Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

liberalism has a few problems re effective organizing and tbh I'd consider its propensity to splinter into finer and finer groups v conservative counterpart hierarchies a bigger issue than its allowing too many voices

insofar as it allows those voices in terms of their uniqueness and specificity id say that allowing them is the actual cause of the splintering. it's kinda the price you pay for liberalism.

Election years would be so much more interesting if any of this stuff about lots of voices were evident.

What was accomplished? An utterly minor (& totally questionable) (& short term & reversed) victory of getting a movie pulled pales in comparison to the contribution this incident made to multiple right wing talking points. Bonus points for getting one more "university censorship" talking point firmly established as well, although that was an "own goal" they can take the blame for by themselves.

yep. http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/10/at-umich-a-libertarian-muslim-student-un

also, this was a very popular, highly visible, much discussed film in american media/ culture: iirc box office record breaking, oscar nominated, publicly praised by first lady michelle obama. i fail to see how attempts to insulate campus from the wider culture & conversation, attempts to shut out or quarantine the wider culture & conversation— as opposed to joining in that conversation (exposing students to it) & providing a critical voice/ perspective— fulfills any of the goals of liberal education.

on the contrary, these campus flurries tend only to discredit the intended message (certainly from the pov of the wider culture).

idk whether campus activists should tailor their protests to the possibility that they're going to end up on the front pages of Fox News and Reason. Requests that university administrations not book what are perceived to be misogynistic comedians, homophobic singers, racist films, etc, for official events (which is not necessarily the same thing as 'banning them from campus') are fairly common and shutting that down in fear of provoking right-wing hyperbole is going to have more of a chilling effect on free speech than the requests themselves are ever likely to.

http://publicaffairs.vpcomm.umich.edu/key-issues/statement-regarding-american-sniper-movie/

alternative programming: paddington the bear movie

and shutting that down in fear of provoking right-wing hyperbole is going to have more of a chilling effect on free speech than the requests themselves are ever likely to.

i certainly agree such protests/ requests should not be "shut down"! As I said before, the petitioning students were exercising free speech (and I'm all for that).

Whether that was an *advisable* act of free speech (as opposed to "an own goal") is another question. And whether in any particular case, particular circumstances, the admin or a university org should *accede* to such a protest/ request is another question as well.

I'm sure you'd agree that to accede to *any and all* protests/ requests that a university not book speakers/ speech/ media interpreted by some on campus as misogynistic, homophobic, racist etc. would be absurd and anti-liberal. That cannot be the guiding principle.

My own liberal values & bias predispose me to lean/ err on the side of free speech-- including "book(ing) what are perceived to be misogynistic comedians, homophobic singers, racist films, etc, for official events," as long as the opportunity for countervailing/ critical speech is fostered & encouraged as well. But I allow that there may well be cases in which such a prohibition is justifiable and advisable. imo this case doesn't qualify.

There once existed an ideal that university life was a place where ideas were thrashed out fearlessly, on their merits, and a wide exposure to all kinds of ideas was considered key to the process of sorting them out to find the most worthy. The phrase "marketplace of ideas" was similarly based on this model of free competition among thoughts. Science also tries to operate on a somewhat similar model, where hypotheses are tested, published and the results retested, probed and debated.

As I say this was an ideal, never a fully realized goal, but as ideals go, it has its strengths.

^yes, this ideal (with all its attendant limits, problems, flaws, even as a myth) is one i value highly. in that respect i'm a liberal out of step with some contemporary aspects or strains of "liberalism" (or "progressivism")-- at least with some of the (imo) exaggerated aspects/ strains on campus nowadays.

Can tuition be free at these universities? Since we are piling on the idealism. Also, how about instead of having assigned teachers, everyone in the class gets a turn?

it can actually. and we dont even tip the lecturers either.

That ideal coexisted quite easily with a ban on female students, segregation, etc, iirc...

