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How Free Speech Died On Campus
theodp writes "The WSJ catches up with FIRE's Greg Lukianoff and his crusade to expose how universities have become the most authoritarian institutions in America. In Unlearning Liberty, Lukianoff notes that baby-boom Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth. But that idealized university no longer exists. Today, university bureaucrats suppress debate with anti-harassment policies that function as de facto speech codes. FIRE maintains a database of such policies on its website. What they share, lifelong Democrat Lukianoff says, is a view of 'harassment' so broad and so removed from its legal definition that 'literally every student on campus is already guilty.'"
This guy is advocating racism and sexual harassment! Shall we defeat him, PC gang?
Norfolk State: "The policy broadly prohibits using any university internet technology resources "to further personal views" or "religious or political causes." It also prohibits downloading or transmitting "inappropriate messages or images," without defining "inappropriate."
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I've seen a lot of bullies and hecklers upset that they don't get their way, whining that their free speech right to harass and intimidate folks is so very important that nothing else can be considered.
This makes me think this is more of a fraud perpetuated by self-professed victims who are themselves the problem than a reality.
It's all because of greed. Universities have adopted corporate tactics to become and stay "more competitive in the marketplace" and that means shielding themselves from lawsuits and making themselves more appealing to donors.
unless the school does it
University of Delaware Requires Students to Undergo Ideological Reeducation
http://thefire.org/article/8555.html
So in order to not offend ANYONE, NO ONE is allowed to say ANYTHING.
This goes right along with sports where there is no winner\ everyone gets a trophy to PC playgrounds with no jungle gyms.
I weep at what has happened to my country in the past 30 years. I think it's time to start again from scratch.
At the community college im attending to bone up on some tech skills they have a 'free speech zone' in the main quad. It is hideous that the college has institutionalized where and when free speech can occur. I understand the practicality of such a solution, but i cannot ignore its chilling effect.
Good-bye
Nice ad hominem. Instead of reading the source and arguing with the points made, you drool on yourself and blabber on about Murdoch.
The fact is that free speech in America has been getting more and more curtailed. Some in a very overt manner (free speech zones). Some in a softer manner (How DARE you suggest that affirmative action is racist, you racist). But the US is not as free as it used to be. No, we are nowhere near a totalitarian state. But freedoms do not go away overnight. If we continue to let the slide continue, we'll be closer to the totalitarian state. Freedoms are hard to get back once they've been ceded.
But thanks for your idiotic response. If anything, it was a nice foil.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Most of the examples in the article have a pro-conservative leaning. So I went to their FIRE database and tried to find some cases where I knew universities tried blocking left-wing people from speaking. Not surprisingly, I didn't find at least the ones I was aware of.
I think it's good someone is defending conservatives' right to speech. I simply feel they should be open about their partisanship.
Beetle B.
I notice you stopped accepting those collect calls....can i bum a square?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Carlin used to tour college campuses in the 70s and 80s because they loved freedom of expression and comedy. He even recorded a special, Carlin on Campus, in 1984. In his later years he avoided colleges like the plague because they became centers of cultural intolerance. Extreme bastions for censorship and political correctness. Most of his act was off limits for performance. Campuses were trying to avoid anything that might be the slightest bit offensive or controversial.
Carlin on O&A talking a bit about free speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX5mz27PTv0
Posting anonymous so I don't lose my mod points.
> Instead of reading the source and arguing with the points made ...
Everyone here, please read this. This is part of the problem. "If my guy does it, you're just overreacting if you disagree," and "if their guy does it, it's automatically suspect, move along, nothing to see."
Forget political parties. Forget Democrat or Republican, or WSJ vs. NYT. If speech is being curtailed, that should concern you.
Example: friend of mine works with my wife at the Social Security Administration, where the rules are so byzantine, they can mean anything you want them to this week. This friend jokes that says things like, "my, you're looking remarkably neutral and androgynous today." It's fun to watch their puzzled expressions as they try to decide whether it's a compliment, an insult, or something that merits a formal EEOC complaint.
Freedom of speech means FREEDOM OF SPEECH. As the Supreme Court of the US has ruled many times, even OFFENSIVE speech must be protected. Even speech with which you might personally disagree.
This should concern every one of you, regardless of your ideological bent.
I think too, that as speech becomes based on private technology, there is a movement that "free speech" has to be "earned" on each said platform. If ever there was a time "he who pays the bills" has become the mantra.
The Free Speech and debating hall in the student union has now been rented to Starbucks. After all, it's not the University's job to provide places for students to discuss stuff not related to the coursework they pay for.
The premise that anybody should be able to say anything on any campus is wrong, legally, philosophically, and historically. Universities are (for the most part) private institutions, and they can decide what speech is permissible on campus and as part of the educational experience. Good universities will, of course, try to present a wide range of viewpoints, but what they present and how they present it is still up to them. Nor does it seem to me that this has changed a great deal over time. Even in the 1960's, people were protesting and getting arrested because their views differed from those of the institution; if they had agreed, there wouldn't have been any need for protest. Publicly financed universities face a special problem, in that tax dollars may not be used to promote religion and that there are a few other restrictions. That's OK: if you don't like those restrictions, don't attend a public university. That's also why public universities should probably also be only a small component of the overall mix of educational institutions.
Rather than making all universities some kind of free speech compromise in which everybody can say anything except when it offends anybody, we should have a diversity of public and private institutions based on many different viewpoints and ideologies, and people pick and choose the institutions that they think meets their requirements.
I'm not surprised the Wall Street Journal allowed Mr. Lukianoff to mischaracterize the contents of Fordham's statement.
Read it for yourself and see if it really matches the tone of WSJ's article : http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/eNewsroom/topstories_2601.asp
November 9, 2012
The College Republicans, a student club at Fordham University, has invited Ann Coulter to speak on campus on November 29. The event is funded through student activity fees and is not open to the public nor the media. Student groups are allowed, and encouraged, to invite speakers who represent diverse, and sometimes unpopular, points of view, in keeping with the canons of academic freedom. Accordingly, the University will not block the College Republicans from hosting their speaker of choice on campus.
To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous understatement. There are many people who can speak to the conservative point of view with integrity and conviction, but Ms. Coulter is not among them. Her rhetoric is often hateful and needlessly provocative--more heat than light--and her message is aimed squarely at the darker side of our nature.
As members of a Jesuit institution, we are called upon to deal with one another with civility and compassion, not to sling mud and impugn the motives of those with whom we disagree or to engage in racial or social stereotyping. In the wake of several bias incidents last spring, I told the University community that I hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed.
"Disgust" was the word I used to sum up my feelings about those incidents. Hate speech, name-calling, and incivility are completely at odds with the Jesuit ideals that have always guided and animated Fordham.
Still, to prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would be to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of fearless and robust engagement. Preventing Ms. Coulter from speaking would counter one wrong with another. The old saw goes that the answer to bad speech is more speech. This is especially true at a university, and I fully expect our students, faculty, alumni, parents, and staff to voice their opposition, civilly and respectfully, and forcefully.
The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face of repugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulter's (and the student organizers') opinions, or do we use her appearance as an opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in the academy--and one another--stronger? We have chosen the latter course, confident in our community, and in the power of decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice.
Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President
Compare and contrast with
Mr. Lukianoff says that the Fordham-Coulter affair took campus censorship to a new level:
"This was the longest, strongest condemnation of a speaker that I've ever seen in which a university president also tried to claim that he was defending freedom of speech."
I guess in the print edition, the WSJ and Lukianoff can assume most people won't actually read the statement being attacked.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Today's students can take back their freedom of expression, but will they have the guts to do so? Or will they continue to lament that "the man" doesn't allow them to say unpopular things?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Another idiot using an ad hominem attack.
FIRE was founded about 15 years ago by a civil liberties professor. So your "Republican wing" comment is pretty stupid. It promotes free speech on campus, even those that might be the most upstanding or "socially polite". If anything, they are more like the ACLU than RNC.
But yeah, dismiss things out of hand with no factual basis. Then immediately afterward, pat yourself on the back for being an intellectual.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
We have outsourced our own brains and the decisions normally made by cultural mores to ideology.
