When we lose our freedom of speech as human beings, in a profound sense we lose our souls.The student protests in America regarding the willingness of Heads of Universities as Governing Boards, Presidents, and Faculties to toss academic freedom and the protection of their campuses from law enforcement encroachment ,under the bus to save their jobs ,and preserve donor preferences ,is a harsh dismal taint on the declining respect universities are supposed to be. And more than that ,a taint on our collective soul as a claimed democracy and our own individual souls if we are not mindful, prayerful, and discerning.

Universities in these ugly times are becoming grotesque symbolic places driven more so by blatant politics and suppression of real free speech ; suppressing speech we simply don’t like. This is apparent in the raging discord sweeping up campuses in the face of provoking Congress men and women willing to use timid campus leaders to do their bidding in the midst of a rudderless White House.

It does not bode well for anyone within or outside the United States since any threat to free speech is a threat to all of us no matter who or what we are. This is because we become vulnerable to being bullied by autocratic manipulative leaders no matter their political party affiliation ,wanting to maintain control no matter the cost even if it means we lose our collective and individual human souls.

We often talk about wanting democracy in the sense of doing what we want as narcissistic consumers indifferent to growing tendencies to suppress, indeed , repress,freedom of speech. We see it all around us now in the multitudes of social media engaged in the contradiction of allowing us communication choices while restricting what we say , how we say it and manipulating or manufacturing our narrations. We say we want people to speak up as long as they say what we wish and if not , we marginalize them, we ignore them, we deny their presence and even sanity.

But with this said about the growing efforts to suppress, to repress freedom of speech has come emerging generations who are not afraid to speak up and speak out. Rather than demonizing them we should be praising and supporting those who are peaceful in their determination to demand justice and truth in societies and world in which older adult leaders have lost their way caught up in the hegemonic arrogance of making profits off the practices of destroying the innocent while the masses of us are deprived and impoverished or just ignored.

Perhaps in supporting these younger generations speaking up and out it will rekindle the fires to do the same among we older generations whose comforts or just disinterest or collisions have caused our used to be thirst for justice to be extinguished thus losing our souls because we have gained the whole world and thus lost sight of our humanity.

As Americans somehow we must regain our societal and individual souls through embracing a new truly inclusive ethic of speaking up and out. Perhaps that is what we are seeing happening now with the younger leading the older back to our collective and individual souls.