WENDY KAMINER: The Progressive Ideas Behind The Lack Of Free Speech On Campus. “These days, when students talk about threats to their safety and demand access to “safe spaces,” they’re often talking about the threat of unwelcome speech and demanding protection from the emotional disturbances sparked by unsettling ideas. It’s not just rape that some women on campus fear: It’s discussions of rape. . . . I remember the first time, in the early ’90s, that I heard a Harvard student describe herself as oppressed, as a woman of color. She hadn’t been systematically deprived of fundamental rights and liberties. After all, she’d been admitted to Harvard. But she had been offended and unsettled by certain attitudes and remarks. Did she have good reason to take offense? That was an irrelevant question. Popular therapeutic culture defined verbal ‘assaults’ and other forms of discrimination by the subjective, emotional responses of self-proclaimed victims.”