Monthly Archives: April 2017

Peter, thanks for your thoughtful critique of my piece, Understanding the Campus Free-Speech Crisis. You call for our elite colleges and universities to be disciplined by the market, rather than by legislation designed to protect freedom of speech. The case I made in my piece is that while market forces are effective in most sectors, the academy is protected from market pressures by massive government financial assistance and by tenure.

People have been talking about the higher-education bubble for some time now. Well, it hasnt burst yet. And why should it when federal and state governments pump massive amounts of money into the system? In fiscal year 2013, the federal government sent $137 billion into the academy in student loans and other assistance under Title IV of the Higher Education Act. Combined state and federal aid to higher education makes up well over a third of public college and university budgets. Rather than make college more affordable, schools have used that money to raise their already inflated tuitions. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is proposing some potentially helpful changes to this system at the federal level. Yet even if these changes are adopted, federal aid is certain to remain massive in scope. That is precisely why NAS has suggested linking Title IV assistance to the protection of campus free speech, an idea I elaborated into a detailed proposal. (And by the way, while it doesnt constitute a formal endorsement of every element of the NASs legislative proposal, over 100 educators, including many prominent conservatives familiar to NRO readers, have signed the NAS letter on amending the Higher Education Act, which includes the proposal on campus free speech.)

So long as that massive federal infusion of money through Title IV of HEA exists, colleges will remain powerfully insulated from market pressures. You note that many alternatives to the elite left-liberal institutions of higher education are available, often at a surprisingly reasonable price. Thats true, and many of those alternative schools are excellent, although quality and commitment to traditional liberal education among some of the alternatives can be uneven. In any case, the alternative menu hasnt produced an exodus from the dominant schools. And it certainly hasnt sufficed to secure free speech at the vast majority of colleges and universities. Nor do I believe that your excellent ideas on accreditation reform will escalate market pressures sufficiently even to slow, much less head off our rapidly metastasizing free-speech crisis.

There is a great deal of justified concern about religious liberty these days, not only at private religious colleges but for religious students at public and private secular colleges as well. You may be concerned about the effect of legislation on private religious colleges, but please note that neither my state nor my federal proposalsnor NASsapply to private religious schools.

Youre mistaken when you say that I never mention the role of college and university administrators. I had plenty to say in my piece about administrators: their tendency to cave in to anti-free speech demonstrators; the decreasing pressures on them to defend free speech; and how administrators are nowadays sometimes allied with disruptors. In fact my state proposal is designed to work by bringing pressure to bear on administrators, pressure not primarily from legislators but from trustees.

Although youre right to point to the growing importance of administrators, this hardly cancels out the role of tenured faculty. Tenured faculty have consistently driven the attacks on campus free speech, both through their teaching and through their ability to hire like-minded non-tenured faculty. After all, the leftist administrators youre worried about were taught by faculty radicals.

Ill let the semi-literate and now notorious Wellesley student editorial damning free speech make my point: We have all said problematic claims, the origins of which were ingrained in us by our discriminatory and biased society. Luckily, most of us have been taught by our peers and mentors at Wellesley in a productive way. Yes, those tenured Wellesley mentors, and the junior faculty they hire, are productive when it comes to churning out students who neither understand nor accept freedom of speech.

The tenure system has been grossly abused to create a de facto intellectual monopoly on campus, and the campus free-speech crisis is simply incomprehensible without understanding the facultys central role. Moreover, the tenure system is specifically designed to insulate faculty from market pressures. Abuse of the tenure system not only killed campus free speech and the marketplace of ideas, the resulting tenure-protected intellectual monopoly virtually guarantees that nothing will change in the absence of intervention from the public by way of its elected representatives.

By the way, I dont agree that the campus free-speech crisis is largely limited to elite campuses. That may have been true some time ago, but the problem has spread to a far wider range of schools. Shout-downs, thefts of student newspapers, free-speech zones and the rest are now regular features at the non-flagship campuses of many state systems. They just dont get as much publicity. I agree that there are some great alternative schools out there, and at a reasonable price. But the crisis of campus free speech and the broken marketplace of ideas now reach far more widely across the academy than you may think.

The idea that accreditation reform (which I favor) will do anything of significance to stop these campus shout-downs any time soon (or even later) is not credible.

