Posted on 10/30/2017 7:42:01 AM PDT by SJackson
The intellectual arrogance of suppressing campus speech.
The intellectual arrogance of suppressing campus speech
Seeming to give credence to Bertrand Russell’s observation that “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts,” a student-written op-ed that ran in the September 25th issue of The Daily Princetonian argued that conservatives should not have the benefit of free speech, and do not even have the right to expect its protection because, given their ideological stance, “they are appealing to a right that does not exist” for them.
“In my belief,” student Ryan Born continued in this astounding piece of sophistry, “when conservative ideas are opposed, there is no right that is being infringed.” In fact, he seemed to be saying, the essential worthlessness of conservative ideology—as opposed to the virtue and fundamental truths embodied in progressive thought—means that instead of debating their ideological positions, conservatives should recognize the errors in their thinking and abandon their views. “Some ideas will already have been judged wanting,” Born wrote, and “Conservatives ought to question why some ideas are so stringently opposed and then adapt their arguments, instead of begging for ‘free speech.’”
Why? Because “conservatives are interested in being able to propose their ideas without any political opposition to their right to speech.”
For evidence that academia is currently awash in this type of execrable sentiment, one only has to look at the number of campuses which, just in the opening months of this semester, have experienced the actual shutting down or exclusion of conservative speech—purportedly with the intention of rejecting “hate speech,” right-wing thought, white supremacy, fascistic ideology, and a host of related extremist modes of thought the progressive left on campuses has conjured up as being an imminent threat to their emotional safety and well-being.
Now, any speech that the left wishes to suppress or avoid it categorizes as being equivalent to violence; conservative ideology is thought of as being weaponized as “hate speech” and potentially harmful to listeners. Any speech that is labeled as “hate speech” condemns that expression to lacking the protection of free speech, and because it thereby falls outside the bounds of acceptable expression, it is undeserving of being heard and justified in being suppressed. Speakers who question prevailing liberal orthodoxy are said to be committing virtual “violence” against marginalized victim groups on campus who might be exposed to these extremist ideas and be injured by them in some way, and speakers are disinvited or obstructed proactively to ensure that victims are never threatened by ideas they do not wish to hear or tolerate.
Campus progressives have shown themselves perfectly willing to shut down speech that they themselves have decided is unworthy of even being heard, and this behavior is not surprising given a 2017 national survey of 1,500 current undergraduate students at four-year colleges and universities conducted by John Villasenor of Brookings Institute. When asked if it is acceptable for students to shout down and disrupt a speech by a “very controversial speaker . . . known for making offensive and hurtful statements,” 51 percent of those polled agreed that, yes, shutting down such speech with the “heckler’s veto” is justified. Even more troubling was the response to a follow-up question which asked respondents if they believed in using violence to interfere with and shut down the controversial speaker’s appearance; astonishingly, 19 percent of students answered affirmatively that a violent response to the controversial speaker’s ideas and words was appropriate and justified.
These intolerant liberals are not even interesting in engaging with their ideological opponents. At a Rutgers University panel discussion in October, “Identity politics: the new racialism on campus?,” sponsored by Spike, “a British anti-misanthropy current-affairs magazine,” audience members began interrupting the panelists with chants of “black lives matter!” When one of the panelists attempted to explain his position, a woman from the audience shouted out that she did not “need statistics,” further complaining that, at any rate, “the system” controls facts. “It’s the system. It’s the institution,” she raved. “Don’t tell me about facts,” she shouted, most revealingly. “I don’t need no facts.”
As part of the paroxysms of moral indignation liberals have shown in response to what they see as the ascension of white supremacy and alt-right extremism in the wake of President Trump’s victory, any student groups to right of center are subject to being smeared as extremists, racists, and white supremacists, and their very presence on campus a threat to victim groups. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, for instance, a meeting of the school’s College Republicans was disrupted after students responded to a Facebook post that urged protesters to come to the meeting and shut it down. “We need a movement of people on this campus that rejects the ‘right of assembly,’ or ‘right of free speech’ for white supremacists and fascists,” the Facebook post read, and activists eventually did force open the door to the meeting space and screamed that the members were “fascists,” “racists,” and “white supremacists.”
Also in October, a similar scene took place at Columbia University where activists mounted “an anti-fascist rally . . . where Tommy Robinson, founder of the far-right Islamophobic hate group English Defense League,” was scheduled to speak. Protesters announced “that alt-right speakers like Tommy Robinson are NOT WELCOME on our campus,” another common phrase used by activists that suggests that they believe they, and only they, are the moral conscience and voice of the entire university community, when that is clearly not the case. A video taken of the event shows protesters attempting to block entrances to the building, storming the area where the speech was to be held, shouting “black lives matter” and “white supremacy,” banging the outer walls of the auditorium to drown out any speaking, and dominating the room with random screaming directed at audience members, and loud, repetitive chants of, “Whose campus? Our campus!”
