Monthly Archives: March 2020

David Pakman calls for a wake-up call to the progressive movement after the Super Tuesday 2020 results. With Joe Biden performing much better than polls, it suggests he has momentum. He was boosted by late dropouts before votes on Tuesday. Amy Klobuchar, Democratic Senator from Minnesota, and Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, both dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden. Beto O'Rourke also endorsed Biden ahead of Super Tuesday. Biden won 10 states on Tuesday, while Bernie Sanders only won 4 states. And now, Biden has received 1 million or 24 percent more votes in all of the primaries.

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A Wake-Up Call for the Progressive Movement? - Free Speech TV

A local group organizing against Issue 12 the sales tax levy to fund the construction of a new jail for Greene County was turned away from Yellow Springs Community Librarys meeting room last week. Local library staff cited a portion of the librarys meeting room policy that prohibits political campaign meetings from occurring in the space.

While the group had met in the room on three prior occasions, it had been doing so in violation of policy, according to library staff, who canceled a reservation for a future meeting.

The group found an alternative meeting venue in Yellow Springs. But the instance prompted the News to more closely examine the librarys meeting room policy and the relationship between such public spaces and the First Amendment, which protects free speech and other basic rights.

Library meeting room policy

The Yellow Springs library is part of the Greene County Public Library system, a county district library formed under the Ohio Revised Code. There are seven libraries in the system, and a seven-member Board of Trustees drawn from different home libraries makes policy for the district.

The Board of Trustees meets monthly, the second Wednesday of the month, and its meetings are open to the public.

Five of the systems seven libraries provide meeting spaces that are free and open to non-library groups, by reservation and within certain guidelines. Those guidelines define what types of groups and uses are permitted, as well as specifying meeting room rules and procedures.

The same policy applies to all public libraries in Greene County. Posted to the Greene County Public Library, or GCPL, website, the policy reads, in part:

Community groups whose purposes are non-profit, civic, cultural, or educational are encouraged to use the various library meeting rooms for group meetings when the rooms are not being used for their primary purpose: library-related activities.

Meeting rooms may not be used for social activities; private parties; commercial purposes/endeavors or gatherings that advertise a product or service; or political campaign meetings.

The current library meeting room policy dates back to February 2009, when the library board unanimously passed several changes proposed by Greene County Prosecutors Office civil attorney Elizabeth Ellis, who acts as legal counsel to the library.

A key change was the addition of political campaign meetings to the list of prohibited uses of meeting rooms, Board of Trustee meeting minutes show. The policy had not previously mentioned political campaigns in connection with GCPL meeting rooms.

The stated impetus for the revision of the GCPL meeting room policy was a federal district court lawsuit involving a religious group denied access to a meeting room in the Upper Arlington Public Library, located outside Columbus. In October 2008, a couple of months after the court found in favor of the religious group, GCPL Executive Director Karl Coln recommended that the Greene County library system update its own meeting room policy. That was accomplished the following February, with the new language about political campaigns and other changes.

In fact, the Upper Arlington Public Library court decision was a turning point for libraries around the country, according to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Associations Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Libraries thought for a long time that because of the establishment clause they could not favor religious groups by granting them access to their meeting rooms, Caldwell-Stone said in an interview with the News last week.

The establishment clause refers to the part of the First Amendment that prohibits Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

At least a dozen appellate court decisions have followed essentially the same lines, upholding the right of religious groups to meet for various purposes in public library meeting rooms, according to Caldwell-Stone.

Similarly, anti-abortion groups and white supremacist groups have successfully sued libraries for access to meeting rooms, she said.

Reached by the News for comment about the 2009 change in the GCPL meeting room policy that bars political campaign meetings from being held there, library counsel Ellis referred to the Upper Arlington case.

I drafted it based on that, she said last week.

Probed regarding the relationship between religious use of the space and political campaign meetings, Ellis stated that the overall goal of the policy was to ensure that the library was a neutral place.

The library needs to be as neutral as possible, Ellis said.

Prohibiting political campaign meetings is a component of that neutrality, regardless of the specific issue or candidate focus of the group.

Its politics with a small p, she said of the encompassing nature of political campaign activity barred from Greene County libraries.

