I agree with Bernie and Just Different. The hyper-correctness imposed on speech helps to produce Trumpism. And the WSJ piece was a gross misrepresentation.