Daily Archives: April 21, 2017

Students encircling the brawl said a Spencer supporter began jawing with an antifa, or anti-fascist, protester over Spencer's right to speak. A punch was thrown. The men spun through the crowd, swinging fists and grasping for headlocks before thudding to the ground.

It was over in seconds with both men in cuffs -- one of them bloodied -- and carted off to jail.

Auburn had tried four days earlier to cancel Spencer's speech Tuesday night. But a federal judge forced the public university to let him exercise his First Amendment rights.

The episode comes amid what critics say is a growing intolerance for the exchange of ideas at American colleges and universities. In recent months battles over free speech on campuses have descended into violence across the nation.

And students say the middle ground on campuses is in danger of becoming quicksand, a place where neither side dares tread.

"There's no test, just an escalation of hostilities on both sides," said Tyler Zelinger, 21, a senior studying political science and business at Atlanta's Emory University. "When there's no more argument, there's no more progress."

Assaults on college free speech have been waged for decades, but they used to be top-down, originating with government or school administrators.

Today, experts say, students and faculty stifle speech themselves, especially if it involves conservative causes.

Harvey Klehr, who helped bring controversial speakers to Emory during his 40 years as a politics and history professor, said the issues college students rally around today come "embarrassingly from the left."

Oppose affirmative action or same-sex marriage and you're branded a bigot, he said. Where debate once elevated the best idea, student bodies are now presented slanted worldviews, denying them lessons in critical thinking, he said.

"History is full of very, very upsetting things. ... Grow up. The world is a nasty place," he said. "If you want to confront it, change it, you have to understand the arguments of nasty people."

Berkeley political science professor Jack Citrin began attending UCB in 1964 during the advent of the free speech movement, when Berkeley students "viewed ourselves as a beacon of the ability to handle all points of view."

Universities expose young people to ideas and challenge what they believe about science, politics, religion or whatever. But many students today exist only in the bubble of what they believe, he said.

"It's an indicator of the erosion of the commitment to open exchange and a retreat into psychobabble," Citrin said.

Twitter dubbed it #TheChalkening. Last year at Emory, someone used chalk to scrawl "Build the wall" and other pro-Trump messages near Emory's Black Student Union and CentroLatino.

Some Emory students were livid and let the administration know it. One sophomore declared, according to the school newspaper, that protesters were "in pain."

As Emory sophomore Maya Valderrama, 20, left a February protest denouncing Trump's policy on sanctuary campuses, she said the outcry over the chalkings was overblown. She wasn't threatened by them, she said, but she understood the concern.

This wasn't about politics, she said. Pro-Mitt Romney messages on campus hadn't threatened anybody, but Trump is hostile to segments of the student body. The chalkings represented "a visual affirmation of his hatred," Valderrama said.

Many students and their professors worry that when it comes to issues on campus, emotion rather than logic is driving the debate.

Nathan Korne, a sophomore at Marshall University in West Virginia, welcomes Trump's attacks on political correctness because he's "tired of not being able to discuss open ideas."

But Yasmine Ramachandra, a 19-year-old at Ohio's Oberlin College, sees no silver lining. Trump is validating right-wingers who always wanted to snuff out certain speech, and his rhetoric has emboldened hatemongers, she said.

Two days after Trump's election, she walked through a campus racial profiling protest where a group of counter-protesting bikers called her a terrorist and demanded she leave the country, Ramachandra said.

"The bigger repercussion is (Trump) validating these other people," she said.

The anger cuts both ways, said University of New Mexico sophomore Alexus Horttor. She recently saw the Arab owner of a hookah shop kick a student out of his store over a Trump bumper sticker.

"People feel their way is the right way, and it's only their way," Horttor said.

Meanwhile, left-leaning speakers routinely appear on university campuses without fuss.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education maintains an incomprehensive database of more than 300 attempts to disinvite campus speakers since 2000. About three-quarters of the attempts involved pressure from liberals.

Evolution and Israel are among the most controversial topics. But more often the disinvitation attempt stems from disagreements over immigration, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or abortion.

Yiannopoulos ticks several of those boxes.

The former Breitbart editor made free speech a buzzphrase when Berkeley protests turned violent during his appearance. The demonstrations made Yiannopoulos -- now persona non grata after appearing to condone pederasty -- a free speech martyr at the time.

UC Berkeley's Citrin said that was the point. Yiannopoulos' speech was staged to challenge the school's commitment to free speech, he said.

"There were a variety of calls for it not to be permitted to occur by a group of faculty who, frankly, didn't seem to understand the First Amendment very well," the professor said. "Free speech at Berkeley took a hit when it was all said and done."

Some students who attended protests against Yiannopoulos' planned speech at Berkeley told CNN they were relieved he couldn't share his message. But others who watched from the fringes were disappointed.

