Daily Archives: June 16, 2017

We live in perilous times when it comes to free speech, and the threats are coming from both the left and right. The president has threatened legal action against the media, and progressive activists have used violence to shut down campus speakers they don't like.

In The Los Angeles Times, former federal prosecutor Ken White has some sharp insights on how to fight back against the would-be censors by shredding the most-popular clichs used by people trying to make the rest of us shut the hell up.

If today's calls for suppressing speech teaches us anything, it's that we can never take the First Amendment for granted. Even if the Supreme Court is on our side, free expression will only continue to exists if we're brave enough to make it ourselves.

Produced by Todd Krainin. Camera by Jim Epstein.

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5 Clichs Used to Attack Free Speech - Reason

The guilty verdict in the sensational suicide-by-texting caseimmediately unleashed both criticism and praise from legal and free speech experts, underscoring its impact on future court cases.

Michelle Carter was found guiltyFriday of involuntary manslaughter in death ofConrad Roy III, her boyfriend, who intentionally filled his truck with carbon monoxide in a store parking lot in July 2014. She sent Roy a barrage of text messages urging him to kill himself leading up to his suicide. Carter had pleaded not guilty to the crime.

Matthew Segal, the head of the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union,criticized Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Monizs decision, tweeting that Carters conviction expands Massachusetts criminal law and imperils free speech.

In an official statement released by the Massachusetts ACLU, Segal states that, underMassachusetts law, it is not illegal to encourage, or even persuade, someone to commit suicide. If Carters conviction stands during the appeal process, Segal says it will chill important and worthwhile end-of-life discussions in the Commonwealth.

A statement from Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel tothe Massachusetts Bar Association, seemed to support Monizs decision, saying that Carters fatewas sealed through the use of her own words.

The communications illustrated a deeply troubled defendant whose actions rose to the level of wanton and reckless disregard for the life of the victim, Healy said.

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Mass ACLU: Michelle Carter conviction 'imperils free speech' - Boston.com

Free speech, the great American right

We should be relentlessly vigilant against attempts to curtail it

Free speech is a bedrock constitutional right, perhaps the crown jewel among American civil liberties, and a necessary component to any free societyand so it makes perfect sense that so many people, campus radicals chief among them, would wish to curtail or destroy it. The latest such effort comes from the University of Maryland, where a student group, seizing upon the tragedy of a murdered young black man, have demanded that the schools administration treat hate speech like cult activity and regulate it accordingly.

This is a by-now familiar type of demand: there is not a single pretext to which a certain kind of college student will not resort in order to quash free speech. Note, of course, the glaringly practical flaw to this proposal: even if the university were permitted to regulate hate speech (its not; see Constitution, United States, Amd. 1), there is no indication that hate speech, on or off campus, had anything to do with this murder, or that clamping down on it, however that would work, would have any genuine effect on preventing another such crime in the future.

But the point of anti-free-speech efforts isnt to achieve some measurable outcome; its to stifle free speech. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that even the exercised and agitated student activists at the University of Maryland believe that hate speech is itself a genuine threat that must be treated like cult activity. Rather, they just wish to shut people up with whom they dont agree. In a sense this is perfectly understandable; nobody wants to hear unpleasant things. But just because someone says something unpleasant doesnt mean they dont have the right to do so.

Once upon a time students might have known this. These days, its apparently not as clear. Nearly three-quarters of college students, for instance, believe that colleges should be able to restrict slurs and other language on campus that is intentionally offensive to certain groups. The failure of our students to grasp the basic precepts of free speech is staggering. It is a failure not just at the college level, but through high school on down: where our educational system might have once inculcated in the studentry a healthy civic respect for American speech freedoms, we now have seven out of every ten young adults believing that universities should be permitted to muzzle offensive language. Something has gone terribly wrong here.

It is likely that the University of Maryland will not, in fact, make any moves to classify any kind of hate speech as cult activity. But dont worry: the university is looking to strengthen sanctions for hate and bias. So perhaps it will come to the same thing, in which case anti-speech student groups will be satisfiedand everyone else will be muzzled.

