Flying Pig Alert

"the enemies of freedom – censorship and conformity"  -Michael Bloomberg

Former NYC mayor, The Little Dictator himself Michael Bloomberg must have made the Lefty Professor's sphincters eat holes in their chairs during a commencement address at Harvard University on Thursday, by unexpectedly implying they are a bunch priviledged  politically homogeneous repressionist: 

WSJ

"Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League.

In the 2012 presidential race, 96% of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama. Ninety-six percent – there was more disagreement among the old Soviet Politburo than there is among Ivy League donors. That statistic should give us pause.

When 96% of Ivy League donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonder whether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a great university should offer.  A university cannot be great if its faculty is politically homogenous.

When tenure was created, it mostly protected liberals whose ideas ran up against conservative norms. Today, if tenure is going to continue to exist, it must also protect conservatives whose ideas run up against liberal norms.

Great universities must not become predictably partisan. And a liberal arts education must not be an education in the art of liberalism. The role of universities is not to promote an ideology. It is to provide scholars and students with a neutral forum for researching and debating issues—without tipping the scales in one direction, or repressing unpopular views.

Requiring scholars—and commencement speakers, for that matter—to conform to certain political standards undermines the whole purpose of a university. This spring, it has been disturbing to see a number of college commencement speakers withdraw—or have their invitations rescinded—after protests from students and—to me, shockingly—from senior faculty and administrators who should know better.

It happened at Brandeis, Haverford, Rutgers, and Smith. In each case, liberals silenced a voice—and denied an honorary degree—to individuals they deemed politically objectionable. That is an outrage and we must not let it continue. Censorship and conformity—the mortal enemies of freedom—win out...."