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Category Archives: Free Speech
Letters: Money is not free speech and a corporation is not a person – Akron Beacon Journal
Posted: January 29, 2024 at 2:21 am
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Letters: Money is not free speech and a corporation is not a person - Akron Beacon Journal
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"Rightsism," Free Speech, and Freedom of Action – Econlib
Posted: at 2:21 am
Many people seem to think that the freedom of some to express their opinions is more important than the freedom of others to peacefully go about their daily activities; that free speech by blocking a road or an air terminal takes precedence over the freedom of somebody else to catch a flight to visit a loved one, to take a vacation, or just simply to earn a living. Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley raises this issue when criticizing pro-Palestinian protestors who recently blocked access to bridges, roads, and air terminals in order to draw attention to their cause (If Police Wont Back Up Mr. Brooklyn, Maybe a Lawyer Will, January 23).
Except if one favors conflicting and unequal freedoms among individuals, free speech does not entail my freedom to go and speak in your living room nor arguably to block a road supposed to belong equally to everybody. What free speech means is the equal freedom to express ones opinions on ones property, or on property one has leased such as a convention hall, or on public property provided that other users are not excluded, or on a piece of property whose owner welcomes the speaker such as the pages of a newspaper. Paradoxically, those who block roads or organize or inspire protests typically have the best access to the media. What would they say if a mob blocked the printing presses of the New York Times or the Washington Post? Freedom of speech is closely related to private property, which explains why it does not exist under collectivist regimes of the left or the rightthe regimes protesters often defend.
Many on the left show a logical incoherence that Donald Trump, certainly not handicapped in this department, could envy them.
Anthony de Jasay, the economist and political philosopher who was both a classical liberal and an anarchist (portrayed in the featured image of this post), often becomes an iconoclast when he follows the logical implications of his theories. He labels freedom-talk or rightsism the political theories that favor conflicting rights picked up from thin philosophical space. In his view, liberties simply but wholly consist of everything that does not cause an actual tort to somebody exercising his own equal liberty; and a right is nothing but a benefit obtained from another party through a voluntary contract (generally against consideration). Protesters, newspapers, and travelers have the same liberties to do anything that does not interfere with the equal liberty of others and anything within their contractual and property rights. As usual, public property raises special problems, but why would one group have the power to deliberately exclude another group of individuals who have supposedly the same liberty to access it? (On freedom-talk and rightsism, see de Jasays book Social Justice and the Indian Rope Trick, especially Chapters 3 and 4 of Part 1; and the chapter Before Resorting to Politics in his Against Politics. Expect to be challenged.)
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"Rightsism," Free Speech, and Freedom of Action - Econlib
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Biden is trying to balance Gaza protests and free speech rights as demonstrators disrupt his events – The Mercury News
Posted: at 2:21 am
Biden is trying to balance Gaza protests and free speech rights as demonstrators disrupt his eventsΒ Β The Mercury News
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In the ‘big tent’ of free speech, can you be too open-minded? – Athens Messenger
Posted: at 2:20 am
People often extol the virtue of open-mindedness, but can there be too much of a good thing?
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In the 'big tent' of free speech, can you be too open-minded? - Athens Messenger
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"Yes, the Last 10 Years Really Have Been Worse for Free Speech" (Focusing on Universities) – Reason
Posted: at 2:20 am
An interesting and, I think, sound analysis by Greg Lukianoff (FIRE), responding to ACLU National Legal Director (and Georgetown law professor) David Cole's review of Lukianoff & Rikki Schlott's The Canceling of the American Mind in the New York Review of Books. An excerpt:
[A]fter 9/11 only about three professors lost their jobs for speech related to the attacks or the subsequent wars, and all three were fired for reasons that extended well beyond protected speech. Meanwhile, since the dawn of Cancel Culture in 2014 there have been more than 1,000 professor cancelation attempts, with two-thirds resulting in some form of sanction and one-fifth resulting in termination .
It's also important to note that the problem will only get worse as older faculty, who are generally far better on free speech, begin to retire in large numbers. In our2022 survey of faculty, we saw that the younger the faculty were, the more acceptable they found anti-speech activity .
What about students, though? Using data from UCLA'sHigher Education Research Institute,Jean Twengehas shown thatsupport for censoringextreme speakers on campus has spiked in recent years: "While only 1 out of 4 students wanted to ban extreme speakers during the 1970s and 1980s, themajority wanted to do so in 2019."
There's much more at the link.