Xps, I'm talking about activists self-censoring to avoid negative publicity, rather than being limited by the administration. The objective of Fox, Breitbart, Drudge, Reason etc seems to be as much about reframing the limits of acceptable protest as it does any concern about freedom of speech. Pressuring students not to engage in discussions of what should / shouldn't be supported by the administration on campus is regressive.

That's separate from the question of whether the university should have agreed to the request. As mentioned upthread, the possibility of a meaningful post-screening debate on media representation looks fanciful in this context but perhaps more could have been done to thrash out the proposal's merits with different parties before the decision was made.

That ideal coexisted quite easily with a ban on female students, segregation, etc, iirc...

yes, but imo that ideal and its exercise also led to all those societal changes.

(its imperfect exercise, as all ideals are always imperfectly exercised)

Ah yes. Who doesn't remember the free debates in Selma or Stonewall, where society was convinced to change course by the power of orderly discussion.

I'm not sure the south was politely convinced to desegregate education.

xp, beat me to it.

ya thats this for sure

i think the problem, as documented in this thread, has became that it is increasingly difficult to identify who the partisans of a suspect "polite and orderly discussion" are. it seems that what's at stake isn't a supposedly "liberal" inclusive model of debate and free speech but two (or several) competing "exclusive" models.

I'm talking about activists self-censoring to avoid negative publicity, rather than being limited by the administration. The objective of Fox, Breitbart, Drudge, Reason etc seems to be as much about reframing the limits of acceptable protest as it does any concern about freedom of speech. Pressuring students not to engage in discussions of what should / shouldn't be supported by the administration on campus is regressive.

But who is “pressuring”? Fox, Breitbart, Drudge, Reason are, like it or not, participating voices in the culture, part of the cultural conversation.

Whether to “self-censor to avoid negative publicity” might also be described as speaking with an eye to, and prepared for, likely responses from other corners of the culture (wider culture or campus itself). No speech is self-contained or self-sufficient. Right-wing media no more & no less “pressure self-censorship” on progressive activists, than progressive media “pressure self-censorship” on conservative activists.

To speak politically is to incur the consequence of countervailing negative speech. The point is not to self-censor, but to prudentially judge and at least be *aware* of, the effect & consequences of your speech, how it’s likely to be (mis)interpreted by others, on campus or in the wider world. To shelter campus activists from that wider world and potential negative responses to their speech— a futile and imo counterproductive fantasy— is not going make them more effective activists, more effective participants in the cultural conversation, when they get *out* of campus.

this seems like an old problem to me. the two sides are: 1. speech should [almost*] never be suppressed, 2. speech should be suppressed when suppression serves the ideological good. * i think we're talking about non "Fire!" speech. my problem w/ the latter is that i don't trust anyone to determine which ideological good is worth suppressing speech for. xp

another way of putting this is that the connection between the sort of thing documented in this thread and 60s style campus radicalism is becoming increasingly hard to draw--and that's discomfiting for old guard liberals! this can also be seen along the lines of what Mordy points to as liberalism's differentiation into competing interest/identity subgroups.

Problem is further complicated in that "free speech" is sort of an amorphous term meaning more or less whatever we want it to mean.

it seems to me that if you don't want the government to censor speech bc your concern is that it will suppress your speech, but not bc free speech is itself virtuous, then you're pragmatically pro-free speech, but not absolutely so. like if you are against the death penalty bc you think there's too much room for error - you're pragmatically against the death penalty, but theoretically if we could create a system that removes all error, you'd be in favor of giving the death penalty. similarly, if you believe that censoring speech is okay as long as you make sure it's not disenfranchised + minority speech that is being censored, then you're not really pro free speech. you're pro your speech and you have pragmatic concerns about the role of government in conducting political life.

which might mean that in a college department that is dominated by a progressive ideological hegemony, you're okay w/ them censoring speech. if it's a department that has a conservative bent, then it's bad for them to censor speech.

Ah yes. Who doesn't remember the free debates in Selma or Stonewall, where society was convinced to change course by the power of orderly discussion.

