, Columnist
There's No Brain Science to College Free Speech
Campus speakers aren't doing violence to undergraduate neurons.
There's always stress.
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Can science, which has given us so many blessings, also help us settle disputes about free speech on campus?
Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, thinks so. She argues in the New York Times that science can “provide empirical guidance for which kinds of controversial speech should and shouldn’t be acceptable on campus and in civil society.” It’s a point that she doesn’t prove, and that poses dangers to which she seems blind.