Daily Archives: June 6, 2017

Free speech has once again become a highly charged issue on college campuses, where protests frequently have interrupted, and in some cases halted, appearances by polarizing speakers.

At a lively panel last week during the Education Writers Assn.s annual conference in the nations capital, free speech advocates and a UC Berkeley student leader debated who was at fault and what could be done.

Alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos tour of colleges across the country drew protesters off and on campus, and sparked violent clashes, including one in which a man was shot in Seattle. At Berkeley birthplace of the Free Speech Movement 50 years ago university officials canceled his scheduled appearance in February and later pulled the plug on a scheduled April visit by conservative commentator Ann Coulter, citing safety concerns.

In March, a protest at Middlebury College left both the speaker, controversial social scientist Charles Murray, and a professor who wasnt his supporter injured.

The way the altercations on campus were characterized by the media and in a growing national public debate frustrated many students.

This whole issue of free speech is a lot more nuanced than what it appears to be in a single headline or what it appears to be on the surface, Pranav Jandhyala, who co-founded the nonpartisan campus group BridgeUSA at Berkeley, said during Thursdays panel discussion. Its not just about the people who invited the speaker and the people who are trying to silence her.

BridgeUSA, Jandhyala explained, was formed earlier this year after university leaders at the last minute canceled Yiannopoulos talk an appearance the university had been defending, citing its commitment to tolerance. The decision was made after protests escalated by what appeared to be a group of outside protesters who were not students on the day Yiannopoulos was scheduled to appear caused about $100,000 in damage.

Violence replaced conversation that day, Jandhyala said, and his student group set out to create more events where students could debate and challenge different views without fear of violence. They asked liberal student groups to pick a speaker to come to campus and debate with students from all sides. They did the same for the Republican students, who picked Ann Coulter.

We wanted to invite her because if you viewed her as hateful and you viewed her as inflammatory and nothing of value, then why don't you go ahead and actually challenge her? he said. We were creating this larger Q&A with her that would essentially be liberal Berkeley students challenging Ann Coulter on the issue of illegal immigration.

Jandhyala and fellow panelists, moderated by Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, discussed a recent Gallup survey that found that when they were asked if they believed in free speech, a majority of students across all political, racial and ethnic groups said yes. But when asked if they favored college policies that banned hate speech, an overwhelming majority of students also said yes, without seeing a contradiction in the two answers.

Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which promotes free speech and due process rights at universities, said the narrative so often gets oversimplified to the cliche PC run amok. Lukianoff said not all free speech issues are political.

Last year, the case I was the most upset about was the case at Northern Michigan University, where students who took advantage of the counseling services there were then sent scary letters saying, 'Listen, if you talk to any of your friends about thoughts of self harm, you will be punished, he said. This is telling people who are either depressed or anxious that they're a burden on their friends and that they should isolate themselves. But somehow, that does not get the same coverage."

Judith Shapiro, the former president of Barnard College who now heads the Teagle Foundation, which works to strengthen liberal arts education, said the heart of the debate really may be less an absence of freedom of speech and more an absence of quality of speech.

The institution has the right to say: OK, is it worth it?... Who should we be listening to and engaging with? Who, even if you disagree, could you actually learn something from? she said, which led to a lighthearted discussion about the relative cultural value of a campus hosting Snooki from the reality show Jersey Shore or Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison.

As soon as you actually start trying to evaluate people on the basis of the quality of the discourse that theyre bringing to campus, thats when a lot of peoples biases really present themselves, Lukianoff said.

This national fight over where to draw the line, however complicated, needs to focus more on emphasizing the power of engagement than on protecting free speech for free speech's sake, Jandhyala said.

Its about creating an environment where you're willing to listen to all different perspectives, form your own from listening ... and also be willing to challenge and debate with others and engage in discussion with the people that you disagree with, he said. That is the driving purpose of free speech.

rosanna.xia@latimes.com

See the rest here:
Hate speech vs. free speech: Where is the line on college campuses ... - Los Angeles Times

FREEDOM OF SPEECH is not just freedom from censorship, Harvards president, Drew Gilpin Faust, just told the Class of 2017. It is freedom to actively join the debate as a full participant.

So much for that lofty theory. When it comes to practice, Harvard University just rescinded acceptances for at least 10 prospective students, the Harvard Crimson reports, after they traded sexually explicit memes and messages targeting minority groups, in a private Facebook chat. According to the Crimson story, by Hannah Natanson, the admitted students formed a messaging group entitled, Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens, and sent messages and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child piata time.

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Thats ugly language, allegedly coming from young people entitled and dumb enough to post it without worrying about the consequences. But theres also something creepy about Harvards policing of it especially since Faust dedicated her 2017 commencement address to a passionate defense of free speech and the battle raging over it on campuses across the country, from trigger warnings to the rights of conservative speakers to address college audiences.

Silencing ideas or basking in intellectual orthodoxy independent of facts and evidence impedes our access to new and better ideas and it inhibits a full and considered rejection of bad ones, Faust told graduates on May 25 (in a speech that also referenced the next act, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg). We must work to ensure that universities do not become bubbles isolated from the concerns and discourse of the society that surrounds them. According to the text of her speech, posted on the Harvard website, she also noted, We must support and empower the voices of all the members of our community and nurture the courage and humility that our commitment to unfettered debate demands from all of us.

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Many will agree these students crossed a line and forfeited the right to engage in unfettered debate, at least at Harvard. But whats the next line of unacceptability? What if a private Facebook chat involved a screed against Elizabeth Warren, expressed support for a Muslim travel ban, or labeled as fascist Harvards effort to ban social clubs? Private schools write their own discipline codes. But with this action, Harvard is sending a message with a classic free-speech chill: You can say anything but not here.

