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Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate Paperback – Illustrated, March 11, 2014
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Lukianoff walks readers through the life of a modern-day college student, from orientation to the end of freshman year. Through this lens, he describes startling violations of free speech rights: a student in Indiana punished for publicly reading a book, a student in Georgia expelled for a pro-environment collage he posted on Facebook, students at Yale banned from putting an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on a T shirt, and students across the country corralled into tiny free speech zones” when they wanted to express their views.
But Lukianoff goes further, demonstrating how this culture of censorship is bleeding into the larger society. As he explores public controversies involving Juan Williams, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Larry Summerseven Dave Barry and Jon StewartLukianoff paints a stark picture of our ability as a nation to discuss important issues rationally. Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate illuminates how intolerance for dissent and debate on today’s campus threatens the freedom of every citizen and makes us all just a little bit dumber.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherEncounter Books
- Publication dateMarch 11, 2014
- Dimensions6 x 0.75 x 8.75 inches
- ISBN-101594037302
- ISBN-13978-1594037306
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Product details
- Publisher : Encounter Books; Illustrated edition (March 11, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1594037302
- ISBN-13 : 978-1594037306
- Item Weight : 1.09 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.75 x 8.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #492,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #341 in Education Reform & Policy
- #518 in Censorship & Politics
- #4,755 in Higher & Continuing Education
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About the author

Greg Lukianoff is an attorney and the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is the author of "Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate" and his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe, in addition to dozens of other publications. He is a regular columnist for The Huffington Post and has appeared on television shows, including the "CBS Evening News," "Fox & Friends," "The Today Show," CNN's "New Day," C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," and "Stossel." He received the 2008 Playboy Foundation Freedom of Expression Award and the 2010 Ford Hall Forum's Louis P. and Evelyn Smith First Amendment Award on behalf of FIRE. He is a graduate of American University and Stanford Law School.
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The gist of the book postulates that many public colleges, universities, and institutions have instituted unconstitutional speech codes, which while they may sound good on paper, are actually the instruments of viewpoint discrimination against those who are deemed unpopular (such as conservatives). While schools do have a legitimate responsibility to protect their children from bona fide harassment or bona fide discrimination, they also have a dual responsibility to respect the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of those who are largely unpopular "around here on campus," such as conservatives. The author has documented several frighteningly unreasonable cases where out-of-control administrators cross the line, sometimes wantonly, and turn it into indoctrination and "inquisition" against Christians/conservatives, without being able to prove any legitimate "harassment" or "discrimination" that would stand up to scrutiny if questioned in a court of law. Is there such a thing as a "right to not be offended?" Whose "right to not be offended" supersedes who else's? Why should only some groups (such as those favored by the left) be off-limits for criticism, while leftists can basically say whatever negative things they want about Christians and conservatives, and get away with it with little or no academic outrage or threats of academic retaliation? Liberals' definition of "harassment" and "discrimination" is not in line with the court-definition of such, nor is it line with what reasonable people would consider it to be. Liberals believe anyone who doesn't agree with them, and anyone who offends them by expressing "non-politically correct" views on campus (basically, anything that is not a liberal viewpoint) should be summarily expelled, detenured, or dismissed without due process, and this book definitely demonstrates that mentality through the evidence it presents, backed up by facts and stories of censorship and indoctrination.
These unconstitutional speech codes, "bias incident policies," and "offense policies" which institutions of multiculturalism and political correctness have adopted and now attempt to maintain, while well intentional and good-natured, often twist words like "discrimination" or "harassment" to mean something else entirely. They're trying to say, if you offend us or your classmates by being conservative and not liberal, you are guilty of so-called "discriminatory harassment" and will be subject to indoctrination and "re-education" to force you to "change your views," usually upon pain of some sort of academic retaliation, such as being expelled for the "crime" of being conservative. These unconstitutional policies, due to being vaguely worded and sometimes over-broad, are actually routinely and commonly abused by the militant leftist faculty and administrators who completely and utterly dominate the one-sided landscape of academia, to engage in irresponsible and irreparable harm against the conservatives whom they hate with a passion, and could probably never win a debate against were it a true marketplace of views. The author documents and demonstrates why being a "conservative loose on campus" is dangerous these days. This is a definite must read not only for Christians and conservatives, but also for people of other religious or political backgrounds who have suffered or seen others suffering from senseless censorship, or are being harassed and inquisitioned by the administrators, and are trying to understand why this is occurring, and most importantly what you can do about it, how you can fight back. The book contains strategies for how to deal with administrative attempts at indoctrination and viewpoint discrimination, while remaining within civil and legal bounds.
