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Wisconsin Speech Bill Might Allow Students To Challenge Science Professors (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There have been some well-publicized incidents in which student groups or other protesters have interfered with scheduled appearances by right-wing speakers at U.S. universities. In response, a number of states have considered "campus free speech" bills based on model legislation produced by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank. Different bills introduce specific penalties for students who shout down the speech of others and prevent college administrators from disinviting speakers, to give two examples. One such bill is being debated in Wisconsin. Faculty and university officials in the state are concerned about what else might be prevented by the bill's overly vague language, according to the local Cap Times. As often happens with bills relevant to science education, the debate has also elicited some rather bizarre comments from the bill's sponsors. The trouble comes from this section of the bill: "That each institution shall strive to remain neutral, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day, and may not take action, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day in such a way as to require students or faculty to publicly express a given view of social policy." While the bills' scope is focused on public events involving invited speakers, there are a couple key questions here. University officials want to know how far this requirement "to remain neutral" extends. For example, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has spoken out against proposed bans on stem cell research on campus. Would the university run afoul of this law if it did so again?
This is what religious theocracies do to enforce orthodoxy. What else is the result of subjecting education to a litmus test of belief? Nothing. Yet another sign of the failure of the US as a modern nation. It's successor can join Turkey as heir to a failed empire.
So let's see if we can get this right. Milo and Coulter couldn't speak on college campuses because of violent left-wing protests. You attempt to use a single "republican student" which doesn't actually appear to be the case. But if you really want to try and pull that bullshit, let's look at the guy in WA state and the other in FL, who were both far-left supporters and went on shooting/stabbing sprees killing multiple people.
And people are upset at liberals shutting down free speech by the heavy use of violence and attacks against individuals, along with left-wing hate crimes. I can even look up here in Canada and find numerous examples of the political left assaulting and violating assaulting people for wrong-think. And left aligned environmentalist and feminist groups who burn things down, try to create environmental catastrophes(like blowing up pipelines), or simply disrupting talks when MRA's are speaking. And those repeated violent assaults against people on college campuses against people who are right-leaning, isn't just some fiction. The left are the violent party, much like how the left in the 1960's and 70's were the ones planting bombs and blowing them up all over the place.
Om, nomnomnom...
Or as POTUS put it, when he tried to get right wing pundit Megyn Kelly boycotted and kicked off Fox:
If crazy @megynkelly didn't cover me so much on her terrible show, her ratings would totally tank. She is so average in so many ways!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2016
Crazy @megynkelly says I don't (won't) go on her show and she still gets good ratings. But almost all of her shows are negative hits on me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2016
Everybody should boycott the @megynkelly show. Never worth watching. Always a hit on Trump! She is sick, & the most overrated person on tv.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2016
Highly overrated & crazy @megynkelly is always complaining about Trump and yet she devotes her shows to me. Focus on others Megyn!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2016
Crazy @megynkelly is now complaining that @oreillyfactor did not defend her against me - yet her bad show is a total hit piece on me.Tough!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2016
Watching other networks and local news. Really good night! Crazy @megynkelly is unwatchable.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2016
Can't watch Crazy Megyn anymore. Talks about me at 43% but never mentions that there are four people in race. With two people, big & over!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2016
What was her crime again? Oh right, she threw a few softball questions to Trump for him to bounce his replies off, and he hadn't prepared any replies, looked stupid, and he did that to recover face.
Oh boo hoo hoo, milo yogurt and ann coulter couldn't speak on a college campus because of protests. A republican student murdered another student for being black. If you're upset about liberals shutting down free speech but not the massive rise in right-wing hate crimes across the country, are you even fooling yourself? You hate liberals, you don't have a fucking reason other than they're not like you.
During the Milo riots, leftist rioters beat Milo attendees with flagpoles and fists. [MMA fighter] Jake Shields pulled a victim from a crowd of beaters and protected him from harm. When asked, the victim had no idea why he was being beaten. Some of the rioters had simply started calling him [the victim] a nazi, for apparently no reason, and the beatings began from there.
This is why the left keeps saying things about the right that aren't true. They say it because once you've established that someone is a nazi, or islamaphobe, or racist, or so on... once you've established that they are despicable then it's OK to attempt to murder them.
I suppose it's a form of virtue signalling, in the manner of "she's a witch! Burn her!" You are such a good and virtuous person that you actively stamp out evil. It starts by labelling the other person as something despicable.
I've *never* seen the right do that to the extent that the left has done, in the last several months. Apparently holding the bloody, severed head of the president is OK, knifing him to death as part of "Shakespeare in the park" is OK, and putting up disgusting nude statues of him in cities across the nation is considered OK.
