Ben Shapiro is Berkeley-bound and the college is buckling down as if a natural disaster were incoming. UC Berkeley is even facing the prospect of canceled classes because of the “militarized campus” atmosphere.
Is Ben Shapiro bringing an army with him? No. He’s bringing provocative thoughts and, gasp, conservative opinions. Berkeley is providing the militant atmosphere itself.
I don’t count myself as an acolyte of Ben Shapiro. He is intelligent, brash and condescending; you would think I adored him. But his politics and mine don’t quite align. That said, I respect his opinions. He presents data-based arguments and legitimately engages with audiences that attend his speeches.
When Shapiro came to UNC's campus, I went because I wanted to hear his point of view. As a society that continues to retreat more and more into our “bubbles,” be it online or off, a live conservative firebrand on campus presented an opportunity to hear someone with an opinion different than mine.
What I didn’t realize until arriving was that a large group of those in the lecture hall intended to stand up and walk out. To this day, I honestly don’t understand it. Shapiro and others on the right would deride them as snowflakes, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate.
When I see my peers choose to disengage instead of listen, it disappoints me. It disappoints me because I know that we are better than that. We are better than plugging our ears and stomping our feet, putting our heads in the sand. It isn’t that these people are afraid of new ideas, but that they do not wish to engage in them. Engaging with opposing ideas is more difficult than succumbing to groupthink.
In Charlottesville, we saw what real white supremacists look like. We saw, in 2017, Klansmen and Neo-Nazis marching in the daylight, armed with weapons. Ben Shapiro is not that. Conservatives, as a whole, are not that.
Students labeled as liberal snowflakes are anathema to what the college experience should be. College is about open-mindedness and the exploration of new ideas, many challenging and some contrarian. Why are we here, in college, if we pronounce to know everything already?
I wanted to find a clever quip to end this column, but you can just quote me: Democrats should be the party of inquiry, of questioning and reasoning and finding solutions. We should not be the party of closed minds or unfounded assumptions, traits we would often ascribe to the other side.
