Columbia University undergraduates Christine Ma and Nikos Mohammadi found out exactly how committed their classmates are to free speech when they decided to publish a dissenting opinion on the “Cornell 7” case earlier this month.
The pair wrote an op-ed for the Columbia Sundial, an alternative campus newspaper, in which they argued that the rush to condemn the alleged perpetrators before all the facts were known was illiberal.
“We believe that this collective frenzy is deeply unproductive, neglects any and all facts of the case which disagree with the ‘preferred’ narrative, and infantilizes women,” they wrote. “It has also ushered in a climate on campus in which it is difficult to disagree with the maximalist position on what happened.”
They didn’t argue the guilt or innocence of the accused but merely reminded their classmates that the presumption of innocence ought not be abandoned in the name of moral righteousness.
For that, they were pilloried by classmates and condemned by student organizations, including some whose founding mission is to defend free speech.
To find out more about the on-campus reaction and what it says about their generation’s attitudes toward foundational liberal principles, I sat down with the two Columbia juniors. You can watch that conversation here:
