Links: Freedom of speech and thought, hospital prices, the “climate left,” and more!

* “How I Liberated My College Classroom: I created a special seminar to discuss controversial issues freely, and the results were eye-opening.” I think this kind of environment used to be a normal seminar, not a “special” one.

* “Get Lucky:” “Ours is not the first society to plunge into a completely moronic frenzy of witch hunts and moral purity tests in an effort to vanquish some non-existent foe or avenge some imagined victim.”

* The least-interesting generation?

* Social Media Is Killing Discourse Because It’s Too Much Like TV. An important point that, because it’s not a quick video, will probably be missed.

* “April Powers Condemned Jew-Hate. Then She Lost Her Job.” As a “diversity officer,” at that!

* “Education and Masculinity—An Interview with Will Knowland:” Ideas rarely today encountered.

* “Hospitals Have Started Posting Their Prices Online. Here’s What They Reveal.” “Not yet as much as they should” is one answer.

* “‘Financially Hobbled for Life’: The Elite Master’s Degrees That Don’t Pay Off. Columbia and other top universities push master’s programs that fail to generate enough income for graduates to keep up with six-figure federal loans.” Schools should have skin in the game, yes, but also, masters degrees in film? Publishing? Come on. An IPO requires a prospectus, which warns investors about investment risks. Investors who invest poorly lose their money. Should the same be true of schools?

* “The West’s cultural revolution is over: The return of censorship, speech codes and taboos suggests society returning to normal.” I’m not so sure the analogies are apt, especially with regards to censorship—the crypto revolution is arguably weakening censorship and censoriousness—but the argument interests:

Those who grew up in the late 20th century were living in a highly unusual time, one that could never be sustained, a sexual and cultural revolution that began in 1963 or 1968. But it has ended and, as all revolutionaries must do after storming the Bastille, they have built Bastilles of their own. The new order has brought in numerous methods used by the old order to exert control — not just censorship, but word taboo and rituals which everyone is forced to go along with, or at least not openly criticise. You might call it the new intolerance, or woke extremism, but all societies need the policing of social norms.

* “Doing Away with College: Will society kill higher education before higher education kills society?” An essay linked to the two links immediately above.

* “What is the climate left doing?” The best analysis of the issue I’ve seen, and it regards the confusion between signaling tribal identity versus getting things done.

* “The Failures That Made Ian Fleming.” On the new biography of the author of James Bond.

* Interview with Matt Yglesias, by Noah Smith, highly substantive.

* “Book review: Crazy Like Us.”

* A listing of Xinjiang camp, rape, and murder victims.

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