Hate Speech Hysteria at the University of Oklahoma

In March of 2015, people across the U.S. were shocked to see a video showing two members of the University of Oklahoma SAE fraternity chanting racial epithets. The reaction of the OU administration was swift and draconian. The offending students were expelled without due process and the entire SAE house was immediately shuttered. Legal scholars, writing in the Washington Post and USA Today, described the university's actions as a violation of the student's First Amendment rights. As Eugene Volokh noted, "racist speech is constitutionally protected." Solely as a result of this incident, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) named OU as one of the ten worst colleges in the U.S. for free speech. Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, singled out OU as the most intolerant of all institutions because its actions were taken as a signal by other universities that they could "toss freedom of speech and basic fairness out of the window." Racial tensions on the OU campus have not subsided. They remain high, and if anything, are now more pronounced than before the 2015 SAE incident. The campus is in the grip of a collective hysteria. The largest single factor driving campus tensions is the student newspaper, the OU Daily. The Daily is perhaps the worst newspaper in the country, college or otherwise. In recent years it has degenerated into a publication entirely devoted to promoting radical left-wing ideology. The newspaper staff sees racism, homophobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, inequity, and social injustice everywhere. In 2014, the OU Daily became the laughingstock of the nation for an article claiming that nude-colored women's underwear was racist.