When the chalkings appeared at Emory, some minority students felt targeted, said Lolade Oshin, 21, who is African American.

Later, after students complained about feeling hurt, a national columnist wrote their parents should've whipped their "spoiled asses with a cat o'nine tails." National commentators chastised them as "snowflakes" -- people too vulnerable to face opposing views.

Oshin, a senior business major, feels such criticism is unfair.

"As a black woman in America, I have no choice but to hear the other side," she said. "But because those individuals are privileged, they don't have to hear my side. ... One side has grown up having to be sensitive and to navigate a white man's world."

Bigots hide behind free speech, she said, asking: How is it the Trump chalkings were free speech but student protests were not?

"Have whatever beliefs you want. Say whatever you want, but if I feel you're dehumanizing me, I'm going to use the same right you're using to fight your ideas," she said.

Oshin also sees hypocrisy in the reaction to the Yiannopoulos pederasty controversy.

Conservatives defended Yiannopoulos after Berkeley, she said, but when he appeared to condone pedophilia rather than Islamophobia and bigotry, there were crickets from the right.

"Is it what is offensive or who is being offended that matters? It is very interesting how conservatives are not screaming freedom of speech now," she said. "It seems to be a tactic used to quiet the marginalized and oppressed. But as soon as others feel threatened, it is not brought up."

University of Oregon law student Garrett Leatham, 29, believes hearing both sides is integral to understanding an issue.

"(Thomas) Jefferson did great things, but he owned slaves. We need to know both. Otherwise, we're stuck believing Columbus sailed the ocean blue and helped the Indians," he said.

Teens' brains are developing, and critical thinking is essential to maturity, so "being able to listen to disagreeable opinions when you're that young and understanding what they're saying and why" is important to higher education, he said.

Horttor, the University of New Mexico sophomore, says her own growth has been stunted by the testy atmosphere on campus.

Take religion. Horttor's mother is a Christian, but she knows many atheists.

The 19-year-old's own leanings? "I don't know what I believe in yet because I haven't seen the man."

But Horttor is reluctant to ask Christians why they believe and atheists why they don't, because she doesn't want to be ostracized.

She sees a similar reluctance to discuss partying on campus. University administrators and student leaders seem to avoid the topic, she said, for fear of appearing to condone it. Meanwhile, parties play host to fights, binge drinking, drugs and sexual assaults, she said.

Why not have forums on the dangers of binge drinking or on signs that a guy might be trying to victimize you?

"People don't talk about the dangers of partying and what to look out for," she said. "It's like sex education. These things need to be addressed so no one gets hurt."

Liam Ginn, a freshman at the University of Southern Maine, faced his classmates' fury this year when state Rep. Lawrence Lockman visited the Portland campus.

Students wanted Lockman disinvited, and as chair of the student senate, Ginn was part of a student government vote to remain neutral. He lost some friends over the decision, he said.

Ultimately, Lockman delivered his remarks on immigration -- or "the alien invasion" -- and students engaged him in heated debate, Ginn said.

Asked why he voted to remain neutral, Ginn, 24, said he'd never condone Lockman's rhetoric. But he did a stint in the US Navy before beginning college, and the experienced changed his views.

"After putting five years down for this country, you realize you're defending all the laws that we stand for," Ginn said. "Otherwise, the past five years were a waste of my time."

In 2015, liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke at Liberty University, the Christian school in Virginia founded by evangelist Jerry Falwell.

Senior Hannah Scherlacher, 22, said most of her classmates don't agree with Sanders' views.

But when he visited campus there were no protests, no raised hackles, she said. Attendance at his speech was compulsory.

Sanders made points students disagreed with, but he knew his audience, she said. He told the crowd of 12,000, "I want to support my arguments with what you believe -- your Bible, your Scripture," Scherlacher recalled.

His "unifying tone" made Scherlacher "reflective on my role as a Christian to alleviate poverty." She revisited her Bible to study Jesus' condemnation of wealth and power.

And Sanders spurred debates that carried on after he left, the public relations major said.

"Everyone I talked to was glad he came," she said. "It's important to communicate with those we disagree with."

Bob Richards, founding director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Penn State, earned scorn himself when he brought porn publisher Larry Flynt to campus in 2001. Faculty and a Philadelphia radio station demanded a disinvitation.

Richards couldn't understand why intellectuals didn't jump at the chance to spar with Flynt. But he believes things may be worse now.

"We see more of a willingness on the part of the public to stop expression. They're happy certain speech is cut out," the journalism professor said. "If you put something like that on a ballot, people would vote to regulate expression."

Ramachandra, the Oberlin student accosted by bikers, acknowledges clinging to her own truths. Oberlin is a bastion of the left, and it's unlikely someone like Spencer or Yiannopoulos would be invited to speak at the Ohio school, she said.