Ellis added that the revised meeting policy was supported by case law relevant to the First Amendment.

Library Bill of Rights perspective

But another view of the countys meeting room policy is suggested by the American Library Associations Library Bill of Rights.

That document consists of unambiguous statements of basic principles that should govern the service of all libraries, according to text accompanying the Library Bill of Rights on the American Library Association, or ALA, website.

The sixth of seven statements reads: Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

The ALA also offers several formal interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights, including an interpretation focused on meeting rooms. Under that interpretation, library meeting rooms open to the public are considered designated public forums, one of three types of public forums in which First Amendment free speech protections apply, within some limits.

Restrictions on meeting room use should not pertain to the content of a meeting or to the beliefs and affiliations of the sponsors, the interpretation states.

The interpretation also specifies that meeting room policies should be written in inclusive rather than exclusive terms. The interpretation continues, For example, if a library allows charities and sports clubs to discuss their activities in library meeting rooms, then the library should not exclude partisan political or religious groups from discussing their activities in the same facilities.

Another ALA interpretation focused on politics in the library makes a similar point.

If a library has designated a space for community use, it must make that space available to all community organizations and groups regardless of their views or affiliations, the interpretation states. The interpretation goes on to highlight the essential characteristic of American libraries in providing access to ideas and opinions.

Therefore, libraries should encourage political discourse as part of civic engagement in forums designated for that purpose. Libraries should not ignore or avoid political discourse for fear of causing offense or provoking controversy, the interpretation concludes.

Yet in reality, many public libraries do draw limits around who can and cannot use their meeting rooms, according to the ALAs Caldwell-Stone.

All library politics are local, she said, noting that a range of factors, including community values, state and local laws and the librarys defined mission, come into play when a library system crafts policies for meeting rooms and other aspects of its facilities.

Theres nothing inherently wrong with public meeting rooms being used to discuss politics, she said, following the interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.

But library boards may be wary of controversy, she acknowledged.

Some library boards dont want to be seen as taking one side or another, Caldwell-Stone said.

While religious groups and others have sued libraries for access to their meeting rooms, groups denied access based on political activity have tended not to, according to Caldwell-Stone.

Theres no case law on this, she said.

Asked by the News whether the Library Bill of Rights was a binding document for libraries, she said it was not.

It offers aspirational best practices, she said.

However, many libraries adopt the Library Bill of Rights as part of their library policy, Caldwell-Stone added.

Asked by the News whether Greene County Public Library had done so, Executive Director Coln said last week that it had not.

And asked by the News whether library counsel had consulted the Library Bill of Rights while crafting the 2009 revision to the GCPL meeting rooom policy, Ellis replied that she wasnt familiar with the document by name, but had taken part in an ALA training prior to drafting the revision.

Describing the GCPL revised policy at the time of its creation in a report to library trustees, Coln wrote that it is suitably sensitive both to the First Amendment rights of all patrons and the GCPLs need to ensure the undisrupted flow of library services to all patrons.

Not an exact art

Managing competing priorities can be challenging for library systems, Caldwell-Stone acknowledged.

Its not an exact art, she said of libraries crafting and implementing policies that protect and promote the First Amendment within their particular community.

Coln last week offered his view that the political campaign meetings prohibition in the GCPL meeting room policy preserves the neutrality of the library for all community members.

The library is meant to be welcoming and open to everyone, he said.

Not all political activity is barred, just activity that involves advocacy, Coln clarified.

Political information is welcome, he said. The difference is in the advocacy piece when a group is saying vote for this or that.

In an email this week, he gave as an example the Beavercreek Matters series focused on local issues at the Beavercreek library meeting room. That forum is permitted because it includes a variety of viewpoints, he wrote.

Political groups that fall outside the librarys policy very, very rarely request use of the meeting room and thus are rarely turned away, according to Coln. The only other example from the past couple of years of a group denied GCPL meeting room access, aside from the recent instance in Yellow Springs, was the local chapter of Indivisible, a national progressive advocacy network, he said.

