American burlesque has a long, celebrated history of advancing social progress by empowering people—of all genders, orientations, colors, shapes, and sizes—to celebrate their bodies while provoking the censors. This form of expression has played an important role in subverting society’s expectations of conformity and morality. There’s never been anything particularly “safe” about burlesque. It’s edgy! It’s radical self-expression! It inspires people to think and behave differently! It provokes! It challenges!

But for some reason, a whole bunch of today’s college students don’t merely run from challenges—they demand repayment, a formal inquiry, and federal legislation to remedy any instance of provocation. All too often, these are the liberal kids—the ones who are supposedly tolerant and open-minded. Recall what happened last semester at Colorado College, when the screening of a pro-gay film was protested, not by social conservatives, but by the campus’s LGBT+ group, because it didn’t feature a sufficient number of transgender characters. For these students, perfect is truly the enemy of good.

[Do read about the Colorado College episode: the pro-gay movie “Stonewall” was deemed “discursively violent,” . . .  reinforcing a hierarchy of oppression…”. Further, one student complained that “the film’s placement of a hunky white boy at the center of events that were often driven by trans women of color, drag queens, butch lesbians, and others is troublesome, to say the least.”]

The Beast continues about Northwestern:

Of course, it seems like there’s also something a tad ordinary going on here: Some students are experiencing a brush with disappointment—possibly their first—at having lost out on a juicier role in the production. It might be better for these students if the directors didn’t erect a safe space to shelter them from reality. As The College Fix’s Dave Huber wrote, “A Broadway director, or better yet, an employer isn’t going to care one whit about some snowflake’s feelings of ‘exclusion.’” Meanwhile, the show must go on—but only if everybody is 100 percent comfortable with it at all times.

I’m not so sure that directors don’t care about “exclusion”: look at the fracas about black representation in Hollywood now. I do feel that’s a legitimate cause for concern—not so much that black actors and films haven’t been nominated for awards, but that films by black or minority directors aren’t getting made. After all, the experience of underrepresented minorities has something to teach us. But I’m not sure that this kind of student entitlement is the way to do it. Perhaps those disappointed students should write their own shows? Or have a demonstration or symposium airing their grievances?

And I’m not so sure that these students will collide with reality when they graduate. Even if they do, some day they’ll be in positions of power—and look out when that happens! What I worry about, as always, is the suppression of disapproved speech as “hate speech,” a trend that shows no sign of waning. As the Beast reports in the Colorado piece,

A recent poll of students’ attitudes conducted by McLaughlin & Associates bears this out. A majority of surveyed students said universities should regulate speech and that people with a history of hateful statements should be banned from campus. A sizeable minority of students incorrectly believed the Constitution did not protect “hate speech,” and that, in ay case, the First Amendment was outdated. Half of the respondents thought their university should crack down on cartoons that criticize religious or ethnic groups, and a whopping 72 percent agreed with the following statement: “Any student or faculty member on campus who uses language that is considered racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive should be subject to disciplinary action.”

Now that is disturbing!

I see this authoritarian Leftism burgeoning at the University of Chicago—not in our administration, but among our students, whose editorials in the student newspaper increasingly call for the banning of “hate speech,” which, they argue,  is not the same thing as free speech.  (That kind of doublespeak is becoming the rule among students.) I’d write to the paper arguing that one person’s hate speech is another person’s free speech, but that would only anger our students, and, blinkered by anger and feelings of victimhood and entitlement, I don’t know if they’d understand.