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Christina Hoff Sommers on the 'Tyranny of Niceness' (VIDEO)

"The ideal of liberty and freely speaking your mind is so quintessentially American."

FIRE Board of Advisors member Christina Hoff Sommers is no stranger to speaking her mind. As the author of books such as The War Against Boys and One Nation Under Therapy, Sommers has taken firm stances on many hot button issues.

But in FIRE's latest video, Sommers argues that today's students are afraid to express their own potentially controversial viewpoints. She believes students are enveloped within a cultural phenomenon she calls "the tyranny of niceness." So concerned with not offending their peers' beliefs, students are hesitant to take a stand for what they believe in.

"What [students] are supposed to be doing is developing ideas and challenging them, learning how to debate," says Sommers. "We have a generation of kids who can't argue. They think that will create tension or there's something wrong with it. Well, if you can't argue, you can't think."

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