MORE:An inside look at the Free Speech class UCLA blocked students from taking

MORE:Berkeley op-ed: safety of marginalized more important than free speech

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Free speech, the great American right - The College Fix - The College Fix

Jordan Ellenberg 10:00 a.m. CT June 16, 2017

Daryl Tempesta tapes a sign over his mouth in protest during a demonstration in April in Berkeley, Calif. Demonstrators gathered near the University of California, Berkeley campus amid a strong police presence and rallied to show support for free speech and condemn the views of Ann Coulter.(Photo: Associated Press)

Youd think Id be in favor of the campus free speech bills the Wisconsin Legislature is considering. Im a strong proponent of free speech on campus, and I believe that our students benefit from being exposed to all kinds of views, even those that mock or directly attack the values they were raised with by their families.

The group answers a viewers question on if free speech is disappearing from college campuses.

But these bills are bad law. Theyll suppress free speech at the University of Wisconsin, not protect it.

AB299, the Assemblys bill, requires that the university suspend any student found to have twice interfered with free expression on campus and expel a student after a third offense. There is no other university infraction for which the state Legislature determines the penalty. Beat up a fellow student, vandalize a campus building, steal the final exam and sell copies, cheer for Ohio State in public no matter the crime, the university determines the punishment based on the merits of the individual case. The Wisconsin Institute on Law and Liberty, a right-leaning organization that strongly supports free speech on campus, has called for this provision to be removed, saying the specific punishment in any given incident should be left to the educational institution.

The bill forbids violent or other disorderly conduct that materially and substantially disrupts the free expression of others. What counts as disorderly? How much disruption is substantial? Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who wrote the bill together with Rep. Jesse Kremer, has insisted that no student would be disciplined for reasonable protesting. I hope hes right. But weve already seen dozens of people charged with felony rioting in Washington, D.C., who were present at a violent protest but who havent been associated with any act of vandalism or disruption. Students who want to exercise their First Amendment right to protest will have no way of being sure they wont be thrown out of school for doing so. Thats no way to protect our constitutional rights.

Sen. Leah Vukmirs bill arguably is an even graver threat to freedom. Her bill requires that University and college campus administrators shall remain neutral on public policy controversies. That doesnt square with the universitys very real need to argue for scientific research and humanistic scholarship, and for support for our students and employees. Vos, who co-authored AB299 with Rep. Jesse Kremer, rightly praises strong statements in favor of free speech by administrators at Chicago and Yale; under this bill, our own chancellor would be barred from standing up for freedom of speech in the same way. How does that help?

The Vukmir bill also says no person. may threaten to organize protests with the purpose to dissuade an invited speaker from attending a campus event. To disrupt a lecture is one thing, to dissuade is another. If speakers come here to argue that Israel has no right to exist, or that white people are genetically superior to lesser races, or just to display unflattering photos of our students and make fun of them in public, they have every right to do so. But theyd better expect some kids to be clamoring outside the hall. If thats enough to dissuade them from coming, too bad for their tender selves. Peaceful protest is a right.

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Lets be honest. What Vos and Vukmir are worried about isnt free speech in general; theyre worried that conservative views are forbidden by thought police on campus. Good news: thats just not true. And Im proud its not true. Gov. Scott Walker has spoken here. Sen. Ron Johnson has spoken here. Dinesh DSouza has spoken here.

Conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro was here in November: protestors hollered and made a ruckus but then cleared the hall and the man had his say. This spring we hosted Steve Forbes and Wisconsins brilliant solicitor general, Misha Tseytlin. Forbes, too, drew a small group of protesters. They protested outside the building not the building where Forbes was speaking, but the one next door. Wisconsin kids are nice.

Harry Brighouse, a philosophy professor at UW-Madison, told graduating students this year:

You might be pro-choice or pro-life about abortion. You might support or oppose charter schools which aim to serve low-income kids in urban areas. You might support or oppose increasing redistributive taxation. Whatever your stance, you know for sure that there are morally decent, and reasonable, people who disagree with you.

If you dont know that, by the way, you should get out more.

Hes right, and he represents a commitment to hearing all views that the University of Wisconsin always has been proud to uphold.

