I do not anticipate an end to the war for, or against, free speech in academia. Last week was a bloody one in that struggle.
In California, the Regents of the University of California had an opportunity to wave glorious banners of censorship, blow trumpets, and retreat from the field. Some committee or working group proposed a Statement of Principles Against Intolerance, a dog's breakfast of poorly-defined wrongthink that would be patently unconstitutional if made mandatory. The Statement had what amounted to a censorship-abjuring loophole: it said that it could not "be used as the basis to discipline students, faculty,
or staff," making it more a proclamation of feels than a rule.
But it does not appear that bargain will hold. At a contentious Regents' meeting, several Regents demanded that the policy be be reworked to inflict punishment for violations of the vaguely-worded and generally unprincipled intolerance code. Regent Richard C. Blum threatened that his wife, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, would interfere and make trouble if the Regents didn't commit to punish people for prohibited speech. Meanwhile, students and faculty battled over whether the intolerance statement should adopt the State Department's definition of anti-Semitism and therefore cave to some factions that believe that Jews have a special right to be protected from certain arguments about Israel.
I predict that the University of California will take the wrong path and wind up buying a beach house for some lawyer.
Free speech still has principled support in academia, articulated by leaders who insist that students act like adults. In Nebraska, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman rebuked calls to censor preachers in Nebraska Union Plaza with a forthright call for free expression:
The university does not condone these comments. One would hope that the campus could enjoy intellectual disagreements without this type of rhetoric. Nonetheless, as far as we can determine the speakers were within their First Amendment rights of free speech. We have designated the plaza outside the Nebraska Union as a place where provocative speech can be conducted without disruption of the ongoing activities of the university.
. . . .
We all have the option to avoid the plaza if we neither want to hear nor be subjected to this type of language. In the end, we are fortunate to live in a free society where speech is protected, regardless of how offensive or provocative it might be.
At Wesleyan, when the student paper printed a controversial op-ed questioning the Black Lives Matter movement, University President Michael Roth defended the paper's right to print it and rejected demands that it be punished:
Some students not only have expressed their disagreement with the op-ed but have demanded apologies, a retraction and have even harassed the author and the newspaper’s editors. Some are claiming that the op-ed was less speech than action: it caused harm and made people of color feel unsafe.
Debates can raise intense emotions, but that doesn’t mean that we should demand ideological conformity because people are made uncomfortable. As members of a university community, we always have the right to respond with our own opinions, but there is no right not to be offended. We certainly have no right to harass people because we don’t like their views. Censorship diminishes true diversity of thinking; vigorous debate enlivens and instructs.
The existence of a few principled allies in the war for free speech is heartening. The existence of foes like Regent Blum (and his wife, a U.S. Senator) is not. But most disheartening of all is the recognition that in fighting for free speech we struggle against an army of child soldiers. At Wesleyan, students responded to their Presidents' example with arguments that free speech should be suppressed because it "silences" other speech and that permitting expression of viewpoints they don't like is a "coward's approach." At the student paper, editors wrote a cringing apology for having offered an offensive viewpoint. Will that paper allow a substantially non-conforming viewpoint in an op-ed again? I fear it will not.
The child soldiers — young people devoted to using official power to punish ideas they don't like — are terrifying because they seem so divorced from core American values like liberty, freedom of conscience and expression, and individual responsibility. Let's not forget that's our own damned fault.
Last 5 posts by Ken White
- Erdoğan and the European View of Free Speech - February 10th, 2017
- Still Annoying After All These Years: A Petty Government Story - February 9th, 2017
- Rights And Reality: Georgia Cop Jails Ex-Wife For Facebook Gripe - February 6th, 2017
- Gorsuch, Buzzfeed, and the Machinery of Death - February 1st, 2017
- Desperation For A Hero - January 31st, 2017
Is Wesleyan a private university? I keep hearing about how free speech only binds the hands of government.
" We have designated the plaza outside the Nebraska Union as a place where provocative speech can be conducted without disruption of the ongoing activities of the university."
Half a bravo to the University Nebraska, but speech is not really free when it is restricted to one officially sanctioned and approved location. Couldn't they have found an abandoned boiler room in the basement of one of the university buildings? Maybe this is plan B, when the protests get started and the heat rises.
Wesleyan is private.
However, I tend to agree with FIRE's take that institutional punishment by private institutions that promise free speech rights to students is worthy of comment.
(As opposed to, say, Liberty University, where you're not being promised any freedom.)
If Wesleyan were to advertise as only permitting campus speech that is deemed correct, then the students can cavort in censorship to their heart's content as far as I am concerned.
