We challenged campus dogma on the Cornell 7 and exposed Columbias free-speech hypocrisy

The hateful messages started pouring in, one after another.“What the f–k is wrong with you?”“I hope [you] are shown the same cruelty you carry in your heart for someone you don’t even know.”“Brother you gotta kill yourself.”As students at culturally progressive Columbia University, we were well aware that the essay we published in our campus magazine questioning campus dogma on the notorious “Cornell 7” would evoke strong reactions.But we didn’t foresee the scale and ferocity of the backlash — or how many of our own “allies” in the fight to champion freer discourse and dialogue on campus would join in. Here’s a taste of what we argued last month in the Columbia Sundial, an independent student magazine expressly founded to present new and even uncomfortable ideas to the general student body:“The sexual revolution created a hyper-liberal, pro-sex culture that insists that ‘women can do whatever they want with their bodies’  ..

.we cannot claim to stand for sexual freedom and then recoil in disgust when there’s a possibility that a young woman simply chose to exercise it.”That, apparently, is something you’re just not allowed to say at an Ivy League institution dedicated to “higher learning.” Not even if you’re a journal dedicated to “multipartisan ideas, including those that may be controversial,” as the student-run Columbia Political Review claims to be.Its editorial board condemned us within hours of publication, saying our words “perpetuate a culture of campus violence, rape and assault.”It called on the Sundial to “formally re-evaluate their publishing guidelines and their commitment to public safety.” The Columbia Open Discourse Alliance chimed in — oh, but not to defend us.Instead its board attacked, well, the very reason for its organization’s existence. “Open discourse requires that every member of our community be able to speak,” the group declared on Instagram.“This article does the...