No. The attempt is to discredit certain features of the public education system. You’ll find that schools of engineering for example are not being discredited. It is the disciplines that are largely fluff that are being discredited by this and other things like high graduate unemployment and low salaries. It seems that even in a largely capitalist society, the communists don’t do too well.
Okey dokey
Why would you have to ignore psychological harm caused by saying terrible things in order to claim there is a difference between that and physical violence? Of course you can acknowledge the existence of both while explaining the difference between the two. Do you apply this type of argument frequently?
I’m glad you are seeing more clearly thanks to my correction of your error.
This is almost certainly true.
At the same time, administrators who give in to the deplatforming demands against invited speakers are allowing the fringe minority a disproportionate amount of power. And it’s the power dynamics that are noticed by people off-campus, not boring average belief.
It doesn’t help perceptions that universities are overwhelmingly left – it makes perfect sense that people on the right would see that overwhelming control by their political opponents as detrimental and destructive. Pernicious, even. When major departments at universities fairly openly “brand” themselves as political institutions, opposed to the values of conservatives, it’s hardly a surprise when conservatives react negatively to that. This feeds the narrative that institutions on the left are engaged in deplatforming speakers on the right… even when that narrative is not correct. Universities aren’t great at protecting speakers on the left either, but those examples aren’t going to get meme’d by the right.
But the main free-speech problem here isn’t bias. The main problem is that uni administrators are, all too often, complete chickenshits.
If the only way you can ever feel like you’ve won at an argument is to interpret disdain for surrender, that’s heartbreaking; but you gotta be you, I suppose.
Okay, but keep in mind that the “disproportionate amount of power” is still a really fucking small amount of power. Yeah, they shouldn’t yell Milo off campus–but so what? Of all the ills in the world, this is one of them, but it’s a very, very small ill.
No: the main free-speech problems here are twofold:
- Actual death threats against speakers (which are happening to folks on the left as well as to folks on the right, see my previous cites); and
- People in power using the government to stifle opinions they don’t like, as happened at UNC.
Both of these problems are far worse, and far worthier of attention, than the problem (again: a real problem, but a tiny one) of folks like Milo having their free speech rights interrupted.
I can’t get any more excited about right-wingers’ motives for harping on lack of campus free speech, than I can about left-wingers’ motives for pressing the issue of whether Trump’s people collaborated with the Russians.
What matters to me with partisan-tinged debates is whether there’s a solid evidentiary basis for concern.
Similarly, I have little patience with tu quoque and there-are-more-important-things-to-worry-about games.
I’d like to see consistent action on the Left to restore its traditional role of being at the forefront of defending free speech, even (and especially) the unpopular sort.
There have been cases of actual physical assault on campus. In one case – Charles Murray at Middlebury – one of the protestors who couldn’t physically reach Murray to attack him settled for assaulting the political science professor who was there to disagree with and debate Murray. Apparently someone brought a garrote (?) to a recent attempt at deplatforming.
I’m comfortable calling even physical assault a “small ill”, compared to problems of say, hundreds of thousands of children in the developing world dying of malaria every year. But we notice things, and have stronger emotional reactions to things, that are closer to us in awareness and proximity. I’m on a campus. I react more strongly, and think more about, threats on campus than I do to other threats, despite the fact that if I had a magic switch to flip, I would without hesitation magically cure malaria over calming campuses.
I don’t currently see how anyone can put some anonymous death threats at a higher priority than real-life assaults.
My father used to receive anonymous death threats from gun nuts when he worked in the gun control lobby, and they were something he shrugged off. Receiving a chronic neck injury, in comparison, is not something that seems so easy to ignore. The threats are much more common, yes, but that’s because internet-tough-guy talk is so cheap and easy. Neither is good, but personally, I’d rather receive a bunch of stupid threats than get physically assaulted.
I don’t see how one variety of people having their free speech rights violated is somehow not only worse, but “far worse” than another variety of people having their free speech rights violated.
I don’t look at two cases of the stifling of the expression of opinion, and say one is “tiny” while the other is “far worse”. I’m not currently seeing the distinction that makes for this difference in magnitude.
Okay, so those are real problems, absolutely. But those are moved goalposts. Assaulting people, and yelling to drown people out, are both bad behavior–but I’m very comfortable calling physical assault a much worse problem than drowning someone out. The latter is, in the grand scheme of suppression of free speech, much smaller.
If a representative of the college administration at an event asks, it’s not really optional. An institution of higher learning is a place with rules created by the administration. When a rule-maker there or at any institution says something like “I must ask you to…” they are not saying that it’s optional. Sommers herself clearly feels that she was prevented from giving the speech that she planned to give by students both trying to drown her out with noise and threatening and bullying behavior and by the dean shutting her down rather than the students.
I agree with you that the two listed issues are bigger immediate problems than whether or not someone can speak at a university.
But changing attitudes about free speech among university students are a very worrisome trend. Those university students are eventually going to be lawyers and administrators and politicians and judges. If they carry with them a reduced respect for the importance of free speech, then we’re in for a lot more of #2 in the future.
Your examples are incorrect and oversimplified.
Evergreen College:
Cite.
A 40-member committee that included white members made the request. Weinstein objected to the change and said he* fel*t pressured to leave campus. He called it oppression, perhaps a poor word choice during increased racial tensions on campus. Fox News said whites were forced to leave campus. Not true. Also, Rashida Love, a Day of Absence organizer, also resigned. She got death threats. I bet Fox didn’t report that.
Yale: A directive recommended students avoid blackface, feathered head dresses, and turbans–all really stupid, insulting, and offensive costumes. The couple who resigned basically argued students should wear what they want, offensive or not. And they only resigned their teaching positions; they retained other positions at Yale and were NOT forced to leave campus.
