The Atlantic

A Wisconsin Legislator Models Political Correctness for Students

Instead of selectively attacking views they find objectionable, students, administrations, and elected officials could try defending the principle of free speech.
Source: Morry Gash / AP

When Wisconsin lawmaker Steve Nass was an undergraduate in his state’s public university system during the late 1970s, he reportedly got into a dispute with a liberal professor. In his telling, he got an F on an assignment for disagreeing with her belief that the world would run out of coal by the year 2000. For the rest of the semester, he grudgingly parroted her views in his papers even though he didn’t believe them. “So much for free speech,” he later said to Isthmus, a local publication.

Many years later, as a state lawmaker, he could have emerged as a champion for free speech on campus, perhaps urging the University of Wisconsin toward a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, rather than its

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