Academia: A Captive Audience

As an aside, the liberals in the Congress want to provide a captive audience for their ideas via the “fairness doctrine.” This doctrine is anti-free speech because it has a chilling effect on radio being the town meeting of today. I warn them that if this is taken away the free speech will go underground with the internet.

Sadly there is one place where a protected soap box with a captive audience exists today, that is in Academia. This is in fact the very place that free speech should exist, where the exchange of ideas should free and open and it is not.

Academia provides both protection via tenure and academic privilege. The person cannot only exercise free speech, they can exercise hateful speech and irresponsible speech and there is an implied protection from consequences as long as that speech fits the mantra of those who judge. We have in effect a speech auditor, something the framers of the constitution held as totally wrong. And even worse, these people are provided with a captive audience called students.

Let’s look at an example, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill. He was finally fired but protested that he was fired for free speech. His speech was flawed in one other important area, accuracy. His credentials were fraudulent but he was afforded a captive audience to spout his political views and the institution and the student’s presence were both made possible in part by government subsidies.

There is a slanted playing field and liberals have the legal high ground. Free speech is under assault by the very people who claim to protect it.