Ideology is a type of political theory that we assume is true, so we crusade toward it in the name of Progress and Utopia.
Naturally, because it is a theory, it's unstable. In fact, there is often proof against it. But its adherents cling to it even more, because it provides for them an identity separate from their real-world identity.
However, this instability leads to it having a need: as a symbol, it must prevail over other symbols. Thus it is intolerant of them, but in the name of tolerance itself.
Futurist Traditionalism
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Exactly. Just look at how offensive she is! Anything that offends me must be destroyed.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Students should learn what they will face later in the real world. Knowing how things are going, i'd say that it complies with that mission.
That worked for Springer, Stern, Coulter, Imas, and Limbaugh!
Right up until FOX has to step in and get the Supreme Court to declare "lying" as protected free speech... To keep them on the air.
The CONSERVATIVES RULE the airwaves for non-PC talk. Even Springer and Stern are "Right" shows because they treat their subjects as "freak of the week" while shouting "look how offensive I am!"
It's sad when NPR is the last "liberal" holdout.. As they make an honest attempt to have discussion . Even the BBC gets labeled as liberal when they are the closest thing we have to 1960's style news people remember.
The fact is that free speech in America has been getting more and more curtailed. Some in a very overt manner (free speech zones). Some in a softer manner (How DARE you suggest that affirmative action is racist, you racist).
You seem to have a misconception about what free speech is. Your first example is about restricting people to particular locations in order to prevent their speech from being heard... all good so far. Your second example, however, is about someone exercising their free speech to criticize someone else's speech. It is an example of free speech, not an example of free speech being restricted.
Nice ad hominem. Instead of reading the source and arguing with the points made, you drool on yourself and blabber on about Murdoch.
You make a good point that we should be judging articles on their merit, however, technically it was not an ad hominem. An ad hominem is the informal fallacy of claiming some argument is wrong based upon some characteristic of the person making the argument. The previous poster made no claim that the argument was wrong, but merely pointed out the untrustworthy nature of the publication and exposited on what they thought the content was likely to be. I highly encourage you to read a book on informal logic as it is a very useful tool/method and will help you not only argue with more precision, but refine your understanding of logically determining truths.
To make matters worse, if someone wanted to show that being gay was a normal productive life choice, they would say it violated their religious liberties. But if they want to bring in a women who condones murder,compares liberals with murders, and has called for the assassination of the president, they say we are being intolerant and politically correct.
Really, when I was back is school it was the Christian conservatives, those fragile flowers that would faint if a poem had the word fuck in it, or if they saw a couple guys kissing, or had the leave the classroom when we discussed classic american literature because it was the devils work, these were the people who create censorship on americans campus. They would bring in the child molesting priests to cry foul. They would bring in the ministers to deny women proper care and choice because the only way they could hope to get a wife was to knock her up and make her dependent. It was sad.
And I am sure the comments are going to prove my point, because I am not hating any one here. Everyone has a right to express their opinion and try to have a life that fits with their values. But it was never the liberal groups who were trying to cut funding for the legal conservative groups. And it was never the liberal groups trying to foce everyone to pray, or waste their time listening to others pray. We held our events and if you did not want to go, then don't.
Here is how screwed up these people were. We were in a conservative state in a somewhat conservative city, but a city that was diverse so people pretty much let everyone do what they do. These wingnuts were so extreme that created their own campus newspaper because they couldn't stand to be in the same room with liberals. And I disagreed with most of the official newspaper, it was conservative. But if these people could not get thier way they did not know how to compromise, so they took their toys, found a sugar daddy, and built their own compound where they would not have to deal with anyone who was different. And evidently that is what they still do, crying when someone calls them on their hypocristy.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"Free speech" means that the government doesn't punish you for what you say. Legally, free speech has been increasing steadily: you can say things now about sex, politics, and religion that would have landed you in legal trouble half a century ago.
But "free speech" doesn't mean that you can say anything anywhere without consequences. Your fellow citizens can still punish you for what you say. Business can refuse to deal with you. Liberal universities can kick you out for spewing Christian fundamentalist nonsense, and Christian universities can kick you out for spewing progressive nonsense. That's what living in a free country means. And thanks to the Internet, we have more opportunity to engage in free speech than ever before.
The sky isn't falling on free speech; quite the opposite, free speech is legally protected than ever before and there are more venues for it than ever before. The only thing anybody might reasonably complain about is that tax dollars are used so widely to support one or the other viewpoint indirectly. That's not new, but that kind of (unconstitutional) government support has shifted from conservative causes to liberal causes. The answer is not to shift it back, the answer is to eliminate such government involvement.
This article appears to be bitching and moaning about the fact that hate speech has been universally recognized as out of the scope of free speech. Ann Coulter is generally regarded amongst the cognoscenti as a purveyor of hate speech, not free speech. I fail to see how denying her an audience of like-minded listeners could possibly be bad in any way.
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
Anyone who supports this Islamophobic nutbag is a like-minded nutbag who is not welcome on any university campus. Her ideas practically beg to be suppressed, so why should she be surprised when it happens? Good riddance to bad rubbish.
If she is wrong, let her speak and then rebut her remarks. Any suppression of free speech is a mistake. Her "like-minded listeners" will hear her anyway. I don't object to letting her speak. What I object to is "journalists" who report her garbage as though it is coming from a respectable source.
Look, America has an unhealthy obsession with "private-good; public-bad". And guess what, the private sector does not need -- nor desires -- to enforce free speech. You want universities to be havens of free speech? It's a 2-step process:
- make them public / make the institutions which are necessary for the public good follow the same rules as public institutions.
- demand of the public institutions to respect your rights. This is actually pretty easy.
Also, the OP is right: it is a crybaby Murdoch piece about people unhappy that they can't hate in peace.
"Becomes?" Printing presses, newspapers, radio stations, and television have always been "private technology" and privately owned, and they have exercised strong control over speech. Lower prices have made free speech far more accessible to people.
It would probably be a good idea to consider something similar to "common carrier status" for Internet providers, prohibiting them explicitly from exercising any control. But that would be an innovation in free speech and mass media.
"If my guy does it, you're just overreacting if you disagree," and "if their guy does it, it's automatically suspect, move along, nothing to see."
Except, you and the guy you are supporting are completely wrong about what's going on here. This really is a Murdock propaganda piece. Look, sometimes a person is reliably and consistently stupid and evil. This means saying "oh, I'm sure Ghengis isn't riding towards those young girls to be nice to them" is not prejudice, just justifiable wisdom. Now your point would be really great if this was an exception. But let's see what I find if I look it up.
WSJ:
Actual policy (I'm not going to include the context here; please read yourself):
and in a separate paragraph near to but not related to the definition of harassment, the only use of the word condescending:
If something is put in a media outlet which belongs to Murdock, assuming that the truth is the opposite will only make you wrong about 10% of the time. In this case, it's about Murdock trying to attack the freedom of speech of the people at universities.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
for citizens in good standing. That is the definition of unalienable. Sometimes you have to fight for them though! Not to worry, you are witnessing Peak College. Bloated, wasteful, dysfunctional institutions will vaporize with the credit that pays their ridiculous prices. Goods and services purchased with credit are altered by the supply of said credit. When we stop rewarding failure with bailouts, that is. Affordable education that caters only to the needs of the student body will be a welcome change!
It's not really a protest if there isn't a rule being broken and an arrest being made!
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It's no surprise. Students are no longer interested in higher education as a means of broadening their perceptions of life and deepening their understanding of the world. Most students today only want to acquire paper credentials for employment purposes. Universities have become largely job training institutes. In that kind of environment, freedom of expression becomes secondary if not totally irrelevant, and the disengaged student body will surely never protest over the loss of fundamental human rights.
Affirmative action is indeed racism. Reverse-racism is no less racist than the original overt racism that triggered the reverse-racism.
And, you might have pointed out for GP that Herr Bush instituted the so-called "free speech zones".
