The university I’m attending distributed some information on how to comply with the progressive orthodoxy on sensitivity in the classroom. Because there is almost no chance I would be able to convince any of the administrators or most of my peers of how silly these sensitivity guides are, I’d like to complain about it here a bit.

Let’s first take a look at what the university says regarding viewpoint diversity:

We are off to a wonderful start. NYU is proudly affirming that viewpoint diversity is key to the goals of post-secondary education. One would imagine this sort of diversity is particularly important in law — after all, roughly half of our country’s judges are on the opposite side of the political spectrum from the average elite law school student. It’s important that the bright legal minds of tomorrow can understand and engage with views they don’t like — or even ones they find abhorrent. Kudos to NYU for sticking up for open intellectual inquiry…

The sensitivity guidelines continue by claiming hateful speech is not formally protected by the university’s code of conduct. Those of us who are not progressive can already see where this goes in practice. The entire point of formal protections (both in public and private policy) for free speech is to protect unpopular viewpoints, like those that may be considered hateful. Nobody objects to hearing an opinion he thinks is morally righteous; many object to hearing one they deem morally repugnant. So, NYU’s policy singles out precisely the kind of speech that would need defense.

Of course, there is a difference between merely hateful speech and academic speech that is considered hateful. The former would include something like simply yelling a slur in class or on campus. That is stupid and impolite (though potentially better addressed with social sanctions from peers rather than formal redress from the university).

The latter would include making the claim that biological men cannot become women. This position, one shared by almost everyone in human history, would be considered hateful or bigoted by the university. The claim, however, beside being obviously correct, is incredibly important to matters of public policy and law. A lot depends on how we answer the question “can someone change genders?” The ways we determine access to gender-segregated spaces (e.g., bathrooms, locker rooms, certain religious structures) and participation in gender-segregated activities (e.g., sports, religious ceremonies) hinge on this. Perhaps even more fundamentally, the way we select romantic and sexual partners is guided by our answer.

Despite the high social stakes, only one answer is permitted in progressive spaces like the university: “men can become women.” The entire opposing case, with which most people outside of the university agree, cannot be made. It is hateful speech, and students at NYU “should [not] feel that they can express [such views] without consequence.” The same could be said of stock conservative positions on abortion, prison, drug use, etc. You have a recipe for disaster when the standard of what is disallowed is subjective evaluations of hatefulness made by leftist students and faculty.

So, you can see how this sensitivity policy claiming to affirm the principles of free expression is really a tool for neutering dissent from students and faculty who express non-leftist social positions. The ultimate irony is that many of the people at these institutions who do not tolerate right-wing (or even centrist) opinions encourage social and intellectual humility — except on matters of progressive morality, which must be taken as absolute and unquestionable, as we see here.