States urge 'intellectual diversity' laws for college campuses
The National Association of Scholars is working with four states to pass laws to increase 'intellectual diversity' at public universities; Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist and Fox News contributor, reacts.
The Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday that “universities have not done a good job of protecting free speech,” and it is “particularly bad when taxpayers are funding the seeds of their country's own destruction by not having vibrant debate.”
She added that universities also have not done “a good job of protecting due process” and “don't have very good hiring decisions.”
“They have faculty who are sort of uniformly in one camp and they don't have a culture of vibrant debate,” Hemingway explained, adding that “that's bad regardless if you're publicly funded or privately funded.”
She went on to say “it's particularly bad” for publicly funded schools that don’t have “any space where ideas of tolerance can be taught.”
Hemingway made the comments as “cancel culture” is on the rise with protesters across the country tearing down statues following the death of George Floyd in police custody.
Host Steve Doocy noted on Wednesday that four states, including Kansas and Missouri, are pushing for “intellectual diversity” laws “to fight what they call campus intolerance in public universities.”
In March 2019, President Trump signed an executive order to promote free speech on college campuses by threatening colleges with the loss of federal research funding if they do not protect those rights.
Last year, Texas became the 17th state since 2015 to legislate protecting First Amendment rights on campus, Fox 41 reported.
“Under intellectual diversity laws, not only must dissenting views be tolerated, but college administrations are required to actively take steps (yet to be specified) to ensure that students are exposed to competing cultural and political viewpoints,” according to the television station.
Hemingway said she “absolutely” sees a connection between what has been taking place on America's college campuses and what is happening on America's streets as it pertains to the protests, which sometimes turn violent.
“It has just gotten steadily worse at universities where young adults are not taught how to argue or debate,” Hemingway said.
“They are not taught basic principles of the American founding,” she continued. “They are instead taught essentially to hate their country and to hate a lot of the ideals that we have and this is spilling out into the streets, and there is a clear connection between what is happening nationwide with these colleges.”
She noted that “17 states have already passed laws protecting” free speech for their universities “but something more is desperately needed and some more pressure needs to be applied.”
“We have seen truly radical things happening at campuses nationwide, and it’s harming the country itself,” Hemingway said.
She went on to say that “we have not taught people what makes America unique, what makes our founding so important and what makes our culture one where we can tolerate people who have different ideas.”
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“That is simply not being done at schools, so much more public pressure needs to be applied and I think people need to think about where they're sending their kids and whether it's going as well as they thought it was going,” Hemingway continued.
Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
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