Six years ago, in a three-part series for Heterodox Academy, Sean and Jonathan Haidt proposed that a “new dynamic” was emerging on American college campuses and that current college students were more hostile toward freedom of speech than their older counterparts. Sean and Haidt proposed that this “new dynamic” represented a set of “politically correct” viewpoints that made it harder for students and faculty who dissented from these viewpoints to express themselves. ...

At the time, Sean and Haidt’s “new dynamic” hypothesis was met with skepticism. Jeffery Sachs declared, “There is no campus free speech crisis, the kids are alright, those that say otherwise have lost all perspective, and the real crisis may be elsewhere, ” and, “The ‘campus free speech crisis’ is a myth and here are the facts.” Rich Smith let everyone know, “There’s No Free Speech Crisis on Campus, So Please Shut Up About It.” And Matt Yglesias claimed in Vox, “Everything we think about the political correctness debate is wrong.” 

This was, of course, maddening to Greg, who had been watching free speech on campus deteriorate since 2001.