Monthly Archives: July 2017

As someone who makes his living by challenging ideas through humor, social commentary and, if warranted, ridicule, I care deeply about free speech. And there is a growing movement across our college campuses to shut down free speech of teachers, students and invited guests. This should scare the hell out of all us all.

Ive been doing talk radio for more than three decades and I host a daily podcast. This means I constantly have guests on who disagree with me on many subjects. Challenging their ideas and points of views while they do the same to me is an important part of the public discourse. One thing Ive learned about Americans from talking with them for more than 30 years is that we like to argue and debate, even among friends and were damn good at it.

But seriously, America has been that safe space where truth can be spoken to power. Where We the People can challenge a king and a corrupt idea like a monarchy. This right has been reaffirmed through our history. Its been fought for, and people have died for it. We must understand that we have the right to free expression, not the right to not be offended. This fundamental difference is being lost on todays college campuses.

We should not be teaching students to retreat from debate, but to charge intellectually into it. This is one of the most valuable and profound gifts given to us in the founding of America.

When we enter into robust debate, the best ideas will most often rise. Its when ideas and points of view are censored that our country loses, because we may miss new ideas or other ones may not have been properly examined.

I used to love to play colleges as a comedian. College campuses were a fantastic place to perform, but today the negatively-charged environment where everyone is offended has made it toxic. Its so bad that some of the top comedians, including Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher and Chris Rock not exactly a right-wing cabal have noted that performing on a college campus is no longer a real option due to the labyrinth of speech codes and hurt feelings.

As comedians, we find subjects, which often includes stereotypes. Then, we make social commentary or a joke about it. String enough of those together and you have a routine. And heres a window into my business: Offending people is the foundation of what comedians do. Finding a moment, person, group or idea and holding it up for ridicule has been a part of comedy since the very first joke ever told.

Someone will almost always be offended; its risky, but if youre a good comedian the joke will reveal a truth we can all recognize. Without this, were all just sitting in a dark theater buying two overpriced drinks. Comedians are the modern-day court jesters holding the mirror of truth back up to society.

I also know that what happens at college does not stay at college. Given this generations impulse to post every moment of life online, nothing they do will stay in college. In fact, it will haunt them from job interview to job interview. There seems to be a growing movement to shut down differing points of view that are not politically correct or fit neatly into todays speech codes, which are nothing short of thought-regulation.

The centrifuge of this movement is ironically the college campus the place that has traditionally been the center of the free exchange of ideas. Instead, colleges now have places known as safe spaces where students who feel threatened by concepts, ideas, differing views, other ethnicities or different economic or geographical backgrounds may retreat.

We currently have more than 20 million people attending colleges or degree-granting programs. This is up from 17.8 million in 2006.Thats a lot of trigger warnings and play-doh and puppy crap to pick up from safe spaces if we continue down the coddling road. But I digress.

Ive also seen how speakers have faced being shut down, intimidated from speaking and even physically assaulted on campus. I recently faced being shut down when nationally-syndicated radio host Dennis Prager and I planned to hold an event at Cal State Northridge in California. The producers of the event confirmed the rental of the facilities, and then, suddenly, two weeks prior to the event, were told the school did not want to have controversial speakers such as Dennis and myself on campus.

Me, I can understand the offense, but Dennis, hes just really tall and really smart. This was later deemed a scheduling conflict not a content conflict. Eventually, after lawyers jumped in, the scheduling conflict was resolved, and the event was held. It also produced a No. 1 iTunes comedy album. But it showed me up close what is happening on campus. To be candid, it shocked me, because our colleges should be an important place that embraces free speech, intellectual diversity and challenging ideas.

What is provided in these safe spaces, and why is it a problem? Instead of fostering the development of young adults, colleges are providingcoloring books, play-doh, puppies and stuffed animals.Its basically your four-year-old daughters bedroom where one can shut out the challenges, facts and outside world. Providing this bubble-wrapped type of education does not prepare the next generation for the challenges of life. It prepares them for failure.