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"Yes, the Last 10 Years Really Have Been Worse for Free Speech" (Focusing on Universities) - Reason
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Fox News allowed to pursue claims that voting firm’s defamation suit is anti-free speech – The Associated Press
Posted: at 2:20 am
Fox News allowed to pursue claims that voting firm's defamation suit is anti-free speechΒ Β The Associated Press
Originally posted here:
Fox News allowed to pursue claims that voting firm's defamation suit is anti-free speech - The Associated Press
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Confusion at Barnard about free speech, institutional neutrality, and academic freedom – Why Evolution Is True
Posted: at 2:20 am
According to the New York Times, Barnard College is in a big kerfuffle involving free speech, institutional neutrality, and academic freedom. The problem is that theyre conflating them all, so the campus is full of stress and argument that, with some good will, could be avoided. Here I proffer a simple solution to the Colleges woes.
First, some terms. These are my takes, so others might disagree. Free speech is the ability to express yourself without censorship. The First Amendment protects your speech from being censored by the government, but not necessarily by anybody else, including your boss on the job. Public colleges and universities, however, must adhere to the courts construal of the First Amendment (theyre considered arms of the government), while private colleges need not. In my view, however, they should, for free speech is seen by many academics as the best way to get to the truth, with everybody able to discuss issues without being quashed. The University of Chicago, a private school, adheres to the First Amendment in our Principles of Free Expression, also known as the Chicago Principles, and these have been adopted by more than 100 colleges.
In contrast, institutional neutrality in academia means that colleges and universities remain neutral on political, moral, or ideological issues, and make no official statements about them. (Faculty and students, of course, are welcomed to express their personal views.) Thus, at Chicago, which adheres to institutional neutrality, you will (or rather should) find no department or unit of the university making any kind of statement about politics or ideology on its websites. This is an adherence to our Kalven Principles (also see here), which allow exceptions to neutrality only when the issues at hand are intimately connected with the mission of the University. Sadly, only a few schools in the country, including Vanderbilt and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have officially adopted institutional neutrality, though I think all of them should. Thats because the purpose of Kalven is to not chill speech by avoiding intimidating people who want to speak up against positions that might be construed as official. Kalven and the Principles of Free Expression are designed to buttress each other.
There is, of course, a difference between free speech and institutional neutrality. You can have free speech without institutional neutrality, so that individuals can speak their minds but departments and universities can also take official positions. (I cant imagine, however, having institutional neutrality without free speech, as the former makes sense only if you have the latter.) The problem with Barnard College, as outlined in the NYT article below (click to read), is that it has adopted free speech but isnt trying that hard to be institutionally neutral. And this is causing problems.
As for academic freedom, thats usually construed as the freedom of academics to teach and do research on what they want without interference. In other words, it is a freedom of inquiry. This is somewhat connected with freedom of speech (can a professor say whatever she wants to in a classroom? Nope.), but its not the issue at hand today, though both Barnard and the ACLU are conflating freedom of speech with academic freedom and with institutional neutrality. If they adopted the Chicago Principles and Kalven, they wouldnt be in trouble. But there are lots of faculty who think that departmental websites, official emails, and other official venues should be able to express political opinions, and thats where they get in trouble.
Click to read, though you may be paywalled:
First, Barnard College (in New York City, affiliated with Columbia University) has adopted the Chicago Principles, and so has free speech (NYT text is indented).
The Barnard faculty also held a vote in December affirming the Chicago Principles, a commitment to free expression, several professors said.
Its in the institutional neutrality issue where they get balled up, because the professors cannot refrain from making political statements on official websites:
Three weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Department of Womens, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College in New York posted a statement on itsdepartmental websitein support of the Palestinian people.
Below the statement, the professors posted links to academic work supporting their view that the struggle of Palestinians against settler colonial war, occupation and apartheid was also a feminist issue. Two days later, they found that section of the webpage had been removed, without warning, by Barnard administrators.
What happened next has sparked a crisis over academic freedom and free expression at Barnard at a time when the Israel-Hamas conflict has led to tense protests on American college campuses and heated discussions about what constitutes acceptable speech.
Acceptable, however, means speech that can appear on departmental websites. The departmental statement was removed because, at least for this issue, Barnard was enforcing institutional neutrality, which is good. (The claim that the Hamas/Israel war is a feminist issue is the way department always try to get around these restrictions. In fact, Id argue that if youre a feminist, youd want to support Israel, which doesnt oppress women or gays. But I digress.)