Yet the distinction between political information and advocacy may be subtle, as the ALA itself acknowledges. Another ALA statement on meeting rooms reads, An individual or group should not be denied access to the librarys meeting room because they intend to engage in political speech, to meet with constituents or to discuss partisan views. But it goes on to offer: Partisan campaign events may be inconsistent with the librarys mission and should be addressed in library policies.

Caldwell-Stone affirmed that libraries can place some limits on aspects of free speech within their spaces. But those limits have their own limits, she added.

Libraries do have obligations under the First Amendment that are binding, she said.

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Free speech and the library - Yellow Springs News

From its founding in 1890, the University of Chicago has occupied a singular place among American universities. Lacking the ancient lineages and social cachet of the Ivy League schools (Chicago welcomed women and Jews at a time when Harvard, et al, excluded the former and imposed strict quotas on the latter), Chicago, which is consistently ranked among the worlds top 10 universities, has always been known for its fierce intellectualism. I think the one place where I have been that is most like ancient Athens, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once declared, is the University of Chicago. Indeed, whereas the Ivy League universities, Stanford and their ilk, admitted and continue to admit their undergraduates based on such qualities as athletic ability, family connections, and that vague attribute known as leadership, students came to Chicago because they prized what it still venerates as the life of the mind. (Chicagos students score on average higher on the SAT a national standardised test that assesses academic aptitude than do those at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford).

Given its devotion to rigorous inquiry to the belief that education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think, as its former president Hanna Holborn Gray declared Chicago has been from its inception the most stalwart bastion of free expression in American higher education. Refusing to bow to political and popular pressure, Chicagos trustees and administration have insisted, from the Red Scare of the 1920s, through the McCarthy era and the politically tumultuous 1960s, that its faculty be unfettered to explore the most heterodox ideas and that its students be free to debate any topic and to invite the most unpopular speakers including, in 1932, William Z Foster, the presidential candidate and future general secretary of the Communist Party USA, and, in 1963, George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder and leader of the American Nazi Party. In 2015, discerning that free speech was under assault in American universities, Chicago reaffirmed its commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation among all members of the universitys community. The subsequent statement of policy the so-called Chicago Principles is at once stirring and precise; it has been rightly praised as a full-throated (and much needed) defence of campus free expression. In addition to publishing the Chicago Principles, the University has repeatedly and unequivocally promulgated its commitment to free speech on its website and in statements by its president, provost, and deans.

Alas, however, although the University of Chicago is a unique institution of higher education, it nonetheless inhabits the ecosystem of higher education. So while its administration and most of its faculty and students remain devoted to what is characterised in the Chicago Principles as the spirit and promise of the University of Chicago, a woke illiberalism is subverting that spirit and promise from within. In January 2018, Steve Bannon, the former director of Donald Trumps presidential campaign and the former chief strategist in Trumps White House, accepted the invitation of Luigi Zingales, a University of Chicago professor, to debate at the university. In explaining why he invited Bannon, Zingales quite sensibly explained, Whether you like his [Bannons] views or not, he seems to have understood something about America that Im curious to learn more about. But surprisingly, given their universitys long-held commitment to free expression; unsurprisingly, given the climate within academe a minority of Chicago students and faculty members mounted a vociferous campaign demanding that the invitation to Bannon be rescinded. Opposing their universitys policies and principles on free expression and displaying an ignorance of its history of upholding them, a group of professors issued a statement, which took the form of a demand letter to Chicagos president and provost, calling for Bannon to be de-platformed. The professors proclaimed that the defence of freedom of expression cannot be taken to mean that views that the professors deem abhorrent must be afforded the rights [sic] and opportunity to be aired on a university campus. Although Chicago didnt heed the protesters demands, two years later Bannon has yet to speak at the university for reasons that cannot be discerned so its unclear what part, if any, the student and faculty appeals to withdraw Bannons invitation have played in his non-appearance.

University of Chicago students participate in a walk-out to protest President-elect Donald Trump, 15 November 2016.

