The First Rule Of The Speech Code Is That You Don’t Call The Speech Code A Speech Code

Good stuff from Erin O’Connor‘s blog. Not sure how the Bucknell conservatives stack up against those zany funsters at the Princeton Tory, but, to quote O’Connor:

What’s great about the letter: the Bucknell Conservatives are taking on a cause that affects all students at the school, and are handling that cause in a non-partisan, even-handed way. Fighting for free speech on campus has become, unfortunately, identified with conservatism, and has thus become something too many people feel they can dismiss as self-serving conservative agenda-driving. It’s no surprise that this is the case, as the people who tend to find themselves on the wrong side of campus speech codes tend to be those whose outlook differs from the liberal orthodoxy that is entrenched at many schools (see the FIRE case archive for endless examples). Naturally, they will become the poster people for campus speech. But even if the issue has largely been taken up by conservatives, and even if taking up the issue gets you labelled a conservative (as has often been the case with Critical Mass), the issue is not itself a conservative one, but one that affects us all.

Right on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2003 at 13:33 by olly and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.