If You Say So

The Arizona House has passed a bill dealing with intellectual diversity on campus.  The guy behind it explains:

The basic idea is to have public universities create offices of Public Policy Events, which would be charged with organizing debates, panel discussion, and individual lectures designed to explore widely debated public-policy issues from divergent and competing perspectives.

According to the linked article, this law would not require student groups or academic departments to invite any speakers to campus. It would only be this new Office of Public Policy which would select the issues and stage balanced debates.

Is it generally a good thing for students to be exposed to a diversity of political beliefs?  Yes.  Are campuses by and large doing a poor job of it?  Yes.  Should public colleges be sued when they deny freedom of speech to their students?  Yes.  But this law is still a bad idea.

As bad as colleges are these days at presenting balance regarding divisive political issues, this is no reason to get the government involved.  Even assuming the Office of Public Policy could be run in a rational, evenhanded way, this is still giving the state too much power.  I don't trust college campuses to do a good job presenting all sides, but I trust government officials even less in determining how a balanced debate should be presented (and punishing those who don't meet their standards).  And even if they did a good job in the short run, who knows how the government might exploit this power in the future.

There are too many bullies on college campuses telling people what they can and can't say or hear.  We don't need to invite another bully, even if this bully promises to be as fair as possible.