Vos pointed out in his testimony that Colorado recently passed a campus free speech law, with bipartisan support, which he described as substantially similar to his bill. It isnt. The Colorado bill establishes a legal principle that free speech is sacrosanct on campus without suppressing the right of students to express their views. If our state legislators really want to stand up for our constitutional rights, theyll follow Colorados lead and do the same.

Jordan Ellenberg is the John D. MacArthur and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of How Not to Be Wrong.

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Ellenberg: A 'free speech' act that's really bad for free speech - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

This article first appeared on the History News Network.

The recent furor in the right-wing press over the New Yorks Public Theatres current anti-Trumpian Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar would be funny if it wasnt so predictable.

Following on the heels of the public castigation of comedian Kathy Griffins inopportune tweet of two weeks ago (which in light of ShakesGate Im inclined to now charitably interpret as a promotional still for a contemporary staging of Euripides The Bacchae ), conservative sites have gone apoplectic over the insensitivity of director Oskar Eustiss decision to stage the play in Central Parks Delacorte Theater, a production which exemplifies the observation that Shakespeares political masterpiece has never felt more contemporary.

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The productions unsubtle message was not lost on the audience when the ancient Roman dictator appeared with a ridiculous blonde bouffant, a cheap, inexpertly knotted tie hanging below his crotch, and a wife who purrs in a Slovenian accent.

As could be guessed, the clanging chorus of the conservative news media was not amused. Fox News, who share Eustiss distrust of subtlety, disingenuously headlined one of their articles with NYC Play Appears to Depict Assassination of Trump, as if one of the great plays of one of our greatest playwright were simply only a NYC Play.

Its telling that after much deserved mockery, the editors at Fox amended the article to more prominently state that the mock assassination occurred in a production of Julius Caesar," as if the initial ambiguity in their title wasnt intentional.

Oh, the Bard, ahead of his time, a coastal elite liberal and dead for four hundred years! Of course that the character of Caesar is in many ways the hero of the play was lost on these pundits, as indeed was the fact that the text itself is vehemently against political violence.

Furthermore, in making Caesar Trumpian the director inadvertently complimented a man as consummately incompetent as our current, accidental, Head of State.

Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.; Julius Caesar. Sculpture by John Gregory (1932). Vysotsky, public domain

Despite that, both Bank of America and Delta Airlines pulled their financial support for the play, for an upstanding institution like Bank of America (which surely has never been responsible for any damage to the lives of actual people) could not be associated with such an intemperate play as Julius Caesar.

Shakespeare has never been politically neutral, and the right-wing anxiety over a New York production of a classic play belies how little of their defense of the canon and of great literature since the heyday of academes Culture Wars of a generation ago was actually just disingenuous posturing.

As a teacher of Renaissance literature Ive often been bemused by conservative hand-wringing over trigger warnings and snowflakes in need of safe spaces and yet anxiety over art often seems to be a particularly reactionary impulse.

There is a cottage industry of right-wing pundits with apocryphal stories about sensitive young undergraduates unable to read Macbeth because of violence, or The Merchant of Venice because of anti-Semitism. The phenomenon of overly-sensitive undergraduates clambering against free speech matches little of my or many of my colleagues experiences as regarding college education today.

Ill note that the petulant opprobrium at Shakespeare in this season of our discontent seems to exclusively be coming from the right side of the aisle, or as scholar Stephen Greenblatt remarked to the Guardian:

Whats kind of amusing, in a slightly grim way, about this is to have Julius Caesar of all things suddenly the point at which the right can no longer endure free expression, which theyve been hollering for .... Every time they send out a crazy provocateur on campus, they go bonkers if there are protests.

Bad faith conservative defenders of the humanities, from William Bennett in the 1980s to the more noxious western nationalists of today, conveniently try to obscure the historically subversive nature of so much of canonical literature. Elsewhere, I have written that the conservative defense of the canon is so often a celebration of mere wallpaper, a means of demonstrating ones education, pedigree, or wealth.

If there was any doubt about the conservative war on the humanities (their claim to be supporters of free speech being shown as totally empty), witness Trumps catastrophic proposal to defund the National Endowment for the Humanities, an act that is at least honest in its brazen philistinism (in contradistinction to the ravings of the William Bennetts and Lynn Cheneys of the world).

