I have written of the insanity of universities allowing students to become grievance-mongers who constantly complain about ideas that clash with their own, or injure their tender sensibilities, and then make sure those contrary and harmful ideas are suppressed and their originators punished. At the University of California, “sensitivity auditors” have decreed that statements such as, “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” are “hostile” and “derogatory,” and therefore unacceptable. A student protesting a conservative speaker on the campus of Swarthmore College said, “What really bothered me is the whole idea that at a liberal arts college we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion.”
Bringing us to Dr. Everett Piper, the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, who in early March received the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Award from the Bradley Foundation and the American Conservative Union. Said Michael Greebe, the president of the Bradley Foundation, “In a time when university administrators are giving in to what amounts to student temper tantrums, Dr. Piper stands out for his adherence to the tradition of academic integrity and open inquiry.”
Which is to say, at the university Dr. Piper leads, free-speech, including open dissent from the prevailing political or ideological orthodoxy — be it conservative, liberal or everything in between — is encouraged and protected.
What brought Dr. Piper to the attention of the avatars of free speech for all on college campuses was a chapel service at Oklahoma Wesleyan University that included a sermon about loving your fellow man. A student attending the service subsequently complained that he had been “victimized” by the sermon.
Dr. Piper later wrote, “It appears this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love. In his mind the speaker was wrong for making him and his peers feel uncomfortable.” (Talk about blaming the victim!)
“Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic,” he continued. “Any time our [student’s] feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and make them ‘feel bad’ about themselves, is a ‘hater,’ a ‘bigot,’ an ‘oppressor,’ and a ‘victimizer.’”
Dr. Piper concluded that, at least at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, such sensitive students will “need to grow up. This is not day care.”
Dr. Piper is the voice of reason in an academic world in which a university president actually resigned for being insufficiently sensitive to a graduate student’s hunger strike — a strike supported by the student body, including the school’s football team — because the university would no longer provide him with subsidized health insurance, the cause of which was a provision in Obamacare that prevented the school from giving graduate students money to buy health insurance.
