Alumni rebel against college speech police

 Washington Examiner:

Groups of alumni from various colleges and universities around the country are organizing efforts to withhold donations from their alma maters in a bid to push the institutions to recommit themselves to free speech principles.

The Jefferson Council is among those groups and was founded last year following continued attempts at the University of Virginia to cancel its founder, Thomas Jefferson, as well as a shift in the institution toward ideological uniformity.

James Bacon, a 1975 graduate of the University of Virginia and a founding member of the council, told the Washington Examiner that the group's goal is to work through the system that is in place to “preserve the legacy of Thomas Jefferson” as well as to push the university to embrace intellectual diversity.

But the council, Bacon said, doesn’t feel restricted to that approach and has discussed using the power of the purse to push administrators to embrace a more free speech-friendly and intellectually diverse environment that doesn’t erase the university’s founder and the author of the Declaration of Independence.

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The issue of free speech and intellectual diversity on college campuses known to be havens of liberal thought has been a well-documented struggle in recent years, with few institutions exempt from the fight.

Activist students and faculty have pressured conservative students and faculty members into silence, while university administrators have often placed roadblocks to the presentation of ideas contrary to the prevailing liberal current of the campus.

The Jefferson Council is part of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance , which brings together groups at major public and private universities across the country to advocate more effectively for intellectual diversity and freedom of speech.

A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the work of the five groups associated with the alliance, groups of alumni at Princeton University, Cornell University, and Davidson College, as well as the University of Virginia and Washington and Lee University groups.

But the alliance’s website said that since its launch in October, it has been contacted by alumni from over 100 different institutions of higher education interested in organizing free speech advocacy groups.

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There is more.

This is a good move to rein in the evils of liberalism on campus and make the universities fairer to differing points of view.  I think it should spread across the country.