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Yeah, well, the site is retarded. They rated my University "red" because we have policies in place to prevent discrimination and hate speech. Heaven forbid the poor racist bastards would get punished if they make some other student who just wants their own educations life a living hell. Same with the sexual harassment codes. Nope, we have to get up in arms just cause you can't derogatorily call that black dude a nigger or the Chinese chick a chink, and damn it all who gives a shit what that chick thinks... we all know they just want the cock, am I right? Seriously, ro read what they have "issues" with the "openness" of the speech with the University of Wisconsin, it's a damn joke.
As long as you are not intentionally being offensive you can chalk messages on the sidewalk... just provide the chalk, no need for permission - this includes political views, religious views, and pretty much anything else you want. Same with dorm rooms, you want to post intentionally offensive stuff on your dorm room? Post it on the inside of the door, the harassment codes specifically state that as a matter of fact.
Shit, we just had an annual remembrance get-together remembering when a bunch of student had a huge protest in the 60's that had hundreds of arrests and over a hundred expulsions. The school provided funds to something that basically was just rubbing the schools face in the dog shit.
TL;DR: site was shit, just a bunch of whiny idiots complaining because they can't be racist / sexist / harassing anyone anywhere.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Nothing to do with free speech necessarily, but the comment about racist are the only ones who disagree with affirmative action comment. Because every time a comment is made that liberals disagree with and they can't debate facts their defacto response is to call the other person racist. It has become so bad over the last few years that when someone is called a racist I tend to read what they said and most of the time it is reasonable. The left has turned the term racist into meaning anti-socialism reasonable limitations on government power. It no longer has any relation to races of people.
Now if there were actually a racist out there, I would no longer know it because they have "cried wolf" so frequently and so often that it is drowned out. Hell, just look at Allen West election in Florida. Al Sharpton thinks West doesn't deserve a recount with his election loss being so close to the automatic recount level. That may ACTUALLY be a racist comment by Sharpton, but he is a member of the left and immune to such calls, along with him also being black and a supposed fighter against racism. But what Sharpton pretends to be isn't what his actions lead you to believe. If West was a Democrat Sharpton would be all over the news complaining that West isn't getting a recount because he is black and people who think he shouldn't get a recount are racist. See, a perfect example of how calls of being racist has NOTHING to do with race, but more to do with political affiliation.
Forget political parties. Forget Democrat or Republican, or WSJ vs. NYT. If speech is being curtailed, that should concern you.
You make a very good point. If free speech is being infringed by the government we should all be concerned, regardless of who brings that issue to our attention or if the act is being done by a specific political party. I think, however, you go a little too far in your equivocation. The trustworthiness of our sources of information are important and by excluding particular details or simply misrepresenting the facts an issue of speech not being subsidized by a specific organization can be misrepresented as that speech being censored, and make no mistake these are very different things.
When you write, "WSJ vs. NYT" red flags go off in my mind. You're presenting not just publications favored by political parties, but one publication with a very solid history of integrity and factual presentation of information with a publication owned by a very deceptive corporation. The Newscorp organization is a big fan of free speech, insomuch as they went to court to defend their free speech rights to publish news stories they knew were untrue and to fire the reporters who refused to present them. And hey, they're correct. They do have the right to tell complete untruths to their viewers and readers. But at the same time their actions make it abhorrent to mention them in the same breath as the NYT and make me think anyone who believes anything they read in Newscorp publications is an uninformed idiot.
"If my guy does it, you're just overreacting if you disagree," and "if their guy does it, it's automatically suspect, move along, nothing to see."
Except, you and the guy you are supporting are completely wrong about what's going on here. This really is a Murdock propaganda piece. Look, sometimes a person is reliably and consistently stupid and evil. This means saying "oh, I'm sure Ghengis isn't riding towards those young girls to be nice to them" is not prejudice, just justifiable wisdom. Now your point would be really great if this was an exception. But let's see what I find if I look it up.
Even a blind pig occasionally finds acorns. My oldest made the comment that "children are nothing but a black hole of need." Some PC idiot said "you can't say that, that's racist." The teacher walked by and told her that she wasn't to make such racist comments in the future (and threatened her with explosion).
Universities are no longer liberal institutions where ideas can be freely discussed. Idiocy and censorship do abound. But feel free to shoot the messenger and ignore the problem.
It's basically a bunch of crybaby Republicans whining about how unwelcome on campus their harassment of women, minorities, gays, muslims, any anyone else not like them is.
Freedom of speech isn't free anymore when you stop crybaby Republicans from whining.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
TFA focuses mainly on content-based restrictions, such as prohibiting people from quoting certain passages from the Koran. But along with these restrictions, many schools now have extremely onerous "time, place, and manner" regulations. Although these are written so as to be blind to the content of the speech, they're often absurdly restrictive. I teach at a community college in Fullerton, California, where last year the police murdered a mentally ill homeless man. This resulted in murder charges being brought by the DA, and a city council recall. I wanted to set up a card table on my school's grassy quad to collect signatures for the recall petition. I went through the process of registering officially, and the restrictions were just nuts. They have two very small patches of grass, over at the corner of the quad, which are marked on the map. I was forbidden from approaching people as they walked by. A lot of colleges refer to these tiny patches, apparently without any consciousness of irony, as free speech zones.
As far as I can tell, the intention is simply to create conditions that make it absolutely impossible for students to stage anything like an actual political rally or protest. You simply wouldn't be able to fit more than about 10 human bodies into one of these free speech zones.
Find free books.
(and threatened her with explosion).
Shouldn't your daughter have reported her as terrorist?
A college education costs more and more and becomes worth less and less. As it is, in many professions, a company will hire someone with a bachelors degree and three years experience before someone with a bachelor's and a master's. This makes the ROI for a master's a negative number. As technology is advancing at an exponential rate, the value of degree decreases at a corresponding rate after it is acquired. The Stanford professor who taught an AI course online and had 100,000 students quit to pursue this methodology full time. MIT is putting all of it's courses online, free. Maybe colleges will become research institutions. But in that regard, when some grad students started working on fuzzy logic, their professors told them "Pursue this and your career is over" and peer-reviewed journals refused to publish their papers. Similar stories come out of every field. Nothing has changed since Galileo. I remember the scene in "Good Will Hunting" where Matt Damon tells a Harvard student that he could have gotten his $50,000 education (back then) for the price of library card. Now it's online. By the way, the text for the AI class was $100. That has to go. Doing a google search and finding that most of the papers on Hidden Markov Models cost $15-$35 is most disconcerting. That has to go. The only people left behind should be alchemists and assholes.
Yawn. Conservatives have so overused their "you're playing the race card" meme that anytime I see that, I tend to realize that they're just posturing themselves as the victim in order to disguise and defend their own racism.
See how you're trying to think if Al Sharpton as the racist here? Yeah, your judo sucks when people realize what you're trying to do.
Personally I think America is better off with West out office. And it has nothing to do with his race, but with his paranoid delusions.
The writer is selecting the parts that support the thesis, but says nothing inaccurate. The policy does in fact threaten sanctions for a "condescending sex-based attitude".
My kingdom for a mod point! Voltaire could not have put it better.
Nothing to do with free speech necessarily, but the comment about racist are the only ones who disagree with affirmative action comment. Because every time a comment is made that liberals disagree with and they can't debate facts their defacto response is to call the other person racist.
Can you provide some examples of this? I read a lot of news and while I've certainly heard comments taken out of context by politicians used to insinuate racism. I don't recall seeing the vast majority of political and social issues being framed in terms of one position being racist. This sounds a lot more like the kind of inflammatory talking point you hear on "news commentary" shows and never backed up with any sort of facts.
Hell, just look at Allen West election in Florida. Al Sharpton thinks West doesn't deserve a recount with his election loss being so close to the automatic recount level. That may ACTUALLY be a racist comment by Sharpton...
I don't understand your argument. How is saying someone doesn't deserve a recount a potentially racist comment? What quote from Sharpton do you think is racist?
If West was a Democrat Sharpton would be all over the news complaining that West isn't getting a recount because he is black and people who think he shouldn't get a recount are racist. See, a perfect example of how calls of being racist has NOTHING to do with race, but more to do with political affiliation.