The students exchanged explicit images and memes in a private Facebook group chat, according to a report.

The issue of revoking admission has come up before at Harvard, most recently involving the case of Owen Labrie, the St. Pauls graduate who was accused of sexual assault. While never formally confirming that Labrie was barred from attending Harvard, a spokesman at the time told the Crimson, An offer of admission can be rescinded if a student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character.

If youre convicted of a crime, the decision to withdraw an admission offer makes sense. If you post something offensive on a private Facebook page, thats a very different standard of judgment. After this, why would any prospective student take the risk of posting anything remotely edgy? And could enrolled students, not just newly admitted ones, be expelled for posting similar thoughts?

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According to the Crimson, admitted students found and contacted each other using the official Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group. The admissions office, which maintains the official page, warns students that it takes no responsibility for unofficial spin-off groups, which is what this group formed. Students are also told their admissions offer can be rescinded under specific conditions behavior that calls into question honesty, maturity, or moral character.

Harvard just drew one line to define what that means. Where will the next one be drawn? That would be a good topic for next years commencement speech.

Here is the original post:
Harvard draws the line on free speech - The Boston Globe

Nazi salutes high in the air, white supremacists rallying on the town green, colorful banners telling homosexuals they are going to hell this is what democracy looks like.

I know, awful.

But the right to say and do those things no matter how offensive many Americans will find them is that First Amendment freedom-of-speech thing that demonstrators in Portland, Ore., rallied for over the weekend.

Which is odd.

Because as far as we know, the folks taking part in the Trump Freedom of Speech rally werent jailed by their government for anything they said.

They may have been ridiculed, harassed, marginalized, ostracized, asked to leave businesses, refused service, lost their jobs or positions of influence because of the things they said.

But they havent been jailed.

And thats the freedom the First Amendment guarantees. The right to speak out without being jailed although not the right to speak out without being criticized.

So its easy to see that we wield the greatest power punishing peer pressure to stop the growing tide of hatred in America. We have to speak out.

[Our ugly racisms newest artifact: The noose left at the African American Museum]

Heres an extreme example the white supremacist in the gym.

Richard Spencer, the Hail Trump alt-right movement leader who champions an American apartheid, complete with a whites-only state, was quietly working out in his Alexandria, Va., gym when he was confronted by another gym member.

I just want to say to you, Im sick of your crap, Georgetown University professor C. Christine Fair said to Spencer, as he was lifting weights.

As a woman, I find your statements to be particularly odious; moreover, I find your presence in this gym to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable, she went on.

Spencer wasnt wearing a swastika shirt or handing out white power fliers at the gym. He was just doing reps. It was the professor who went after him. And she was relentless, calling him a Nazi, then a cowardly Nazi after he refused to identify himself.

It got so uncomfortable, another gym member yelled at the professor for making a scene.

Guess who lost their gym membership?

Spencer did.

And his world howled that this was a violation of his freedom of speech.

No, sorry, folks.

Most states ban most businesses from discriminating against clients based on the clients race, religion, sex or national origin, law professor Eugene Volokh wrote in The Washington Post last fall, right after the election, about a case where a New Mexico company said it would stop doing business with Trump supporters.

The Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from that kind of discrimination, while some states and cities also ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status and other attributes.

But political affiliation is rarely on the list, Volokh wrote. A few cities or counties do ban such discrimination. D.C. bans discrimination based on the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party.

Spencers freedom of speech wasnt violated. He can say whatever he wants without being jailed.

The Constitution doesnt protect his right to belong to a private gym that finds his political and social views dangerous and odious.

But what if a coffee place didnt want to serve a Muslim, a hotel wouldnt rent a room to black family, a baker didnt want to bake a cake for a gay couple or a restaurant didnt want someone with a wheelchair eating in their dining room?

Too bad for the businesses in those cases. State and federal laws prohibit businesses from discriminating against protected classes.

Neo-Nazi is not a protected class at least not yet.

The ACLU is used to these sticky debates, and their attorneys have consistently stood their ground in protecting everyones right to say what they want, no matter how disgusting. It probably wasnt easy to defend the Ku Klux Klans right to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, a town filled with survivors of the Holocaust.

Im not defending hate speech, Im defending free speech, said Claire Guthrie Gastaaga, head of the ACLU of Virginia, which has been hearing plenty about Spencer, who lives in Alexandria.

As soon as you accept that its okay to suppress speech, you say its okay to suppress your speech.

But what about the rallies that seem so hateful?

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) had the wrong idea when he tried to stop that freedom-of-speech rally over the weekend. It was scheduled before two men were killed and another wounded on the light-rail train trying to protect two girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab .

Jeremy Christian, 35, was arrested and charged in connection with the slaying of Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, and the stabbing of another man, Micah Fletcher. When he was brought into a Portland courtroom last week, Christian yelled: Get out if you dont like free speech.

Dude, your free speech was protected at all those rallies where you threw the Heil Hitler salute. Killing two men and stabbing a third, as Christian is alleged to have done, is not speech.

The protesters in Portland had the right to spew all their hateful views. The feds recognized that and rejected the mayors request to shut down the event because it could incite violence.

It was the counterprotesters who behaved violently.

Until they started throwing stuff, damaging property and messing with the police who were there to do their jobs, the counterprotesters had the right idea.

The right response to speech you dont like is more speech, Gastaaga said. The real harm is the nice people who say nothing.

So do it. Speak, yell, shout.

Dont shut the other guys out.

Just be louder than them.

Twitter: @petulad

Originally posted here:
In Portland, the haters are entitled to free speech, but not to our silence in the face of their views - Washington Post