I can’t tell if this is satire or serious, but it seems to be serious since it’s so fleshed out. In any case, any thoughts, rebuttals, comments to the professor’s proposal?
Please remember that Reason is a libertarian publication that is innately opposed to any measures that would preferentially help minority groups.
Note that the article therefore comes down on the side of doing absolutely nothing to hinder possible offense or even acknowledge that offense should be taken at any time on anything by anyone.
The conclusion that law students have to encounter the real world raw with all its imperfections is not in itself a bad position to take. Context matters, however. By presenting a good conclusion as the alternative to comical exaggeration of imaginary offenses, the effect is to rob all meaning out of why the offensive material is problematic in the first place.
You can have it both ways: dealing with offensive material when it occurs while also trying to alleviate or minimize new examples of it. That’s close to his choice #4. His proposal is obviously missing the point. On purpose, to reinforce his ideological opposition. Fair enough; it’s his site. But the rest of us don’t have to agree.
I do not identify with Libertarians, but I have to agree with them on this. Nothing is gained by hiding your head in the sand.
A couple weeks ago on these boards, I self-censored in my translation of a title “Les Negres Blancs de L’Amérique du Nord” and someone corrected my translation of “Negres”. They were right.
Being libertarians, they are fans of defunding the police, however. 
I read some other articles and the author makes a clear distinction between using a slur and mentioning or quoting one. The former is obviously offensive, the later need not be and is what he is defending. I agree with him and with @Hari_Seldon that in that setting bowdlerisation is a bad idea.
I think it’s ridiculous to think that college students will be traumatized by, and must be shielded from, any potentially offensive language.
The article, though, feels kind of like an anti-PC rant: “Gotcha! You hate the constitution!”
I would say that state-run schools should refrain from using any censoring software lest they run afoul of the First Amendment.
However, if we’re talking about a private university, this is not a “free speech” issue at all. A private institution can do whatever the hell it wants, and if students don’t like it they can go elsewhere.
Every major private university gets huge amounts of money from the federal government and therefore either follows the federal governments rules or has to stop taking its money. Guess which one they’ve decided on?
There are 17 colleges that have been offered the bribe, but declined
https://deanclancy.com/a-list-of-colleges-that-dont-take-federal-money/
What is the bribe? What is the Fed Gov’t asking for in exchange for the grants, aid, etc.?
The issue with allowing mentioning a term when you can’t use it is that it often seems to be used as an excuse to actually use it.
And I would argue that, if you want to prepare people for real life, then you also have to prepare them for the fact that there’s no consistent opinion on this, and you’ll face some opposition for saying the words. Currently, it seems that we’re in a “don’t say the n-word” level of society, so I do that. In some contexts, I also don’t use other words. In others, I do.
It’s really not a big deal to me. I have no reason not to just go along with whatever society is doing, because being able to or not able to say the word is never the point I’m actually making. I’d rather not have the distraction where people get offended by the words I choose.
As lawyers, I think this is something they should learn, due to needing to interact with the public. If they’re trial lawyers, they’ll need to be able to convince a jury. It won’t matter if you’re some passionate anti-bowdlerizer. You’ll need to do it if you think it will help you not offend the jury.
Yeah, I didn’t think that article was a particularly good way to make his point. But judging from this another one on the site, some students do indeed feel traumatised by, and feel they should be shielded from, any mention of offensive language:
They are not complaining, as @BigT suggested, that mentioning the term was or could be an excuse to use it. They make no such distinction and are calling for any mention of it to be banned (unless it’s by black students or lecturers, presumably).
A 2020 version of the Hays code.
All appear to be Christian schools, so my guess is that they insist that teachers and perhaps other staff be Christian as well.
I would argue that “traumatized” is grossly overstating what these students felt.
They didn’t like seeing and hearing the n-word in class, granted. And they’re apparently still naive enough to think they get to pick and choose everything they see and hear to avoid anything they don’t like. That’s OK; it’s part of the process of transitioning into the real world.
But that transition will be stunted if the school indulges their entitled indignation.
What are seventeen colleges nobody has ever heard of, Alex?
Yeah, that’s several miles over the line. The Faculty Senate needed to make its own resolution and have a showdown.
See, that’s my problem with Volokh; he’s often on the right side but too rigid to see that times are changing.
