Domain: thefire.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to thefire.org.
Comments · 103
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Re: Thou Shalt not Expose...
I guess you could always go check with the guys who monitor this sort of thing and expose the worst abusers, rather than the apologists for the Universities involved....
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Re: Thou Shalt not Expose...
I guess you could always go check with the guys who monitor this sort of thing and expose the worst abusers, rather than the apologists for the Universities involved....
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Re: Hire stupid harassers
I love how here any such claims, no matter how wild, get modded up high. Now I expect to be modded down for pointing this out, despite it being true. If there's one thing the "anti SJW" can't stand it's dissent.
Do you work for a company with more then 300 people, a Fortune company, or company listed on a major stock exchange that has annual profits greater than $15m/year? How about been to a university in Canada, US, or Europe in the last 15 years? Can you name the last time you had mandatory workshops on any of the following: Sexual harassment/workplace etiquette/triggers/trigger-words/micro-aggressions/politically (in)correct language/politically correct speech/politically correct terminology.
Has your HR dept or student life/student union/professor published memo's outlining speech guidelines, improper speech, improper word usage in essays/papers, warnings against particular types of speech in the university and/or aggressively made restricted speech in a public university which is backed by the university president and/or dean of students. Thinking on the university, can you or can you or not remember at any point in the last 4 years where a TA, professor or tenured professor has been unofficially or officially sanctioned by either other professors, or adjoining body, or open protests by students for wanting to show full arguments/open discussion/defense of speech/views protected by charter/constitutional law/students rights charter/employment act/student union protections on an issue.
If the answer is no. Then you haven't interacted with mainstream education, or corporate culture in the last decade in any western country. In turn, you're ignorant of what's going on around you. If yes, then you're either accepting of these views or you're either not paying attention or are simply lowering your head so much to not make any waves, you've accepted the abnormal as normal.
Feel free to read campusreform, Fire, or anything similar for universities. Go on and read up about the Title IX abuses and abuse of students with no due process for indictable offences/felonies. Feel free to read the employment manual and/or the up to 20 supplemental documents at a major company. Read The Guardian, Vox, Vice, The Root, Huffpo, and read the articles that led to those same policies you're now skimming over. Look at the universities that are primary hires at these major companies, then go take a look at the googlers and their statements. Notice anything yet?
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Re:They COULD be as important
Have you taken a liberal arts/humanities class in the last 10-20 years, do you know someone who teaches one, or are you just parroting the anti-intellectual bullshit of the alt-Right?
Oh look, the bogyman of 'alt-right' again. Instead of actually thinking that there's a problem it's the repeat of "OMG LOOK ANTI-INTELLECTUAL CONSERVATIVE" that leftists pushed 20 years ago. Seriously, stop with the bullshit, and realize that there's a serious problem with these areas. You need examples? Go hit campus reform. Need more examples? Go hit FIRE Japan didn't gut the piss out of humanities and liberal arts for no reason. Evergreen college didn't have a massive drop in student enrollment for no reason. University of Missouri didn't have a massive drop in enrollment for no reason either. Wilfred-Laurier didn't have a drop for no reason. Along with a bunch of other universities, and in each case that drop, the fact that students transferred out in droves, should tell you something. And in each case, it was very specific.
But hey, whatever. The problem is obviously everyone else, not the batshit crazies that are driving people out. It's really the alt-right, conservatives, christians, republicans, or whatever bogyman you need this week. It's always someone else, it's always that next mythical enemy over the hill that's out to ruin the reputation of xyz thing.
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Re:Why was this allowed in the first place?
University Law trumped state law after the Dear Colleague letter, which obligated colleges to have their own Title IX hearings where guilt was decided on a 'preponderance of evidence' rather than 'beyond a reasonable doubt' if they wanted to continue to have Federal funding.
https://www2.ed.gov/print/abou...
As noted above, the Title IX regulation requires schools to provide equitable grievance procedures. As part of these procedures, schools generally conduct investigations and hearings to determine whether sexual harassment or violence occurred. In addressing complaints filed with OCR under Title IX, OCR reviews a school's procedures to determine whether the school is using a preponderance of the evidence standard to evaluate complaints. The Supreme Court has applied a preponderance of the evidence standard in civil litigation involving discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), 42 U.S.C. SS 2000e et seq. Like Title IX,
Which led to cases like this
https://www.thefire.org/victor...
In finding Warner guilty, UND used the weak "preponderance of the evidence" standard (50.01% certainty) to determine guilt or innocence-the very same standard recently imposed upon every federally funded college in the country under an April 2011 regulation from the federal Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
UND's reliance on the "preponderance of the evidence" standard lowered the accuracy of the proceedings so much that the police and the university arrived at very different results. Using what the university later insisted was the very same evidence, UND's campus tribunal convicted Warner of sexual assault, while the Grand Forks Police Department determined that Warner's accuser had lied about what had happened.