The left says a lot of things about the right that simply aren't true, for a reason: it's to justify breaking laws and trampling rights. They want to get their way in any manner possible, and the ends justify any means.
The left says a lot of things about the right that simply aren't true.
Don't believe them.
I'm sick of these lefties fresh mouths.
I think the lefties' behavior tarnishes their own cause, but I am skeptical of the righties' effort to ensure free speech by restricting speech.
Math professor: You didn't solve that partial differential equation.
Conservative snowflake: I did too, libtard.
Wisconsin Republicans: Teach the controversy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Restricting it how?
TFS makes it sound as though challenging science professors is a bad thing. So long as it isn't disruptive to the class, it shouldn't be discouraged. Science is often all about challenging long-held beliefs, even when those beliefs are held by tenured scientists.
Science is about challenging belief with evidence, particularly procedurally documented and experimentally generated evidence. In other cases it is observationally generated or synthesized by review of existing literature. All are valid. Disagreeing for the sake of disagreement, objecting for the sake of grandstanding, and claiming belief in the face of contrary evidence are poor imitations and must be called out as a deluded faker.
I am skeptical of the righties' effort to ensure free speech by restricting speech.
Shouting down those who disagree with you so they can't be heard, pulling fire alarms in the buildings where they're trying to speak, and threatening violence against anyone who supports them isn't "free speech." It's fascism.
A citizen should have every right to speak freely, but they should never be allowed to silence their opposition through violence and activities designed specifically to deny their opposition a venue to speak or to be heard. It's your right to speak, but it's not your right to stop me from speaking too.
It's sad that these laws are even necessary. There was a time when the left stood up for free speech. Now they oppose it. Liberals like me have been alienated by the modern SJW liberal movement, and it's why blue states are turning red.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I am sick of righties calling techs lefties because they use big words
I am sick of righties thinking they can then turn around and threaten to dox people they can barely understand
i am sick of righties getting called out and whining that they're being bullied because they failed in a power gambit but they're doubling down & need a sucker
Lol, no it doesn't. This "both sides are awful" bullshit needs to die in fire.
I can't see that changing much, and if students decide to raise a stink, it would be fair for a teacher to offer to let the student test out of the class immediately, giving them the remaining homework/tests in one lump, and saving everyone a bit of time, since the student is unwilling to learn directly from the teacher.
Have you even *been* on college campuses today? The term "inmates are in charge of the asylum" is frighteningly accurate. Students only need claim professors and/or curriculum "triggered" them via a series of "micro aggressions" and BAM! Headache for one and all. Well, not the students, who may retire to a "safe space", complete with crayons and comfy chairs.
If the topic is controversial enough ( say; someone refuting feminist dogma like the wage gap ), the professor can look forward to a full on witch hunt.
Schools are addicted to money, and the students are...not the source, but the catalyst for it. Thus, schools are becoming more and more like a fast food joint, complete with the questionable stains and general idiots on either side of the counter.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"Right now the radical right is the ones doing the screaming,"
You should watch some videos from Berkeley, when Milo Yiannopoulos was to give a speech.
Nope, it wasn't the radical rights screaming, using fists, and setting the campus on fire.
I'd say some publicity stunts like some nutcases giving a speech to an empty lecture hall is a small price for stopping that sort of behavior.
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Without being challenged, viewpoints degenerate, echo chambers amplify the noise until it overwhelms the signal.
Read up about feminist glaciology, how carbon fiber is sexist, or why snow should be removed from back roads first, leaving main arteries for later (hint: gender discrimination).
This is the kind of fruit of "science" borne from silencing the opposing views. This is the environment that happily swallows "penis is responsible for global warming" as a valid scientific conclusion - because it got so efficient at silencing and dismissing any opposing views that it's completely unable to tell complete bullshit from real science.
And what you're doing in your post is exactly dismissing the opposing views as "spittle from twats".
Maybe listen to some of that "spittle" before claiming with total authority that you're right and everyone who disagrees is wrong.
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Science is about challenging belief with evidence, particularly procedurally documented and experimentally generated evidence. In other cases it is observationally generated or synthesized by review of existing literature. All are valid. Disagreeing for the sake of disagreement, objecting for the sake of grandstanding, and claiming belief in the face of contrary evidence are poor imitations and must be called out as a deluded faker.
And while most science should be based on observed behavior, or at least proven formulas, everything has human interpretation involved. Given a hundred scientists, there should at least be two (usually more) interpretations of a set of data and the minority should never be rejected just because it is the minority. All opinions should be accepted or rejected based on careful consideration.
All opinions should be accepted or rejected based on careful consideration.
