Why Is Campus Free Speech so Important?

Stanford Law Prof Michael McConnell made this truly remarkable assessment of why campus free speech is so essential in speech he gave to a Fed Soc Chapter. Conservative viewpoints are often the target of campus censors, and McConnell was reacting to student concerns about that reality of life in academe. Here is what he said:

"You are not the victims. [McConnell told Fed Soc students.] And I don't have a lot of patience with whining.

Yes it is unfair. Yes it can be painful. But you've been through the refiner's fire. You don't go a day in your education without being challenged about the nature of your assumptions--why do you believe what you believe. And you don't go a day in your education without having to figure out how to communicate with people who don't necessarily share your presuppositions. You are getting the finest education that young lawyers can get.

The victims of this one-sidedness are your liberal and progressive fellow students, who can go through an entire education without ever having their precious beliefs challenged, and without needing to learn how to make a real argument--to make [logical] arguments instead of [merely shouting] 'check your privilege,' which I think is left-wing ideology-speak for 'shut the hell up.'

And there is one other set of victims, and that's society as a whole, because universities and especially law schools are raising the leadership class of our country, and I fear that we are raising a generation of people who either do not understand or do not believe that there are two, and often times more than two, legitimate points of view, and who believe that disagreement is something that can be suppressed. I think this is a major reason for the much-lamented extreme polarization that we are already seeing in our political culture."

That is a truly profound analysis by one of the major First Amendment scholars of this generation. Inclusive leaders in the law reject censorship and welcome  respectful debate in a wide-open university marketplace of ideas.