Although the 87 professors who demanded that the invitation to Bannon be revoked asserted that they represented the breadth of the Universitys intellectual community, in fact 36 of them nearly one-third teach at either the school of social work (20) or in the English department (16). Indeed, the English department has carved out for itself a role as the chief critic of Chicagos policies on free speech, and has since 2017 promulgated an alternative to the Chicago Principles on its official web pages pages that are, themselves, part of the universitys official website. Reserving a permanent and prominent place on its web pages for a proclamation in the form of an open letter signed by 40 of its faculty members, the department has classified this three-year-old proclamation as the only item of Departmental News worthy of publication. While the proclamation genuflects to the principles of free expression, it proceeds to undermine those principles with the assertions that follow:

our academic pursuits do not exist in isolation from the hate, racism, and violence that continue to play a powerful role in US politics and in the social and legal arrangements that endanger the safety and wellbeing of people of colour throughout the country. We wish to reaffirm that our role as scholars and educators centrally includes the fostering of a culture of inclusiveness and mutual respect that prizes our diversity rather than seeing it as a threat. Such a culture depends on a willingness to listen carefully to other viewpoints, and to engage critically with them, in ways that respect norms of reasoned argument and the use of evidence. Particularly in the context of emotionally and politically charged issues, it is crucial to respect the right to freely express and argue for ones views, especially when they are controversial or run counter to popular opinion. But when disagreement takes such forms as bullying, racially charged attacks, and the glorification of violence against those with whom one differs, then speech is no longer primarily a matter of the expression of ideas, viewpoints, or opinions, and an invocation of the right to free speech is a distraction from the real issue. There is a crucial difference between speech that makes claims and articulates ideas, and speech that demeans, intimidates, or harms others. Such hostility has no place in academic life. It is our responsibility as scholars not only to condemn and repudiate hatred expressed in speech and other forms of action, but to model forms of discussion that manage criticality in a spirit of open inquiry, committed to acknowledging and thinking through the difficult histories and difficult present in which we are all embedded.

As an example of the muddled and insidious thinking that characterise woke assaults on campus free speech, the English departments proclamation which expresses not just the signatories opinion but their perception of their academic responsibility and their intent to fulfill that responsibility should be subjected to the same kind of rigorous inquiry that is, or was, the hallmark of the University of Chicago.

Although the US News and World Report rankings (Americas most famous academic league table) place the University of Chicagos English department as the best in the US, the departments arguments and assertions evince sloppy writing and thinking. Who is to decide what constitutes bullying or racially charged attacks? Who determines if and how speech demeans, intimidates, or harms others? Who deems what speech has no place in academic life? Would any individual who feels demeaned or harmed by speech have the power to exclude that speech from academic life? Is the English department proposing itself as the star chamber? The open letter states that bullying and racially charged attacks are just some of the forms of disagreement that are illegitimate and therefore deserving of expulsion from the academy (when disagreement takes such forms as, emphasis added). Who will decide what other forms of disagreement are considered worthy of banishment from campus? The department states that the invocation of the right of free speech is illegitimate when speech is no longer primarily a matter of the expression of ideas, viewpoints, or opinions and that only speech that makes claims and articulates ideas is legitimate. Who is to determine what speech pursues these aims and falls under these categories? If the open letters signatories condemn and repudiate certain on-campus expression or activities, what form will that condemnation and repudiation take? The Chicago Principles guarantee all members of the university community the broadest possible latitude of expression, but the English department seeks the opposite goal not free speech, but licensed speech.

Moreover, the position articulated in the departments proclamation is contradictory and therefore ambiguous. Speech that any person or group might construe, or misconstrue, as bullying, racially charged, glorif[ying] violence, demean[ing], or harm[ful] forms of expression that the English department states should be expunged from campus could simultaneously be a matter of the expression of ideas, viewpoints, or opinions and constitute speech that makes claims and articulates ideas that is, forms of speech that the department deems permissible. Thus the position advocated in the proclamation, and any policies that might derive from that position, are irredeemably flawed. Furthermore, if the proclamations precepts are followed, any persons who feel that they have been harm[ed] or demeane[d] or that the content or manner of debate is bullying, racially charged, or glori[fies]violence can, in fact, ought to, shut down the offending debate or discussion. The departments position would thus squelch free inquiry and potentially require any member of the university to be condemn[ed] and repudiate[d] (by the English department?) for articulating an argument because some unspecified party judges that argument to be offensive.