If they were, there'd be anger but support. People would open up safe spaces to shield students from hurtful messages, she said. She's fine with that.

A leader of Oberlin's debate team, Ramachandra said the difference between Liberty's reaction to Sanders and Berkeley's response to Yiannopoulos is simple.

Sanders promotes policies, she said. Yiannopoulos was an alt-right darling who Twitter banned for harassment and who counts feminists, Muslims and social justice warriors as enemies.

If students want to protest Yiannopoulos, avoid him or shut him down, it has little to do with the free exchange of ideas, she said.

"I don't think I'm missing out on any political discourse" by tuning him out, she said. "I've already come up with my own counterpoints so I don't need them to come to campus and provoke me and hurt other people."

Link:
War on campus The escalating battle over college free speech - CNN

Conservative author Mark Steyn said some colleges are "selling out freedom of speech" by throwing up roadblocks for conservative speakers.

The University of California-Berkeley recently reversed its cancellation of Ann Coulter's speech, but also moved it to another date and time.

Its chancellor, Nicholas Dirks, said he was "gravely concerned" by Coulter's announcement that she would show up on campus even after the cancellation, because it threatened school safety.

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Steyn called Dirks' response a "creepy, weasely and evasive speech" and quoted another author who called 'security concerns' "the new 'shut up'."

He said colleges like Berkeley now simply claim there are security concerns when a conservative speaker is to appear, and say it is too unsafe for that person to visit.

"They are selling out freedom of speech," he said.

Steyn said inaction against violence, like the response to Milo Yiannopoulos' appearance at Berkeley in February, is turning campuses into "hooligan football stadiums."

He also called out campus police chiefs who tell officers to stand down during such rioting.

Berkeley Reverses Course, Re-Invites Ann Coulter to Speak Next Week

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View original post here:
Steyn: Colleges 'Selling Out Freedom of Speech' By Restricting Conservatives - Fox News Insider

Texas code at the time banned intentional "desecration of a venerated object," including public monuments, places or worship and the national flag. Under the code, to desecrate meant to "deface, damage or otherwise physically mistreat in a way that the actor knows will seriously offend one or more persons likely to observe or discover his action." The punishment Johnson faced was a year in prison and a fine. An appeals court overturned his conviction and the state turned to the Supreme Court. At issue in the nation's highest court was the First Amendment of the Constitution and Johnson's right to symbolic speech exercised by burning the flag. Here's a quick refresher on the First Amendment, which reads in part: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

You can hear the major arguments from both sides of the case in the Instagram video embedded above, but they essentially came down to free speech against the protection of a national symbol.

More:
#TBT: Texas v. Johnson and free speech's trial by fire - CNN

Susan Kruth is an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonpartisan organization that defends freedom of expression and due process on college campuses. On April 19, Kruth gave a talk in the Gund Gallery Community Foundation Theater entitled Free speech, safe spaces and academic freedom, sponsored by the Center for the Study of American Democracy.

In popular discourse, people tend to perceive a tension between political correctness and freedom of speech. How do you define political correctness and freedom of speech? Why do you believe theres a tension between the two?

To the extent that political correctness just means trying to be respectful in tone, I think that its reasonable to encourage, but when public schools or other government entities try to mandate that certain language be used or certain langage not be used, it can really hinder peoples ability to express themselves the way they want to express themselves. As far as freedom of speech, I think that the Supreme Court does a good job of drawing the line between speech thats expressive even if it makes people mad and speech that really functions as conduct because it really has such an immediate connection with physical harm.

As an attorney at FIRE, you have made statements criticizing the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the office that enforces Title IX on college campuses. Why are you critical of the OCR?

One thing the OCR has been doing lately is coming down hard on sexual harassment and sexual assaultand the way colleges deal with themin ways that dont help schools in actually protecting students and infringe on students rights. One thing the OCR was involved with was telling schools they have to define sexual harassment in this very broad way: speech or conduct of a sexual nature. That could include practically any speech about sex. Its very important that schools respond to the kind of harassment that interferes with students educations, but its really not the job of a public institution to say, You cant say anything about sex that offends anybody. Thats going to limit a lot of constitutionally protected expression.

Where do we draw the line between censorship and protecting individuals from hate speech?

The law right now does a pretty good job of distinguishing between speech that functions as conduct and speech that, while its hurtful, can ultimately, and should be ultimately, fought with words rather than censorship. One example would be incitement to imminent unlawful action. Thats a situation where someone is trying to convince people to violate the law usually with violence in a way that is likely to encourage someone to commit these acts imminently. Speech that doesnt have that immediate, concrete effect is protected by the First Amendment.

How can Kenyon students ensure that they are creating an environment in which all people can express themselves freely?