Umm, your perfect example is a hypothetical what you think Al Sharpton would do if a candidate was a democrat? That's not an example its a supposition. Your argument seems to be about people not talking about race, as an example of people talking about racism inappropriately. I guess I'm just not buying your argument. If you want to convince me you need to support it much more strongly than that. Have you really considered this objectively and come to this conclusion and if so, what convinced you of your opinion?
My kingdom for a mod point! Voltaire could not have put it better.
Wow, thankyou sir. I'm certain I've never received a nicer compliment on slashdot, and surely it is undeserved.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Seriously?
Try this one, replace "republican" with "democrat" and replace "ann coulter" with your favorite liberal pundit. Once you've done that, see if you see the problem.
I swear, here's some wisdom to take heed of. "Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove any doubt". You guys spew a lot of garbage that if you took a step back and actually thought about what you were saying would surely think "wow, I'm a douche, and that is about the most intelligently barren statement quite possibly ever made"
They got their whining published in The Wall Street Journal. Clearly their free speech rights are being trampled.
The Wall Street Journal has become about as responsible a news source as Glenn Beck's "the Blaze". It used to be that their hard news was spot-on but their editorial pages leaned Right. Now, their hard news leans way Right and their editorial pages are full-blown kookie wingnut.
David Horowitz and his little pantload salon have a lot of influence over at the new, improved, Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal. He's a shitty academic who now has a permanent hard-on for all of higher education because he was basically laughed out of the business (his bleak student evaluations were purely coincidental, he claims).
The WSJ is a big proponent of for-profit higher education. They're trying to get their Mitts on the for-profit colleges the way the Washington Post got into the higher ed biz via Kaplan. Beware of anything the Wall Street Journal has to say about education.
There has never been so much diversity of political points of view on college campuses in the US. Unlike the 70's, all ends of the political spectrum are represented. You can find conservatism unlike ever before. Hell, you can't walk three steps without tripping over some Right Wing or libertarian prof with a handful of his students complaining loudly about how viewpoints like his cannot be found anywhere.
In fact, it's surprising how much of an organized, concerted effort is being made not to increase the diversity of opinion, but to silence Left Wing points of view. There are a bunch of very well-funded groups (most of which involve David Horowitz at some level) who are targeting speech with which they disagree.
With guys like the WSJ, there is one rule: It's ALWAYS projection.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The writer is selecting the parts that support the thesis, but says nothing inaccurate. The policy does in fact threaten sanctions for a "condescending sex-based attitude".
a) the writer says it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude." where actually harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual conduct which is related to any condition of employment or evaluation of student performance. So the writer is actually saying something "inaccurate"
b) I can't see any sanctions clearly linked to not being "sensitive" which is the only context where this occurs. Now, I am not a lawyer, so I'm quite willing to bow to your 'expert' opinion, however please do explain how you parse the policy so that you see sanctions linked to a "condescending sex-based attitude". I have no doubt that my fascination will be fully aroused by your explanation.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Careful. You may not always be the one who decides who gets to speak. The rulers will change and you are setting a dangerous precedent.
Just remember: you cannot bitch about the other side doing the same thing later if you condone this now.
Understand this: Free speech is not a just a law. It is an ideal. Because of the circular point you just made, we can not outlaw private restrictions to speech, but that does not mean they are morally right. Legal censorship (private) can be as bad as illegal censorship (public) depending on the size of the entity enforcing it, but regardless of their legality they are both something I am personally against.
> Liberal universities can kick you out for spewing Christian fundamentalist nonsense,
But the liberal universities in question are usually state- or federally-funded. The Christian universities that you seem to have in mind are typically privately-owned and operated.
Just pointing that out. Your idea of eliminating government involvement is a great one, but it'll never happen.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
I'm a Republican and I'm not whiny. Let's look at it from my perspective. The colleges are indoctrinating the youth with no opposition. Whenever you are on campus and you decent from the left wing ideology you get harassed. My free speech is being stifled. You call it hate speech but let's address each of your points.
Harassment of women: This is strictly about abortion. For sake of argument pretend you believe life begins at conception. Would you be OK with a form of birth control that ended a human life each time it was used? You can argue that life doesn't begin at conception but that's not the point. The point is, if yo believe life DOES begin at conception then how could you act any different than the Republicans do? Other than that, there is no harassment of women from Republicans.
Minorities: Affirmative action, you can't make up for past discrimination by enforcing racial discrimination upon everyone. I didn't discriminate but because I am white I don't have the same chances of success as a minority because we are putting people into positions, be it colleges or jobs, based on their skin color rather than their ability. Thinking this way makes me a racist. You had that situation in NY where no minority passed the advancement test so all the guys who did pass, all white, were not given a promotion and they rescheduled the tests to get more minorities to pass. Discrimination against whites in the name of fairness.
Gays: All about marriage. I had a gay room mate. I have many friends who are gay, I live in California. I am against gay marriage. You don't change words to suit your ideology. Example, the term gay. There was a commercial by Wanda Sykes where a guy used the word gay to me stupid. Nothing to do with homosexuality. You know, they even spell it Ghey rather than gay. She chastises the guy and say "don't steal our word." Catch the irony in that, since the word was stolen by the homosexual community and totally changed the meaning. I don't care if you are gay. I understand how tough things are for gays. But times are changing and the "harassment" has to do with aggressive homosexuals forcing their lifestyle upon society rather than fitting in. You know, the same way you see religious people forcing their way into your life. Of course I see the gay community being far more aggressive about forcing their lifestyle into my life than religious people are. But that's OK with you because you can be a hypocrite because you care. Me, I'm a homophobe because I say "just be gay and get out of my face."
Muslims: sorry, I can't give you a rational argument you will accept (not that I expect you to accept my point of view on any of these). Muslims are responsible for 99% of all terrorist attacks in the world. To not understand that is just more political correctness. You are willing to condemn Christians because some priest molest children (by the way these are GAY priests in most cases if not all). Or some nut job kill an abortion doctor but you won't say a thing about the Muslim religion which basically does nothing in the way of denouncing terrorist attacks based on the belief in Allah. Of course if they do their own brethren will silence them.
as for "anyone else not like them" pure bullshit. You people on the left chastise and berate anyone who is a Republican. Women get told they are idiots for being Republican. Blacks get ostracized by their own for being Republican. Look at what happened to Stacey Dash after she said she was supporting Romney. You guys are very hateful towards others who don't share your opinion.
I know this was long but you really should consider your skewed point of view towards Republicans and even if you don't agree with what I said, perhaps we are really hateful people, just not as enlightened as you. Maybe you should help rather than hate. How can youchange our point of view by insulting us and spewing hate?
Clearly you don't get the point.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm confused, the teacher threatened your child or the PC idiot. One outcome is good, the other not.
...that so many people reject the claim just because Murdock or a supposed Republican organization is making it. Suppose for the sake of argument that Lukianoff really is just a Republican shill and ignores crimes against free speech committed by conservatives. Does that mean the crimes against free speech committed by liberals, that he highlights, are any less wrong?
Take the Fordham University event. Those on the left are quick to point out that Fordham didn't actually ban Coulter. But were McShane's strong words against her and "disappointed with the judgment and maturity" of College Republicans just that, or were they a veiled threat of consequences should the event go on?
Then theres the "condescending sex-based attitude" -- it turns out that yes, as the article says, displaying such is sexual harassment if said attitude is unwelcome.
The prohibition on "annoying" speech from Northeastern's systems is also true. (It also applies to "offensive" speech, again in the sole judgement of the administratrs).
I assume the debates that are discussed go deep into the modern conflict between rights of individuals and traditional expectations of society: It seems to me thta in one way it could be a real issue..... I assume everyone has views, and people value their views: They don't like to see them denigrated or to see aspersions cast upon them.
.. but it can't.. really.. be good...