Too many critics of free speech fail to grasp that championing free speech does not imply endorsement of the content of the speech to be protected

Furthermore, the department broadens the forms of speech proscribed by the Chicago Principles. There the categories of expression that should be barred from academic life were confined to what the university calls the narrow exceptions of the criminal and the defamatory. Certainly, direct threats, incitement to imminent violent action, and defamatory speech are not protected forms of expression: the criminal courts punish the first two and the civil courts provide remedies for those injured by the third. The English departments proclamation substantially and dangerously extends those categories, proposing to condemn and to exclude (and to punish?) forms of expression that are neither illegal nor actionable.

The English department asserts that there is a crucial difference between speech that makes claims and articulates ideas, and speech that demeans, intimidates, or harms others. But inevitably and unavoidably, expression that makes claims and articulates ideas will be found by some and in quite a few cases by nearly everyone to be demeaning, hurtful and even intimidating. The Chicago Principles emphatically recognise this very point: It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive [C]oncerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community. The Chicago Principles go on to declare unambiguously that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. In this way, too, the department holds a position incompatible with the principles of the university that houses and governs it.

Because the English departments categories of proscribed speech, and the criteria by which the speech would be deemed illegitimate, are wholly dependent on the attitudes, political outlook, and emotional state and personal views of the recipient of the speech, those categories and criteria could not withstand judicial scrutiny. Of course, in nearly all instances the kind of speech the department would condemn would not be a matter for adjudication in the courts, but it is at the very least troubling that the English department is comfortable establishing what amounts to a speech code that so clearly ignores the acuity and accumulated wisdom that First Amendment jurisprudence provides.

The English department affirms that all speech that can be interpreted as the glorification of violence against those with whom one differs, or as hatred expressed in speech, should be condemned and excluded from academic life. This blanket condemnation and exclusion would necessarily embrace within its ambit many important political statements and arguments. Will those who would approvingly cite the dictum from the river to the sea Palestine will be free (a statement many believe advocates a genocidal programme against Israels Jews) be expelled from academic life? What about those who express Maos idea that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun? And what about those who invoke Thomas Jeffersons idea that the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants? Or consider the following statements:

The dictatorship of the proletariat [can only be achieved by] revolutionary terror.

The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.

A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror

Far from opposing the so-called excesses instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals the workers party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction.

Surely invoking or subscribing to these statements by Marx and Engels whose writings are, rightly, required reading at Chicago would fall under the English departments categories of illegitimate hatred expressed in speech and expression that is the glorification of violence against those with whom one disagrees. The English department blithely ignores the reasoning behind Justice Oliver Wendell Holmess famous injunction that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death. Chicago is rightfully proud of resolutely holding, even in the darkest days of the Red Scare and of McCarthyism, that Communist speech should be permitted on its campus. Had the open letter of the English departments sweeping and imprecise criteria been applied at that time, such speech would necessarily have been banned from the university. In todays political climate, one could assume that the department might, in fact, exempt Communist rhetoric (and perhaps Palestinian liberation rhetoric) from its condemnation and expulsion, but such an exemption would necessarily suggest that the department believes that some forms of speech that embrace violence against those with whom one differs, and that represent hatred expressed in speech, are more legitimate and worthy of protection than are others.

Perhaps most perniciously, the department proclaims that the invocation of the right to free speech is not legitimate when it is a distraction from the real issue. Who is to determine what the real issue is, and who judges when an invocation of free speech is not to be credited because it is merely a supposed smokescreen? It is particularly disturbing that the English department holds that the invocation of the right to free speech the foundational precept of democracy and of rigorous inquiry should ever be regarded as politically suspect. That the underlying motivations of those who invoke free-speech arguments should be sussed out smacks of McCarthyism. The English department, like other critics of free speech, fails to grasp that championing free speech does not imply endorsement of the content of the speech to be protected. After all, the past courageous work of the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of free expression, for example, did not mean that the ACLU was (contrary to the claims of its critics) pro-Communist, pro-Nazi, or pro-Ku Klux Klan.

University of Chicago students protest a visit by Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager, 15 February 2017.