One of the biggest initial steps that all members of a campus community can make is advocating policies that are very clear and very speech-protective. Kenyon already promises its students and professors free speech rights, but make sure that all of the other policies in place are consistent with that. Make sure policies do not prohibit offensive expression because offensive expression is, a lot of the time, part of conversations, and it is certainly part of what is protected under the First Amendment. Protecting speech is something that we do because it actually helps things move forward. I dont think you can make progress on any issue, no matter how you define it, unless there are open conversations, including open conversations with people who youre really offended by or disturbed by.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The rest is here:
On the Record: Susan Kruth, an attorney specializing in student freedom of speech - Kenyon Collegian

I'm a liberal Democrat. I support an expanded welfare state, stronger environmental regulation, and affirmative action in college admissions. I'm pro-choice, pro-Obamacare, and vehemently anti-Trump.

But I'm also an advocate for unbridled free speech, which makes me a "conservative" on many college campuses these days. Freedom of speech used to be a centerpiece of liberalism, while conservatives took up the banner for censorship. But in recent years, these roles have been reversed.

When you read about a speaker getting shouted down - or a campus newspaper getting confiscated - the censors are almost always on the Left. The latest example occurred earlier this month at Claremont-McKenna College, outside of Los Angeles, where students prevented conservative author Heather Mac Donald from giving a public address about her new book, The War on Cops. (Mac Donald delivered her remarks via livestream video, instead.)

The students' arguments - such as they were - were grimly predictable. By inviting Mac Donald to campus, the college administration allegedly gave its imprimatur to her views on race and policing. And those views made students - especially students of color - feel "unsafe."

How did two ideas that used to run in tandem - free speech and racial diversity - get pit against each other? Part of the answer lies in the remarkable growth of diversity itself. Between 1976 and 2012, the number of African American college students in the United States tripled. And women now receive 57 percent of undergraduate degrees, nearly double their proportion of 50 years ago.

Over the same span, more and more students reported mental-health problems. That reflected a new and welcome awareness of psychological illness, which lost some of its longstanding stigma.

Finally, new technologies inhibited in-person communication. More than half of community college students and a third of four-year college students agree with the statement, "I pretty much keep to myself socially." Even phone calls are avoided in favor of texting and social media, which give people more control over any interaction - and less anxiety about its outcome.

When you put these factors together, it's easy to see why there's less solicitude for free speech at colleges today. Arriving on campuses made up of diverse groups, students are warned that their comments and behavior could cause psychological distress to any of them. That's a pretty distressing prospect, in and of itself, so we shouldn't be surprised that many students would rather retreat to Facebook than risk offending someone to their face.

In a nationwide survey in 2015-2016, 71 percent of incoming freshmen agreed that "colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus." And 43 percent said that colleges should have the right to ban "extreme speakers," nearly double the proportion who agreed with that statement in 1971.

Who defines "extreme"? My students and I recently met with Mary Beth Tinker, who was 13 years old when she was suspended by her school in Des Moines, Iowa, for an extreme act: wearing a black armband protesting the Vietnam War. Her case wove its way up to the Supreme Court, which upheld her free-speech rights in the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines decision in 1969.

All of my students said they should be allowed to engage in antiwar demonstrations, of course, but they drew the line at racist or sexist speech that causes - yes - psychological injury. But Tinker wasn't having it. Surely, she said, parents whose children were fighting in Vietnam - or, especially, students whose parents had died there - were profoundly wounded by her very public act of protest. Yet that wasn't a good enough reason to silence her, or anybody.

Other students argued that free speech is really a matter of power, which has become another popular line on our campuses. In a society marred by racial inequality, the argument goes, speech is used by whites to oppress minorities. Hence white speech must be restrained, so that minorities can be protected.

But Tinker wasn't buying that, either. Historically, free speech has been a weapon - often, the only weapon - of the powerless, not the powerful. At the time her case began, Tinker reminded us, she was a child. And speech was all she had.

That's why every great champion of African American freedom in our history - including Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King Jr. - has also been a warrior for freedom of expression. "To suppress free speech is a double wrong," Douglass told a Boston audience in 1860, after a mob had broken up an anti-slavery meeting at the same location. "It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money."

It's tempting to imagine that the mob at Claremont-McKenna was fighting against racism, so it was justified in squelching speech. But at the end of the day, a mob is still a mob. It's anathema to America's great liberal tradition, which relies on free speech to right our wrongs. Let's hope liberals on our campuses can rediscover it.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania and is the author (with Emily Robertson) of "The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools" (University of Chicago Press, April 2017). jlzimm@aol.com

Published: April 19, 2017 3:01 AM EDT The Philadelphia Inquirer

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College students rejecting freedom of speech - Philly.com - Philly.com