Asked to explain why the page was removed, college administrators told the department that the statement and links were impermissible political speech,a statement from the department said.
And if that applied to all official political, ideological, and moral issues, that would be great. Barnard would then be like the University of Chicago. The problem is that Barnard College seems to have taken it upon itself to judge whether some official political/ideological speech is okay, and other speech isnt. And that puts them in the position of being, as W. said, The Decider. What speech is acceptable, and what is not.
The Barnard administration then, in late October and November, rewrote its policies on political activity, website governance and campus events, giving itself wide latitude to decide what was and was not permissible political speech on campus, as well as final say over everything posted on Barnards website.
And so we get stuff like this:
At both Columbia and Barnard, an all-womens college that is formally part of Columbia University but has its own leadership and policies, administrators have asked the community to refrain from slogans and words that others may find hurtful. Both institutions have also issued reworded administrative rules that officially apply to everyone. But critics say that in reality, they are being used to curtail views the college does not want aired.
Under new rules Barnard emailed to faculty on Nov. 6, for example, all academic departments must submit changes to the content of their websites to the Office of the Provost for review and approval. All content on the colleges website may be amended or removed without notice, arelated policystates.
Arthur Eisenberg, executive counsel with the N.Y.C.L.U., said that the policy gives the administration discretion to determine what is permissible academic discourse on the website. And thats the problem, he said.
While the pro-Palestinian statement was taken down, for example, astatementby the Africana Studies Department decrying anti-Black racism and state-sanctioned violence in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020 was permitted to stay up.
No hurtful speech? Trying to maintain a position like that is asking for trouble.
At Chicago, statements about George Floyd, structural racism, state-sanctioned violence, and Black Lives matter on departmental websites was taken down, simply because these were political statements that had nothing to do with the mission of the departments who issued them or our University.
And now the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is warning Barnard that institutional neutrality amounts to censorship, not realizing that it is intended to prevent chilling of ideas. The problem is when you are trying to draw lines between hate speech and other speech. Its best to just adopt Kalven and not permit any official speech on politics or ideology.
Apparently, the NYCLU doesnt understand that, nor does it understand academic freedom:
The moves caught the attention of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which wrotea letterto Barnards new president, Laura Rosenbury, in December, warning that the website and political speech policies violated fundamental free speech principles and were incompatible with a sound understanding of academic freedom.
Such a regime will inevitably serve as a license for censorship, the letter said.
In a statement, the Barnard administration said that it had barred college resources from being used for political activity for at least a decade. Another policy barring political signs from being posted on campus was not directed at any ideology, it contended.
But the statement about George Floyd and state-sanctioned violence above is certainly a political statement. It would be barred here and, if Barnard adheres to its principles, it should be barred there. As for the ACLU defending academic freedom, thats simply not whats at issue.
The upshot seems to be that Barnard will approve of some political speech on department websites, but not all such speech. Sure, its fine to have the administration decide in advance what additions to department websites should be made, but they should simply ban all additions that make political, ideological or moral statements.
This kerfuffle is easily resolved:
Dear Barnard College,
The solution to your problems is this: adopt both the Chicago Principles of Free Expression, which youve already approved, but also the Kalven Principles of institutional neutrality.
Cordially, Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago
The big impediment is that some professors are so bursting with political bombast and feeling of virtue that they INSIST that their political views must be broadcast on their departmental websites. One example:
The Department of Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies has now created its own websitethat is not administered by the college, and posted its pro-Palestinian statement and resources there. It has for the past two months been in discussions with Barnards provost office about permitting a link from its official website to this website, Dr. Jakobsen said.
Fine, have your unofficial website. But the answer to whether this should link to the departmental website is NOPE! If Barnard says its okay, then theyre opening Pandoras box.
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Confusion at Barnard about free speech, institutional neutrality, and academic freedom - Why Evolution Is True
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Gurski: Emergencies Act ruling should be a stern lesson to government about free speech – Ottawa Citizen
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Gurski: Emergencies Act ruling should be a stern lesson to government about free speechΒ Β Ottawa Citizen
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Don’t ‘Jeopardize Free Speech That Is Fundamental’ to Harvard, Says Prof – Newsweek
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Harvard professor and international relations expert Joseph Nye has had a long and distinguished career, working on the ground in the Carter and Clinton administrations as well as many years teaching foreign policy. His new memoir, A Life in the American Century (Polity Books), is a diary of his life, including his years in the university and government and his thoughts about where the U.S. stands in today's global world order. In this Q&A, Nye talks about his advice for the interim and future president of Harvard in the wake of Claudine Gay's resignation, which countries should be highest on our radar to prevent the threat of nuclear war, what role the U.S. should play in the Russia-Ukraine war and the significance of U.S. alliances in the Middle East and more.