I'm trying to see things from a Conservative viewpoint here (its not something that comes naturally to me) - if I had strong views about relationships, about the rights and duties of states and individuals, I'd probably want to talk about them. I'm pretty sure someone would find them offensive (normally it'd probably be me). BUT - if the people on one side are allowed to make a big thing of their views and values, why aren't those on the other side?
what I'm saying is that in certain circumstances we need to either have an open debate, or silence all debate. I'm a liberal. I think conservatives are WRONG at a pretty fundamental level... but if I seek to silence them from talking about things that matter to them we arent having the debate, nobody wins, we just increase divides that already exist. That would make for a peaceful life: I wouldnt have to worry about people who already have a bad time (immigrants, gays) hearing stuff that will offend them
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I work at a private, non-profit college. We don't tell our students what they may say online; our efforts are directed toward known porn/malware sites (often the same thing) and keeping people from using P2P. Yes, of course there are legitimate uses of bittorrent et al, but our problem is one of bandwidth consumption. We can't afford a gigabit pipe from Google or anyone else and we can't have a few students sucking up all the bandwidth that must be shared with everyone.
Saying what you wish to say is one thing, it's well and good and under the right circumstances is protected by the Constitution. What concerns me more personally, is that not one instructor on staff has Conservative leanings; every instructor that has expressed an opinion is very Liberal. Call it "progressive" if you like; it's the same thing.
Maybe it's different at taxpayer-supported institutions; I'd like to hear from others.
Even a blind pig occasionally finds acorns.
Yes, but the whole point of my comment is that, in this case, it has not found acorns but worthless stones. And now it's trying to get us to eat them.
My oldest made the comment that "children are nothing but a black hole of need." Some PC idiot said "you can't say that, that's racist." The teacher walked by and told her that she wasn't to make such racist comments in the future (and threatened her with explosion).
Universities are no longer liberal institutions where ideas can be freely discussed. Idiocy and censorship do abound. But feel free to shoot the messenger and ignore the problem.
I like your story; it's almost as good as some of the ones around niggardly. How about you set her up with a decent portable video camera or two, and arrange a repeat situation. Let's see if we can get the idiot teacher exploded[sic] from her job instead.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
It's this exact attitude that has caused the USoA to become the political cesspool we are right now. Political debates are nothing but ad hominem attacks disguised as political talking points.
Take the Fordham case for example. If they host Ann Coulter it opens them up to ad hominem attacks from people who would rather dismiss them by saying "they're the same as that racist, sexist *-ist" than actually take the time to come up with a rational response to debate her points. The result: the institution capitulates to the threat and she is, in effect, censored from campus.
Murdoch may be a shady character whose only ambition in life is to see how big of a bank account he can rack up, but that doesn't discount the issue his company (WSJ) is presenting. We need to learn to separate the person (Murdoch, Coulter, etc.) from the issue.
No wonder we have bullying issues in school....
If the WSJ is excluding details to make a point, it is the epitome of triviality to argue against those points by showing what was excluded. If the WSJ is wrong about something, prove it. Otherwise, just stuff it, because your cheerleading for the NYT at the expense of the WSJ won't convince anyone. Those who are "uniformed idiots" because they read the WSJ certainly won't be convinced (the name calling is a nice touch - really brings people to your way of thinking). And those who already agree with you don't need convincing.
Rational thinkers will not be convinced, and those are the only ones you can possibly hope to sway.
Doesn't matter what you see
Or into it what you read
You can do it your own way
If it's done just how I say
Independence limited
Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend
Freedom of speech is words that they will bend
Freedom with their exception
Journalism has been dead for awhile. Its all "He said, She said" now. This allows the media to support any view they wish at any time, by simply deciding which of the He's and She's to "report" about, rather than the harder job of finding evidence that supports things.
"His name was James Damore."
I have no idea how you were modded up, because your "Right up until FOX has to step in and get the Supreme Court to declare "lying" as protected free speech... To keep them on the air," is blatantly false. Not only was it not Fox News (it was a Fox affiliate) but that's not even what happened. The Fox affiliate wouldn't run a piece about GMO without a response from Monsanto. It had absolute NOTHING to do with "lying." I'm a critic of Fox News (and MSNBC which has turned into a joke) but at least get your facts somewhat straight, instead of perpetuating this lie that the netroots throw around.
The students who hated all authority in the Sixties were RIGHT, but they sold out for the most part.
Kids, the Man is fucking YOU even harder than he did your predecessors.
Unless you get pissed off enough to act, "prepare your anus".
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yeah, and if you want to say those things on the lawn of the university they need to be stopped too.
This can't say x on public this or that is just bullshit. Limiting speech in public areas is limiting speech. We shouldn't be required to buy our own private areas to exercise free speech. Universities should understand and be ardent supporters of this.
I don't think it's clear at all there, mixing definitions of coercive or sustained harassment and simple "discomfort", though this page this page is more coherent, laying out the "hostile environment" terms. Whether harassment has occurred is "judged both objectively and subjectively", which is another way of saying "No Men Allowed."
Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, by Dinesh D'Souza, discussed this issue almost 15 years ago. It's nothing new—it's perhaps just that others are beginning to catch on.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I recently visited a community college that actually had a free speech zone way out on the corner of the quad. There was also a policy of not allowing religious or political discussions.
How do they expect the philosophy, theology and political science majors to do their assignments?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The College Republicans regret the controversy surrounding our planned lecture featuring Ann Coulter. The size and severity of opposition to this event have caught us by surprise, and caused us to question our decision to welcome her to Rose Hill. Looking at the concerns raised about Ms. Coulter, many of them reasonable, we have determined that some of her comments do not represent the ideals of the College Republicans and are inconsistent with both our organization's mission, and the University's. We regret that we failed to thoroughly research her before announcing, that is our error and we do not excuse ourselves for it. Consistent with our strong disagreement with certain comments by Ms. Coulter we have chosen to cancel the event and rescind Ms. Coulterâ(TM)s invitation to speak at Fordham. We made this choice freely, before Father McShaneâ(TM)s email was sent out and we became aware of his feelings --- had the President simply reached out to us before releasing his statement he would have learned that the event was being cancelled. We hope the University community will forgive the College Republicans for our error, and continue to allow us to serve as its main voice of the sensible, compassionate, and conservative political movement that we strive to be. We fell short of that standard this time, and we offer our sincere apologies.
Ted Conrad, President
UPDATED: McShane Responds to College Republicans' Cancellation of Ann Coulter Event
The Republican Club tried to get the Student Association to spring for George Will, but was capped at $10,000. Fordham College Republicans withdraw Coulter invite
The Speaker's Bureau:
Campus Speaker & Board of Advisors Member - Ann Coulter
Click here to host an event with Ann on your campus!
Fun times:
The incident followed a Monday night lecture at the University of Western Ontario, where Coulter told a Muslim student to "take a camel" as an alternative to flying.
Coulter made the comment as she responded to a question from student Fatima Al-Dhaher, who asked about previous comments in which Coulter said Muslims shouldn't be allowed on airplanes and should take "flying carpets" instead. Al-Dhaher noted she did not own a flying carpet and asked what she should take as an alternative transportation. Coulter did not deny making the flying carpet comment and replied to the university student, "What mode of transportation? Take a camel," to jeers and cheers. It was a decidedly pro-Coulter audience. One man, who identified himself as a U.S. citizen, described U.S. President Barack Obama as a "Marxist."
She is well-known for her vehement views against Muslims. In a post-September 11 column, she wrote that the U.S. should invade Muslim countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
Coulter, who often comments on Fox News, once said Canada is "lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent" after the Canadian government did not join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Coulter speech cancelled over fears of violence
Free speech: you don't get it. You think "harassment" is something else than the legal definition. You think "hate speech" is something different from speech. You even think a ceremony funded by the school is the height of "free speech"! Though to be fair, those aren't really your thoughts.
I don't think it's clear at all there,
I'd agree there. It's an awful piece of writing which the university should be ashamed of. However it doesn't actually say anything threatening and if they did try it on they would lose of ever pushed to it.
this page this page is more coherent, laying out the "hostile environment" terms. Whether harassment has occurred is "judged both objectively and subjectively", which is another way of saying "No Men Allowed."
I definitely support the principle that "The issue is not whether you are paranoid, the issue is whether you are paranoid enough" but in this case you are being paranoid ;-) The fact is though, that this is basically just a direct cut'n paste from Davis, the related supreme court judgement. For the University it's saying we match exactly what the supreme court told us to do. For real life it's saying that you can't be done for harassment just because some delicate flower felt harassed; you have to actually objectively harass them. It's also saying that if they were (literally) asking for it and don't feel that they were harassed, it's still okay even if, according to the objective standards you could have been said to be harassing them.