@James:
From my limited understanding, although maybe it only applies to pre-college schools, schools can limit speech such that it doesn't disrupt the learning and ongoing activities. As part of that, a general area where generic speech is allowed is valid.
Similar, some (most?) military bases have a "free speech" area which is typically located near, still visible, but off to the side of the entrance. The base commander (e.g. government) is limiting speech by enforcing it only in one area, but it's deemed acceptable because it keeps from disrupting the ongoing activities, allows security to remain in place without being so distracted, and still allows for the exercise of free speech.
I'm sure I got some of that wrong, but I hope not too badly.
I guess the name "Liberty University" can't be construed as any kind of claim for any sort of liberty existing there?
Di Fi, who never met any liberty she didn't hate, catapulted from SF Board of Supes to national political office thanks to the work of political assassin Dan White.
I think that a university's policies either in favor of or rallying against free speech should be taken into account in terms of accreditation. Put very approximately, a student who receives an education at an institution where speech is substantially oppressed has not attended a university. Part of the very notion of a university education is that the student has (we hope) learned to look their own and other people's ideas straight in the face, and entertained, criticized, advocated for or against many of them. I personally think that an essential element of a university education is the ability to cogently argue an opinion that one does not hold.
NB: I am pretty sure I disagree with Ken about 'trigger warnings,' although they aren't directly mentioned above. After having read a few pieces by advocates for them, I've become convinced that (when used appropriately!) they can be an asset to the learning process rather than detracting from or building a slippery slope under academia.
@Ken,
"dog's breakfast" – I like it, although in this case, "dog's breakfast aftermath" might be more appropriate.
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@En Passant,
So Blum threatened to sic his wife on 'em. Wonder who wears the pants in that family. (BTW, interesting read on Blum, in, of all places, wikipedia) I'll bet the Reagents were quaking in their boots! I still like the idea of Di Fi weighing in on the matter, just because it would be fun. She could put the 'douche' back in 'douchebag'.
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El Suerte: The fact someone has a right to do something doesn't make it the right thing to do.
Part of free speech is telling people:"Dude, not cool." Wesleyan may have a legal right to censor speech… and everyone ELSE has a legal right to say "Wesleyan is being a total douchenozzle for censoring speech." The idea that "It's not government censorship, therefore, it cannot be criticized" is one the left seems to have seized on with gusto, becoming, suddenly, radical free-marketers who support the moral, as well as the legal, right of private entities to limit speech… provided it's speech the left desires to see limited, naturally. When it's not (such as Clear Channel, a private entity, broadly banning music seen as 'unpatriotic' during the early days of Gulf War II), then, of course, government regulation is CLEARLY needed. (Not that the right is any better when it's their goose being gored. Suddenly, regulation is absolutely needed and the FCC has a moral obligation to get all this FILTH off the airwaves! Won't somebody please think of the children?)
They were willing to give Bernie Sanders a forum, while Bill Maher was blocked from speaking at UC Berkeley. Make of that what you will.
@Nathan…,
Having spent a fortune on a University education, the poor(in both senses) students find they must educate themselves outside the system, in order to see what the real world is like. Not much bang for the buck, eh? If public schools can become safe havens for unconstitutional rules, the Propaganda Ministry will have achieved another goal in it's push toward fascism: controlling the flow of information.
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Those comments are gold. "Then how do you combat ideas rooted in bigotry in a liberal arts institution?" With other ideas, dingus, that's how discourse works.
@lizard
I agree that a private institution that asserts it is devoted to learning and then shuts down or punishes legitimate speech is worthy of comment and criticism. But it is still worth distinguishing that from a government institution doing the same. If the government does it, then it is a true first amendment violation. If a private institution does it, then it is merely foolishness.
@ElSuerte,
If you're actually hearing that, the people you're hearing it from are idiots. More likely, you're hearing that the First Amendment only binds the hands of government, which is correct. Free speech is a concept, and doesn't (as such) bind anyone's hands.
Private organizations can do any number of things which infringe on free speech within their respective spheres of influence. Although these actions aren't unconstitutional (their not being the government and all), they're usually a bad idea, and fair grounds for censure of that organization.
An institution that asserts it is devoted to learning, honoring free speech, etc. that then does the exact opposite ought to be charged with False Advertising and Fraud.
Ken, your spot-on remarks about child soldiers reminded me of this timely little piece by W.B. Yeats, whose context is explained by its lengthy title. It will be 100 years old next year:
On hearing that the Students of Our New University have joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Agitation against Immoral Literature
WHERE, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age.