In fact, on May 13, 2010, the Grand Forks County District Court formally charged Warner's accuser with "False information or report to law enforcement officers or security officials," a Class A misdemeanor, and issued a warrant for her arrest on May 17, 2010. To date, Warner's accuser has failed to appear to answer the charges against her.
"When you only have to be 50.01% sure about the evidence, it's easy to make a mistake or to let bias, conscious or otherwise, determine the outcome-especially in campus justice systems. Yet, the federal government is now mandating that this flaw be enshrined at practically every university in the country," said FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley.
Warner first requested a rehearing on July 28, 2010, but UND refused to grant it. In the spring of 2011, Warner asked for FIRE's help. On May 11, 2011, FIRE wrote UND President Robert O. Kelley, pointing out the university's procedural errors and criticizing its failure to reconsider the case. On May 20, UND responded to FIRE, once again denying Warner's request for a rehearing. This is when UND revealed that it had used the very same evidence to find Caleb Warner guilty of sexual assault that the police and prosecutor had used to charge his accuser with lying to law enforcement.
On July 15, an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal by FIRE Chairman Harvey A. Silverglate launched FIRE's national press campaign to encourage UND to give Warner a fair rehearing. Two weeks later, UND Provost Paul LeBel finally invited Warner to appeal the finding against him. With the help of attorney Nathan Hansen, Warner submitted a new appeal on August 31.
Late last week, Warner received a ruling from LeBel announcing that "based on the specific fact of a law enforcement office filing an affadavit of belief that the complainant had provided false information to him" about the sexual assault accusation, a "continued fin
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Re:The moral of the story
Which ones? Or is this a Trumpian "a lot of people are saying"?
Why don't you check out http://thefire.org/ and http://campusreform.org/ both who've been recording this type of garbage pouring out of academia for the last decade.
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Fighting words only exist face-to-face
Three points:
- Fighting words must be "face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation."
- Online speech isn't face-to-face.
- There's serious doubt about whether the exemption itself is still valid.
Here's a more complete explanation written by an actual first amendment lawyer:
Trope Seven: "Fighting words"
Example: "There are two exceptions from the constitutional right to free speech – defamation and the doctrine of “fighting words” or “incitement,” said John Szmer, an associate professor of political science and a constitutional law expert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte." McClatchy.com, May 4, 2015.
No discussion of controversial speech is complete without some idiot suggesting that it may be "fighting words."
In 1942 the Supreme Court held that the government could prohibit "fighting words" — "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The Supreme Court has been retreating from that pronouncement ever since. If the "fighting words" doctrine survives — that's in serious doubt — it's limited to face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation. The Supreme Court has rejected every opportunity to use the doctrine to support restrictions on speech. The "which by their very utterance inflict injury" language the Supreme Court dropped in passing finds no support whatsoever in modern law — the only remaining focus is on whether the speech will provoke immediate face-to-face violence.
That's almost always irrelevant to the sort of speech at issue when the media invokes the trope.
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Fighting words only exist face-to-face
Three points:
- Fighting words must be "face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation."
- Online speech isn't face-to-face.
- There's serious doubt about whether the exemption itself is still valid.
Here's a more complete explanation written by an actual first amendment lawyer:
Trope Seven: "Fighting words"
Example: "There are two exceptions from the constitutional right to free speech – defamation and the doctrine of “fighting words” or “incitement,” said John Szmer, an associate professor of political science and a constitutional law expert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte." McClatchy.com, May 4, 2015.
No discussion of controversial speech is complete without some idiot suggesting that it may be "fighting words."
In 1942 the Supreme Court held that the government could prohibit "fighting words" — "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The Supreme Court has been retreating from that pronouncement ever since. If the "fighting words" doctrine survives — that's in serious doubt — it's limited to face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation. The Supreme Court has rejected every opportunity to use the doctrine to support restrictions on speech. The "which by their very utterance inflict injury" language the Supreme Court dropped in passing finds no support whatsoever in modern law — the only remaining focus is on whether the speech will provoke immediate face-to-face violence.
That's almost always irrelevant to the sort of speech at issue when the media invokes the trope.
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Re:Evergreen State
And I wish Evergreen were just a completely fringe case. But sadly, even many mainstream universities in red states are now indoctrinating students and stifling any dissent. Even reddest of red states, Tennessee, had to pass a law (against the opposition of its own public university administrations) just to guarantee students basic free speech rights.
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Re:No kidding...
Despite your seemingly "reasonable" tone and content your post is a load of rubbish. Lets look in detail.