In other words, this particular statement is pretty much 100% on the side of sanity and definitely doesn't mean "man == harasser", however much Andrea Dworkin might wish it to mean that.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Some in a softer manner (How DARE you suggest that affirmative action is racist, you racist).
Your second example, however, is about someone exercising their free speech to criticize someone else's speech. It is an example of free speech, not an example of free speech being restricted.
It is an example of free speech, not an example of free speech being restricted.
Understand this: Free speech is not a just a law. It is an ideal. Because of the circular point you just made, we can not outlaw private restrictions to speech, but that does not mean they are morally right.
First, you don't seem to know what a "circular point" is. Second, we're not talking about a private organization "outlawing" free speech. Private organizations can't outlaw anything because only the government can create laws. We're not even talking about a private organization censoring speech in a location. We're talking about someone citing free speech criticizing them and their opinion on affirmative action, as though somehow they have a right to prevent people from talking about how they disagree with said person. That's not censorship it's the epitome of free speech.
Since it's proaganda, university officials should ban it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
While I have no objection to what you stated, I don't understand why you felt the need to state it. It implies that people are trying to prohibit this "whining". Generally, they aren't doing any such thing. They're just calling it out *as* whining. There's absolutely no conflict of free speech there. Individual sites and the WSJ are allowed to publish whatever whining they want, just as others are allowed to point it out as whining. In fact, people are even allowed to call something whining when it isn't! It's not terribly polite of them, but it's permitted.
What is not permitted is actual hate speech, behavior intended to incite violence toward a group, or intentionally cause emotional harm (arguably another form of violence, simply a non-physical one). The "crybaby Republicans" that you and the GP mention are welcome to cry all they like about this policy, and that is their right.
Why are you implying that people think otherwise?
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Nothing to do with free speech necessarily, but the comment about racist are the only ones who disagree with affirmative action comment. Because every time a comment is made that liberals disagree with and they can't debate facts their defacto response is to call the other person racist.
Can you provide some examples of this?I read a lot of news and while I've certainly heard comments taken out of context by politicians used to insinuate racism. I don't recall seeing the vast majority of political and social issues being framed in terms of one position being racist. This sounds a lot more like the kind of inflammatory talking point you hear on "news commentary" shows and never backed up with any sort of facts.
Pretty much anything critical of the tea party mentions racism. Thats one simple example.
I don't think "the tea party" qualifies as a comment nor as a topic of debate. You said whenever there was a comment liberals disagree with. What comments? So no, that's not even close to an example.
Further, while the Tea Party has certainly been criticized for various racist remarks made by members I don't think that is a major criticism of the Tea Party. If you to a search for "tea party criticism" the first hits have to do with: their criticism of Mitt Romney, requiring land to vote, Islam not being protected by the first amendment, mischaracterization of Jared Lee Loughner as "a liberal extremist", lack of compassion when lauding the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords", blasphemy by members, and that they can't create a coherent platform for voters. Racism doesn't even make the first two pages in Google. Perhaps you have a skewed perception of reality?
You shouldn't need to be pointed to examples...
Yes, for heaven's sake. Let's just scream rhetoric and never try to address real facts or real world cases. Then we'd have to support our hyperbolic nonsense. If it is so easy, cite a few examples. Are you lazy or lying?
Or, to paraphrase a book which many on Slashdot claim has lost its relevance, and then came the Pharaoh who did not know Joseph.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
If the WSJ is excluding details to make a point, it is the epitome of triviality to argue against those points by showing what was excluded. If the WSJ is wrong about something, prove it.
I think other posters have already covered that pretty well. The WSJ clearly was trying to misconstrue the facts and sensationalize.
Otherwise, just stuff it, because your cheerleading for the NYT at the expense of the WSJ won't convince anyone.
This isn't about "cheerleading". I'm not particularly a fan of the NYT, but I certainly recognize them as a a normal, reputable newspaper that does research, vets their sources, makes an attempt not to print outright falsehoods, and prints retractions. Newscorp owned properties are something else. To pretend they should be given equal weight on their face is just absurd at this point. It really isn't news, it's an attempt to persuade.
Those who are "uniformed idiots" because they read the WSJ certainly won't be convinced (the name calling is a nice touch - really brings people to your way of thinking).
If you get your news from a source that went to court to defend their constitutional right to lie to their readers/viewers, what else would such a person be called? You pretty much have to be uninformed and/or an idiot to trust such a "news" source.
And those who already agree with you don't need convincing.
Here's where you mistake. I'm not trying to convince people. That's rhetoric. I'm presenting a logical argument. Frankly, I don't expect people to change their minds as most people are just looking for anything to justify what they already believe. Instead I'm writing to respond to those that can still argue logically and really, fuck the rest of you. This is Slashdot, news for nerds. If you can't handle logic why would I care about your opinion?
Rational thinkers will not be convinced, and those are the only ones you can possibly hope to sway.
Rational thinkers ignore the rhetoric you endorse. Wasting time coddling people who insist on believing things written by a propaganda company proven to repeatedly lie are the ones beyond hope.
The "free thinking" radicals of the 60's counter culture movement, are today's 50 & 60 year old "professors" in most major institutions. Couple that with the ideology they have pushed in primary & secondary schools over the last 25 years, and they have melded the minds of today's 20-30 year old adults into believing that free speech is only free as long as you believe what they believe. If not, you are to be told you are a __________(insert favorite PC term), and need to be silenced. Until THAT ideology is removed, and the so called political correctness "movement" is contained, nothing will change it.
The parent is the "informed idiot". The case he was talking about is well documented. The reported wanted to include statements detrimental to monsanto and GM feed going into milk being produced locally. The local station told them to cut that out and present the story without it. The reported didn't and were fired. The reporters attempted to file a claim under the whistle blower protection laws and lost.
How not presenting details turns into lieing probably has more to do with his interpretation (lies) then anything.
Shit, we just had an annual remembrance get-together remembering when a bunch of student had a huge protest in the 60's that had hundreds of arrests and over a hundred expulsions. The school provided funds to something that basically was just rubbing the schools face in the dog shit.
Erm, surely this means it was an effective protest, since the views of the protesters subsequently became the school's policy? Sure, at the time, the protest was not welcomed by the faculty and students were expelled for it - just as they would be today, if they were to offend against "speech codes". But the protesters graduated and joined the faculty, and now the things they wanted as student radicals are now official policy.
The very concept of racism, which includes more than just racial discrimination, comes from the 60s and was created by the radical groups of that time as a way to push their "anti-fascist" agenda. The radicals regarded speech codes as preferable to freedom of speech because they thought it unlikely that such agenda-pushing weapons would ever be applied against them - ironically adopting fascist tactics in order to fight fascism. Maybe someday there will be a switcharound, and speech codes will make it illegal to spread hate against Jesus or advocate abortion. That will be fun to watch.... from a distance.
(and threatened her with explosion)
Damn, now that's a discipline policy!
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
It's basically a bunch of crybaby Republicans whining about how unwelcome on campus their harassment of women, minorities, gays, muslims, any anyone else not like them is.
At the University of Colorado they now have a Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy.
I. Kid. You. Not.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2012/07/03/cu-boulder-commences-search-visiting-scholar-conservative-thought-and
I'm a Republican and I'm not whiny. Let's look at it from my perspective. The colleges are indoctrinating the youth with no opposition.
Why does your perspective have to be so absolute? That seems to be the problem. Nothing prevents universities from bringing in any speakers they want so long as they do so within the bounds of the constitution and if they allow/pay one religion to speak they do the same for all. That seems to be the fundamental disconnect in my mind. When everyone is given equal opportunity, why do you whine about not being given more than equal opportunity?
Harassment of women: This is strictly about abortion.
Actually if you read the article and the actual policies at the university it claims to cite, this is about no employee making grades or employment based upon requirement that people have the same views. So no, it isn't about abortion... but lets continue.
