National Coalition Calls for Campus Censorship of "Offensive" Speech (washingtonpost.com)

schwit1 writes with this opinion piece from Eugene Volokh, who teaches free speech law at UCLA School of Law, about the push to ban "offensive" speech and censor websites on campus. He writes: "A large coalition of advocacy groups has asked the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights to pressure colleges to (1) punish students for their speech and (2) block student access to certain Web sites — especially sites such as Yik Yak, which allow students to anonymously post their views..... Yet another example of today's Anti-Free Speech Movement for American universities — unfortunately, one that fits well into the Education Department's attitudes. Fortunately, courts have firmly rejected these kinds of calls to restrict college student speech, though the OCR and the college administrations it pressures can get away with a lot of restrictions until the lawsuits are actually brought."

Comments

Censoring speech...

[Anonymous Coward]

... how very European of them.

Re: Censoring speech...

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "refugees", not refugees. Refugees escape with their families from their shithole to neighboring countries and move back when there's a new dictator. "Refugees" are the men (there are almost no women in their groups, go look it up if you don't believe me) who leave their shithole (usually not Syria) to rape women in Europe.

Re: Censoring speech...

[dwye]

1) Very few were killed when they migrated over the land bridge, because at most very few were here, already (most evidence for a pre-Clovis population is sketchy at best - perhaps because the sea level rise at the end of the Ice Age drowned the good stuff).

2) Europeans didn't kill the 95% of the pre-existing Indian population, European diseases that even the Europeans themselves couldn't really treat did. Most of those diseases were borne by farm animals, which the Europeans brought with them. You can see the effects from the writings from a Spanish expedition into what would become the Deep South. They brought a herd of pigs with them rather than hunting the local animals that the locals would have needed, treated the Indians with no violence (as they were explorers, not conquistadores), and by the time that they returned the locals were already dying of mysterious plagues that seemed somewhat like Europeans childhood diseases gone crazy. The local adults had never had mumps, chicken pox, measles, etc., all of which are usually relatively harmless when experienced as children and terrible when an unexposed adult catches them. There were other diseases that hit the Europeans hard (smallpox, cholera, etc.) that still hit the then-unexposed even worse, but barring an offhand comment by Lord Amherst no one would have considered using, much like no one uses chemical weapons anymore if the wind can change directions and blow it back on one.

3) No one was very nice to anyone else in those days. If the Indians had a more extensive bacterial load than Eurasia they would have had no qualms about crossing the oceans and settling the depopulated European forests and the steppes, adopting wheat, barley,and rye to supplement their own maize and potatoes, and violating treaties with the whiteskins whenever the press of migration was too heavy.

Re:Censoring speech...

[jedidiah]

That's another word that the terrorist sympathizers abuse like "genocide".

In truth, Israel is by far the most progressive country in the middle east treating Palestinians as equals. They also do the same for all of the indigenous minorities that the BDS movement conveniently forgets about.

In other Arab countries, Palestinians are perpetually kept in "refugee camps" and prevented from assimilating. A Palestinian is better treated in Israel (or the US) than by their own people.

And let's not forget who keeps the other side of Gaza bottled up. The Egyptians don't like Hamas any more than the Israelis do.

Re:Liberals

[Alypius]

Curious how the same folks who want to ban anonymous speech are the same folks who show up for demonstrations in Guy Fawkes masks.

Re:Liberals

[Beeftopia]

As William F. Buckley famously said, "Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view."

Re:Liberals

[Obfuscant]

I wish there was a party for me.

We tried holding it yesterday, but you called the cops when we got a bit noisy while setting it up. We tried.

I also wish both parties would quit fucking with the right to be free from warantless searches and seizures. Do any of our politicians even know what is in the bill of rights? It seems not.

Yes, it seems not, for the fourth amendment does not contain a prohibition against warrantless searches and seizures, but against unreasonable searches and seizures. It also does not define "reasonable" to mean "based upon a warrant", because that would be patently absurd. For example, if you point a gun at a cop, your gun will be seized and you will be searched prior to being put in jail. Neither requires a warrant (nor should they) but bother are reasonable.

