© TwitterIf you're not on the side of the prevailing social justice narrative, you might as well leave campus altogether or have a miserable time of it.
A woman in a "stay woke" sweatshirt led the call and response, as students blasted music to try to drown out Sommers' words, and held signs saying "NO PLATFORM FOR FASCISTS" and "PATRIARCHY, BIGOTRY, HATE...THESE ARE THINGS WE DON'T DEBATE." Others held up "RAPE CULTURE IS NOT A MYTH" signs and sang while Sommers tried to speak.
But not all students in attendance were focused on shutting Sommers down or denying her the chance to speak. "You're embarrassing our law school and our student body," declared one student who was seemingly trying to listen to the speech. Student activists aggressively demanded that Sommers take questions after only a few minutes of speaking, and there was clear conflict between students on both sides, as some exasperated students countered the activists.
Sommers remarked after the event via Twitter that, "The chaos inside the lecture hall at Lewis & Clark Law School was only part of the problem. Protesters outside were chanting loudly." She also added that "Most of the students, conservatives & progressives, were civil. A noisy minority was willing to impose its will on everyone else."
But that's the problem, isn't it? A noisy minority of campus activists who can't seem to handle opposing viewpoints are breeding an unintellectual, mob-like environment where students must choose sides or face nasty social repercussions. I experienced this when I went to the College of William & Mary - writing libertarian op-eds got me threats, people refused to speak to me, people called me "evil," "bitch," "racist," and, yes, "sexist" online. If you're not on the side of the prevailing social justice narrative, you might as well leave campus altogether or have a miserable time of it. Might as well hunker down in your dorm room and wait for it to all be over.
In recent years, there's been less room to explore controversial ideas: Is rape culture overblown? Does "The Hunting Ground" use unreliable statistics? Why do people still wear Che Guevara shirts? Are environmentalism and capitalism directly in conflict with one another? Is abortion a human right (as one of my old professors confidently declared)? Within all these questions, there's room to hold abominable viewpoints or say horrible things that would hurt the people around you, but they're not inherently unreasonable questions.
It's a shame Sommers didn't have the opportunity to speak for as long as she'd been promised or be greeted with the polite discourse and pushback she seems to welcome. It's a shame her fascinating ideas were reduced to bastardized versions of themselves, and equated with fascism. When nuance disappears, so does discourse, and independent thought, and our ability to find what we believe to be true. That's exactly what happened in Portland yesterday.
Liz Wolfe (@lizzywol) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is managing editor at Young Voices.
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