A Primer For College Presidents On How To Talk Back To Crybullies Clamoring To Have A Speaker Disinvited
Psych prof Christopher Chabris has done a great job of writing a letter that college presidents should be writing when the students start wah-wah-ing about some speaker invited to campus whose views are not perfectly in tune with theirs.

An excerpt:

Learning doesn't just mean going to class, doing homework, and taking exams. If a group of students or faculty members are so interested in hearing, debating, and engaging with the ideas of a person from outside our community that they decide to invite him here and organize and attend an event, I cannot rebuke them. In fact, I congratulate them, for they are engaged in an act of learning that goes beyond what is strictly required of them. They are spending their personal time and energy furthering the central purpose of our institution.

The reputation of our college and the value of the degrees we confer will not be affected by the speakers we host, but it will suffer if we acquire a reputation for stifling unpopular views. A college does not need to "manage" its "brand" like a for-profit company does. All colleges stand for excellence in scholarship; that is the only brand that matters, and disinviting speakers and suppressing thoughts will only cheapen it.

To those who say the speaker may make them feel unsafe, I must point out that higher education is not designed to make people safe. Instead, it is our society's designated "safe space" for disruptive intellectual activity. It's a space that has been created and set apart specifically for the incubation of knowledge, by both students and faculty. Ideas that may seem dangerous or repugnant can be expressed here--even if nowhere else--so that they can be analyzed, discussed, and understood as dispassionately as possible. Many of humanity's greatest achievements originated as ideas that were suppressed from the public sphere. Some, like the theory of evolution by natural selection, equal rights for women and minorities, trade unions, democracy, and even the right to free speech and expression, are still seen as dangerous decades and centuries later.

If you are against this speaker coming here, please also consider this: Some members of our community--some of your friends and colleagues--do want him to visit. By asking me to disinvite him, you are implicitly claiming that your concerns and preferences are more important than those of the people who invited him. Are you really sure that you are so right and they are so wrong? Psychologists have found that people tend to be overconfident in their beliefs, and poor at taking the perspective of others. That might be the case here.

A decision by me to bar this speaker would have far-reaching negative repercussions. It will make everyone in our community think twice before they stage a provocative event or invite a controversial speaker. Cancelling this invitation will not only prevent this person from talking; it will reduce the expression of views like his in the future, and probably chill speech by anyone who could be regarded as controversial. And it will set a precedent that future leaders in higher education may point to if they feel pressured to do the same. All of this would be antithetical to our common purpose--and our social function--of learning and discovery.

Chabris' terrific book, co-authored with Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us.