When conservatives point to censorious forces in academia, including administrations, faculty, and especially students, liberals have a common rejoinder: Conservative Christian colleges are also very intolerant of other opinions.
This parallel is very telling.
FEDS MUST CURE EDIFICE COMPLEX
Some cases of Christian conservative college speech-policing really is just intolerance or politicization — such as Jerry Falwell Jr. barring anti-gun Christian pacifists from campus. But often, what gets portrayed as intolerance is simply the insistence that a Christian institution act according to Christian teaching.
It is not inconsistent to say (a) free and open debate is necessary in a free society and a democracy but also to say (b) a religious institution will uphold its religious beliefs. A synagogue isn’t being intolerant if it won’t hire a Catholic as a rabbi. Nobody should demand that a Christian revival give the stage to an atheist or a Satanist.
Yet Christianity has always made room for secular spaces. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” implies that some parts of public life will be secular. It’s not that we are only Christians in church, but that we cannot expect the entire world to conform to Christianity. That’s implicit in St. Paul’s warning in his letter to the Romans: “Be not conformed to this age.”
Not all religious traditions believe that there ought to be secular spaces.
The new religion — call it wokism, the replacement ideology, or whatever you want — is grounded in faith-based views of gender and severe notions of original sin based on race. It has its rituals and even sacraments. It often seems not to allow for secular spaces.
At the very least, this new religion claims as its temples the institutions we used to think of as secular spaces: The news media, public schools, and state colleges. A professor rejecting gender ideology in favor of standard understandings of sex and gender is blasphemy.
The latest evidence is in a new study from North Dakota State University’s Institute for Global Innovation and Growth.
The Institute surveyed college students across the country and found widespread intolerance of differing opinions, particularly among left-wing students.
Most liberal students said that “if many students disagree with the views of someone who has been invited to speak on campus,” the “university should “withdraw the speaker’s invitation.” Almost half of liberal students said a college professor should drop any reading that makes students feel uncomfortable.
And 81% of liberal students believe that “if a professor says something that students find offensive” he or she should “be reported to the university.” The statement, “Biological sex is a scientific fact. There are two sexes, male and female” was deemed reportably offensive by 38% of liberal students, while “there is no evidence of anti-black bias in police shootings” triggered the “report!” reaction in a majority of liberal students.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
All of the censorious stances were much more prevalent on the Left than on the Right.
This is easier to understand if you see college campuses as temples of the new religion, and thus the expression of dissent amounts to blasphemy on holy ground.