Playing With FIRE

I recall circa ~2000 FIRE’s Harvey Silverglate visiting Tufts University for a conversation about the topic that forms the organization’s name. This occurred contemporaneously with a moment when the campus publication with which I was associated was under comprehensive assault which ranged from the student senate continually trying to defund it to activists regularly bulk stealing paper copies of the free publication from distribution points.

The magazine was “big tent conservative” on a campus dominated by students of far-left thought and so it was the only home for a then-essentially-libertarian/now-subtly-left kind of human. I often found various of my co-authors’ writing fairly cringe and yet the topics that in that age that got people worked up feel incredibly quaint compared to the present epoch under which Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was rolled up by DHS goons on the basis of co-authoring a Tufts Daily opinion piece about the Israel/Gaza conflict.

As it turns out, extremists of all stripes care little for freedom of thought, seeking only to advance their preferred narrative.

The enclosed images were sourced from FIRE’s Facebook page in the last day and respectively originated from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Pennsylvania State University. Look no further for evidence of how far the Overton Window has slid.

The grown-ups in the room desperately need to shift the register before we spiral from a cold civil war into a hot one. We can only hope that Congress plays the part by getting off its knees but we all must keep pressure on them to do so.

For essays on related topics, consider my piece “To Kill A Democracy”, which touches on Rümeysa’s abduction the day after Charlie Kirk’s killing, as well as “Put Your Amygdala On Ice” and “The Long Road To Tragedy”, written in the wake of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.