A politically conservative young person enrolls in a social science program at the University of Copenhagen and is dismayed to learn that her fellow students aren’t very friendly or receptive to her opinions. Does that show a woeful lack of understanding of society in 2020 that might disqualify her from pursuing a career in this field? 

As I reported recently, Denmark may not yet be in full compliance with the social justice standards of the Anglosphere, but it is making strides to catch up. In that post, I looked back at highlights of political correctness in the country last year. Those were isolated incidents that were perhaps too easily conducive to jokes. But some people have to live with this code of conduct every day.

The University of Copenhagen’s student newspaper interviewed students and faculty members (DK) in the social science and political science departments and learned that, as in the US, both groups are overwhelming leftist. Conservative students felt they couldn’t express themselves candidly on subjects such as race, gender, inequality and immigration and sometimes found themselves shunned socially.

The sexual dimorphism heresy
One student said that of all the organizations he had experienced in schools and workplaces, this one was the most limiting of free debate. He felt he couldn’t discuss gender “because I believe there are two sexes and that’s almost an illegal opinion here.” A sociology student said that he couldn’t be sure whether right-wing students in his department felt marginalized because they’re weren’t any others left. The three others in their entering class had disappeared. There are certain basic assumptions that his fellow students agree on, he said, such as the multiplicity of sexes, and the only debates about them are between moderate and radical leftist positions. 

In the student council election campaign in 2019, a conservative student displayed a poster that said “No to identity politics,” with a picture of a sombrero – a reference to a recent cultural appropriation scandal on campus. A photo of the poster was posted on Instagram with the description “white supremacist move” and a suggestion that the posters be torn down. The same thing happened to another candidate with the slogan “No thanks to grievance-readiness” (Nej tak til krænkelsesparathed). She said that other conservative students confided in her that they stayed in the closet or else got shamed for their opinions.

All opinions welcome – except yours 
Two anthropology students behind a Facebook group called “Inclusive environment at U of Copenhagen” believe it is legitimate to exclude certain opinions. One said that some conservatives have views of humanity that are directly harmful and violate human rights: “We have accepted the idea that there should be room for all opinions and views and that it is okay not to like immigrants, to be transphobic or to hate women a little. But it is not an opinion that some people cannot have the same rights as others.” The other draws the line at racist, sexist and otherwise oppressive views: “The question is how you treat other people. Are you discriminatory in the words you use? Do you wound other people and make them sad?”

It is not apparent what rights they thought the conservatives wanted to deny to others or what words they perceived to be discriminatory. Some conservative students may have committed such infractions against general guidelines for ethical behavior, but the ones interviewed seemed very cautious and self-censoring. These progressive students share the same beliefs and tactics as their American counterparts. They want to limit free speech for those with opposing views, they use subjective emotional reactions as the criterion for determining whether something is to be prohibited, they think disturbing language is violence, and they rely on straw-man – er, straw-person – arguments.

Maoism light?
The professor who conducted one of the surveys, Assistant Professor Frederik Hjorth, found a surprising degree of political prejudice and “affective polarization” among the general population in Denmark. He also found that leftists were more likely to show intolerance than others, and so it was likely that social science and political science students tended to fit that description since leftists are overrepresented in those fields. He noted that this wasn’t a completely new phenomenon, however. There was a similar conformism to left-wing opinions and an intolerance of others in the 1970s, at that time according to a more classical socialist or communist ideology. In any case, he concluded, such an atmosphere of polarization and tribalism is bad for democracy; fear of stigmatization or social retaliation stifles the free exchange of ideas.

But Hjorth himself has not heard many pointed political opinions expressed in the classroom. On the contrary, he thinks his political science students are rather apolitical. The fact that a professor can research and describe the situation in an impartial way in itself indicates that the situation hasn’t reach the tendentious anti-science and anti–free speech atmosphere of many elite American liberal arts colleges. But that’s little comfort to the students who are being discouraged from entering these fields by subtler pressures. And their exclusion because of intolerance for intellectual diversity is a loss for the professions they were preparing for and the society they are supposed to serve.