Cornell’s intellectual diversity questioned

Regarding the Feb. 28 story 'Cornell rejects group with ‘alt-right' reputation”:

The article is a sad commentary about Cornell College's lack of intellectual diversity and tolerance.

One of the reasons given for the rejection was Orwellian. The Senate claimed the group is a threat to free speech for exercising its right to free speech. Amazing!

Two critics of the group that influenced the Senate's decision are the Southern Poverty Law Center and far left professor Wendy Lynne Lee.

The SPLC recently gained notoriety for placing presidential candidate Ben Carson on its 'extremist watch list” and by claiming the Amanas were a hotbed of neo-Nazi activity.

Professor Lee detests the conservative group because it posts the names of far left professors whom it sees as attempting classroom indoctrination. In short, she condemns the conservative group for doing the same thing as the SPLC which she supports.

Esteemed, liberal, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz has condemned actions such as those at Cornell when they have occurred elsewhere. Students should not get a pass, he argues, to eradicate beliefs which don't coincide with theirs.

It was students, he states, who first burned books in Berlin and Munich, and we all know that didn't end well.

Those students' modern day equivalents seem to feel they are on the side of the angels, yet they fear dissent.

They would do well to consider Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's quote: 'Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.”

Kurt E. Maas

Coggon