I wasn’t planning to write about this Washington Post editorial today until I saw a tweet which convinced me it’s irritating the right people. I’ll get to the tweet in a moment but first up, this piece was published by the Editorial Board Saturday. It suggests that the latest trend in academia may be standing up to the demands made by left-leaning students.

The editorial opens with a recent push at Cornell University that would have mandated trigger warnings for all classroom content. The surprising part was the reaction. Cornell said no.

“We cannot accept this resolution as the actions it recommends would infringe on our core commitment to academic freedom and freedom of inquiry, and are at odds with the goals of a Cornell education,” wrote Cornell’s president, Martha E. Pollack, and its provost, Michael I. Kotlikoff, in a letter rejecting the student assembly’s plea for trigger warnings. Although they did note, understandably, that “in some cases faculty may wish to provide notice,” an outright trigger warning requirement, they noted, “would have a chilling effect on faculty, who would naturally fear censure lest they bring a discussion spontaneously into new and challenging territory, or fail to accurately anticipate students’ reaction to a topic or idea.”

And again, showing some backbone seems to be a trend.

Earlier this month, Neeli Bendapudi, the president of Penn State, released a recorded statement defending her university’s embrace of controversial speakers. The Supreme Court, she reminded her viewers, has long held that public universities such as Penn State are bound by the First Amendment. But she also reiterated a moral reason to continue welcoming diverse, and even offensive, opinions: “For centuries, higher education has fought against censorship and for the principle that the best way to combat speech is with more speech.”

A similar defense is being waged at private institutions. At Harvard University, a group of more than 50 faculty members last month established the Council on Academic Freedom, a group “devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse.” Vanderbilt University, likewise, announced last month that it would become the U.S. foothold for the Future of Free Speech project, an initiative of the Danish think tank Justitia. “For a university to do its work, faculty and students must have maximum freedom to share their ideas, assert their opinions, and challenge conventional wisdom — and one another,” said Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier in a statement.

The Post cites the FIRE survey which I wrote about here. That survey found that 52% of faculty “worried about losing their jobs or reputations because someone misunderstands something they said.” Not surprisingly, not all professors are equally afraid of this possible backlash.

Ideological differences for this question were even more pronounced, as almost three-fourths (72%) of conservative faculty reported being “somewhat” or “very” worried. This fear was not limited to conservative faculty, as 56% of moderate faculty, and even 40% of liberal faculty, also felt this way. In other words, 40% of those in the dominant ideological group on campus reported being worried about losing their jobs or reputations, which speaks volumes about the climate of fear, intimidation, and censorship on campus.

Finally, the Post mentions the decision by Stanford to apologize to Judge Duncan despite student demands that they retract the apology. Overall, it’s a decent editorial pointing out that something seems to have changed among administrators at some of these schools. They are no longer apologizing to students for standing up for free speech. Instead they are acting like they are actually in charge of the schools and taking a stand.

It’s clearly a topic that has been relevant for at least the last 6-7 years and probably longer so it’s worth pointing all of this out. But today I noticed that NBC’s Ben Collins was outraged the Post covered this “absolutely braindead” topic. He told the editorial board to “grow up” and talk to “actual reporters.”

They are literally stripping shelves bare of books at public schools in Florida and we're still getting absolutely braindead takes like this one by editorial pages at newspapers in 2023.

Grow up and talk to your actual reporters about what's really going on, good god. pic.twitter.com/SxfF7y7PqC

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) May 1, 2023

The administrators responding to these student demands and the groups who study these issues closely think it’s quite serious and important but Ben Collins knows it’s not worthy of anyone’s attention because…well, just because Ben Collins is an “actual” reporter.

And when he isn’t sharing his wisdom on university censorship, Collins is busy with his favorite hobbyhorse, attacking Elon Musk. You may recall that he was suspended from covering Musk last December after some critical tweets that seemed a bit off-kilter.

The scandal here is that Elon Musk discovered who his company's deputy general counsel was six weeks after he purchased it. pic.twitter.com/vGgKrHcOHv

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 7, 2022

As Ed noted at the time, “discovered this on Sunday” doesn’t mean what Collins took it to mean. He’s just looking for any excuse to go on the attack, even if it doesn’t make sense. Consider his output today, starting with this reference to Musk’s commentary about the “woke mind virus.”

Yeah you should consider if maybe there’s a political movement afoot to blame the world’s problems on a minority they don’t understand.

On second thought, maybe not. They wouldn’t be so obvious as to call it a “mind virus” or something. People would catch on to it no problem. https://t.co/AwDndCBkVO

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) May 1, 2023

And this is also from today.

Hypothetically. https://t.co/r6kRizIh0r

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) May 1, 2023

And this.

Can no longer open this site on an actual computer. Great work as always by the Rocketman.

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) May 1, 2023

And retweeting this:

Elon Musk displaying classic scam behavior, announcing a steady stream of “changes” to Twitter at a pace just fast enough to make sure most of his fans don’t take a minute to pause and reflect on how bad he’s failing at the prior plans. He’s running around the room jangling keys

— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) May 1, 2023

That’s just today. This is his side-hustle and his obsession. Notably, he gives it far more attention that removing books from schools in Florida.