Free speech means discourse

To have been a student on Whitworth University’s campus for the past two weeks is to have been surrounded by the debate over whether or not Ben Shapiro should be allowed come to campus.

The default liberal position seems to be that Ben Shapiro’s radical and inflammatory messages would threaten the safety of minority students, while the conservative position is that denying a conservative speaker is a violation of free speech.

The question no one seems to be asking, however, is what free speech means on a college campus. Does it mean any and everyone should be allowed to say whatever they want on our campus? The very presence of a vetting system seems to suggest otherwise.

My belief is that the college campus should be a place for discourse. It should be a forum for disparate sides to expand their worldview using facts, reason and civility, and an arena for ideas from opposing viewpoints to clash against each other for the sake of knowledge and understanding.

Ben Shapiro does none of this. He favors rhetoric over reason, biases over facts, and selfish victory over the higher truth for which all educational institutions stand.

Kohlton Wilcox

Spokane