Commentary: What If the Campus Speech Crisis Is a Hoax…

August 08, 2023 1 min read

Leon Sachs
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: We should think about campus speech debates the way my hometown political cartoonist, Joel Pett, suggested we think about climate change. Some years ago, Pett published a political cartoon satirizing climate change denial: a speaker onstage at a climate summit is explaining the many benefits of greener environmental policies. In the crowd, a defiant climate skeptic stands up and exclaims, “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?”

If we replace meteorology with the university, this cartoon captures today’s debates about campus speech climates. It also suggests a better way to think about them.

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