Middlebury: The students who participated in the nonviolent (but disruptive) protests inside the building and who could be identified were punished. The “protestors” who engaged in violence outside the building were masked, could not be identified and may not have been students. You can’t expel people if you don’t know who they are and if they’re not students. This is also why no arrests were made.
The topic here is the suppression of free speech on campus.
The OP itself is titled “Free speech on campuses (with polling data!)”
Charles Murray was invited to a campus for a speech/debate, where he was deplatformed – he was not able to talk and debate – and then he was subsequently pursued off campus. They were even trying to find out the restaurant where he was eating afterward so they could continue to confront him. The attackers were not able to reach him, and so attacked the political science professor instead who was there to debate him. She received a neck injury.
This event was one of those in my mind from my first post in this thread. You then responded to that post. I do not see where any goalpost has been shifted. The use of violence to suppress speech on campus is itself part of the subject of speech on campus.
It is plausible that a case where speech is suppressed on campus, where the protestors actually succeed in shouting down a speaker, can subsequently result in violence after no original boundary is enforced. If the first line is not enforced, it is possible that subsequent lines will subsequently be crossed with impunity. We know that this can plausibly happen, because it has happened.
I’m not an expert in mob mentality, but I know that I personally would feel more comfortable – and yes, safer – on a campus where speakers were given an opportunity to speak, than on one in which the worst elements of the crowd were allowed to win their first victory in deplatforming speakers. Obviously shouting someone down is much less serious than violence, taking the two incidents separately. Totally true. But given what has happened, I don’t believe the two incidents are necessarily separate. Maybe they were, but right now, I doubt that.
He/she has eyes, ears and a brain?
I’m not particularly liberal, but my wife always has Fox News on in the background and I certainly recognize marketing and propaganda when I see it.
Republicans have a very strong conservative narrative. There are very specific points that they repeat over and over again and it’s constantly echoed in their media:
-Liberals are lazy, naïve, ivory tower snowflakes who don’t know the meaning of hard work or sacrifice
-Liberals are soft on criminals
-Liberals are soft on immigration
-Liberals hate white people, particularly white hetero men who have worked hard to earn what they have
-Liberals want to confiscate all your wealth and redistribute it to the lazy, criminals, immigrants and minorities who hate you
-Liberals want to take all your guns leaving you defenseless against criminals, immigrant terrorists and a corrupt government who wants to confiscate all your wealth
-If you don’t believe, speak or think how Liberals want you to, they will shut you up
-NEW: Anything that doesn’t support this narrative is “fake news”
This message is constantly repeated over and over again in Conservative media through editorial musings and anecdotal examples of cherry picked stories. By presenting the most extreme examples of Liberalism run amok, they discredit liberals and democrats as a whole (quite effectively IMHO).
Will you condemn the assault of a child carrying a flag that has the word “Trump” on it? Incidents like this happen all of the time and yet are ignored by liberal and mainstream media. This is intimidation by the left.
Assaulting people is bad. A few bad events don’t constitute intimidation by a group of tens of millions of people. And a few bad events don’t constitute “all the time”. And incidents that are covered by local news stations aren’t “ignored by liberal and mainstream media”.
:rolleyes:
Yes, he will condemn the assault of a child.
99.99% of people of people would condemn this. If you think you’re talking to people who wouldn’t condemn this, then you are not engaging in the conversation on an intellectual level that is suitable for this thread. Or for most of reality.
You say that events like this are “ignored” by the media, and then you offer a cite from the media.
You seem to be having difficulties with what the word “ignored” means.
At Liberty University, a group holding a revival in Lynchburg, VA today and tomorrow sent a letter to Jerry Falwell, Jr., Liberty’s president, inviting him to join their revival, and asking if they could hold a 2-hour prayer vigil on Liberty’s campus on Saturday afternoon. They got a letter back from the Liberty University Police Department*, saying that if they came on campus, they’d be arrested for trespassing.
*Not the issue here, but Liberty is a private religious university. How exactly do private entities have their own police forces?
Shouting someone down doesn’t infringe on anyone’s freedom of speech. The shouters have to have the same freedom of speech as the speaker. There is no requirement that people are quiet and actually listen to you, or don’t obstruct you.
You can have rules against this, if you want. And people who don’t follow them can be asked to leave, and, if they don’t, they’re trespassing. But they are not in any way shape or form infringing on the other person’s freedom of speech. As long as they are only speaking, they are responding to speech with speech.
Freedom of speech is for everyone, not just a privileged speaker. The students have every right to protest, and even say they don’t want someone to come, and that still does not infringe on anyone’s freedom of speech. The college largely has to pay the speakers. A town can choose not to pay for a speaker they don’t like, so why can’t a college?
And, finally, as far as Shodan’s claims about us calling everything racist: Remind me. Which side has actual diversity and racial minorities, and which side is almost entirely one race? Conservatives are the ones who are wrong about racism. That’s why you need the excuse that we call everything racist, when we clearly don’t. We just actually care about racism, while conservatives overlook it at best.
If you aren’t the ones who experience racism and you refuse to listen to those who do, then you are the one who doesn’t understand racism.
I support freedom of speech, even for racists. I support true free speech forums where everyone is allowed to speak, but must be quiet when others are speaking. What I don’t support is this bullshit privileging of some guest speaker and removing freedom of speech from the protesters who don’t want them there.
No, not even because they are young and you hold them in contempt.
I don’t understand how you square this:
with the definition of “true free speech forums” you give later in your post:
Cognitive dissonance?
Almost every college speaking event I ever went to including a Q&A period at the end, where audience members were invited to ask the speaker questions. Typically, the speaker would be quiet and respectful while the audience member was asking his/her questions and then respond. Everyone is best served when audience members extend the speaker the same courtesy.