What happens when university students call on authority figures to censor students or staff at institutions of higher education? At Yale
such students have been awarded prizes, at the University of Missouri they've been
successful in forcing administrators to resign, at Claremont they were able to force their president to implement a long list of demands, and at Evergreen State College a throng of students were
allowed to take control of the campus while harassed faculty sought refuge off-campus.
At other colleges around America, and even on campuses in the U.K., Canada and Australia, university administrators have met illiberal student mobs with a parade of mealy-mouthed platitudes and prostrations. This pattern of weakness has been dismaying for all people who value academic freedom and open inquiry. This week, however, a line has been drawn by David Yager, President of Philadelphia's University of Arts (UArts). In response to students calling for the censorship of Camille Paglia-one of the most admired humanities scholars in the world-he articulated a full-throated defence of intellectual freedom, showing administrators of supposedly superior universities what real leadership looks like.
To understand what happened, one has to go back in time to 2016, the year when Camille Paglia
recorded an interview with Ella Whelan of the British magazine
Spiked. In this interview, Paglia criticised the transgender and feminist activist movements in her usual colourful and provocative style. She queried whether every single case of transgenderism was genuine, and
drew attention to the victimhood that mainstream feminism is preoccupied with. While controversial, Paglia's comments
reflected viewpoints shared by many people. Part of her popularity comes from saying what no-one else has the courage to say.
Yet it was only last week, after UArts student Joseph McAndrew-who identifies as "non-binary" and who stipulates their personal pronouns as they/their/them-began making posts on Facebook and Instagram, that a complaint against Paglia was made:
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