Lots of people in media are starting to notice that we have a serious free speech problem on campus.

This editorial appeared in the Press Enterprise.

EDITORIAL: Free speech needs campus ‘safe space’

Students at the University of Pittsburgh are up in arms about a speech Feb. 29 by conservative activist and Breitbart.com tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, and they are not handling his opposing viewpoints well.

“During his talk, Yiannopoulos called students who believe in a gender wage gap ‘idiots,’ declared the Black Lives Matter movement a ‘supremacy’ group, while feminists are ‘man-haters,’” student newspaper The Pitt News reported.

Students described being “hurt” and “in danger” by the remarks. “This is more than hurt feelings, this is about real violence,” social work and urban studies major Claire Matway told the paper. Student Government Board President Nasreen Harun “teared up” while listening to students’ reactions at a board meeting the next day, and the Rainbow Alliance, Campus Women’s Organization and Black Action Society held a joint event to “respond to the hate speech” and “provide a SAFE SPACE for those who have experienced trauma, been triggered or felt any kind of pain because of the events.”

Such events – and emotional overreactions – are becoming regrettably common on college campuses. Days before the Yiannopoulos event, hundreds of students at Cal State Los Angeles literally mobbed a lecture hall where conservative columnist and political commentator Ben Shapiro was scheduled to deliver a speech, blocking entrances, assaulting and otherwise intimidating attendees, pulling the fire alarm to disrupt the talk and threatening violence against the speaker.