Campus wars: has liberalism gone too far?

From trigger warnings to public shaming, has the left lost sight of reason — and itself?

By Rana Foroohar

: Emma Sulkowicz, a senior visual arts student at Columbia University, carries a mattress in protest of the university’s lack of action after she reported being raped during her sophomore year on September 5, 2014 in New York City. Sulkowicz has said she is committed to carrying the mattress everywhere she goes until the university expels the rapist or he leaves. The protest is also doubling as her senior thesis project — Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images

It started as a “he said, she said” story. In 2012, a Columbia University sophomore named Emma Sulkowicz had sex with a student from her class, Paul Nungesser. She claimed it was rape. He said the sex had been consensual. Sulkowicz filed a complaint with the university, which found Nungesser not responsible. A year-and-a-half later, she filed a police report, but after a few months stopped talking to the authorities.

But the drama was only just beginning. Sulkowicz began carrying a 50-pound mattress around campus, a representation of her version of the experience, which she also turned into her senior arts thesis, a project entitled “Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)”. Under the self-imposed rules of the project, she had to carry the mattress wherever she went on campus, until Nungesser was no longer there.

Columbia didn’t expel Nungesser, since its own investigation found that he had done nothing wrong. But it also didn’t stop him from being hounded and ostracised as he found himself the subject of rape protest rallies, warning leaflets, and campus taunts. A month before both students received their degrees in 2015, Nungesser…