We can’t have nasty words offending sensitive college students can we?

Emily Shire writes at the Daily Beast.

Freedom of Speech? Not At Brown University

College is a time for participating in a number of head-scratching activities that make perfect sense inside the campus bubble, but appear utterly ridiculous and nonsensical to anyone in the “real world.”

Increasingly, this category of baffling behavior is less about booze, sex, or even standards of hygiene and much more about larger issues regarding the right to free speech and the value of expressing unpopular–even if it is ignorant or offensive–opinions.

Well-meaning attempts to foster an environment where everyone feels safe and no one is offended has led the main campus newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, to effectively override freedom of speech considerations.

Earlier this week, The Herald published two pieces written by columnist M. Dhazily Maier (which is a pen name) on October 5 and 6, both of which the editorial board has since denounced as “not only controversial but also deeply hurtful”.

The first, “The White Privilege of Cows,” runs with an editorial note that the column “did not meet The Herald’s standards for writing and clarity, and, more importantly, contained several factual inaccuracies regarding biology and race that cannot be corrected without compromising the argument of the entire column.”

Specifically, from the editors’ perspective, the column relied on the “premise that race is a biological category,” which has been “repeatedly disproven.”

The second, “Columbian Exchange Day,” was altogether removed fromThe Herald’s website because the editors “made a decision not to publish” and claim it was in print versions due to the logistical error of not stopping the presses in time.