You Can t Cancel Me, I Quit – WSJ

What about the odds of physical injury? Low, but not nonexistent. In 2017 students at Vermont s Middlebury College attacked Prof. Allison Stanger, sending her to the hospital, after she hosted a talk by Charles Murray. Bystanders have been injured during other recent campus brawls, like the March 14 protest of a Charlie Kirk speech at the University of California, Davis that left an officer injured. In 2021 the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education polled 37,000 students at 159 campuses

In the end, it was a different thought that led me to pull the plug. As Liel Leibovitz put it recently in First Things, The terrible power our pursuers hold over us, the power of intimidation and of setting the terms of the debate, dissolves the moment you realize you re free to disengage. To which I add: Bullies have a right to protest, but that right doesn t extend to dragooning others into untruths including the untruth that people who join a hateful mob have any intention of listening to a speaker in the first place. They don t, and the rest of us are under no obligation to help them live that lie by playing along.

To the students who did want to hear my speech: I m sorry to miss you. On a positive note, it s better to read than to watch. Copies of Primal Screams have been sent to every student in Furman s Tocqueville Program, and two dozen more will be available this week for whoever wants them delivered care of the university president s office, since social-media mobs lack mailing addresses.

via www.wsj.com

Mary Eberstadt is a brilliant observer of contemporary culture and Furman U. has missed an opportunity to learn something. In other events, SDSU also smoked Furman in March Madness. Just sayin’.