Who Are You Calling Willfully Ignorant?

According to some, college campuses are a microcosm for society. Stephen Sweet, a professor at Ithaca College, stated this in his 2002 book College and Society: A Introduction to the Sociological Imagination. In March 2021, Chapman University president Dr. Daniele Struppa denounced racism, while avowing that Chapman University students, faculty and staff are racially insensitive. “devoted to the idea of an equitable society.”

“A university is a microcosm of our larger society that reflects beliefs, ideologies, experiences, and backgrounds,” He stressed that “we are not immune to the ills of our society.”

Sigal R. Ben-Porath is a University of Pennsylvania Professor of Education, Philosophy, and Political Science. She makes a similar claim with her new book, Cancel Wars. How Universities Can Foster Freedom of Speech, Promote Inclusion and Renew Democracy. She argues that attempts by progressive college students to suppress conservative views reflect a larger struggle in the United States for control over gender identity, inequalities, and above all race.

Populism, political polarization and propagators of hate speech are all threats to democracy, she writes. It takes a dedicated effort to save democracy “shared epistemology” America can be saved from falling into authoritarianism or decline.

Professor Ben-Porath makes several valid points. Hyper-polarization in politics undermines social trust. It discourages cooperation on matters that Americans should address, not as rival clans fighting for their blood but as one nation with a common purpose. Populists of both left and right feel that the cultural and economic elites have moral double standards and unearned privileges. This is causing people to be disengaged from leaders and institutions whose integrity and honesty should be taken as a given.

Cancel Wars is a tribe book without objectivity and awareness of the fact that it’s wider American society who has contracted when it comes to censorship. “the ills” View the campus. The entire American family became sickened by higher education.

Historical records go back as far as the 1970s, and show early cases of cancelculture in higher education. In the 2010s they became more common with Brown University’s high-profile incident in 2013. Ray Kelly, New York City Police Department Commissioner at the time, had a greater approval rating than anyone else.

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