Step on a college campus in the US. There is no free speech. No intellectual diversity at all. Everyone just shuts up since no one dare steps out of line.
Not all colleges/universities have gone bad, and that's a good thing, because intellectual discourse is supposed to be the point of university, not (just) vocational training.
That's because it's not called "censorship" any more. Instead, people will label a person whose speech they dislike as a racist, homophobe, Islamophobe, anti-semite, misogynist, etc. Sure, people with such views exist and we should debate how we, as a society, want to respond to such views.
What is the problem is the unwritten expectation that, once identified as such by almost anyone, you are excluded, attacked, and told to "shut up". For a regular person it's often enough to be labeled in this way once for their social or work prospects to either be ruined or hurt. Worse, the label will still stick, even if later this person is exonerated.
It came out as more flippant than I intended, but I'm being quite serious, and my real question is genuine: what can be done--other than suppressing communication about the judgement--to render the consequences other than life ruining?
Which university is this, if I may ask?
yes, in university there are children who are so appalled at the injustice of the world that they react .. as children
but you can't dismiss the academy for their actions
Which campus are you talking about?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/ohio-sta...
However, as others have mentioned, there is a huge risk gradient to overcome for students wishing to drop out to stand behind their principles. They need to be somewhat reassured that they are not gambling their careers away.
One way that those out in the workforce could help would be to make a hefty and very public effort to hire as many of these dropout students as possible, credentials be damned. That's how it used to work back in the day anyway, why can't it be done again? With all of the excipient courses that one is forced to take that have little or nothing to do with one's profession, they won't be missing out on much.