Don't ever let someone tell you that you have no First Amendment rights, or that their "community standards" supersede your rights and somehow "unprotect" constitutionally protected speech of ONLY conservatives who are unpopular. That is simply untrue. Without being able to prove disruption or bona fide harassment, they are WRONG to so much as threaten retaliation against a conservative who merely "offends" them or makes them "feel uncomfortable." Was this country not founded on a marketplace of viewpoints? This book will arm you to fight back against leftist political correctness and indoctrination, and their attempts to justify irreparable and often-times unlawful viewpoint discrimination.
Another interesting and important aspect, apart from the subject of the book, is the fact that the author is, by his own declaration, a liberal and democrat. It doesn't put me off reading the book in any way. In fact I can agree with him in a lot of things. But it makes me reflect on the differences between conservatives and liberals and why the problems described in his book are so prominent today. My view is that liberals (perhaps it is more accurate to say progressives, which I don't know if is the author would agree), specially more radical ones, adopt a worldview that judges the present based on an hypothetical future. This, I think, would justifies a lot of the disrespect for free speech that happens in many universities' campuses.
In any case, it is only possible to make these reflections because the book is written with utmost integrity and honesty. It is not every day that you can say someone you would disagree with is an example to follow, certainly I can say that of Mr. Lukianoff.
The stories related here are chilling. They include, for example, an older student working his way through college found guilty of racial harassment merely for reading a book, an orientation program that literally trains its practitioners to stifle debate, several schools that have explicitly prohibited Christian groups from forming organizations thus depriving them of the rights of association while other kinds of student groups have free rein, guidelines circulated with syllabi that demand student agreement with debatable assumptions and graduate programs that expel students who dispute approved definitions of "social justice." Examples of such trends and practices are truly disturbing.
One of the most frightening trends, as Lukianoff's many narratives of rights-violations makes clear, is the creation of regulations and laws by the Department of Education and state legislatures that literally require universities to violate the individual rights of their students (e.g., the "Dear Colleagues" letter issued by the DOE in 2011 requires a reduced standard of evidence to convict a student of harassment, including sexual assault). Lukianoff even explains how a recent Supreme Court decision misconstrues the first amendment. The law of the land is itself moving away from protecting our liberty, an evolution this book interestingly links to the flagging attention to vigorous debate and critical thinking fostered on campuses where students and faculty alike are increasingly afraid of expressing themselves bluntly and clearly. We are in danger of failing to educate the next generation of citizens to value central freedoms.
My only criticism of this important and fluidly written book is its organization. Each chapter opens from the perspective of a fictional student first learning about, then applying to, finally being admitted to and attending a fictional college campus. The anecdotes and interests of the chapters follow those of this hypothetical young student, from censorship in high schools to hypocrisy in college publicity and admission to the excesses of orientation programs and infringement of freedom of association on campus. I found this structure confusing and would have preferred that the powerful evidence supplied by this book had been organized by a more rigorous topical method--e.g., a chapter on speech codes, followed by a chapter on the rise of the therapeutic approach to student life, followed by a chapter on due process, freedom of association and so forth. I also thought that the fictionalizing thought experiment that governs the book's structure blunts the brute reality of the true stories that it tells. But if Lukianoff's student-centered approach attracts more young readers, the loss of clarity will be worth the expansion of readership.








