https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/opinion/columbia-nimesh-patel-comedian-kicked-offstage.html
When you silence someone you don’t agree with or find offensive, not only do you implement the tactic used by the people you disdain; you also do yourself the disservice of missing out on a potentially meaningful conversation. You cannot affect change if you are not challenged.
I don’t think college students and young people are “soft,” though. This is the generation that got a million people to march for gun control this year and somehow got my Indian-immigrant dad to recycle. You have no idea how tough you have to be to persuade a guy named Sanjay to separate plastic and glass.
So true. The Sanjay in my life has a difficult time with this activity.
After I was forced offstage, something unexpected happened: Notes of support flooded in. Students apologized via email and via Instagram DM. They told me: We’re not all sensitive people; we can take jokes; you shouldn’t have been pulled offstage, that was wrong. Three Columbia students even came to my next show to apologize in person.
I do not think we should let the actions of a small group — actions that get blown out of proportion because they feed a narrative many people want to hear — paint college campuses as bad places to perform and paint this next generation as doomed.
That’s a scary and incorrect way to look at the world.
I agree. From my time speaking to college students across the country, it very much seems A New Generation Wants a Better Way.