Humor is often the first casualty of repression.

Comedians were among the first victims of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Kim Jong-un, in particular those who mocked the tyrants and their political cronies and programs. In fact, the concept of “political correctness” developed under Stalin as a rigid test for “acceptable” humor, art, and even music.

Now political correctness is running amok in American universities, and its first casualty is college humor. Today’s repressives are not the right-wing McCarthyites or religious fundamentalists who tried to censor the humor of my college generation; rather, they are the self-proclaimed “progressives” of the hard left — the new Stalinists on campus who shape the terrain of permissible speech in general, and humor in particular. These political-correctness police demand “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” to protect their thin-skinned lemmings from micro aggressions, including sexist, racist, homophobic, and other “offensive” jokes. 

An example in point from my own grandson, who is a senior at Harvard and a member of the Lampoon, the college-humor magazine. He and a friend attended the Harvard-Yale football game and his friend held up a sign reading, “Tackling is a micro aggression.” Offended students screamed at them, “You’re mocking our pain! You should be required to undergo sensitivity training!” Yes, my grandson and his friend were mocking the excessive efforts of the hard left to control campus humor. That’s what comedy at its best does. But the radical censors of the hard left have no sense of humor, and they don’t want anyone else to laugh at the serious issues they raise, either.

A recent documentary on campus humor, Can We Take a Joke?, showed how widespread the problem has become. Comedians are now refusing to perform on campuses lest they be attacked by hard-left censors. Teachers are reluctant to use humor, not only in the classroom but in the cafeteria. Students risk discipline for telling a dirty joke to an overly sensitive friend.

“Self-censorship, enforced by university administrators, is the current mechanism of suppression of offensive humor.”

To be sure, the real tyrants killed their politically incorrect comedians. There’s a wonderful 1993 film, Genghis Cohn, about a German-Jewish comedian who’s murdered by Hitler and comes back to haunt his killers with jokes. No doubt Hitler would have executed Charlie Chaplin for making his 1940 comic masterpiece, The Great Dictator, if he could have.

Of course today’s college censors merely seek to discipline comic offenders, but the impact is discernible. Self-censorship, enforced by university administrators, is the current mechanism of suppression of offensive humor. And the impact is similar: a humorless campus on which fear of offending destroys spontaneity.

The real concern is that today’s universities are miseducating tomorrow’s leaders. The real world into which students graduate is filled with micro and macro aggressions. There are no “safe spaces” or “trigger warnings” on Main Street, Wall Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue.  Current students will be unprepared for that world. Or, worse, they will try to change it into a replica of their repressive university world in which sensitivity trumps liberty.

As usual, there are some heroes, but not many. The University of Chicago felt it necessary to send a letter to all incoming freshman, telling them, “We do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

The very fact that a top university felt it necessary to send such a letter speaks volumes about the current stifling atmosphere on many campuses. The fact that other schools would be afraid to send such a letter speaks even more loudly.

Students, faculty, and alumni who value freedom of expression might fight back against bullies who would tell them what to say, think, and believe. One can be sensitive without being stifled. An organization called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has taken the lead in opposing campus repression. But they, too, are being subjected to censorship and harassment.

There is bigotry and a double standard at work here. Many of the same censors who want safe spaces — for themselves and their partners in paranoia — are among the leaders of groups that aggress against religious Christians, Jewish Zionists, conservatives, free-speech activists, and other politically incorrect groups who are denied even physically safe spaces against both micro and macro aggressions.

“Free speech for me but not for thee” is a common refrain for hypocrites. The new refrain is “Safe spaces for me but not for thee.” The only acceptable approach is physically safe spaces for all, but intellectually safe spaces for none. And no protection against humor.  If you don’t like a joke, don’t laugh!