The Huffington Post has launched a college section of its website to focus on student issues. This is a positive sign for the student movement that more and more news outlets understand the importance of students and the vital role that education plays in shaping our society.
Today, friend of Students For Liberty and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff kicked off the new HuffPo college section with his article Is College Censorship Destroying Our Society’s “Sophistication Machine”? In it he explains that the biggest challenge facing higher education today is not a lack of state funding but the often oppressive intellectual atmosphere on college campuses created by speech codes and other forms of censorship:
In my opinion, higher education is supposed to work as a sort of “sophistication machine” for our society. That is, it is supposed to help us produce a citizenry with a deep, nuanced, complex, and multifaceted understanding of the issues confronting our nation and world. Many critics of higher education point to ideological imbalance within the faculty, grade inflation and diminishing academic rigor, or the increased corporatization of the university as factors that prevent it from fulfilling this crucial function. These are all problems worth investigating. But I believe the most important factor interfering with the success and credibility of higher education is the continuing maintenance of campus speech codes and other policies and practices designed to discourage and even punish free speech and meaningful dissent.
Read the whole article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/is-college-censorship-des_b_485376.html
While the academy is supposed to be the heart of open intellectual discourse, we students of liberty know this is often not the case. The intellectual atmosphere on campus is commonly one of group think and ostracization for those who dare to question the orthodoxy. That is why the mission of the student movement for liberty is so critical. If the 
faculty and administrators will not embrace an open dialogue, then it is up to us to bring the ideas of liberty to the forefront. It is our mission to show our fellow students that liberty is not a fringe idea that can be brushed aside, but an intellectually strong and rigorous philosophy that must be taken seriously.
As the Huffington Post’s expansion of college coverage shows, there rest of the world is beginning to pay attention to these issues. Now it is up to us to ensure that when others look at our universities they see communities where the ideas of liberty thrive.