–W.B. Yeats, 1916
I would call it a cowardly act to sweep any truth under the rug, no matter how embarrassing, inconvenient or even costly. What is integrity worth? The way to deal with truth we don't like is to face it head on, eyes forward. It's how we become better people. It's what we are supposed to be teaching our children.
The way to counter speech you don't like isn't with censorship. If something is offensive, then call it out, reject it, hold it up as an example, and use it as a teaching exercise. We should be shining the light of truth on stupidity, not letting it grow by turning our backs on it.
@Dan: "More likely, you're hearing that the First Amendment only binds the hands of government, which is correct. Free speech is a concept, and doesn't (as such) bind anyone's hands."
People who conflate the 1st Amendment proper with the ideal of free speech are, IMO, just trying to indulge their censorious urges while still seeing themselves as liberals/progressives/freethinkers. Such views often correlate with the notion that the Bill of Rights is — rather than a collection of noble ideals which legally restrain the government — just a bunch of lucky privileges to be revoked whenever it's convenient to do so.
Wood chippers all the way down…
Humans have a long history revering the previous generation and reviling the next one, but in the case of millennials, it's completely justified. Nobody under 30 should be allowed outside without adult supervision.
Are there any Free Speech organizations that would be worth Time (though I don't have money) to donate to?
Universities have usually engaged in censorship of unapproved points of view. One of the ironies of late 18th Century England was that so many of the premier minds of the day – Joseph Priestly being an example – were not Oxbridge educated, because as "dissenters" (non-Anglicans) they were not allowed to attend.
The idea that every child should go to college is a fairly recent development, and not necessarily a good one. Giving children the basic tools of an education used to be the job of the primary school system, a job which it has abandoned in favor of pleasing the teachers' unions. College was traditionally for serious scholarship, combined with what amounted to day-care for those sons of the wealthy who were not occupied in the Military or as remittance men.
Should Universities that promise a free exchange of ideas in their promotional literature be ridiculed (or sued for breach of implied contract) for censorship? Absolutely. But let's not pretend that censorship is a strange and foreign beast on college campuses. It's in its natural habitat.
Liberty University was forced to invite all Presidential candidates, on pain of losing their tax exemption some years back (they cannot be totally partisan). So Sanders should be commended for going into the lions den, and the students for treating him respectfully.
The best comment on Dianne Feinstein that I ever heard came when she was mayor of San Francisco: "She doesn't care what you do in bed so long as you're in bed by 9:00."
@C.S.P.,
"…The idea that every child should go to college is a fairly recent development, and not necessarily a good one…."
It's because we're taught that kids need a college degree to get a good job. It's high-priced vocational training. It's a joke. Universities are part of the big money system, with multi-millionaire presidents, over-paid bureaucrats, mostly well-off students (except those who become tuition-loan debt-slaves).
I've met lots of Ph.Ds who well knew their field, but didn't know shit about anything else. How can these yokels ever become good citizens? They think they're smart because they watch PBS and listen to NPR.
A friend has 2 kids. The son studied MRP, and walked right into a job after graduation. The daughter studied Marine Biology, and married a software engineer. So do you want to be an employed engineer, or an unemployed philosophy major?
Just sayin'.
Now that we're in an age of barristas with Masters degrees, what's a poor dumb kid with a high school diploma to do?
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Albert,
"Now that we're in an age of barristas with Masters degrees, what's a poor dumb kid with a high school diploma to do?
. .. . .. oh"
Well, he could figure a way to work with his hands. I don't think the auto-mechanic business requires a degree. My renter is a tough kid from Albania, and seems to be seeking his fortune that way.
Of course, maybe he's really secretly in the sex-slave or heroin business, like all the Albanians in the movies….
Which is, of course, one of the best recommendations he could get. If Wholly-Odd despises your people, you can't be all bad.
But you're dead right that far too many degrees are passed out, and far too many fields are now studied in college.
My Father was a Professor of the History of Science and Technology. At the end of his career he was astonished at how much money society was prepared to pay him. He knew that, unlike instructors in the science and engineering fields (and the social sciences do not count), he was a luxury good. He loved the research, and much of the teaching, and was a scholar to his core, but if he had been asked which society needed more – Professors of History of Science or good plumbers – he'd have said plumbers.
It all comes back to the would-be ruling class – the Liberal 'Intellectual' Radical Progressives, or LIRPs. They aren't really 'Intellectuals', or 'mind workers'. Intellectuals implies some degree of original thought. What they are is a Clerisy; a class of people who know how to read and write. There was a time when such people were rare and, in a way, important. But with the rise of literacy in the Lower Orders, they are basically clerks. They aren't really smart enough to think of new things, but they'll do for cataloging the old ones.
