On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Nathan Harden, an author at Real Clear Education, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss how online schooling exacerbated free speech problems on college campuses across the United States.
“I think there’s evidence that the move to online education has made this speech problem worse and for this reason: the same fear that makes students most cautious or most worried about what they say on social media applies when you go to Zoom because a lot of these lectures are recorded,” Harden said.
Recordings, Harden explained, give posterity to the words from students and professors and hold major potential for backlash by woke administrations and activists if they are leaked.
“It’s rather ironic…the issues that are at the very forefront of our political conversations or our culture wars are the very issues students are least apt to want to discuss in what’s supposed to be a safe and open forum for the exchange of ideas, the university,” Harden said.
“The mission of a university is supposed to be, at its highest, a place that offers the widest possible range of space for viewpoints to be debated and for you to encounter points of view that maybe you didn’t grow up with or aren’t familiar with … and we just don’t see that happening because of this environment of fear.”
Listen here:
