To the Editor:

I read at Syracuse.com that Vice President Joe Biden told the Syracuse University College of Law class of 2016 they were part of "the most tolerant generation ever." Really? While Vice President Biden is known for his gaffes, this was a maybe his worst ever.

According to the Foundation for the Individual Rights in Education so far this year they have identified 18 instances where college students or faculty have tried to intimidate speakers invited to speak, at least 11 have been prevented from speaking because they are deemed too controversial. Just recently at a college in Massachusetts a group was holding an event to discuss the effect political correctness has on limiting free speech and divergent ideas, only to have "politically correct" students come shout and disrupt the meeting to the point where the speakers at the event could not be heard and the event was cut short. Colleges are setting up safe zones and enforcing speech codes, making sure there are no "micro aggressions" and "trigger warnings" to make sure a student does not hear something that may offend them. It seems that today's students tolerate only what they want to hear and try to prevent all others from speaking.

One of the complaints we all have is problems cannot be solved because politician are in their own ideological box not willing to listen to other ideas. If our esteemed colleges and universities will not allow, better yet encourage, differing point of view to be heard and exchanged on our campuses, how will we ever fix our problems? Until the last few years we as a society have had the freest and most open exchange of ideas the world has ever known. We have all benefited from allowing this marketplace of ideas improve our society.

For the sake of our free society I implore our colleges to prepare our young to challenge the future by making sure differing ideas are heard on campus, no matter how uncomfortable they may make your students.



John Buckley

East Syracuse

