Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” network senior political analyst Brit Hume sounded off on a Princeton professor being forced to cancel class on free speech after some students object to speech.
The anthropology professor Lawrence Rosen asked students whether it was worse for a white man to physically attack a black man, or to use a racial slur, which upset some of the students.
Hume said some people were seeking to be offended so that they could react outrageously.
Partial transcript as follows:
HUME: It’s been a while though. Don’t ask me how long it’s been.
CARLSON: I won’t. But what I found so striking about this was this class was – this is not something he’s threw out there. This class was about speech, what speech is offensive. It was an anthropology class. How odd is it that Princeton students couldn’t handle it?
HUME: Well, we’re talking here about the N-word, which is one of the ugliest words in the language.
CARLSON: For sure.
HUME: And we don’t go around using it for that reason –
CARLSON: Yes.
HUME: And it’s offensive. However, I would submit that there is a difference between using the word and mentioning the word. There is a difference between using the word – that is to say calling someone that or speaking of others and using that word, saying that they are, you know, that, and mentioning and discussing the word.
And in a class devoted to this very subject of language and what’s offensive and what’s not, you ought to be able to mention the word and, in so doing, say the word.
After all, the professor wasn’t calling anybody by that name. He was simply discussing the word itself. And that’s a distinction that seems to me has been lost in this absolute wave of political correctness in which some things are simply now unsayable.
CARLSON: Yes. To me, it makes no sense. Like most people, I hate that word and I don’t want to hear it. But I also would like to think that Princeton students would be rational enough that if you said to them, look, we’re having a discussion about speech and violence and is speech ever violence, for example, and this is a horrible thing to say, but here it is that they would be able to track with that and they would be smart enough to kind of understand what you are saying, but they don’t seem like they were.
HUME: No. I think there is – one of the problems here, Tucker, is that America is a compassionate country and a country that strives for justice and equality and we want to be sensitive to other people’s feelings.
CARLSON: Yes.
HUME: And, therefore, if you’re a victim in any of these areas, it’s kind of a good deal. You get a lot of consideration. You get a lot of sympathy. And it seems to me that we have reached a stage in America where we have people basically going around applying for victim status or seeking to be offended, so they can react to it and be indignant and even yell F bombs at college professors.
And I sense that it’s utterly regrettable. And you see this sensitivity going on all the time. I mean, this is what we mean when we talk about little snowflakes.
Our colleague, Fox News contributor Guy Benson ran into resistance up at Brown University, another Ivy, where people said it was offensive and wrong for him to be permitted to speak there.
This all part of the same phenomenon and it is very widespread, it is very disturbing. It’s been widely reported on. And I think most people in America disapprove of this and yet on it goes.
And the responsibility, it seems to me, falls upon these university administrators and the faculty, which put up with this crap and have for a long time. And this needs to stop.
CARLSON: In the letter at Brown, they accuse Guy Benson, who is probably the nicest guy in the building, of enabling white supremacy.
In the 20 seconds we have, if you had an 18-year-old right now, would you be worried about sending that child to college?
HUME: Well, I have an 18-year-old granddaughter who is at college. And I’m pleased to say that there hasn’t been many reports at the college where she is going of this kind of stuff going on.
But it very much concerns me. And, yes, I am concerned about it and I got another granddaughter coming along in a couple years who’ll be headed off to college and I very much hope that she’ll choose a college and will be able to get into a college where there is a minimum of this kind of stuff going on.
But more than that, Tucker, I hope that, by that time, the attitudes about this will change and these college administrators will begin to grow some backbone.
CARLSON: I hope so. The revolution will burn itself out. Brit, thank you very much.
HUME: You bet, Tucker.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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