1. This is listed as a staff editorial at the Wellesley News and speaks on behalf of the student publication.
2. Its logic should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the intersectional fascism of the left. It's only a question of when the first millennial Supreme Court justice will make that same argument.
"FREE SPEECH IS NOT VIOLATED AT WELLESLEY" is the headline. The argument is that the only legitimate free speech is left-wing speech. Or as the editorial puts it,
"The founding fathers put free speech in the Constitution as a way to protect the disenfranchised and to protect individual citizens from the power of the government. The spirit of free speech is to protect the suppressed, not to protect a free-for-all where anything is acceptable...
"Shutting down rhetoric that undermines the existence and rights of others is not a violation of free speech; it is hate speech."
This is the natural extension of the 'punching up' vs 'punching down' gag rule that leftist crybullies have been imposing on comedy. It's okay to make fun of the privileged, not the underprivileged. This just takes that toxic argument and applies it to free speech.
The Founding Fathers (those racist slaveowning dead white men whose names we must remove from every building and from the entire country) really wanted free speech to protect the "suppressed". That is to say, to promote social justice, not to just let anyone say anything they want.
That would be some sort of crazy free-for-all where anything is acceptable. And that's not free speech.
Free speech is just for the "disenfranchised" folks who control the Wellesley News and have decided who can and can't speak at campus. It's not for those they terrorize.
Free speech is being free to only say what Jee Lee and the Wellesley News and the Black Bloc and the DOJ's Community Relations office thinks you should be allowed to say. Four legs good, two legs better.
Anyway, first they'll berate you and subject you to re-education at Wellesley.
We have all said problematic claims, the origins of which were ingrained in us by our discriminatory and biased society. Luckily, most of us have been taught by our peers and mentors at Wellesley in a productive way. It is vital that we encourage people to correct and learn from their mistakes rather than berate them for a lack of education they could not control. While it is expected that these lessons will be difficult and often personal, holding difficult conversations for the sake of educating is very different from shaming on the basis of ignorance.
If re-education doesn't hold and you still voted for Trump, instead of Jill Stein, it'll be time to get Bolshevik on your behind.
This being said, if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted. If people continue to support racist politicians or pay for speakers that prop up speech that will lead to the harm of others, then it is critical to take the appropriate measures to hold them accountable for their actions. It is important to note that our preference for education over beration regards students who may have not been given the chance to learn. Rather, we are not referring to those who have already had the incentive to learn and should have taken the opportunities to do so.
This probably read better in the original Russian or Chinese. But it does perfectly capture the spirit of totalitarian condescension so inherent to leftism and to all totalitarian utopian ideologies.
We're going to take our time to try to make you a better person. But if you refuse our well-meaning efforts to re-educate by yelling at you in a tone of voice high enough to shatter glass, you will be responsible for the consequences of the illegal ways we will silence you.
But obviously this just applies to evil non-lefties. Lefties and, especially minorities, can say any hateful thing they like. To restrain them would be "tone policing" and involve expecting them to engage in "emotional labor" to educate you in Lee's condescending voice instead of throwing things at you, starting fires and yelling racial slurs at you.
We at The Wellesley News, are not interested in any type of tone policing. The emotional labor required to educate people is immense and is additional weight that is put on those who are already forced to defend their human rights.
Translating that from the Maoese, you can't expect that African Studies major screaming racial slurs in your face to communicate in a civil manner because he's telling you that voting for Republicans is a denial of his existence and tone policing is inappropriate as his informing you of this already involves tons and tons of unpaid emotional labor.
There is no denying that problematic opinions need to be addressed in order to stop Wellesley from becoming a place where hate speech and casual discrimination is okay.
There is certainly "denying it". But that would be a "problematic opinion" which needs to be addressed to protect the casual discrimination of lefties against everyone else