Cornell President Elizabeth Garrett
Over the weekend, media outlets, especially right-leaning ones and those supportive of free speech, were gleeful after Cornell President Elizabeth Garrett called herself “an avid supporter of freedom of speech” at a press event at the Cornell Club in New York City.
Garrett also denounced trigger warnings, saying “With respect to trigger warnings, first and foremost I am an absolute defender of academic freedom,” according to the Cornell Sun.
The NY Post quoted this entire paragraph in its glowing editorial board piece “Hopefully Cornell president’s free speech stance sets a trend”:
“A university is about the fullest and freest expression of ideas and arguments. There isn’t any idea that ought not to be tested and questioned. Because that’s how we get closer to the truth. We’re about reason, rationality, debate. So if you disagree with someone, the answer isn’t to shut them down . . . I don’t believe there should be any limits on the substance of freedom of speech at a university.”
While this rhetoric and the statement about trigger warnings are statements to be championed by those who believe in free speech, unfortunately, the NY Post and other media outlets failed to research Garrett’s past comments about free speech.
Just four weeks ago at the leftist start-studded Democracy & Inequality panel at Cornell, Garrett defiantly declared: “Speech can be regulated. Speech has to be regulated in the narrowest possible way to serve a compelling state interest.”
The Cornell Review pointed out that on campus the “state” is the administration.
Perhaps Garrett has had a change of heart. If so, that’s great. But a complete change of heart in just four weeks seems awfully close to a flip flop designed for positive press coverage.
President Garrett said: “A university is about the fullest and freest expression of ideas and arguments. There isn’t any idea that ought not to be tested and questioned.” Would that include testing Intelligent Design Theory?
Of course not. She only means questioning and testing moderate or conservative ideas. She is a hypocrite.
“If Freedom of Speech is taken away, then dumb and blind we will be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.”
George Washington, 1783.
Christians are eventually led away like sheep to the slaughter because they speak truth when asked or told not to, or commanded by law not to speak. Persecution is to be expected. 2 Timothy 3:12 “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” Mark 10:29 Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”