Criminologists at the University of California beware: disseminating crime data could put you afoul of university governance. The politically appointed regents of the ten-campus UC system are devising “principles against intolerance” that would regulate university speech and behavior and could threaten a large range of academic inquiry, including crime research. The effort shows how a therapeutic agenda has taken over the traditional educational and research functions of American colleges.

The impetus for the “intolerance” initiative was an alleged rise in anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incidents on UC campuses. In February 2015, some UCLA students questioned whether another student with ties to Jewish organizations could serve impartially on a campus judicial board. In response, the regents asked the UC administration to compose a “statement of principles against intolerance”; the UC provost presented a draft at a regents’ meeting last week at UC Irvine. The regents criticized the principles for not explicitly mentioning anti-Semitism but didn’t object to their substance. Indeed, one regent called them a “nice statement.” While the next version will undoubtedly incorporate a reference to anti-Semitism—which had been omitted out of a desire to be “inclusive,” according to provost Aimee Dorr—the draft’s main ideas and language will almost certainly remain the same.

Read the article “Intolerant of Truth” on city-journal.org.