Re:Liberals

[AK Marc]

Yes. "Liberal" in the US means "someone I don't like". No more, no less, and unrelated to political leanings. The word is not used in a consistent or logical way. So it's not an issue of the person not belonging to the group, but the group not existing. So there is no such thing as a "liberal". Ever.

Re:Dear National Coalition

[ganjadude]

well years ago bush was president... so it was wrong

but now obama is president so... more restrictions are good???

Re:Leftists are insane

[LostMyBeaver]

To be fair, anyone who identifies themselves as leftist or rightist are utter idiots. Intelligent people evaluate each issue individually and make choices (if necessary) to address those issues based on what they believe is the most productive and constructive (or in some cases, the easiest) option.

The real problem isn't the left or the right... it's the left AND the right and every other damn option out there.

While I am entirely aware I risk making the same mistake, you apparently have a gift of making impressively stupid comments without applying thought or reason to what you say and instead simply spout some populist nonsense that is little more than finger pointing.

Take responsibility for yourself, this article identifies a REAL problem. The problem is, we've (I am not even in America, yet I recognize "WE" is accurate) have established a "civilization" that contains some very clear and identifiable problems.
1) There are knuckle-draggers in our higher education system that clearly are in desperate need of an education but are also clearly not likely to obtain one as they have shown they're as ignorant as you by stereotyping based on some trait they believe makes another person less than they are... based on a group... which generally has no actual genuinely common characteristics.
2) There are fools in the higher education system who lack the intelligence to simply ignore the knuckle-draggers and steer clear of them if needed. While I can't identify from the article if the targets of the hate-speech are those who are complaining, I will assume at least a few of them are. The fools (like yourself and likely me for rising to the bait) making the hateful comments are a waste of time, food and air. What they say has utterly no relevance to anything. These fools who take offense to knuckle-draggers making such comments are a major problem.
3) There are fools who seem to believe the solution to the problem is to try and hide it. People who I don't believe are left, right, lib, conservative, etc... but instead are truly the most dangerous people I know, the PC enforcement crowd have identified a long list of causes they "feel strongly about". They want to the be the mommies of us all and instead of attempting to identify and resolve the issues progressively... devising an intelligent solution, they instead want to make us cover our ears and eyes and pretend like it will go away if we just sweep it under the rug and come up with punishments for people who say naughty things.

Fact 1) Thank goodness for the Internet... Racism is 100x better today than it was 10 years ago. Racists who talk on Facebook and Twitter have been learning that they have lots in common with all those people they used to hate for skin color and religion and now have learned that they can hate people no matter what their skin color or religion. So as a result, now a formerly racist person who desperately needs to believe that some group of people must be responsible for why their lives aren't better... they can point fingers at all kinds of other groups of people. It's like Christmas in July.

Fact 2) We don't need mommies and we really don't need PC enforcers. It's better to simply avoid/ignore people who we find offensive. Which leads us to...

Fact 3) People like you are a waste of time to make any effort on. It's just simply built into your system to pick some group to blame without actually even taking the time to identify whether those people are in fact a group or not. There is nothing me or any other person could say to teach you to think intelligently and objectively about each scenario and then make productive recommendations. Which leads us to ....

Fact 4) Finger pointers really aren't a necessity and are actually generally not even wanted. We have Fox, CNN, ABC and BBC to do that for us... we don't need anyone else to do it. I tend to find the shows on the news networks tend to spend a lot of time constructing groups of people who agree with e

Re:Liberals

[drinkypoo]

Libertarians are not anti-government, that's anarchists. Libertarians are in favor of a government that shits on everyone who doesn't have money, because they are sure they will have more of it than the people that they consider to be the problem. Little horrifies me more than the thought of having to have a kickstarter to pay a court before you can prosecute someone for having wronged you. It's basically what we have now, but without all the pesky social programs that keep people from rioting in the streets.