Episode 32: Attack of the PC College Kids!
We\u2019ve heard this scare story a million times: A theater group at Wesleyan won\u2019t perform The Vagina Monologues because it\u2019s offensive to trans women! Oberlin is banning classes featuring white authorsI Rich, sheltered college students, increasingly indoctrinated by radical Marxist professors, are asking for safe spaces!
But how much merit is there to the popular trope that college kids are hypersensitive and coddled? Is there really a free speech crisis America\u2019s campuses? What are the origins of this evergreen complaint? Who does the constant harping on the threat of \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d and anti-free speech undergrads actually hurt? And more importantly, whom does it benefit?
Today's guest is David Palumbo-Liu, professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University.