You mistakenly presume that there is any sort of government censorship of Republicans by "left-wing thugs" to begin with. This claim does not stand up to even the most basic form of scrutiny....
That is a straw man. He didn't write that it was government censorship, but rather "left-wing thugs" shutting down speech. That is true. Here are just two of many recent examples:
College Protestors Send Professor to the ER
Conspiring to stifle free speech is a crime: Glenn Reynolds...not to mention the judicial which now leans conservative;
Really? The judiciary "leans conservative" so soon after 8 years of Obama appointments? Of the last 24 years Democrats have had 16 years of making appointments and 8 years of obstructing Republican appointments as best they could. Trump has made 1 (one) judicial appointment that was seated only a few weeks ago. If the judiciary "now leans conservative" how are Trump's travel ban executive orders being challenged in such unprecedented ways and on what are essentially frivolous grounds? You don't know what you are talking about.
so if we are to talk realistically about what you perceive to be an infringement of your right to call those who disagree with you "left-wing thugs," your own post is clear proof to the contrary.
This is more nonsense. He isn't complaining about being unable to "call those who disagree with you "left-wing thugs," he is complaining about the left-wing thugs (previously cited) who are using violence to shut down speakers invited by or speaking from a conservative or Republicans viewpoint.
But perhaps, like many of your ilk, you are too ignorant to understand the difference between someone who disagrees with the kind of ill-informed, uneducated, right-wing vitriol that you spew, and someone who actually imposes a legal order against your ability to speak out in this "marketplace of ideas" that you vaguely refer to.
You appear to be misinformed. Mobs wielding baseball bats and fire bombs are not "someone who actually imposes a legal order against your ability to speak out." As to the question of who is "spewing" vitriol, I suggest a comparison of your response and the post you relied to. You have things backwards.
As your political class has never historically had their actual constitutional freedoms curtailed by law, perhaps a more charitable observer would forgive you for such a spectacularly persistent inability to recognize whether the government is actually oppressing you.
Oh absolutely! Who could possibly notice the infringement of rights
.. which never happen?
Police Can Seize And Sell Assets Even When The Owner Broke No Law
Top Ten Worst Abuses of Eminent Domain Spotlighted in New Report
Wichita State University: Student Government Denies Recognition to Libertarian Group Because It Defends Free Speech
Part of D.C. Gun Carry Law Struck Down in Federal CourtBut perhaps, like many of your ilk, you are too ignorant to understand the difference between someo
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Re:You can do that anyway...
Either you're a liar or an idiot. I'm not sure which, but there's a reason why The FIRE exists and there have been multiple court cases on this across the US. Here's an example from my own back yard. And the "micro aggression" crowd going after people for "cultural appropriation" and yoga mats. Now we can get into the UK the US, and some more of the US. And one can really keep going. FYI west coast universities, and universities in Southern Ontario are the worst in North America right now for this garbage.
Bonus article, about students in favor of banning free speech in the UK to protect feelings.
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It is a troubling trend
As a private institution, Harvard does indeed have the right to pull the plug on admissions on anyone. However, it is a (and excuse using what often is a logical fallacy ), a slippery slope. With all of the illogical attacks and rampant emotionalism happening on campus these days, I often say to my sig-other, that I would never attend college these days. In fact, as a alumni of one of the most liberal colleges, I don't support the alumni association with donations, instead I give my dough to thefire.org. If you haven't been keeping track, here are a few examples: Yale 2.0 at Evergreen State College, When the left eats its own, Harvard president defends free speech in commencement speech; Harvard still actively suppresses student rights, and the list just goes on and on. The trend away from using logic, peer-review, toward speech-crimes and railing against traditional western liberal free thought and debate is just intellectually mind numbing.
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It is a troubling trend
As a private institution, Harvard does indeed have the right to pull the plug on admissions on anyone. However, it is a (and excuse using what often is a logical fallacy ), a slippery slope. With all of the illogical attacks and rampant emotionalism happening on campus these days, I often say to my sig-other, that I would never attend college these days. In fact, as a alumni of one of the most liberal colleges, I don't support the alumni association with donations, instead I give my dough to thefire.org. If you haven't been keeping track, here are a few examples: Yale 2.0 at Evergreen State College, When the left eats its own, Harvard president defends free speech in commencement speech; Harvard still actively suppresses student rights, and the list just goes on and on. The trend away from using logic, peer-review, toward speech-crimes and railing against traditional western liberal free thought and debate is just intellectually mind numbing.
