What's up with freedom of speech? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Please join me in welcoming our newest contributor to BCN, Kathy Manos Penn, a native of the "Big Apple", by way of the "Peach City" - Atlanta. Kathy is a former English teacher, author of The Ink Penn blog, and a communications professional in corporate America. Now with Kathy on board, I advise all other contributors to mind your punctuation and syntax.

    I cannot stop thinking about college campuses and freedom of speech or lack thereof, and for the first time in my writing life, I feel compelled to take on a controversial topic. Let me start by saying that I may not be in the know about every last fact on the latest happenings, but what I’m hearing disturbs me.

    As a child in New York City, I had Polish, Italian, Jewish, Armenian and black friends...and those are just the ones I can recall. Ours was a global neighborhood. Our parents and our friends' parents regularly cracked ethnic jokes to and about each other. The Irish drank; the Poles weren't smart; the Jews loved money; the Italians were in the mafia, and all the Greeks owned greasy spoons. If Halloween costumes are off limits at Yale because someone might find them offensive, what would those students think about ethnic jokes and comments?

    I am one half Greek, with grandparents who immigrated here. My Greek grandfather had his own biases, formed in his youth in Greece and during his service in the US Army in WWI. He disliked Turks, whom he labeled barbarians, and was not happy when his brother married a Turk nor when my Aunt married an Italian, because he considered Italians Fascists. Remember the grandmother's fear of Turks in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding?" There was an historical reason for that.

    When I went to work in corporate America in Atlanta, I was well schooled in political correctness ... to the extent that my siblings made fun of me for saying African-American and Asian-American. The term black was taboo back then. But, lo' and behold, today black is the preferred term. We have separate professional groups for women, for black women and for Hispanic/Latino women, you name it. Diversity is the name of the game in corporate America and on campuses across the nation, but how can you function in a diverse world, if you can't have frank conversations with those different from you and learn to understand each other? Diversity is not only diversity of appearance, heritage and lifestyle, but also of thought.

    As an overly sensitive child who cried at the drop of a hat, it would have hurt my feelings if anyone had called me a greasy Greek, as happened to me on a NYC business trip early in my career. By then, though, I could take some good-natured teasing and survive. If the New Yorkers weren't commenting on my Georgia accent, it was my Greek heritage.

    The Manhattan office I supported was staffed primarily by Jews and a handful of Irish Catholics. They teased each other unmercifully, and anyone in earshot was fair game too. The Jewish head of the office regularly laughed about his love of money and being Jewish. His second in command, an Irish Catholic, joked one Good Friday that all the Jews had taken the day off and he was working. Can you imagine any of these comments on today's college campuses? Well, if you can, you can also well imagine the reaction. I wonder whether blonde jokes are now off limits too?

    And while there have always been protests on college campuses, a 2014 report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) notes another disturbing trend: "... over the past 15 years ... the number of 'disinvitation incidents'- i.e., efforts to prevent invited speakers from conveying their message on campus- has risen dramatically." Must all speakers be those with whom students agree? Isn't higher education intended to make you think, to expand your mind, rather than shut it down?

    When did it become acceptable to yell F*** you to professors and call them F*** idiots, but unacceptable to express your opinion or politely speak your mind? What ever happened to civil discourse? I've honestly and politely expressed my thoughts. Now, I'm quietly waiting for those who disagree with my perspective to bombard me with foul language and insults. What a world we live in.