The problem we have now is that after the science community has carefully considered a particular "interpretation" and has rejected it, a large portion of our populace ignores this.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Which opens the door to infinite evil. Do we have evidence that behaving sinfully won't end up with us cast posthumously into a pit of eternal fire? Well, no, partly because we have no evidence of life after death, pits of eternal fire, and no objective definition of sin. So this means that ANY presentation can be interrupted simply by asserting that thus and such are sinful, etc. Can you prove that it is NOT? Of course not. There simply in no evidence that it is.
Your example of a zombie apocalypse is well taken. Do we have the slightest shred of evidence that zombies or anything zombie-like is really possible? Not just heavily drugged or brain-damaged individuals deliberately harmed by slavers or practicers of voudoin, but actual living dead brain-eating zombies? Well, no, although rabies as a disease does have related effects and might have been part of the origin of zombie legend. So what the heck! Sure, the zombie apocalypse could be unleashed by mutant rabies, GMO foods, stem cells, a disease transported to Earth by meteors or space aliens, biowarfare gone awry, the deliberate act of a vengeful deity, the deliberate act of an evil supernatural demon, prions (a mutant mad cow disease), a new "safe" designer recreational drug anybody can make at home out of clorox and pepto-bismol that has a zombie side effect one year after it is ingested, pods from outer space, slugs that attach to your spinal column from outer space, nanites intended to cure brain cancer, or a mutation of the common cold. Maybe half of these possibilities have formed the basis in whole or in part of science fiction novels over the decades (mutant rabies, alien diseases, pods, and slugs, biowarfare gone awry...)
So, should we allow scientific talks on how stem cells are being used to cure nerve deafness in humans and parkinson's disease to be interrupted at will by whack jobs that want to claim, without evidence, that the individuals cured MIGHT turn into zombies, so all research into stem cells must instantly cease? Seriously? Or, because stem cells are making an end run around the "intelligent design" of the human body by a supernatural deity they are therefore sinful (no need for evidence or a firm definition of sin, remember, it is whatever you want it to be or allege that it is and nobody can prove you wrong) and will cause not the zombie apocalypse but the biblical apocalypse unless we gather up all of the researchers and burn them alive at the stake as a manner of atonement and banish all of their works and threaten all human with torture and death if they ever use the words "stem cells" again? Can you prove that this won't happen (well, except by ignoring the idiots and curing nerve deafness and Parkinson's anyway with no breaking of the seals or unleashing of the four horsemen etc)?
Lack of evidence is not positive evidence of lack. It is, however, something that can legitimately be used to state that lack is more likely the longer evidence is looked for and not found. We cannot positively assert that there are no pink unicorns living somewhere on Earth simply because one has never been seen, captured, found (with or without color) in the fossil record), but we can say that -- given the existing observational evidence -- it is pretty unlikely that any exist and are just lurking somewhere in deepest darkest Africa or Tibet or in a special volcanic cave in the middle of Antarctica. If you assert invisible pink unicorns (whatever color "invisible pink" ends up being) you make it even harder to disprove, as now you can literally look everywhere on Earth and just because you can't see them doesn't mean that they aren't there, because they are invisible! Does this mean that we have to now allow La La Loopsie/My Little Pony followers to disrupt scientific presentations of evolutionary biology?
Note well that I'm not certain legislation is the answer to stuff like this, but providing the idiots with an escort off campus and leaving them there with instructions not to come back (students or not) seems pretty reasonable.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Nice collection of weapons pulled off antifa members who were looking to attack people at pro-trump/free speech rally. http://www.officer.com/news/12...
Holy shit!! I think I saw the rusty hatchet stolen from my shed in there. Any chance I can get it back?
And what the hell is that at the bottom of the image? Is that a a gate hinge bolted to a shin guard? That's gotta hurt.
This also demonstrates that no government can disarm the public, people will improvise. You can take their guns and knives but then they'll just fashion their own. Part of the reason why the speakers and attendees to these speeches get their ass kicked so often is that the venue is "weapons free" but the area to and from is not. The police disarmed one group but not the other. Would these hooligans be so bold to bring a sack full of bricks if they thought the attendees might shoot back?
I know someone is thinking, "but at least the hooligans didn't have a gun." What makes you think the hooligans could buy a gun? These students are likely often high on drugs (prescribed or not), likely with previous criminal records, or a protection order out on them. They couldn't pass a background check to buy a firearm.
Another common reply to my comment, "Do you really think it justified to use a gun against someone swinging a sack of bricks?" Yes. Wait, let me make myself clear... HELL YES!! Swinging a sack of bricks, putting a plastic bag over someone's head, hitting them with a pipe wrench, or a bike lock, is deadly force. Deadly force should be met with deadly force. That includes the use of a firearm in defense of lives.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.