I sympathize in a way. I’m a strong free-speecher of the old school. I went to college only a decade after the McCarthy era when right-wingers shut down free expression. Our counter was that all speech was to be free. Until the fringe-left idiots started shutting down government speakers. Hypocrisy is bad even when it’s on your own side.
This new wave of repressing microaggression is just as bad as that. Both represent a value taken to extremes during a revolution. Revolutionaries don’t care about sense if it damages the other side. But it hurts them badly in the long run because the backlash is always stronger.
Weirdly, we have two revolutions going on today; one on words and the Trumpian one on truth. I’m in the weird position of wanting the backlash on both to be stronger in the long run.
Speaking of rigid, I came across this piece:
I think calling those schools colleges is a bit of a stretch. Only 3 out of the 17 are even ranked by US News and World report. One of them describes itself as a community college. Another one had its two seniors drop out so didn’t have graduation and yet, another one wouldn’t even let its professors present at a religious academic seminar in the same town while being caught lying about its accreditation multiple times. Another one had nothing but links on its career counseling page to linkedin and indeed.
It seems more like “colleges” that don’t take federal money are more likely to be scams then for profit colleges.
But it doesn’t contradict anything I said, either. They specifically cite Salseda using (not mentioning) the word repeatedly, which heavily implies they think she was using it as an excuse to say the word, rather than using it out of necessity for discussion. That’s the use/mention distinction. It gets blurry when you keep mentioning a word beyond what is necessary.
My theory is this: they don’t explain it like I do because for them it’s so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said. They’re either black themselves and/or have grown up hearing about how that word is misused.
I’ll admit that’s not me. I’m a bit out of date, since I’m in my 30s. I admit I didn’t understand not mentioning the n-word until the Netflix kerfuffle, and I had to do a lot of catching up. And it was mostly about how white people love to come up with contexts where they can get away with saying the n-word, singing songs with it, discussing it, etc.
So I am just echoing what I found. The issue seems to be that black people don’t trust white people not to be trying to slip in the offensive word, because so many seem to treat the taboo as something desirable to break. And that fit the Netflix exec: he literally said the word in his supposed apology–clearly a power move to be able to say the word after he was told he shouldn’t. He lost his job, and that was good.
It really does seem to me that someone who doesn’t realize that repeatedly saying the n-word would offend could use a sensitivity course refresher to learn why. And seeing as that’s the only consequence they are proposing, I can’t see anything wrong with it at all.
Well, other than I’m not sure it’s smart to start a negotiation with the actual goal, instead of starting more severe and then negotiating down. But, for all I know, they’d be happy with just an apology, so maybe this is their highball.
I do think that last part gets lost in these angry outcries. Pushing the way things “should be” versus the status quo is always effectively a negotiation in the public sphere. And, in negotiations, you’re expected to highball/lowball and negotiate into the middle.
They cite her saying ‘nigga’ once while reciting NWA lyrics, and on a separate occasion writing ‘Niggaz’ twice while giving the full name of the band and discussing their artwork. Now you tell me, is that using the word or mentioning it? It’s not like she randomly recited offensive hip-hip lyrics while giving a physics lecture, this was a context where it was entirely relevant. If anything should count as mentioning, this should. Yet the students describe her as using the word. A much simpler explanation than your theory is that they make no distinction between using and mentioning and are seeking to ban both.
That is not the only consequence they are proposing. And it also appears to me they want to ban any non-black lecturers from ever saying or writing the n-word or its variants, no matter the circumstances.
(Continued because I hit reply too soon.)
Supposing non-black professors are still allowed to teach about NWA in future(!), should they tell students to Google the full name of the group because they are not allowed to say, nor write it? That seems absurd. These aren’t primary school students. It’s likely Salseda is perfectly well aware of the potential of the word to offend in general, but felt her students would understand her mentioning it (all of two times) in the given context.
I’m surprised, I thought you were older than me. But who the heck are these people who love to come up with contexts to get away with using the n-word? I’ve literally heard it used IRL once, in my entire life, and that wasn’t even said to a black person. Didn’t you say you used to be conservative? Do you know any of these people personally and what their motivation is, or are you just assuming?
And what’s that about a Netflix exec? Did I miss something?