What is clear from its proclamation is the English departments lack of faith in debate and rigorous inquiry, the very qualities that historically defined the University of Chicago. The departments faculty and those others who called for de-platforming Bannon have plainly forgotten that their university has been a haven for untrammeled discourse. In such a place, the proper, indeed the only, response to speech deemed racist or otherwise wrong is fiercely exacting argument based on evidence, logic and reason.

Of all universities, the University of Chicago has historically been the most vigorous defender of academic freedom that is, of the right of faculty members to pursue and expound on any views in or outside the classroom. Clearly, then, individual professors or a group of professors are free to proclaim any opinions whatsoever, even if those opinions contradict the positions and policy of the university. But a departments web pages are a place for departmental matters and for defining the nature and purpose of the departments academic function, not for expounding the incidental private opinions of the departments members. Had a collection of English professors published this proclamation on the limits to free expression in the campus newspaper or in the New York Times, then the proclamation would be merely a collective expression of private opinion. But by publishing it on its web pages, and by reserving for it a permanent and prominent position there, the English department is clearly giving the proclamation its imprimatur and conveying that its contents are of defining importance to the department. Plainly, the department does not make its web pages available as an open forum to any and every faculty member for the airing of any and every personal opinion. So why is this particular statement published on the departments web pages? Such publication clearly connotes endorsement.

Im perhaps particularly exercised by the English departments position because my son will be entering the University of Chicago in the fall. He had hoped to study English, but now feels compelled to change his plans because he takes the departments statement to mean that, were he to be an English major, he would have to exercise a vigilance in his response to literature that he would find incompatible with fruitful academic pursuit. Although Im disappointed with his conclusion, I cannot say that I find it unreasonable.

In his four years at his New England prep school, my son who, though Im loath to point out such things, considers himself on the political left has not infrequently observed that teachers have taken upon themselves the role of arbiters of what constitutes views or interpretations that are (to quote the vocabulary in the English departments proclamation) racially charged or offensive. Such proscribed views have included the defensible if debatable propositions that identity politics can be a distraction from a class-based politics and can therefore have the effect of exacerbating economic injustice; that being colour-blind is a worthy personal goal; and that racist statements written by members of racial minority groups are still racist. Some teachers have judged those views as insufficiently sensitive to the hate, racism, and violence that continue to play a powerful role in US politics and in the social and legal arrangements that endanger the safety and wellbeing of people of colour throughout the country (again, to quote Chicagos English department). Because these teachers believe that those views fail to take into account the experiences of others, these teachers have judged that expressing them demeans [and] harms others, and therefore have determined that their responsibility is to condemn and repudiate those views. This approach obviously exercises a chilling effect on academic discourse; these teachers have effectively excluded those views from debate and discussion in the classroom and assembly hall, and have effectively ruled that those views have no place in academic life.

Id like to tell my son that this could never happen in an English class at the University of Chicago, but the sweeping avowals in the English departments proclamation suggest otherwise. For his part, my son is dismayed that the department that he had planned to make his academic home has taken a position so contrary to that which attracted him to the University of Chicago in the first place.

Benjamin Schwarz is the former national editor and literary editor of the Atlantic.

All pictures by: Getty Images.

To enquire about republishing spikeds content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

Link:
How woke illiberalism is killing the academy - Spiked

In both cases the solution trans activists and their supporters have in mind is to have these women cancelled sacked, no-platformed, shunned and, most important of all, silenced. The ruin of an academic or journalist is a small price to pay for trans activists not to have to listen to opposing views that might upset them.

But in order for them to achieve their ends, two vital elements are necessary. The first is that language must be altered and manipulated so that words no longer mean what they used to mean. And so transphobe, which used to mean fear or hatred of trans people, now means anyone who believes in sex-based rights. If you believe in the biological fact of sex, that sex is not assigned at birth but is an inescapable physiological fact, then you are a transphobe.

Similarly, the term hate speech used to mean expressing views that encouraged violence against others, usually minorities. No longer. Feminists and others who question trans ideology but who do so while expressing solidarity with trans people and insist that they should never face discrimination in their professional or private lives, are guilty of hate crime because they believe that sex is more than a state of mind.

Excerpt from:
The Left would shamefully rather silence women than allow free speech on trans issues - Telegraph.co.uk