Can you imagine a student like this getting a job in customer service for an IT company where millions of dollars are on the line, and rather than being able to address or fix a problem, they will need play-do and puppies to get through the day?

We also hear a cry for diversity on college campuses, which is total boloney. Diversity by definition doesnt just mean differing races, genders or ethnicities coexisting. True diversity is intellectual diversity, where differing points of view and ideas can be discussed, even the ones we vehemently disagree with. True diversity requires points of view we disagree with, otherwise it wont be diverse, only self re-affirming.

But this definition of diversity does not seem to fit within the current college campus. The definition being pushed is not one of true diversity, but reaffirming already approved thoughts. Its basically like were dressing ideological uniformity in a cheap supermarket costume but calling it diversity. We all know the real kid behind the mask, but students and teachers are forced to go along with the charade.

This point couldnt be made any clearer than by Sol Stern, one of the co-founders of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. Stern, looking back 50 years later on what he saw as the failure of the original Free Speech Movementobserved, Because the claim that the FSM was fighting for free speech for all (i.e., the First Amendment) was always a charade. Within weeks of FSMs founding, it became clear to the leadership that the struggle was really about clearing barriers to using the campus as a base for radical political activity. Our movement ignored Orwells warning that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful.

Orwell was right, and 50 years later, the climate on college campuses is growing worse. The stated goal of diversity has been one of inclusion, but the recent growth of identity politics has reversed this to ultimately promote exclusion, nearly indiscernible from Jim Crow laws of the 1940s.

While our national motto is E Pluribus Unum, or out of many, one, identity politics creates a divisive power play on the pattern of basing ones identity on characterizations like race, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion and on down the line in as many divided categories of oppression as one can imagine.

Ultimately this movement against challenging ideas is a disservice to students, as theyre not being prepared for the world outside their safe spaces. Instead, their diplomas some of which cost in the mid-six figures will have actually set them back. I think the only thing worse than being uneducated is being mis-educated.

Adam Carolla is a comedian, television host, actor, podcaster, author and director. He hosts "The Adam Carolla Show," which set the Guinness World record in 2011 for "most downloaded podcast." He and Dennis Prager are currently filming a documentary, "No Safe Spaces," which explores political correctness on college campuses.

Th views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

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OPINION | Carolla: 'Safe spaces' harm free speech, stunt students ... - The Hill (blog)

(New York Magazine) While there is no set precedent for the issue, more and more courts are encountering a new type of lawsuit related to social-media blocking. The Knight Foundation, for instance, is suing the U.S. government on behalf of Twitter users blocked by President Donald Trump, whose Twitter account has become alarmingly vital when it comes to understanding his presidency.

This week, a federal court in Virginia tackled the issue when it ruled on behalf of a plaintiff blocked by a local county politician. According to The Wall Street Journal, Brian Davison sued the chairwoman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, who temporarily banned him from her Facebook page after he posted criticism of local officials last year. Judge James Cacheris found that she had violated Davisons First Amendment rights by blocking him from leaving comment, because, in his judgment, the chairwoman, Phyllis Randall, was using her Facebook page in a public capacity. Though it was a personal account, she used it to solicit comments from constituents.

Link:
Court: Politicians blocking followers violates free speech - WND.com

The White House. (photo credit:REUTERS)

WASHINGTON -- Earlier this month, one of America's largest civil liberties organizations announced opposition to a congressional bill that would target international efforts to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, setting up an uncomfortable fight between US-based Israel lobbies and free speech advocates.

The ACLU a union at the forefront of several battles against the Trump administration over the rights of immigrants, refugees and minority groups facing systemic discrimination said the bill would make worse a 1970s-era law that had already stymied the ability of individuals and companies to exercise their constitutional right to boycott.

But the Israel Anti-Boycott Act was jointly introduced in March by a Senate Democrat and a House Republican, with cosponsors from both sides of the aisle a rare moment of bipartisanship in 2017, as several other legislative items on Israel have wrought division.

