Features January 2017
Seven types of suppression
On the left-wing playbook for campus politics.
The implacable determination of today’s campus enforcers of conventional opinion is nowhere better illustrated than in the rise of berts—Bias Education Response Teams. These are administrative bodies now common at colleges and universities that stand ready to swing into action at the drop of a gender-insensitive pronoun. berts are empowered to seek out and torment alleged malefactors; to comfort the afflicted; and to raise alarm throughout the community when its norms have been transgressed.
berts enforce not justice in the plain old sense, but the marvelously flexible concept of “social justice.” And social justice authorizes seven types of suppression of free speech. To keep these seven in good marching order, I propose the mnemonic
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