The Progressive/Liberal Mind is Closed

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an article describing how many university graduation speakers across the country are being cancelled because of protests by students and faculty over their political stands or even because they were remotely associated with political issues, which were obnoxious to the university.

For instance, Somali-born feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali withdrew herself from the speaker rostrum at Brandeis University because of student opposition. Hirsi Ali has a record  anti-Islam statements, which students think violate Brandeis's "core values."

In like fashion, Smith College has experienced the withdrawal from their invitation for commencement speaking, Christine Lagarde, the French head of the International Monetary Fund.

Most puzzling of all, however, was the withdrawal of Robert J. Birgeneau from his commencement address at Haverford College. Mr. Birgeneau is the former chancellor of UC Berkeley, the big bang of political correctness. He is famous as an ardent defender of minority students, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community and undocumented illegal immigrants. This man is a super-supporter of liberal beliefs in America. It is unbelievable that a liberal institution would make things so uncomfortable for him that he would withdraw from such an invitation. Opposition to Mr. Birgeneau originated from student and faculty who were offended by the Berkeley police action in 2011 when they used "force" against Occupy protesters in Sproul Plaza. I assume that the university believes its chancellors are responsible for the action of local police departments!

In defense of university administrations and faculties, it must be added that there has been strong push-back from these opposition activities of their student bodies. Not all representatives of the universities are opposed to political diversity.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University and an avowed liberal in political belief has written a book published in 2012. The book is called “The Righteous Mind—Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.” In his book, he describes his well-researched findings that people’s attitudes, beliefs, and values are shaped by six kinds of belief areas. These areas of psychological belief are:

1)    Care/harm
2)    Fairness/cheating
3)    Loyalty/betrayal
4)    Authority/submission
5)    Liberty/oppression
6)    Sanctity

He found that conservatives usually consider all of these areas when forming their belief and value systems. On the other hand, he found that liberals live, almost exclusively in the first two, i.e., in Care/harm and Fairness/cheating. Liberals, for the most part do not give much consideration to the last four, i.e., Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/submission, Liberty/oppression, and Sanctity.

What must be done if our culture is ever to heal is for students on university campuses to harken to all six of Dr. Haidt’s belief areas and quit concentrating exclusively on the first two.

The universities mentioned above have traditionally advertised that they are institutions that welcome divergent and varied statements from people of all persuasions—that has always been the stance of so-called “liberal” institutions of higher learning. From the trend of intolerance being demonstrated by university personnel over the speakers at graduation exercises, the progressive left has given up on its previously avowed claims of open-mindedness to belief systems, which do not perfectly comport with their own stated value systems. The closed mind has apparently won the day with America’s universities.

This trend is alarming. When Americans cannot even listen to both sides of controversial issues, our country is in deep trouble. Universities are the institutions that often shape the belief systems of the rest of the nation. Universities have traditionally and predominantly been staffed by liberal thinkers, and they only have a few conservatives scattered among their faculty members; but it is a sad day when they cannot even listen to such important speakers as the ones listed above—real leaders of the free world.