The problem being; there are too goddamned many of them, and like most groups they are completely convinced, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that the world would be a much better place if only they were running things.
And one of the things they do to further that end is try their damnedest to turn every halfway bright young person into another Clerk.
It's a while now since Occupy Wall Street, but the schmoo who was part of it, and complained that he had $30,000 in debt for a Masters Degree in Puppetry still haunts me. Unlike a lot of people, I don't consider him an idiot (or not much more so than I was at his age); her was just doing what society told him to. You want to do something, you get a college degree in it. And what I want to know is, when the F*CK did that happen? As opposed to, say, hitchhiking to Los Angeles, getting a job running coffee for Jim Henson Studios, and pitching in?
The Clerisy have sold us a bill of goods. They aren't scholars. If they were, they would be massively in excess of requirements. Their degrees are largely without value. College is for the Hard Sciences, the Engineering disciplines, and what few real scholars the world needs. Young people should graduate from high school with an education up to the task of allowing them to teach themselves any sub-set of scholarship that holds their interest, if any does. And there should be trade schools for people who work with their hands. Preferably not run by the government, since those guys could screw hop a picnic.
I'm generally supportive of the core idea behind the Black Lives Matter concept, but I thought that student op-ed was really well written and thoughtful. Anyone who was made to feel unsafe by it is demanding absolute conformity, and rejecting that anyone has a right to ask any questions of the movement.
I am not a lawyer, but…
I don't buy that it's not government censorship. The University of California is a state institution. It certainly does not have unlimited power to punish its students' speech, though I would expect time, place and manner restrictions aimed at preventing disruption of operations to stand, provided those restrictions are content neutral (which UC's new code certainly is not).
In the case of a private institution like Wesleyan or even Liberty University, I wouldn't expect a court to question any rule they make, unless that rule were imposed on the school by government, perhaps as a condition of receiving tax funds. The recent DOE letter demanding an end to due process for students accused of rape is that kind of federal imposition, and because it is, students who suffer from the policy can probably have it struck down on constitutional grounds, even if the school in question is a private one. But I don't think the same is true of speech codes at private colleges, at least until DiFi gets around to carrying out her husband's threat.
I just got out of a meeting with a Dean involving the new federal standards for investigation of sexual misconduct. There are no longer any hearings before a committee of any kind. Instead, a committee considers a written investigation and makes a decision, without ever talking to or seeing the accused or the accuser. They can, however, get to see and question the investigators. The Obama administration doesn't give two hoots for due process or any other Constitutional protection, based on what I can tell from their new process
@CSP,
I employed a German auto mechanic many years ago. In Germany, he learned not only auto servicing, but business accounting and record keeping, and anything else necessary to run a small auto repair shop. Those were trade schools in Germany back then. Trade skills in the service industry cannot be outsourced:).
Interesting the your dad was a"…Professor of the History of Science and Technology….". Now I happen to believe that's a very important subject. Today's scientists have no knowledge of the foundations upon which they are building their careers. Consequently, they cannot evaluate, let alone question, the work of their predecessors, which, as is true of atomic physics, could be totally bogus.
Sorry, but getting a degree in something won't get you a job. Motivation for becoming successful doing something you love has been replaced by motivation to get a degree. The very best programmers I've ever met in my 20+ years career as a s/w engineer had no degrees in CS; some had no degrees at all. If your goal is to become rich, you don't even need college. The guy who started Waste Management started with one garbage truck in his town, because no one else would do it.
We had 2 guys with physics degrees in my real estate appraisal class. Soon, college degrees will be required for any job.
"Sorry, but your 10 year record as a top toilet cleaner and $5 will get you a cup of coffee. I've got several Ph.Ds with degrees in Bull-Shit in front of you, you sorry-ass MF."
It's a crazy old world, ain't it?
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jdgalt – A lot of universities like to play it both ways. When they want something that a public institution would get, they play up the "public" part. When they want to impose rules and orders or limitations, they fall back on "private" institution. That's not all universities/colleges, but many do this. It's a shady way to do business, but, well, repetition?
Wat.
Even by the standards of hyperbolic rhetoric, equating 'college students (essentially all of whom are legally adults) I don't agree with' and 'actual children forced to fight and die in armed conflict' is pretty crazy. I suppose that by extension, teaching college students these views you disagree with is effectively a war crime?
Just because freedom of speech gives us the ability to make terrible analogies doesn't mean we actually have to.
