Episode description

We’ve heard this scare story a million times: A theater group at Wesleyan won’t perform The Vagina Monologues because it’s offensive to trans women! Oberlin is banning classes featuring white authorsI Rich, sheltered college students, increasingly indoctrinated by radical Marxist professors, are asking for safe spaces!

But how much merit is there to the popular trope that college kids are hypersensitive and coddled? Is there really a free speech crisis America’s campuses? What are the origins of this evergreen complaint? Who does the constant harping on the threat of “political correctness” and anti-free speech undergrads actually hurt? And more importantly, whom does it benefit?

Today's guest is David Palumbo-Liu, professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University.