You say that anti-Trump campuses wont be intimidated by reforms backed by Trump and the Republicans. But if contemporary experience of the academy says anything, its that administrators will do nothing to jeopardize their Title IV funding. Thats the federal gravy train they cannot do without. Threaten their Title IV eligibility, and youll rapidly see a remarkable number of administrators turn aficionados of John Stuart Mill.

You defend the tenure systemthe antithesis of the market. Yet you rely on the market in other respects. I dont believe this contradiction will hold. It would have when the tenure system was a bulwark of the marketplace of ideas. But now that tenure has been abused to create an unbreakable intellectual monopoly, we conservatives have to face the fact that the campus free-speech crisis is largely immune to market pressure. This is not a surrender of conservative principle but simple recognition that market forces have been structurally subverted in this sector. We wont win until we admit how badly were losing.

Again, I agree that there are still some great schools out there and that we should work to buck them up. (And my proposals exempt private religious colleges.) Market forces within the academy also can and should be strengthened. Important exceptions notwithstanding, however, we are losing our most fundamental freedom on a generational level. Were on the edge of the abyss; the foes of freedom are protected by tenure and ensconced in the seat of cultural power; and tweaking the accreditation system and hoping for the best 20 years from now wont do. Stronger medicine is required.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He can be reached at [emailprotected]

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Can Deregulation Restore Campus Free Speech? - National Review

Pakistani authorities have won another battle against free speech. The latest blow is just another consequence of harsh measures taken by Pakistans government in the last five years against freedom of speech.

On March 27, the interior ministry announced that Facebook had removed 85% of illegal, blasphemous content found on its website. The estimated number of social media users in the country, according to a 2015 report, is around 17.3 million. Facebook is the top site, and Twitter is spreading fast.

The move was possible because of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, which were inherited from British rule. The laws are aimed at anyone who displays disrespectful behaviour or words against religion. And those found guilty can be put to death.

The laws are known and criticised globally because they have led to many deaths over the past decade.

In January, five Pakistani bloggers disappeared. All were known for their extensive use of social media, public criticism of religion, and statements against censorship in their country.

Among them was the poet and academic Salman Haider. He finally returned home on Jan. 28, as did two other activists.

But none of them have yet disclosed who abducted them. And the others are still missing, adding to the many unexplained disappearances in Pakistan.

Cases of true blasphemy are rare and laws exist to address them. And there is also no evidence that there has been a surge of blasphemous content online.

The public has to accept the verdict of the government without really knowing what is wrong with the way people express their views on social media.

But after the disappearances, the judiciary launched an investigation and asked the Federal Investigation Agency to monitor the question of online blasphemy more carefully.

Confronted by technological changes, authorities or self-proclaimed moral groups stir panic over what they dont understand and then justify extending their control.

The problem in the country is not simply a religious one. Its a structural issue within the ruling elite, the Pakistani brown sahibs, who look down on the common man, as argued by Zafar Bangash, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, in 2005.

They control permitted views, deeming some as inferior and wrong, he said, adding:

Almost all colonized people display two characteristics: total subservience to the colonial master, and utter contempt for their own peoples.

The role of Pakistans citizens in their countrys governance has, unfortunately, been fairly minimal. Even in the limited periods when democracy has ostensibly existed in the country, it has been of varieties restricted either by prevalent socio-political conditions that do not provide equality of opportunity to constituents, or by the manipulative politics of dictators and demagogues garbed in the camouflage of electoral popularity.

This mindset fits into the late literature professor and founder of post-colonial studies Edward Saids argument in the follow up to his book Orientalism, titled Culture and Imperialism.

According to Said, post-colonial structures revert to an appreciation and the practice of colonial masters when disappointment with total freedom sets in. And distaste for popular opinion becomes ingrained in the system.

This is the reason why the very idea of freedom of thought, let alone freedom of expression or journalism, has become anathema to the governing structures in Pakistan.

It is true that the abuse of social media and the incompetence of the mainstream media, especially private television, has created an environment that was traumatising for some.

The proliferation of private TV channels and their lack of professionalism, the growth of social media, and the rise of fake news have made some audiences fearful.

The debate about responsible journalism is clearly not going anywhere when people such as Aamir Liaquat Hussain, a religious broadcaster, publicly accuse liberal activists, bloggers, and journalists of blasphemy and treachery.

