NEW YORK šC 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.
Barrett writes that science has shown that ¡°abusive¡± speech damages listeners¡¯ bodies, especially their brains, and should therefore be considered a form of violence. But it has also shown that ¡°merely offensive¡± speech does not have this effect. So campuses should let Charles Murray speak, since he is offering ¡°scholarly hypothesis to be debated,¡± but is not ¡°a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos.¡±
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