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It is a troubling trend
As a private institution, Harvard does indeed have the right to pull the plug on admissions on anyone. However, it is a (and excuse using what often is a logical fallacy ), a slippery slope. With all of the illogical attacks and rampant emotionalism happening on campus these days, I often say to my sig-other, that I would never attend college these days. In fact, as a alumni of one of the most liberal colleges, I don't support the alumni association with donations, instead I give my dough to thefire.org. If you haven't been keeping track, here are a few examples: Yale 2.0 at Evergreen State College, When the left eats its own, Harvard president defends free speech in commencement speech; Harvard still actively suppresses student rights, and the list just goes on and on. The trend away from using logic, peer-review, toward speech-crimes and railing against traditional western liberal free thought and debate is just intellectually mind numbing.
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Re:Wow!
As historian W. Jelani Cobb notes, "The freedom to offend the powerful is not equivalent to the freedom to bully the relatively disempowered. The enlightenment principles that undergird free speech also prescribed that the natural limits of one's liberty lie at the precise point at which it begins to impose upon the liberty of another." There is no doubt that the speakers in question impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty at Wellesley. We are especially concerned with the impact of speakers' presentations on Wellesley students, who often feel the injury most acutely and invest time and energy in rebutting the speakers' arguments. Students object in order to affirm their humanity. This work is not optional; students feel they would be unable to carry out their responsibilities as students without standing up for themselves. Furthermore, we object to the notion that onlookers who are part of the faculty or administration are qualified to adjudicate the harm described by students, especially when so many students have come forward. When dozens of students tell us they are in distress as a result of a speaker's words, we must take these complaints at face value.
What is especially disturbing about this pattern of harm is that in many cases, the damage could have been avoided. The speakers who appeared on campus presented ideas that they had published, and those who hosted the speakers could certainly anticipate that these ideas would be painful to significant portions of the Wellesley community. Laura Kipnis's recent visit to Wellesley prompted students to respond to Kipnis's presentation with a video post on Facebook. Kipnis posted the video on her page, and professor Tom Cushman left a comment that publicly disparaged the students who produced the video.
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Re:Valid
So he hasn't actually gone so far as college campuses in limiting and punishing speech?*
Well, good then, he is simply exercising his free speech and expressing an opinion about what the law should be. Wake me if he actually tries to impose unconstitutional speech codes like college campuses.
Concerned about repression on college campuses? Consider a gift to: FIRE - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
*And whose Secretary of Education may very well review those unconstitutional rules?
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Re:good for them
A worthwhile org run by liberal lawyers highlighting the anti-free-speech youth movements and their scholastic enablers.
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Re:So long as it is PUBLIC posts... meh...
I would like to be living in the world that you believe exists.
In many of the cases in news reports of student disciplinary actions that led to criminal charges, students were not allowed to contact their parents, were not informed of the right to have a lawyer, and in fact didn't have a right to a lawyer.
That's true even for college students. https://www.thefire.org/fire-g...
There was a court ruling in North Carolina which gave high school students limited constitutional rights in disciplinary hearings. http://tharringtonsmith.com/st... The significant points are (1) Up to that case, they didn't have constitutional rights (2) That case only applies in North Carolina (3) The rights are still limited. Students still don't have a right to a lawyer at most parts of the disciplinary process.
If you want to look it up, Emily Yoffe was writing in Slate about sex abuse charges. In one case, a student got a Skype call over the summer about an accusation he knew nothing about. It was basically an ambush hearing. He said that he thought that he should get a lawyer first. The university official running the hearing said that if he didn't participate in the hearing, they would make their decision without his input.
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Re:vote with your feet
Black Lives Matter has a lot of legitimate points, but what happened to Michael Brown was not one of them. It's unpleasantly common for police to kill people who aren't actually threatening anyone and get away with it, particularly when the victims are blacks. We're starting to see some action on that, including the bypassing of grand juries and the drive for body cams.
Police brutality is an issue for everybody, not just black people. That they choose to highlight ridiculous cases, make the issue only about blacks, ignore black on black violence and black on white violence, and make ridiculous protests because Clinton said "super-predator" when describing criminal gangs in the 1990s all goes back to the "progressive" stupidity inundating the country.
I haven't seen all that much suppression of free speech on campuses.
https://www.thefire.org/catego...
This is also a good place to mention the University of Missouri ridiculousness as part of the general zeitgeist of college campuses.
As far as social media goes, if you want to say things on Facebook, you've got to abide by Facebook rules. The social media are privately owned, and nobody's got a right to say whatever they want on them.
No shit, but free speech isn't just about legal rights. That they're bowing to pressure to censor politically incorrect speech is the point.
I have no idea what problem you have with transgender people. The other 99% can deal with transgender people just like they deal with everybody else, and have no problems whatsoever.
If that's the case, then why is there all the media attention pushing for transgender acceptance? Why was everybody falling over themselves to talk about how "brave and stunning" Bruce Jenner was when he attempted to transform himself into a woman, and not talking about the person he killed with his car?