For sake of argument pretend you believe life begins at conception. Would you be OK with a form of birth control that ended a human life each time it was used? You can argue that life doesn't begin at conception but that's not the point. The point is, if yo believe life DOES begin at conception then how could you act any different than the Republicans do?
You see I believe in freedom. For example, I believe 99% of people who shoot pigeons are jackasses. They're hunting for sport, wasting good meat, and they mostly are macho dickheads trying to compensate for their own inadequacy. I voted to give them the freedom to choose to continue this sport, even though I disapprove.
Even if I believed life began at conception I can still rationally demonstrate that that is just an opinion and unprovable. Further I can logically demonstrate it is a faith based opinion not supported by science. So even if I believe it, I would still support the right of other individuals to make their own choices based on their own beliefs and if there is a god, let him judge them.
It's called "freedom" and it's not just a bumper sticker or a campaign slogan. Maybe you should try believing in it instead of just saying it like a parrot.
Other than that, there is no harassment of women from Republicans.
Umm, yeah. Except all the other harassment about things like homosexuality, subservience to men, etc.
Minorities: Affirmative action, you can't make up for past discrimination by enforcing racial discrimination upon everyone.
Is that truly what you believe the purpose of affirmative action is, punitive? Maybe you should read something that isn't from the right wing. Try reading how affirmative action changed, for example, politics and business in northern Europe removing in a few generations the prejudice of centuries.
Gays: All about marriage. I had a gay room mate. I have many friends who are gay, I live in California. I am against gay marriage.
Please. Before gay marriage Republicans fought against homosexuality being legal at all and after they lose gay marriage they'll still be fighting against the rights of gays to adopt children. Why do you hate freedom? For a party who opposes "big government" you sure do believe in the government making choices for other people and getting in people's personal business. Here's an idea, don't like gay marriage? Don't marry any gay people and shut the hell up and mind your own business.
Muslims: sorry, I can't give you a rational argument you will accept (not that I expect you to accept my point of view on any of these). Muslims are responsible for 99% of all terrorist attacks in the world.
Have you considered learning facts? They make decision making much more accurate.
...as for "anyone else not like them" pure bullshit. You people on the left chastise and berate anyone who is a Republican.
Are you posting from 1980?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A hideout for the incompetent. A form of welfare for academics. What we need is a system of exams. Minimal human intervention. Build this circuit in X amount of time. Program this algorithm in x amount of time. Name this many muscles, bones and nerves. While we'll still need internships and hands on experience for some things, much of the old style brick and mortar and a professor nonsense can be replaced with books and on-line learning.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
But campuses have extended that idea to "student housing" ie the places students pay the school to live in... Which is kind if backwards both from a landlord-tenant view and the traditional academic view... THAT is what is unprecedented here.
He recently guest-blogged on Volokh Conspiracy, which is popular blog by prestigious law professors. The series of articles posted by him is well worth a read. http://www.volokh.com/author/greglukianoff/
-- obligatory (but true) caveat: my comments my own, and don't reflect my employer or colleagues' positions.
But they are all Just Actors. They say on the air, is what gets ratings. Occasionally their real opinion spills out and they get treated for the tools they are.
What people miss is that even the "liberal" personalities are selected because the "prove the Right, Right." Or money can be made from them! Really think about how contemptable they REALLY are.
The sky isn't falling on free speech; quite the opposite, free speech is legally protected than ever before and there are more venues for it than ever before.
If you said this before 2001, I might have agreed with you. Since then, with the introduction of "free-speech zones," government detention of supposed "terrorists" indefinitely on trumped up causes (often some part of the supposed evidence involves some free expression), etc., I don't think your "than ever before" still holds.
Although we have had strides in free political and corporate speech rights in the past couple years. But individual speech has come under greater restrictions and surveillance by the government in the past decade.
I work for an IT shop in a university and am one of the people who respond to complaints about speech in any campus system. While our university has what some may see as a draconian policy, we have never actually enforced the policy since it was written in 1994.
The reason many campuses have these kind of policies is not de-facto censorship, but instead de-facto legal ass-covering. We also have policies that you can't ride bikes on campus, even though we offer bike racks everywhere; or say you can't use campus computers for illegal file sharing even though unless you're sucking up a crazy amount of bandwidth, we won't really do anything about it. These policies are purely legal risk management and in most campuses solely exist so if a student says something bad, we can't be sued about it.
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" - Emma Goldman
You many want to visit the following website and think X times about your decision to enroll:
http://100rsns.blogspot.com/
New Economic Perspectives
And, in fact, the greatest damage moderates and right-wing could do to the left wing extremists is to invite them to freely speak their minds. The resulting spew of sexist, anti-Semitic, elitist, racist, and hate filled non-sequiturs would likely shift most people just a bit to the right.
You're presenting not just publications favored by political parties, but one publication with a very solid history of integrity and factual presentation of information with a publication owned by a very deceptive corporation.
You say this and I think, "How can anybody say that about a paper owned by Newscorp." But then you go on and talk about how unreliable Newscorp is as a news source and I think, "This guy thinks that the NYT has a history of integrity and factual presentation of information. What a strange definition of integrity." The NYT is a newspaper that won several Pulitzer Prizes for printing articles by Walter Duranty saying that the Ukraine famines orchestrated by Stalin were not happening. The NYT is the newspaper that promoted Jayson Blair when his boss at the time wrote a memo saying, "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now." This was in response to articles containing fabrications that Jayson Blair had written. There are many other examples in between those two individuals that demonstrate that the NYT has never been a newspaper with integrity (although it managed to build a reputation for integrity, it never actually had any).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
But don't deny the tea party has a strong racist component to it. I know they've insisted they're not racists quite a bit.
I deny that. Now offer proof.
The bulk of the article is derived from information provided to the reporter by Greg Lukianoff, a Democrat.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Of varying degrees. It's simply a matter of what you call them.
I don't know about your university, but are you OK with a university punishing a student for racial harassment for reading a book about the KKK in front of someone who was black? How about when you discover that the book was "Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan"?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Just as for centuries it has been the policy of the Roman Catholic church to promote free speech when they are not in power and to oppose free speech when it rules, it was the policy of the left to promote free speech in the 1960s when they did not yet quite control most universities and to oppose free speech now that they have an iron grip on most schools.
If the freedom to make non-intrusive political speech is not absolute, it does not exist.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Like so many legal questions, I think the answer depends on the details: what does the housing contract say, how is Internet service provided, what alternatives are there, etc. And a legal remedy might be to replace dorm Internet service with a private provider, making the issue go away.
All I'm saying is that there is no general right to free speech at universities.
Except WE ALREADY HAD this debate... You know, back when the Anerican British Colonies were "corporate employees" of British companies.
RIGHTS like Free Speech don't go away just because you "pay rent" to somebody else for housing or utilities... That's WHY they're called RIGHTS.
http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/free-expression-peaceful-dissent-and-demonstrations
The origins of speech codes on campus made some amount of sense, in that they were based in restricting harassment. It is not acceptable to follow people around calling them racial slurs, just like it's not acceptable to follow people around doing the chicken dance.
It is perfectly permissible for the government to restrict harassment even if said harassment is done via speech. In fact, it does restrict that. There are actual legal remedies to harassment in the real world, and it's entirely reasonable for a university to make rules duplicating those laws so they can punish students there or kick them out of the school, instead of requiring a restraining order and the legal system.
Incidentally, if you ever seen anyone defending the speech codes on campus, they seem to be defending the original intent. They run around defending the idea it is not acceptable for students to go around harassing people.
The problem with speech codes is that everyone seemed to have immediately forgotten the original premise, and decided that speech codes weren't to stop to the problem of people being harassed, it was to stop people being offended.
AND THOSE TWO THINGS ARE NOT THE SAME.
Harassment is when someone makes repeated legal-but-annoying actions directed non-consensually at a specific other person, with none of it individually doing any real harm, but cumulatively it causing enough that it rises to something we've decided to stop. And indeed, the government, and government institutions, can stop that.
But the government has absolutely no ability to stop being from being offended, or the right to punish people who do offend other people. Offending people is a constitutional right.
