Commentary: A Glimmer of Hope in the Ivory Tower

By Jonathan Nicastro
National Review

Excerpt: The outgoing and incoming presidents of Dartmouth College, Phil Hanlon and Sian Beilock, respectively, recently published a robust defense of free speech in the Boston Globe. Not only do Beilock and Hanlon dismiss the silencing of people for supposedly harmful opinions as illegitimate, but they also explicitly recognize the self-censorship of conservative students in “today’s left-leaning higher education landscape.”

Not to be mistaken for Republicans, the two presidents highlight right-wing threats to freedom of expression, citing a Florida bill (HB 999) that would ban the gender studies major, queer theory, and critical race theory from public colleges and universities. In the same sentence, Beilock and Hanlon take the censorship-prone Left to task, pointing to “progressives who want to restrict potentially upsetting content” as another insupportable attack on academic inquiry.

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