But there is a difference between regulation and punitive measures. The authorities in Pakistan never had a policy of developing a public information system that responded to peoples questions, educated them, or empowered them to participate in governance.

In a world of information explosion, no iron curtain could work. Pakistan allowed private TV under former president Pervez Musharraf (2001-2008) in early 2000s, not because the ruling class changed its thinking, but because there was no other option left.

State-owned PTV was considered a poor tool to counter Indian channels, which carried their own version of stories involving both countries, such as the coverage of the Kargil war in disputed Kashmir. Bringing in private TV channels was a half-hearted allowance that was never meant for freedom. And herein lies the problem.

Because of the regimes attitude towards media, citizens barely got accustomed to what free press stands for. Which is also why the rise of social media in the country has had such an impact and given rise to new forms of freedom of expression, with few boundaries and dependent on the subjectivity of connected individuals.

It took Pakistan almost 15 years to get from email through direct dial-up connections in 1993 to high-speed internet in 2007. But its now one of the top 20 connected countries in the world.

But the use of this medium as a journalistic enterpriseone without sufficient professional ethicshas brought with it problems, not only for social media users, but for the mainstream media too and, beyond, for freedom of expression within Pakistani society.

As the bloggers disappearances showed, social media activists in Pakistan are among the first ones to suffer. Having only a network of sympathisers for support, they have to go through all the ordeals of censorship and repression on their own, while mainstream journalists can at least rely on wider structures.

The situation in Pakistan is no longer about who did right or wrong, whether social media is to blame or if the government or other powers are intolerant or retrogressive.

The question that haunts the free mind and confronts every intellect in the country is whether it would be possible to restore the semblance of freedom of expression we had six months ago. Or if we need to use scissors on our minds, tighten the locks on our tongues, and hail neo-obscurantism.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

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Backed by colonial-era laws, Pakistan has declared war on free speech - Quartz

On Wednesday, April 12, the UCR branch of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) held a protest, while they were tabling at the Bell Tower from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., against the restraining of the free speech of students at UCR.

According to the President of YAL and fourth-year applied math and economics major Joseph Gomez, UCR is limiting the free speech of its students. As it stands right now, he explained, it (UCR) has this policy where we have to notify the school if it is reasonable to suspect that more than 25 people are going to be here at a protest which is completely unconstitutional. Gomez later added that protests and demonstrations are limited to being held at the Bell Tower.

To clarify the specific goals of the protest, we asked the participants if this protest was about free speech as a whole on UC campuses, citing the cancellation of former Breitbart Editor Milo Yiannopoulos speech at UC Berkley due to protests as an example. The Director of Data for YAL, fourth-year business administration major with a concentration on finance Roman DYachenko, replied, On a larger scale I think we are. But we are not targeting it specifically right now, but we are here for free speech and events like that are disheartening because people, no matter what their beliefs, should be allowed to speak.

The small group of protesters held signs that called into question UCRs support for free speech. One sign asked those walking by, Think UCR gives you constitutional free speech?

YAL has not yet made contact with the UCR administration about their grievances with these policies. As far as I know we havent had the chance to speak directly to them, Gomez explained. I think that the biggest reason is because they wont hear us out, Gomez continued.

Freedom of speech on university campuses has been an ongoing issue with uneven interpretations of its meaning. However, recently, there has been a surge in student activism. DYachenko argued, It was only recently that people have really gone down the bandwagon of If this offends me, it must be wrong. Lets take it away. Now this (the protest) is kind of the counter to this and only now are we seeing people mobilizing and people arent as afraid to speak out against this.

Fourth-year political science and law and society major Arturo Gomez retorted, I personally dont feel like the university has been restrictive at all with respect to people gathering or people protesting a certain issue or promoting a certain issue. Gomez also later commented on the protests that took place at UC Berkeley, I agree that free speech shouldnt be violated, but if someone does say and make incendiary comments or anything that may target a certain community, they have the right to say it but they are not exempt from critique or mass protest.

In the afternoon, members of YAL brought out a large inflatable beach ball that they call the Freedom Ball. The purpose of the ball, they explained, is to allow students to write anything that they want in order to promote the YALs message of freedom of speech. Some of the comments written on the ball included phrases in Arabic and political statements. They had the Freedom Ball with them until they packed up at 2 p.m.

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YAL protests for more free speech on UC campuses - Highlander Newspaper