If somebody wants to pretend they're a woman when they're a man, well it's a free country, but I'm never going to see them as a woman, despite the barrage of "progressive" media. There's an alternative viewpoint that it's a mental illness, and normalizing transgenderism and encouraging body mutilation with hormones and reassignment surgery is unhealthy.
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Re:All awful but the bias is interesting
FIRE does take a lot of those cases, but yeah your post is pretty ignorant and downright incorrect. Let me list a few: 1) Defending a self-described socialist - http://web.archive.org/web/200...
2) Student suspended for reading a book from school library on the downfall of hte KKK - http://www.thefire.org/article...
3) Defending a student who'd been unilaterally expelled over a joke - http://chronicle.com/article/F...
4) Defending an atheist college professor - http://insidehighered.com/news...
5) Calling out Depaul for not recognizing a pro-marijauna group - http://thefire.org/article/123...
6) FIRE calls out university for denying an LGBT group school recognition - https://www.thefire.org/fire-l...
I can go on if you want. Lots of these cases do seem skewed toward benefitting white males, but if you look at the actual cases well you'd see why. Lots of the decisions they draw FIRE's ire are fucking stupid, short-sighted, and somehow scraped their way out of a poorly run administration meeting. -
Re:All awful but the bias is interesting
FIRE does take a lot of those cases, but yeah your post is pretty ignorant and downright incorrect. Let me list a few: 1) Defending a self-described socialist - http://web.archive.org/web/200...
2) Student suspended for reading a book from school library on the downfall of hte KKK - http://www.thefire.org/article...
3) Defending a student who'd been unilaterally expelled over a joke - http://chronicle.com/article/F...
4) Defending an atheist college professor - http://insidehighered.com/news...
5) Calling out Depaul for not recognizing a pro-marijauna group - http://thefire.org/article/123...
6) FIRE calls out university for denying an LGBT group school recognition - https://www.thefire.org/fire-l...
I can go on if you want. Lots of these cases do seem skewed toward benefitting white males, but if you look at the actual cases well you'd see why. Lots of the decisions they draw FIRE's ire are fucking stupid, short-sighted, and somehow scraped their way out of a poorly run administration meeting. -
Re:All awful but the bias is interesting
FIRE does take a lot of those cases, but yeah your post is pretty ignorant and downright incorrect. Let me list a few: 1) Defending a self-described socialist - http://web.archive.org/web/200...
2) Student suspended for reading a book from school library on the downfall of hte KKK - http://www.thefire.org/article...
3) Defending a student who'd been unilaterally expelled over a joke - http://chronicle.com/article/F...
4) Defending an atheist college professor - http://insidehighered.com/news...
5) Calling out Depaul for not recognizing a pro-marijauna group - http://thefire.org/article/123...
6) FIRE calls out university for denying an LGBT group school recognition - https://www.thefire.org/fire-l...
I can go on if you want. Lots of these cases do seem skewed toward benefitting white males, but if you look at the actual cases well you'd see why. Lots of the decisions they draw FIRE's ire are fucking stupid, short-sighted, and somehow scraped their way out of a poorly run administration meeting. -
Re:More like 'Plans to ruin Tor forever'
Might I suggest you consider FIRE for a donation? They do good work, including much that the ACLU seems to have little appetite for.
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Re:I think the problem is overstated
The problem is that it's a lot of isolated incidents that are piling up. There was a famous case from several years prior where someone was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book about the KKK because some other prat found it offensive. It wasn't even a book praising the Klan, but rather one about how people had stood up to them. You see it in plenty of other areas where campuses ban something because some group found it offensive. A Canadian university canceled a yoga class because some precious fuckwit was whining about cultural appropriation.
If someone wants to protest against something, that's their right, but it's another thing entirely to capitulate to the demands of those who seem to be looking for new ways to be offended. Look at the Mizzou professor who shoved a student journalist who was attempting to report on the protests there. It's not just the students who are participating in the idiotic ideology that makes the Tea Party look sane by comparison. The people getting offended are the kind of rabid zealots that want to shove their views on everyone else, not the type of people who will politely disagree or engage in some kind of dialog. -
Re: Larry Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign...
Paranoid bullshit.
Idiot that hasn't been paying attention.
Banning of expression and speech banning wrongthink
Banning of speech on university campuses and another banning costumes and another safe spaces, and no dissent safe spaces and pro-racial segregation. Did I miss anything, or do you need a few dozen more examples? This isn't isolated, you can find more examples of every single one. -
Re: Larry Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign...
Paranoid bullshit.
Idiot that hasn't been paying attention.
