Williams College diversity advocate Ferentz Lafargue is the most recent defender of the cowardice has infected too many American colleges and universities.

In his commentary for the Washington Post, Professor Lafargue fails to address the question of how Williams College can reconcile it’s commitment to “…an inclusive environment for learning, living and community”  when the same institution cancelled separate invitations to two conservative speakers.

This, of course, is not an inclusive environment and most certainly is blatant hypocrisy.

As a former university professor who taught a class for decades on “Class, Race, Media and Gender,” I can tell you and Professor Lafargue that Williams College has wrapped itself in a blanket of liberal bias in an effort to prevent students from actually learning.

Exposure to conflicting perspectives is fundamental to developing critical thinking skills and evaluating ideas based on their merits.   One can’t recognize homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia if you’re shielded from them. You can’t develop ways to combat them if you don’t understand their arguments.

Williams College, as a result, has denied its students this basic educational truth and abandoned the principal on which higher education was founded.

Unfortunately, Ferentz Lafargue is just the latest name added to the long list of apologists for the timidity that pervades too many campuses of our so-called institutions of “higher learning.”