Yale invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islam, to speak on campus. Yale’s Muslim Student Association protested and demanded that the invitation be withdrawn. Yale stood its ground (unlike other schools where protests have caused craven administrators to back down), so the Muslin Student Association had to rely on free speech to counter the “offensive” Hirsi Ali.

In this Minding the Campus essay, Mark Bauerlein looks at the resulting document, which is long on feelings but devoid of arguments. He writes, “Instead of sticking to criteria of truth and falsity, the statement turns to ‘values,’ and not values of accuracy but of speech and (ugh) diversity.”

Bauerlein continues that this “feeble whine” might be ignored “were it not for the fact that it fits perfectly with customary practice in higher education. In countless episodes, we have seen truth and error give way to feelings of offense, and the powers that be have responded sympathetically.”

Quite right. I suspect that if we could take a poll of American college professors, an alarmingly high percentage would agree with the notion that feelings trump reason.