Banning of expression and speech banning wrongthink
Banning of speech on university campuses and another banning costumes and another safe spaces, and no dissent safe spaces and pro-racial segregation. Did I miss anything, or do you need a few dozen more examples? This isn't isolated, you can find more examples of every single one. -
Re:Yeah, makes perfect sense...
Nowhere in the US is a woman allowed to give consent before sex, then revoke consent after, and have the sex then be treated as rape. Go on, name one place where that's the case (in law, not just according to the statements of the defendant).
Well, there are some cases that come very close. For example, Occidental College: Student Found Guilty of Sexual Assault After Incapacitation Standard Is Misapplied And then there are numerous articles that make it explicit that consent can be withdrawn any time during sex and going a few seconds past that "No" counts too. For example, this story. There should be more than 5-10 second grace period on that, don't you think?
Call me old fashioned or a SJW, but if I'm having sex and the other person says "no, stop" then I'll fucking stop, and stop fucking.
You don't need ten seconds to think about it.
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Re:Yeah, makes perfect sense...
Nowhere in the US is a woman allowed to give consent before sex, then revoke consent after, and have the sex then be treated as rape. Go on, name one place where that's the case (in law, not just according to the statements of the defendant).
Well, there are some cases that come very close. For example, Occidental College: Student Found Guilty of Sexual Assault After Incapacitation Standard Is Misapplied
And then there are numerous articles that make it explicit that consent can be withdrawn any time during sex and going a few seconds past that "No" counts too. For example, this story. There should be more than 5-10 second grace period on that, don't you think? -
Re:MOAH POPCORN
It's almost like free speech is more of a social justice value than a meathead one.
*snort*
http://thoughtcatalog.com/andr...
:God help us if we have to rely on conservatives to defend free speech.
A list of such censorship is basically endless, so I will have to suffice with a not-so-brief list of some of the more egregious examples:
- A student at Purdue was found guilty of "racial harassment" for reading a book called Notre Dame Vs the Klan. (The Klan is the bad guy in the book.)
- A candidate in the European elections was arrested in Britain for quoting a passage from Winston Churchill about Islam.
- Gert Wilders, a politician in the Netherlands, was tried on five counts including "criminally insulting Muslims because of their religion."
- Both Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant were dragged in front of the Canadian Human Rights Commission for being Islamophobic.
- Conservative radio host Michael Savage was banned in Britain.
- The group Women, Action and Media convinced Twitter to allow them help report and censor harassment and hate speech. Twitter subsequently suspended the accounts of the anti-feminist Youtubers Thunderfoot and Mykeru (they were later reinstated). Both of them are liberals, by the way.
- Adam Weinstein at Gawker wants to "Arrest Climate-Change Deniers."
- Brendan Eich was forced to resign as CEO of Mozilla for opposing gay marriage. Another guy was fired because someone eaves dropped on his joke about dongles.
- A group called Color of Change was able to get Patrick Buchanan fired from MSNBC for expressing his incorrect opinions (that have been pretty consistent for the last 50 years) in his book Suicide of a Superpower.
- Allegedly, a man was banned from an Oregon college campus for "resembling a rapist."
- The "Pickup Artist" Julien Blanc was barred from entering the UK for making sexist comments.
- The mayor of Massachusetts banned the word "illegal" when referring to, umm, immigrants who came into the United States without going through the proper, legal channels. The Associated Press did
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FIRE is good
If you believe in free speech, due process, and the most basic constitutional protections on college campuses, then FIRE is good.
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Re:You don't say...
These classes only exist in the minds of MRAs.
That's wrong, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
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Freedom of speech is absolute, is not it?
Well, as we are often reminded by various Illiberals here at home:
- Freedom of Speech is a privilege ;
- Hate Speech should be banned;
- “This isn’t really the ’60s anymore [...] people can’t really protest like that"
- "Constitution is not a suicide pact"
Given the "pragmatic" approach to rights even in the country, which explicitly puts them in writing, should we be surprised, other places are even more restrictive?
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Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen...
Funny you should say that since the Libs want to:
- control what I do in my bedroom
- control my social life
- control what I talk about
- control who I do business with
- control what I believe
- control what business I'm allowed to engage inIt's time to reassess your opinion on who wants to to micromanage your life.
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Re:Although I agree...
I'll just leave this shit right here: The Harvard Bait and Switch
See also FIRE: The Foundation for Individual Freedom in Academia.
You're one of those nutters who think that Generalizations are bad because you have no Idea what outliers are and don't realize that generalizations don't limit individuals to being outliers; Nor do you care to do any fucking research at all before you flap your anecdotal gums, because you haven't a clue whether you're an outlier or in the middle of the trend -- It just doesn't fucking matter to you, it's all about YOUR experience. Oh how dare they drip a bit of paint on Your special Snowflake experience when talking about the vast majority of experience.