Lets remember whats implied with things like the Fox headline theirs is not only an attack on Eustis, or a New York theatrical production, but it is also an attack on Shakespeares play itself. If conservatives are made uncomfortable that an onstage tyrant reminds them of the president, maybe theyd do better to ask why that comparison is so easy to make in the first place.

Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber once provocatively wrote that Shakespeare makes modern culture and modern culture makes Shakespeare. She continues by saying that one of the fascinating effects of Shakespeares plays [are that].they have almost always seemed to coincide with the times in which they are read, published, produced, and discussed.

Julius Caesar has as its subject themes like authoritarianism, treachery, and violence, it serves to reason that in authoritarian, treacherous, violent times Julius Caesar will appropriately enough be on our minds. Julius Caesar, as befitting a Republic such as ours which always made great significance of our perceived Greco-Roman ideological origins, has been perennially reinvented over the years, from Orson Welless landmark anti-fascist version of the 1930s, to an anti-Obama production in Minneapolis five years ago (Ill add that Fox News was silent on that one).

Shakespeare, like all great art, is ours to invent and reinvent. Donald Trump Jr., when not accidentally confirming James Comeys account of his interactions with Trump Sr., took time to tweet Serious question, when does art become political speech & does that change things?

Well Mr. Trump Jr., its inadvertently a good question I would argue that art is always political speech, and that that changes nothing. Shakespeare has been enlisted in all variety of political causes, often wildly contradictory ones. The multi-vocal brilliance of the playwright is that he has come down to us as both monarchist and republican, democrat and authoritarian, elitist and populist. There are worlds within the plays of the folio, and that is precisely what can be so threatening about him.

ShakesGate puts me in mind of Shakespeares younger colleague (and sometimes collaborator) Thomas Middleton, whose 1624 Jacobean play A Game at Chess was "the greatest box-office hit of early modern London, in part because it contained thinly veiled representations of both King James I, and the Spanish King Phillip IV (in violation of a law which prohibited depictions of living monarchs).

After nine sold out performances, the play was shut down by authorities. One imagines that had they existed in 1624, Bank of America and Delta would also have pulled their support of that production.

It is inevitable that all literature is read and reread within the context of the present moment in which we find ourselves. Shakespeare himself said as much in Julius Caesar when Cicero remarks,

Indeed, it is a strange disposed time:/

But men may construe things after their fashion, /

Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

We are in our own strange disposed time, and it is inevitable that well construe literature after our own experience, separate from the historical concerns which helped to produce said literature. Thats the same as it ever was.

But ironically, the rather immutable message of the play is provided in a playbill gloss by its director, who writes that Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. This, it would seem, is crucial, for in such context a production as this can be read as anti-trump without being pro-violence, with Eustis continuing by explaining that To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.

And this, I think, gets to the heart about what the right finds so dangerous about Shakespeare in this circumstance. It has nothing to do with taste or appropriateness, and everything to do with the fact that such a classic text is able to see a tyrant for precisely what he actually is.

Ed Simon is the associate editor of The Marginalia Review of Books, a channel of The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Continued here:
Killing Free Speech. Et Tu Delta? Et Tu Bank of America? - Newsweek

To the editor: Although it is correct and important to say that hate speech is legally protected, this op-ed article is misleading. (Actually, hate speech is protected speech, Opinion, June 8)

For instance, in the famous Supreme Court decision in Schenck vs. United States in 1919, the constitutional principle about not shouting fire in a crowded theater is not actually bad law as suggested. Nor is it accurate to suggest that such speech is illegal or unethical only if it is false.

A better example is from the libertarian philosopher John Stuart Mill: It is still criminal to incite mob violence or carnage at the house of a corn dealer even if the speech there is true. Another reason not to make truth or falsity the test of protected speech is that what was once thought false might turn out to be true.

There should be no doubt, however, that so much of so-called hate speech is legally protected but is nevertheless currently suppressed especially on college or university campuses (I am a philosophy professor at Cal State San Luis Obispo). Hate speech has come to mean whatever political speech one hates or finds offensive.

Despite the articles shortcomings, it is to be applauded for prompting reflections on these points.

Stephen W. Ball, San Luis Obispo

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Is false speech free speech? - Los Angeles Times