At an October event at University of Michigan, in in yet another example, Charles Murray, political scientist, libertarian, and author of the controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, was scheduled to speak but protestors screamed out continually for 40 minutes, “Charles Murray go away; sexist, racist, KKK! Charles Murray go away; sexist, racist KKK!,” occupying the majority of the seats in the venue and ultimately preventing Murray from speaking at all. When an administrator asked the protestors to cease their heckling, they screamed back at him, “We’ve been silent too long!” and “stop silencing students of color!”
Administrators have been slow to respond to these outrageous outbursts and out of control protests by leftist students, but the frequency and intensity of these disruptions, and the virulence of the left’s reaction to conservative speech, has finally pushed at least one institution to take a firm moral stand and address this serious problem head-on. The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin recently drafted a new policy, titled “Commitment to Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression,” which will enact penalties for any individual who exercises the “hecklers veto,” disrupts the speech of others, or otherwise prevents others from enjoying freedom of speech on campus.
Anticipating the mistaken belief that many students now have that certain speech—such as that speech referred to as “hate speech”—does not deserve protection, the policy asserts that “[I]t is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they, or others, find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
Maintaining civility on a campus is, of course, a worthy goal, but, the policy states, “concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members within the university community.” For violations of the policy, students will be subject to a formal investigation and a disciplinary hearing, and multiple infractions will result in suspension and eventually expulsion.
Shutting down speech is not only unconstitutional, it violates one of the university’s primary values. When members of the academic community ignore those values and violate regulations, there must be swift and significant consequences, and these sanctions must be publicized in advance of any event, as the Wisconsin policy will do. Students should not and cannot be allowed to take over a campus and hijack the robust exchange of ideas—even if they think they have the best intentions and are promoting a virtuous, progressive agenda.
“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education,” observed the champion of free speech, Justice Louis D. Brandeis, “the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
Authoritarian liberals are following the same model as Islam.
Protect the meme by equating criticism of it and facts embarrassing to believers as a literal physical assault on all believers. Now you have permission to physically attack critics and kill infidels for the “protection” of the believers.
They even have the multi-tiered morality where different groups are assigned different moral weights and social value, with believers at the top.
>>Authoritarian liberals are following the same model as Islam.
And who did Islam learn the model from?
Hint: Ask the Bolsheviks who instigated WWI, II, the Cold War - as well as the divisive festivities afflicting the Middle East.
Got 200 Years Together?
https://www.google.com/#q=200+years+together+solzhenitsyn&oq=200+years
Where is the ACLU on this? In the past they even protected the rights of Neo-nazis to free speech. What about free speech rights for people espousing beliefs that are merely to the right of the radical left?
Trying to shut down speech at a university should be a mandatory expulsion. Any institution that doesn’t realize that isn’t worth spit.
The ACLU will only protect you when it can oppose the government. They aren’t going to stand against other leftie interest groups.
"Progressives" talk a lot about "diversity." By that, Hillary and her crew, as well as the "sheeple" who follow her, mean "diversity" of anything and everything except freedom of conscience, freedom of expression of ideas which differ from the "Progressive" agenda for "changing" America from adherence and devotion to the ideas of liberty outlined in its Declaration of Independence and structured into its Constitution for self-government.
Shame on them and all whom they control through fear!
The things we are witnessing are the consequences of decades of Progressive academic and government "elitists'" indoctrination of America away from its founding principles in the ideas of liberty and toward the cultish and oppressive ideology of Progressivism, an ideology which demands complete submission to "progressive" regressives who believe they are entitled, and were appointed, to rule over everyone else. A society where Progressives rule is a society where the ideas of liberty have been subordinated to the ideas of tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson, only days before his death on July 4, 1826, explaining his inability to attend a gathering to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration, wrote to Roger Weightman:
"I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made. may it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others. for ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them." (Jefferson, June 24, 1826, to Roger Weightman, End of Jefferson quotation)
If not, violence will be inevitable. Think Kent State x 1000.
Bookmark
Progressive liberalism cannot exist unless they continually throw out Facts, Reason, Logic and Common Sense.
How they get away with it is stunning as we watch pure evil unfolding at a rapid pace right in front of our eyes.
bkmk
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