Fuck off idiot.
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Re:I think this is bullshit
Then its not a Free Speech issue, which only concerns itself with communication between you and your government.
The Foundation of Individual Rights in Education disagrees with you, vehemently. Why, they actually win cases in court for freedom of speech issues.
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Re:Brilliant Response
Maybe if Zuckerberg had finished his studies at Harvard, he would realize that an internet company and a university have two totally different business models and the analysis methods for one do not translate to the other.
Thank Fuck Almighty that Internet companies aren't run like Harvard!... yet.
I wouldn't wish Harvard on my worst enemies. Princeton's not a whole hell of a lot better. Academia is screwed, mate; It's become the realm of pseudo scientific propaganda, and guilt until proven innocent. Abandon brain all ye who enter there.
The real tragedy comes when profs decide to commercialize their ideas. Then all hell breaks loose, when, for example, you are part of a team trying to implement the dream and you realize the emperor's clothing is not of the most reliable material..
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Re:Brilliant Response
Maybe if Zuckerberg had finished his studies at Harvard, he would realize that an internet company and a university have two totally different business models and the analysis methods for one do not translate to the other.
Thank Fuck Almighty that Internet companies aren't run like Harvard!... yet.
I wouldn't wish Harvard on my worst enemies. Princeton's not a whole hell of a lot better. Academia is screwed, mate; It's become the realm of pseudo scientific propaganda, and guilt until proven innocent. Abandon brain all ye who enter there.
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Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?
Yeah, and all these conservatives have college campuses where they can expel people for expressing themselves on and off campuses. Damn consevatives.
Student Expelled for Facebook Posts Sues 2-Year College in Minnesota
Court Rebukes Le Moyne College for Censorship
University of Cincinnati: Speech Code Litigation
College Republicans lobbying against open club membership
FAU College Student Who Didn't Want To Stomp On 'Jesus' Runs Afoul of Speech Code
...and the Chinese follow suit on speech with the support of US universities.
China’s Peking University fires professor who criticized government
Not Orwellian enough? How about this:
'US citizen has no right to free speech?' State Dept spokesperson grill
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Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule?
Yeah, and all these conservatives have college campuses where they can expel people for expressing themselves on and off campuses. Damn consevatives.
Student Expelled for Facebook Posts Sues 2-Year College in Minnesota
Court Rebukes Le Moyne College for Censorship
University of Cincinnati: Speech Code Litigation
College Republicans lobbying against open club membership
FAU College Student Who Didn't Want To Stomp On 'Jesus' Runs Afoul of Speech Code
...and the Chinese follow suit on speech with the support of US universities.
China’s Peking University fires professor who criticized government
Not Orwellian enough? How about this:
'US citizen has no right to free speech?' State Dept spokesperson grill
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That's why I stopped supporting the EFF also
I used to donate to the EFF also, but that issue you mention and a couple of other obviously partisan bents put me right off helping them.
Now I support FIRE, which is more narrow in scope but at least not partisan. I hope to find other groups that can take up the role of the EFF in a more even-handed way.
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Re:So much for...
You're a coward who believes that safety is more important than freedom, but it's not. Why don't you and your ilk go ruin another country?
I assume you misspelled elk as ilk since you're having a cow over nonsense.
As if getting molested at airports
Silly hyperbole. A pat down, when they occur, is not "getting molested." It's been happening on and off since the '60s or '70s and the rash of hijackings by the Palestinians and those desiring unplanned Cuban vacations.
shoved off to free speech zones are
That's been going on since the Clinton administration, at least. I don't think its a good idea, but the courts haven't seen fit to ban it. Also note that sort of thing is used at either particular events, or far more widely on politically correct campuses as part of the PC speech code. You might think about donating to Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
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Re:Different countries
Does FIRE have a counterpart in Canada?
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Re:Let them try
Freedom of speech in India is far weaker that what most Indians think it is. Prominent people are regularly arrested for exercising free speech, by making speeches, making politically incorrect statements, burning copies of the constitution, writing articles, etc)
To take a recent example, an opposition leader who played a part in exposing India's largest corruption case, has an arrest warrant out on him because he wrote this article in July Analysis: How to wipe out Islamic terror (the article seems to have been removed from the online version of the newspaper itself)
Censorship does not directly affect most people in India not because of free speech protections (which are very weak), but because the government is not strong enough to impose it on everyone.
The threat to internet freedom is not from and Indian version of the great wall of china, but from the possibility that, to protect their business opportunities in India, Internet companies will bend over to accommodate the govt of India. If history is any indication, the people in India will protest very loudly for a few days, then get distracted by the latest celebrity scandal . Ultimately they will adjust to one less freedom (the infamous attitude we term as "Chalta Hai") and forget about it. -
Re:...stuff they see on the Science Channel.
