Liberals Are Amazed That Campus Free Speech Outrage Gets So Much Attention. Here's Why It Matters.

"...it's wrong to say that this fixation on the current state of higher education in America is unwarranted. Liberal arts undergrads may not have the nuclear codes, but they are spending lots of money and years of their lives in pursuit of the most prestigious credentials in the world—the college diploma—and the power it buys. The graduates of Berkeley, and Middlebury, and Michigan, and Mizzou, and a hundred other institutions enduring similar moments of illiberalism, will go on to become business leaders and political leaders and activists and inventors and doctors and lawyers and artists and writers. They don't have their fingers on a button that could destroy the world all at once, but their ideas do matter, and will shape society in the long run.

The question is this: do we want the society of the future—the one built by Berkeley graduates—to reflect a sustained commitment to free speech and other liberal, Enlightenment norms, or not? If the answer is yes, then what happens at Berkeley should matter..."