In the 60s and 70s UC Berkeley used to let controversial speakers present. The audience would listen patiently. And then take turns asking questions trying to catch the racist / bigot / Nazi / homophobe / whatever in the midst of logical failures. Now we just protest and shut down ideas via claims of political correctness. It’s not nearly as effective.
It's incredibly absurd how this discussion is going in this site.
People are literally defending the idea that preventing currently unpopular ideas from finding expression, if necessary violently (and certainly through physical obstructions, which is of course violence), is moral and even good.
The obvious problems are, of course, left without any solution.
1) if this idea had been applied as little as 20 years ago, today's society would have been violently repressed.
2) we are not "right" on everything (on the moral front, and outside). We must allow for evolution of our opinions because of changes in our understanding, and because of changes in the real world surrounding us that our morality just doesn't consider at the moment.
3) the potential for abuse of this attitude is incredibly huge.
Generally we should consider that our attitude is right now violently repressing the morality of society as little as 20 years from now. We will fail in that, and will do a lot of damage in the process. It is as simple as that.
We should welcome speakers and friends and colleagues from wildly different viewpoints and environments and engage with them. Clearly, that's the way forward.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-on-the-UC-Berkele...
In the 60s and 70s UC Berkeley used to let controversial speakers present. The audience would listen patiently. And then take turns asking questions trying to catch the racist / bigot / Nazi / homophobe / whatever in the midst of logical failures. Now we just protest and shut down ideas via claims of political correctness. It’s not nearly as effective.