1. Since when do corporations control education? Education is dominated by liberal progressives who are, if anything, anti-corporate. If anything, it is the generally left-wing educational establishment which is discouraging critical thinking. See http://thefire.org/ [thefire.org] for numerous examples of the suppression of free speech at college campuses.
There's problems on both sides. Conservatives are actively anti-education: they throw a fit when education conflicts with their fundamentalist religious dogma, for instance, and they also don't like "wasting" their tax money on education, when they could have lower taxes instead and spend that money on crap. Liberals, by contrast, actively encourage education. Of course, both of them want their own biases instilled in the education (conservatives want Creationism and religion (their religion) taught in public schools, until 8th grade and then all the kids who can't pay for more kicked out; liberals want their ideals such as "diversity" which really means "white people are evil" taught in public school). Basically, they want to use the system to indoctrinate others to their beliefs. Unfortunately, this is partly what education is about, at least at the lower levels: indoctrination. Putting kids in school and teaching them all these things that society deems important is a form of indoctrination, because otherwise children aren't prepared to be adults in modern society. You can't educate without a certain amount of indoctrination, so the different political sides are constantly arguing over what to indoctrinate kids with. Reading, writing, and basic math everyone can agree on, but the rest of it they can't.
You complain about suppression of free speech, but how much "free speech" do you think there is at Bob Jones University, Liberty University, or BYU? In any group of people with certain accepted ideas, anyone who challenges these ideas is usually met with derision or worse.
The real problem with liberals and pre-college education is that liberals generally aren't that good at business and getting things done because they're too idealistic about certain things. Can you imagine a military force run by liberals? So what we see in elementary education is teacher's unions, which started out as a good idea like every union: keep employees from being mistreated or underpaid, etc., but then turned into something very ugly. As a result, we have schools where really horrible teachers cannot be fired, teachers are not evaluated on merit but on tenure (longevity), bad teachers are protected, etc. Sounds like the police doesn't it? So instead of lots of good teachers, some great ones, and a very small number of "bad apples", you get about half of them "bad apples", and the rest struggling in futility to make a difference. Again, sounds just like the cops, doesn't it?
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Re:...stuff they see on the Science Channel.
Crab fishing? Ice road trucking? Paranormal investigation?
Governments do not want a critically thinking populace. Just suck up the bullshit they, the bought dogs of the corporate states of America, want you to think and believe.
Science and math require a solid foundation in the basics. With a solid foundation, politicians, corporate thugs and banksters cannot sway the public. Bread and circuses brought down the Roman Empire in approximately 200 years. This country is next.1. Since when do corporations control education? Education is dominated by liberal progressives who are, if anything, anti-corporate. If anything, it is the generally left-wing educational establishment which is discouraging critical thinking. See http://thefire.org/ for numerous examples of the suppression of free speech at college campuses.
2. The term "Bread and Circuses" refers to the Roman government buying off the citizens, and is more analogous to politicians buying off their constituency with pork and other handouts than anything else. -
Re:Lets see if I understand this.
FIRE is of the legal opinion that he was entitled, backed to some degree by precedent, although obviously that would need to be tested in a court of law.
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Just in case you didn't RTFA...
...the second poster he hung up is better than the first. Much better.
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Could be a civil rights violation, but...
...not a criminal offense.
Lifting a paragraph from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:
In the case of Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629, 652 (1999), the Court held that peer harassment in the educational context is limited to only that conduct that is "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims' educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution's resources and opportunities."
Maybe this is true in this case. But the recourse is either for the school to take disciplinary action or for the victims to sue him.
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Valdosta is the least free school in country
Check them out on thefire.org and see just how fascist Valdosta state is: http://www.thefire.org/case/751.html
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Re:Racism
There is an area of academic pursuit that is actively trying to shift the meaning of "racism" and racist to encompass any white (written with a lowercase "w") member of society. Understanding White Privilege by Fances Kendall is a good read on the matter. Basically, our society is racist because members of different races exercise varying degrees of privilege. Because members of privileged groups cannot divorce themselves of the privileges that they receive from our racist society, all members of the privileged race are racists. Conversely, no Black (written with an uppercase "B") can be racist.
Such reasoning is extended to declare any member of the privileged sex "sexist," the privileged sexual orientation "homophobic," etc. This "privilege theory" was the basis for the now-retracted freshmen curriculum at the University of Delaware.
Lest I be flamed for this, let me be clear that I completely reject these notions. But they are central to many people's understanding of "racist." I've found that one's definition of the term to be central to many disagreements.