In recent years, efforts to legislate against the BDS movement have largely taken place at the state and local level. That tactic has proven successful on paper: The nation's largest states, including California, Texas, Florida and New York, have all passed harsh measures that effectively prevent their states from aiding businesses that partake in boycotts of Israel.

But this new bill takes a different approach, reacting to new global efforts beyond the reach of any one state. It was drafted in reaction to a decision from the United Nations Human Rights Council last spring to compile a "blacklist" of companies operating in the Palestinian territories, defined by them as anywhere beyond the pre-1967 war Green Line.

The anti-boycott act would amend the Export Administration Act of 1979 originally written to protect US companies from Arab League sanctions on Israel to protect Israel and Israeli businesses from international boycotts of virtually any kind. Specifically, the bill would criminally penalize any US person seeking to collect information on another party's relationship with Israel in pursuance of a boycott.

The ACLU has been joined in recent days by several other civil liberties advocates warning that the law would encroach on free speech: One's right to join a boycott called for by an organization such as the United Nations. They claim that the law as it is currently written is blatantly unconstitutional in this regard.

But the language of the bill offers a clever counterargument: That enforcement of the US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014, which compels the US to deepen strategic, security and economic ties as much as possible, definitionally requires Washington to rebut the BDS effort. And it simply expands on the sturdy parameters of 1979 export regulations that prohibit the boycott of friendly countries.

Supporters of the argue that the ACLU's argument against the legislation is, in fact, an argument against the Export Administration Act a basis for international sanctions levied against governments worldwide in the name of national security. The ACLU, on the other hand, argues that its problem with the bill is that is targets specific companies choosing whether to enter into business with other specific companies, such as one operating a factory in West Bank settlements.

Authors of the bill note their legislation takes no position on Israel's settlement activity.

"The ACLU has long supported laws prohibiting discrimination, but this bill cannot fairly be characterized as an anti-discrimination measure, as some would argue," the organization said in a July 17 letter to lawmakers. "For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already prevents businesses from discriminating against customers based on race, color, religion, and national origin."

"This bill, on the other hand, aims to punish people who support international boycotts that are meant to protest Israeli government policies, while leaving those who agree with Israeli government policies free from the threat of sanctions for engaging in the exact same behavior," the group continues. "Whatever their merits, such boycotts rightly enjoy First Amendment protection."

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US bill on Israel boycotts sets up free speech battle - The Jerusalem Post

An attitude has grown up among some Americans that free speech is only for opinions we agree with. Gone is the once liberal view that although I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it. That attitude is now seen as folly, though it actually comes from confidence and strength.

This new view of no free speech for fascists was expressed at a Charlottesville City Council meeting (Activists demand answers from city, The Daily Progress, July 18) when one of the protesters against Ku Klux Klan and alt-right demonstrations said, This brainless defense of free speech is killing us. If your speech is being used to promote that other human beings dont deserve rights, thats not a form of speech we have any obligation to defend or protect, at all. (The old view was that it is precisely the opinion that nobody likes that needs to be protected in order to protect everyones rights.)

A liberal from the 1970s might wonder how this change in attitude came about, but Peter Breggin, back in 1979, put his finger on it when he suggested that the reason why the American Civil Liberties Union famously defended Nazis was because the Nazis had no power and were regarded as underdogs. If the ACLU had thought the Nazis had real power, he opined, they would not have defended them.

By any objective analysis, the alt-right and KKK have no real power today. They are fringe groups that represent un-American ideologies. But they are not seen that way by self-identified resistance groups who fear an existential threat from people with different opinions.

Even mildly different opinions are seen as threats through this lens of insecurity. This need to defend against threats both real and imagined has become justification for disorderly conduct or, in some cities, even violence.

As the attitude becomes No free speech for fascists and well tell you who the fascists are, the danger is that it will be too late by the time people with this attitude look into the mirror and see their enemy looking back at them.

Miles N. Fowler, Albemarle County

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Opinion/Letter: Free speech must apply to everyone - The Daily Progress