Remember, that guy had a job as a teacher that he quit in order to get his useless degree. Which IIRC, he wanted to be a teacher
Careless,
My point is that, in general, if you want to do something, almost anything, society tells you to go to college and get a degree in it. Certainly the Colleges do. And for a bunch of things, that's absurd.
OK, yes, ideally Puppetboy should have known better. But fact-checking everything that Society expects you to do is exhausting. And often a waste of time.
I mean, how out-of-date am I? I'm only 54, but my Parents belonged to the WWII generation, and both of them were history teachers. Maybe I think that hitching to Hollywood and getting a go-fer job is the reasonable thing to do because of my exposure to a time when most people didn't aspire to college degrees. It just seems weird to me that one would go for a degree in Puppetry, unless one was on, say, a Varsity team and had no interest in Basket Weaving.
Well if the California university system's going to throw cash around settling 1A suits, then I need to apply and get myself a sign critical of Israel. KA-CHING
I think the biggest threat to free speech today comes from network companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google.
As I understand it, Facebook, Twitter and Google can restrict speech on their platforms without running afoul of the First Amendment because they are private companies. Nevertheless, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit and others constitute a new public square.
Almost nobody goes to a physical public square anymore to say what they have to say. Most people do it online. Therefore restrictions on speech by companies that control the new public squares are very serious.
Due to networking effects, there really can be only one Facebook or Twitter or Google. In each instance company with the largest network wins the space and becomes a monopoly. If all the 'public squares' of the future are controlled by private companies and speech-restricted, the future of free speech is not bright.
Imagine if when the telephone or email came about, the companies which ran the networks chose to restrict speech. That is what seems to be happening now with Facebook and Twitter among others. Worse, Facebook, Twitter and Google are network monopolies in their respective spaces (this is an important distinction; each of these operates a different space, and they are not substitutes of each other). All new users prefer whoever has the largest network, endlessly reinforcing the monopolist's position. There is no viable substitute to any of the above platforms since a network without people is not a network at all.
It seems that free-speech advocates need to make a case that these platforms, since they are de facto monopolies (in their respective distinct spaces) due to network effects, need to have something like the First Amendment. The First Amendment is hollow if the only 'public squares' it protects are historical relics.
On the one hand, the First Amendment is as strong as ever. On the other hand, it is hollow if so many modern spaces of public debate are not protected.
Dianne Feinstein also was a proponent of amending the constitution to allow banning flag burning. And she was one of the many politicians whining about the court decision against “under God” in the pledge. So apparently she only opposes intolerance if it's against a group other than atheists.
“The Statement had what amounted to a censorship-abjuring loophole: it said that it could not "be used as the basis to discipline students, faculty,
or staff," making it more a proclamation of feels than a rule.”
[note: the carriage return between “faculty,” and “or staff” appears to be in the original]
But that loophole can then be countered by the loophole of labeling adverse action “administrative” or “academic”.
@En Passant
“Di Fi, who never met any liberty she didn't hate, catapulted from SF Board of Supes to national political office thanks to the work of political assassin Dan White.”
The term “political assassination” is generally used to refer to the use of political means to remove someone from power. Actually killing a politician is generally just called “assassination”.
@Lizard
“They were willing to give Bernie Sanders a forum, while Bill Maher was blocked from speaking at UC Berkeley.”
What are you talking about? Bill Maher gave the keynote at the 2014 Winter Commencement.
@Anton: And this is yet another reason why Usenet was a great advance over its successors.
Jewish groups who call for restrictions on settled matters of constitutional law are acting in direct defiance of basic Jewish ethics. The concept of "dina d'malkhuta dina," Aramaic דִּינָא דְּמַלְכוּתָא דִּינָא, "the law of the land is the law," is foundational in Jewish law. The Christian equivalent would be "render unto Caesar," but the Jewish version is more binding: it is halakha, or law, as basic as keeping kosher. It appears repeatedly in Talmud and subsequent legal literature. The phrase commands that general or conceptual secular problems that do not conflict with Jewish are for secular courts, because "the law of the land is the law."
Students at UCLA, for example, are fortunate to have world-class faculty in this very field so they have no excuse. Those who just don't want to hear what they consider beyond the pale can attend the fine University of Judaism just up the hill from UCLA on Mulholland Drive in the Sepulveda Pass.
Child soldiers who are also shallow vessels unaware of what they're doing reflect the failure of universities to teach the moment. However the shallowness is also a structural weakness that will cause this nonsense to collapse under the weight of it's own contradictions. Dina d'malkhuta dina.