While I hate that treatment, this is a terrible comparison. Bernie Sanders is a serious political thinker. Coulter and Milo are enfants terribles.
Tell me when Liberty University invites Sarah Silverman to speak, what happens.
I agree that Bernie isn’t the same as Milo or Coulter. But let’s take, say, Mike Pence or George W. Bush and have them speak on campus. How would UC-Berkley react?
“Legitimizing” and “normalizing” are becoming cliche. If we were to ban and violently protest nonsense and superstition from universities where would one get a degree in theology?
Well said. It makes me think of all the debates on the SDMB where anti-same-sex-marriage folks were challenged to give good reasons for their position, and failed miserably. Those discussions persuaded me to change my mind on the issue; I’m now ashamed to admit that I voted for Kentucky’s anti-SSM constitutional amendment back in 2004 (and Bush’s second term, in the same election). People aren’t unchanging monoliths arranged into two opposing forces, they can and do change over time.
Has anyone’s mind ever been changed by screaming at speakers to drown them out, other than by persuading the audience to hate the interlopers and the ideology associated with them?
Problem is, I can’t find a record of either of them speaking at a public university in the past decade. They prefer to go to private conservative Christian colleges to give speeches. Why is it, do you think, that the provocateurs that keep paying for Milo and Coulter to speak on campuses aren’t paying for Pence and Bush?
FWIW, I went to a super-leftist college in the mid-nineties, and we had Dinesh D’Souza in a public debate against some liberal, talking about affirmative action. It was respectful and interesting. No undergrads screamed or protested, although we asked a lot of very pointed questions and challenged him on his dishonest bullshit (he falsely claimed MLK would support his stance, and was deliciously humiliated when someone quoted MLK’s actual words.)
When I say it was a super-leftist college, I mean that bell hooks was our commencement speaker, and I also heard Noam Chomsky speak, and Mumia was the commencement speaker one year by videoconference. I’m not screwing around when I say it was leftist. But we were able to host D’Souza, and it was far more effective to argue him down than to shout him down.
Yeah, at Pitt in the early 80s we had G. Gordon Liddy debate Timothy Leary. I arrived super early and got a seat up front. Standing room early, and a respectful, quiet crowd other than some hoots and laughter that the debaters encouraged.
They were different times.
No, they were different people. Read the wikiquote page for Ann Coulter: she herself is an anti-intellectual, whose words (e.g., that she wished that McVeigh had instead targeted the NYT building, the backtracked to say only after the everyone but the editors and reporters had left) often seem to encourage violence against people she disagrees with.
Coulter is not a “firebrand” she an incitist, a stochastic terrorist who deserves to be shouted down or disinvited. I mean, I am all for allowing her to talk to a mixed audience, but it is all but guaranteed that she will stray from reason and get into gratuitous vitriol, at which point, shouting her down is a fair option.
If a speaker can carry their presentation in a reasonable manner that does not inflame some of the audience, the have earned the right to be heard, but when the wander off into the irrational or the inciteful, they ought to be shouted off the stage.
(Yes, “who decides rational?”, that can be problematic.)
You know why she does that, right? She wants to be shouted at by liberals. That’s her schtick! She’s like an evil pro wrestler, who thrives on audience boos.
Keep shouting her down, if you like her schtick and want it to continue. Otherwise, fuckin’ ignore her.
Per an article in the student newspaper at UC Berkeley it looks like Coulter’s speaking fee was set to be paid in part (15%) by student organizations at UC Berkeley but mostly (85%) by the Young America’s Foundation.
Having outside foundations pay for all or part of a speaker’s fee does happen. Hillary Clinton gave a speech at U Connecticut where her speaking fee of $251,250 was paid for by an outside foundation, the UConn Foundation, funded by the Fusco family of New Haven.
The right to free speech only means anything if you are morally courageous enough to apply it to those with whom you disagree.
If you can do that then you shouldn’t think of it as assisting your opponent, you are doing it for yourself because the same rationale you might otherwise use to shut down expression can be turned in a heartbeat against you and you would have no defence against it. Plus, you owe it to yourself to hear dissenting opinions and bad ideas that may test, modify and solidify your own or at the very least allow that for others. Even in a university…hell, especially in a university.
I don’t trust a single person to decide for me in advance what is suitable for me to hear or read, I don’t trust anyone in this thread, I don’t trust anyone in government or other authoritarian position, I don’t trust a screaming mob in a university and certainly wouldn’t trust myself to make that judgement.
The antidote to bad speech isn’t no speech, it is better speech.
Shouting down bad ideas is usually an ineffective tactic, and I usually will advocate against it. There are probably some circumstances in which it’s appropriate, or at least harmless (say, protesters at an abortion clinic who insult every woman who tries to enter).
How did you arrive at the view that a university is a place where people should be shielded (perhaps by violence) from the expression of controversial/strange/goofy/obnoxious viewpoints?
I think that is a bad example. The women in that case have no options and have not chosen to listen to those people. The protesters are invading the space of those women with the intention of insulting them ( and I’m assuming intimidation and implied threat).
The example of someone merely giving a talk to an audience that wants to hear does not equate to insult, threat and intimidation.
Would you not agree that merely talking to a self-selected audience should never be shouted down? I would.
Yes.
But when speech is permitted or prevented depending on its content or the views of its speaker, that ain’t free speech.
In a perfectly free society? Yes, I would agree. In a brutal and oppressive society (say, the South in the 30s)? I’m not so sure – peaceful and non-confrontational tactics weren’t working, and even in the CR movement, only achieved so much.
Modern America is closer to a perfectly free society than to the South in the 30s, I think (and hope), but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that confrontational tactics are never appropriate today, though in almost all (if not all) of the examples discussed so far, I think they have been counter-productive. But in a society with some significant bigotry and unfairness, I’d prefer that bigots were afraid to be bigoted than that they had no fear of being bigoted. Not fear of the law (except in the case of violating CR laws), but fear of the response of society. Occasionally, confrontation and civil disobedience can be appropriate.
In general, I agree, I’m just not going so far as to say never, at least not until we have that actually free and just society. I think there are actually functionally voiceless people in our society, and as a straight white male, I’m not going to unreservedly insist that potentially the only tactic left for them is always unacceptable.
I think there is some instinct to preserve free speech for those who are not our immediate enemies, since for the vast majority of our species’ time on earth, all of our non-violent interactions were at a personal level, where we could debate back and forth with people willing to do the same.
However, these days I do not feel sympathy for those who are shouted down. I do not believe they would be willing to have an honest, open conversation with me, and this is borne out by the couple of times I have attempted to do so. If they are not willing to listen to me, why should I care if they can be heard? This would not be an issue in the days when we were smaller tribes of less than 200 individuals.
As far as making certain viewpoints look bad, people opposed to them will always find ways of dismissing the “other”, no matter how loud or quiet the opposition is. Furthermore, in order to even work in theory, everyone would have to be extremely civil even in marginal cases where it isn’t actually tamping down on speech (such as loud protests outside the event), or those predisposed to hate will just nutpick those examples and use it anyway to justify their dismissal of the other side.
Which isn’t to say I think these tactics are productive: they aren’t. I just don’t feel that there’s any special halo around designated speakers when it is a one-way conversation.
Abortion protests that happen in public places, where everyone has the same right of access, aren’t invading anyone’s space.
Regards,
Shodan
Compelling patients to run a gauntlet of hostile shouters at close range is a dubious example of “free speech”.
So is a Klan rally, but the First Amendment is still in force in the US.
Regards,
Shodan