Why Banning Laura Kipnis Would Betray Wellesley's Academic Mission

This week at Wellesley College, six professors who serve on the Commission on Race, Ethnicity, and Equity, a committee at the highly selective liberal arts school, sent an email to fellow faculty members urging a radical shift in campus culture. Under the status quo, the Northwestern professor Laura Kipnis, a feminist cultural critic, was invited to speak on campus, despite her controversial view that academia’s approach to regulating sexual conduct is doing harm to female students.

The Wellesley professors find that status quo too permissive.

So they urged new norms that would eschew invitations to speakers like Kipnis. Their premise: “There is no doubt that the speakers in question impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty.” Knowing many will be skeptical of that premise, I present their argument at length, in their words, in the order that they appear.

Their email first expressed particular concern for Wellesley students, “who often feel the injury most acutely and invest time and energy in rebutting the speakers’ arguments.” In their telling, “students object in order to