Free Speech Barely Overcomes ‘Offensive’ Challenge at Top US University 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of America’s top universities, adopted a resolution to support “free speech,” only after overcoming opposition from a sizable share of its own professors.

They wanted to ban “free speech” that anyone could just consider “offensive or injurious.”

Free Speech Made It…This Time.

The faculty vote in favor of free speech at MIT was reported by the website of American legal scholar Jonathan Turley.

His report made it clear that the effort to codify the previously self-evident need for defending free speech – also enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution – faced serious resistance by more than a third of the school’s professors. 

Turley’s website emphasized the resolution of the MIT factory explicitly defended free speech that may be “deemed ‘offensive or injurious.’ “[The vote was] a triumph for free speech,” the report declared. 

However, it immediately noted that the resolution was supported only by 98 faculty members, while 52 professors opposed it. 

That means while 65% of the MIT faculty thought free speech of any kind had to be defended at all costs, a good 35% preferred the Marxist-Communist principle of eliminating free speech that one just happens to dislike. 

The result of the vote may be considered surprising. The latter number could have easily been higher given how communists have practically infiltrated and conquered American college campuses from within over the past 30 years.

They are putting crazy amounts of effort into brainwashing younger Americans attending their schools. 

‘Unnerving’ How Many Professors Want Communist Censorship 

In its report, Jonathan Turley’s website declared the “Free Expression Statement” adopted by the MIT faculty, as the resolution is officially called, offers a “balanced affirmation” that free speech plays an “essential role” in higher education. 

The document explicitly states any “commitment to free expression” stipulates having speakers who may contradict the “views or opinion of man [in] in the MIT community.” 

It defends the right to peaceful protest against speakers, but insists speakers cannot be “suppressed” or “restricted” from “expressing their views.” 

Jonathan Turley’s website pointed out it was frustrating that at least one-third of the MIT faculty disagreed with the above principles, describing that situation as “unnerving.” 

It also emphasized the document’s “key acknowledgment” that colleges and universities “cannon prohibit” free speech, which some individuals may view as “offensive or injurious.” 

The report further stated many American college professors have embraced the “silencing of opposing voices” as their “core principles.” 

It also reported there had been cases in which MIT kowtowed to “cancel culture.” In one case in 2021, it banned Dorian Abbott, a geophysicist from the University of Chicago.  

MIT also, at first, abandoned standardized tests in order to serve the woke calls for achieving “diversity,” though it later reversed the decision. 

This article appeared in The State Today and has been published here with permission.

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