And while it might have possibly been understandable confusion between 'harassing someone' and 'deliberately offending someone' (Hint: Harassment has to happen more than once, at the very least.), at this point speech codes have clearly slipped off the deep end and are now attempting to ban stuff that is just sorta vaguely offensive to some random person, somewhere.
It is not possible to accidentally harass someone. Nor is not possible to say something to someone and harass someone else. Nor is it possible to be giving a speech and have someone walk up and be harassed. Reading a book near someone else cannot be harassment.
Nothing without a specific person that is not specifically impacted, on purpose, can be harassment.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
right.. the correct response to disagreeing with a mans point of view is to halt his speech and lock him up. Works great in china
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Hey, moron. Harassment is a specific legal thing.
AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OFFENDING PEOPLE.
As long as you are not intentionally being offensive you can chalk messages on the sidewalk... just provide the chalk, no need for permission - this includes political views, religious views, and pretty much anything else you want.
Except this isn't even slightly what the actual code forbids: It say you can't 'Demean the race, sex, religion, color, creed, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry or age of the individual or individuals; and Create an intimidating, hostile or demeaning environment for education, university-related work, or other university-authorized activity.'
If you don't understand what that actually says, I suspect you don't know what 'demean' means. Demeans just means 'to lower'. It means to lower the value in any way, it doesn't even have to be offensive or untrue.
And that's not lowering the value the individual, as a poor reading of that sentence would imply...it's barring people from lowering the value of the race, sex, etc.
And I can only conclude by 'demeaning environment', they mean 'an environment where X is lowered in the eyes of people'.(1) Aka, that 'intent' thing just means you have to intend to change people's opinions. (Which does mean they can't get people for speaking facetiously, but that's about all the 'protection' that provides.)
So, to recap: It is against the rules to, in any way, speak negatively about any attribute any student holds hold with an intent of convincing anyone else of that. Not to 'offend' them as you seem to think...they don't even have to be there, or aware it happened.
That is the ACTUAL STATED POLICY OF THE SCHOOL.
And to make this even stupider, these attributes include creed.You know, if I attended that school, I'd be tempted to have a stated creed that school administrators ate babies, and constantly repeat that near them, hoping some day that they would, some day, tell some random person that my idea was wrong, thus putting them in violation of their own speech code.
1) A 'demeaning environment' really would be something like Saw, where you have to do horrible things to survive. However, a) that would be crazy for _speech_ to create, and b) is already covered by 'hostile' or 'intimidating' anyway. So I think my interpretation of 'a demeaning environment' meaning 'an environment where people think demeaning things' is correct.
Alternately, 'demeaning environment' might mean one where people say demeaning things, but that's even stupider: You are barred from saying demeaning things, but only if you're intending to create an environment where people are saying demeaning things. OTOH, if no one is saying demeaning things, feel free to say demeaning things. Huh?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Hey fuckstick I go there, you obviously don't. And you are so god-awful stupid you can twist anything to say anything.
Here is a nice splintery bat, go shove it up your fucking ass and enjoy it.
TL;DR version, I go there, you don't - I see what really goes on there, you... don't. Get the picture yet? There is NO problem with freedom of speech unless you are repeatedly verbally assaulting someone.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Wow, amazing, I make a comment about the whackos on the right (and you must admit, some of them should probably seek help) and you immediately proceed to erect a whole army of strawmen to knock down.
The Democrats I object to have problems on the other axis. That is, they are too authoritarian. I am speaking against them in this very thread. You apparently didn't notice that I favor free speech for all (even you), perhaps you were distracted by your bile boiling over.
You truly enjoy free speech and my plan is working perfectly :-)
As a side note, I would object to being called a heterophobe since I am hetero and do not support any program to discriminate against heteros.
>Also, the OP is right: it is a crybaby Murdoch piece about people unhappy that they can't hate in peace.
Just for the sake of argument, let us assume you are right, and it is a crybaby piece. Is this a case where they can't hate in peace? If they can't hate in peace, there is something wrong with the system.
I remember the Republicans telling Todd Akin to withdraw from the race after his comments.
Here are a few..
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2012/08/list-of-senators-calling-on-akin-to-quit-keeps-growing-132703.html
If you post something that slashdotters disagree with, you get modded out of readability. I give this message about 15 minutes.
Freedom of speech isn't free anymore when you stop crybaby Republicans from whining
Well then, I guess its fortunate for Freedom that no force has yet been discovered by science that can stop that.
You can't rebut crazy. Have you ever tried talking to a truther, a Holocaust-denier or a moon-landing-hoaxer? The best thing for private citizens to do is to make it as hard as possible for these whackos to be heard. Some opinions really don't need airing, and if a private community like Fordham decides they don't want to hear her batshit insane blabber, more power to them. As other posters pointed out, the College Republicans rescinded their invite BEFORE their president issued his letter. And his letter specifically DEFENDED the College Republicans' right to have their speaker of choice on campus. In typical WSJ fashion, this got turned into "the evil communist liberal university president wouldn't let this nice lady talk to some heroic, freedom-loving Republicans who desperately wanted to hear what pearls of wisdom she had for them."
I see you are confused by the term "free speech rights". The term refers to the First Amendment, which says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". That does not give you a right to speak wherever you want, because there are other constitutionally guaranteed rights, like the right to property. Restrictions on speech are usually of the form "if you don't stop speaking (misusing the network, whatever), I order you off this property and if you don't comply I have you arrested for trespassing." Whenever you can legally order people to leave, you can effectively restrict their ability to speak.
I'm confused, the teacher threatened your child or the PC idiot. One outcome is good, the other not.
The teacher threatened to expel my daughter for making "racist" comments. Who knew that astronomical terms are racist.
A good discussion, but my position continues to be that free speech is not something you are granted, it's something you take. By definition.
Example: The students in this area staged a "hug out" a couple years ago to protest the banning of public displays of affection at school. Students would greet by hugging, hold hands going to class, and so forth. Three local high schools participated. The students were in danger of getting suspended or expelled, but continued anyway. And, eventually, got the rules changed.
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how freedom works. If you're waiting to get permission to be free, you've already lost. Yes, it's hazardous. Anything worthwhile usually is.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It's a common meme in redressing ills done to others.
Pay back MORE THAN YOU OWE.
So the white kids were found guilty of racism and this was their punishment? Because the whole point of "redressing ills" and "paying back more than you owe" is that you have to be guilty of the crime in the first place.
So. P2P, understandable. Malware, too.
But why're you singling out porn? If you're talking about 'also malware', I'd put pirate sites above that - more dangerous, and actually illegal instead of just 'immoral'.
Probably a public relations issue.
I went to a private college that had a similar policy, but only for the PR with alumni to keep the funding coming in. They had a policy of "Responsible Freedom", only instead of enforcing their network access agreement, they put a K12 filter (N2H2's Bess Filter) on all computers when there were only a handful of students that had a problem, and those students actually used lab computers at times when no one else was there. The network access in ones own dorm room had an ISP-like agreement in place; so they could easily disconnect you from the network if you violated it.
The P2P traffic did eat their bandwidth enough to put a load balancer in to favor certain kinds of traffic - like outgoing video feeds during January for the presentations made during the month, again namely for alumni. But the network did have issues and their pipe was limited - they were in a ring network and eating more bandwidth than they were purchasing (a side-effect of the network design by the ISP allowed that - one reason I prefer Cable Internet instead of DSL).
So yeah, it's probably a PR thing.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Christian universities can kick you out for spewing progressive nonsense.
However, those Christian universities typically don't - they usually make it a point of discussion instead bringing people in from both sides of the issue.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Affirmative Action was valid at one point to level the playing field. It's not longer required. It also has nothing to do with "Paying back more than you owe", and those calling for its removal have no reason other than to truly level the playing field. Those calling for it to stay have more reason to keep it for failure from their own incompetence.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Good for them; they certainly need the contact with alternative viewpoints. A technical college, on the other hand, may simply want to keep religion and politics off campus since it has nothing to do with their mission. The point is that students don't have a "free speech right" on campus, it's up to each educational institution to decide for themselves.
You idiot. FIRE doesn't rate your school's 'freedom'. They rate your school's speech code.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?