The Patriot Post® · Harvard's Rainbow Speech Codes

Free speech has increasingly become a no-no at Harvard University, along with academia more generally. New students at one of the nation’s most prestigious schools will be expected to adhere to new speech codes designed to ensure that students don’t engage in “verbal abuse” of others. The problem is, not surprisingly, the definition of “verbal abuse.”

In a required course, students are introduced to the “Power and Control Wheel,” which is designed to help them identify “harmful” behaviors. The list includes a number of attitudes and behaviors that are classified as contributing “to an environment that perpetuates violence.” Included on this list are “sizes and fatphobia,” “cisheterosexism,” “racism,” “transphobia,” “ageism,” and “ableism.”

Wait a minute. “Cisheterosexism”? Come on.

The “Power and Control Wheel” then delineates behaviors the school categorizes as “abuse,” which ostensibly violate Title IX policies. “We all have an essential role to play in creating a community that cultivates gender equity and inclusion,” Harvard dean Rakesh Khurana tells the students in an instructional video. “Completing this course is a critical step in establishing a shared understanding of the values here at Harvard College.”

The course is part of Harvard’s effort to train students on “Preventing and Responding to Sexual Harassment and Other Sexual Misconduct.” Of course, what constitutes sexual harassment and sexual misconduct according to Harvard is rather broad, including “repeatedly using the wrong pronouns,” which the school dubiously claims is an example of a Title IX violation. It’s all illustrative of the Left’s aggressive redefinition of terms in order to silence and control the speech of others. There is little freedom in Harvard’s views and codes.

At Harvard, failure to uphold the Rainbow Mafia’s speech codes is liable to get one booted from the university because all that “diversity” and “inclusion” demands absolute adherence to the Left’s shibboleths.

It is indeed sadly ironic that America’s universities, once the cultural bastions of free thought and free speech, have led the way in the effort to limit diverse views and opinions and squelch speech. And now not only are they silencing certain “bad” speech, they’re compelling newspeak. When Harvard was founded in 1636, its motto was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae — Truth for Christ and the Church. At some point that was shortened to just Veritas. Today, it would be more accurate to change it to the Latin word for lies — Mendacium.