I got an email the other day from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) saying that they had been receiving an increasing number of complaints about free- speech violations on campus. FIRE is a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is “to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of liberty.”
When most campuses aren’t even operating at normal capacity due to the pandemic, what could possibly be driving the numbers of these kinds of cases up so noticeably? The answer: cancel culture has taken root on campus.
I had a chance to speak with Robert Shibley, FIRE’s executive director about this earlier in the week. Here’s a video of our conversation, in which Robert lays out the five stages of a brewing disaster due to cancel culture gone wild on campus.
To learn more detail about the situation at Western Carolina University and how the five steps Robert discusses are manifesting, click here. FIRE has a five-part series on this topic in progress now.
