College kids turn away from free speech, tolerance for dissent

"Young Americans are turning their backs on basic American principles of free speech, tolerance and due process," writes Brad Polumbo of BASEDPolitics in Newsweek. He cites a

new Buckley Institute poll of students at four-year colleges.

For the first time, "more students support shouting down speakers they disagree with than oppose this kind of mob censorship," he writes. More than 50 percent say certain topics should be "banned" on campus, and 46 percent think students who voice "offensive" opinions should be reported to the university administration.

Forty-five percent of students told pollsters it is justified to use physical violence to prevent people from expressing "hate speech" or making "racially charged comments," Polumbo notes. That's up from 30 percent in 2017.

America is "a big, sprawling, ugly, beautiful melting pot of people from starkly different backgrounds with starkly different values," he concludes. "This only works if we tolerate each other's differences, no matter how distasteful we find them."

Professors who think "universities should be dedicated to the pursuit of truth" are "heading for the exits," writes Bari Weiss on The Free Press.

Francesca Block discussed The Exodus of Wrongthinkers from American Universities.

Marc Rowan, a billionaire equity investor who sits on the board of Penn's Wharton School, is calling for university donors to "close your checkbooks." Trustees "have sat by quietly as the pursuit of truth — the ostensible mission of our elite institutions — was traded for a poorly organized pursuit of social justice and political correctness,” he writes. Rowan, who is Jewish, gave $50 million to Penn in 2018, and now plans to donate $1.

Harvard, which received a failing grade on free speech from the Foundation on Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has found a new love for freedom of expression now that the university is under fire for student groups blaming Hamas terrorism on the Israeli victims.