The last decade-plus of administrators, professors and allegedly marginalized student “victims” demanding colleges and universities be so-called safe spaces helps explain the assassination of conservative leader Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University last week, writes scholar Heather Mac Donald for City Journal.
Pointing out that a Change.org petition titled “Stop Charlie Kirk From Spreading Hate on Utah Campuses” circulated roughly one week before Kirk’s murder, Mac Donald writes that it represents an “ideology of totalitarian safetyism.”
The petition had stated in part: “While free speech is essential to higher education, universities also have a responsibility to protect students from harassment, hostility, and the legitimization of hate under the banner of ‘debate.'”
Mac Donald points out it was “grimly fitting that Kirk was murdered on a college campus, the source of the ‘hate speech equals violence’ ethic that demonizes philosophical opponents and creates a presumption that those opponents must be silenced for the good of America’s endemic victims.”
The core tenet of repressive academic safetyism—that officially designated student victim groups are dangerously vulnerable to meanie “haters”—is laughably delusional. There have been few more pampered and richly endowed individuals than early twenty-first century American students. Yet they are encouraged to think of themselves as “unsafe” by the very adults who should be leading them toward a grounded understanding of reality. And that is because the adults on campus are even more invested than students in maintaining the hegemony of leftism—a belief system enabled in part by the conceits of fragility and dangerous “haters.”
Equally ludicrous: the notion that it is conservatives like Kirk who hate and who are “intolerant,” and not the campus scourges. Whole academic disciplines are organized around vilifying whites for white privilege and white supremacy. The banshee mobs who shut down conservative guest speakers do not radiate tolerance and good will.
And now that counterfactual ideology of safetyism has spread widely and has reached its logical lethal conclusion. Kirk was gunned down by a sniper’s bullet after cheerfully tossing out MAGA hats to a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University. A few hours later, MSNBC political commentator Matthew Dowd explained Kirk’s responsibility for his own assassination: “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” (MSNBC subsequently terminated Dowd’s contract.)
Kirk never expressed “hate” toward allegedly “marginalized Americans.” He disagreed with propositions that classify some groups as inherently oppressed and other groups as inherent oppressors, based on those groups’ race and sex. He disagreed that sex and gender are social constructs. He disagreed that immigration levels should be determined by illegal entrants to the country, not by American citizens. And he expressed his disagreement through civil debate. Attendees at his “Prove Me Wrong” college lectures who disagreed with him were given priority among audience questioners so that they could challenge his views. Far from being a “hater,” Kirk was the sunniest personality on the MAGA right—buoyant, optimistic, and eager to engage with those who hated him.
Read the full piece at City Journal.
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