Q _ Has Harvard's reputation been tarnished by the controversy about campus antisemitism and allegations of plagiarism against former President Gay?
A _ Any time a president is compelled to resign, it is bound to tarnish an institution's reputation, but the fundamentals of Harvard's academic excellence have not changed.
What advice would you give to Harvard's interim and future presidents?
The next president must continue to pay attention to diversity but avoid bureaucratizing it or creating rigid rules. Since private universities are not bound by the First Amendment, a president can establish norms such as prohibiting calling for genocide of any people; but he or she must be careful that they do not jeopardize free speech that is fundamental to the institution. Private institutions can establish their own norms but should stay as close as possible to the First Amendment.
In the Carter administration, you worked on nuclear non-proliferation policy. In today's world, what should we be most concerned about relating to nuclear powers?
In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy said he expected more than 20 countries to have nuclear weapons in the 1970s. When I was put in charge of Carter's non-proliferation policy, the Arab oil embargo and ensuing energy crisis led many to believe that Kennedy's prediction would come true. Carter, a nuclear engineer, elevated the priority of non-proliferation and took a number of unpopular steps to slow down the spread I describe in my book. Today there are nine states with nuclear weapons. We have to focus on keeping numbers low, and in the immediate context that means focusing on Iran and North Korea.
You also worked on energy policy, but the world has changed a lot. Fracking has dramatically increased U.S. oil and gas production. Climate concerns also loom larger. How should the U.S. consider managing our energy needs?
In the '70s and '80s, the U.S. became increasingly dependent on imports of oil, particularly from the Middle East, and some analysts argued that the U.S. exploration had reached "peak oil." The technology of fracking (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) proved the skeptics wrong and the U.S. became virtually energy independent. The dilemma today is not too little oil but too much given the increasing scientific evidence of fossil fuels creating costly climate change. We have to design policies for a smooth transition away from fossil fuels, and once again technology can help.
As chair of the National Intelligence Council under President Bill Clinton, you grappled with issues related to the expansion of NATO. The possibility of membership for Ukraine was one of the reasons Russia has offered for invading. Given where we are now, what should the U.S. do about the conflict?
Vladimir Putin has used NATO expansion as an excuse to justify his invasion of Ukraine, but it was well known in Europe in 2022 that Ukraine was not about to join NATO. Putin's own writings describe how he did not regard Ukraine as a legitimate state but as a renegade that had to be reunited with the Russian world"Russkiy Mir." If Putin gets away with this effort to expand the Russian empire, it will put other states such as the Baltics and much of Europe at risk. The U.S. should continue to help Ukraine in its efforts to resist this imperialism.
You argue that the balance of power is essential for global interdependence. Which elements are the most significant in today's Middle East and how should it inform U.S. policy?
The world has benefited from an enormous increase in global trade and interdependence which continues despite wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. But every market depends on a security framework. Buyers and sellers may ignore security in the short term, but security is like oxygen. Once you start to miss it, you can think of nothing else. Since 1945, the global balance of power has depended on the role of the United States as the preeminent power. If our foreign policy turns away from the alliances and institutions we have created, there will be negative effects on the global economy and, in turn, our own prosperity and security.
Defense of its sovereign borders is one of a government's most important responsibilities. Israel's border was breached by Hamas, with over 1,200 people killed and about 250 taken hostage. The Israeli government says it didn't have a choice but to respond by attempting to dismantle Hamas in Gaza. Do you agree? Was there an alternative?
Every country has the right to defend its own borders, and the Hamas atrocity of October 7 meant that Israel had to react strongly. But overreaction is a mistake, because for every civilian killed in a counterterrorism operation, there is a danger of creating a next-generation terrorist. Terrorism is like jujitsu. The smaller player tries to exploit the strength of the stronger player against itself. This is the trap that Hamas set for Benjamin Netanyahu, and he fell into it. A smarter strategy would have involved a more targeted approach with more attention to reducing civilian casualties. As American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, there is a danger of winning the tactical battle and losing the strategic war.
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Biden is trying to balance Gaza protests and free speech rights as demonstrators disrupt his events – Hamilton Spectator
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