Many of the people who joined those protests/ movements, or voted in responsive ways (with politicians responsive in turn), were in large part motivated by ideas and speech in free circulation and increasingly propagated at the time.

Mordy, you're obviously correct, but here's the thing: 'Majority' people, people who benefit from the structural inequalities of the status quo, can claim to be pro free speech from just as pragmatic reasons as minorites. But they will never be confronted with the question, because the inequalities shelter them form being in those paradoxical situations. They can claim to be pro-free speech from absolutely virtuos reasons, that just so happen to coincide precisely with their own interests, without anyone being able to call them out on it.

BTW this place clearly don't believe in the power of the superior argument either. Because what I write is clearly the smartest of everything written in this thread, and yet all of you still seem unconvinced!

;)

So do you guys think censorship can go both ways, not that it is exclusively used as a tool by power structures? Because historically it has been used by power structures, I am having a tough time coming up w an example of a minority group successfully censoring the speech of a powerful majority.

Power is required to censor

my feeling is that "censorship" (acknowledged or implicit) is endemic to literally every kind of social organization.

The thing is that 'power structures' can be more or less fluid and dynamic. There are def situations where a member of a minority can censor a member of a majority.

To take a stupid example: Bill O'Riley can still rule the debate on his show, even though Democrats have won a permanent majority.

what?

i think it's important to tease apart what exactly we're arguing for/about bc i have a set of beliefs about the virtues of free speech qua free speech, and a set of beliefs about free speech as a pragmatic way to support minority voices. like if you believe the latter, i'd ask - how can you ever trust that the people setting the agenda have pure interests at heart? this isn't theoretical - loads of left wing movements have given way to uncomfortable authoritarianism once they attained power. i'd even say it's endemic to humanity that power is seductive and it's dangerous to give anyone any ability to censor anybody else bc no one can be trusted w/ that power. nb a very agreeable scenario: speech that criticizes power will always be threatening to power no matter how it is ideological aligned. if that's true, you might as well become a free speech radical bc the pragmatics extend forever. if we're discussing the former (fs qua fs), i think free speech has all kinds of virtues. 1. sunlight is the best disinfectant + suppressing gives credibility to the suppressed pov, 2. radical free speech is necessary to develop new/innovative ways of thinking, 3. free speech as a guarantee of individual freedom, etc.

speech should be suppressed when suppression serves the ideological good

the further problem with this pov is that it's possible to agree on the "ideological good" yet disagree whether specific speech or instances of speech serve or disserve the ideological good. That's why e.g. revolutions so often end up eating/ purging the "other" themselves, ad absurdum or horror.

(Not equating campus activism to jacobinism! Just saying "speech suppression for ideological good"-- particularly a liberal as opposed to conservative ideological good-- may lead to contradictions that are ultimately reactionary.)

its not possible to agree the ideological good in any way the meaningfully applies to any real world scenario more complex than one hungry person in a room with a sandwich

nb I would censor thus thread to Ryan drash and mordy rn fwiw

has anyone ever written on free speech as a kind of consolation in democracy? ie, "your side lost and you have to follow the laws made by the other side but you sure as hell get to complain about it." in this case, the whole notion of free speech is bound up with minority status--who else would need it?

was just reading a book about the enlightenment, and i cant remember who said this but it was a striking quote regarding the inclusiveness of the liberal ideal: "only a barbarian believes in barbarians."

paraphrasing there, probably poorly.

lots of Hugo Black and OWH Jr. decisions on free speech in a capitalist democracy worth reading too

But who is “pressuring”? Fox, Breitbart, Drudge, Reason are, like it or not, participating voices in the culture, part of the cultural conversation.

Whether to “self-censor to avoid negative publicity” might also be described as speaking with an eye to, and prepared for, likely responses from other corners of the culture (wider culture or campus itself). No speech is self-contained or self-sufficient. Right-wing media no more & no less “pressure self-censorship” on progressive activists, than progressive media “pressure self-censorship” on conservative activists.

To speak politically is to incur the consequence of countervailing negative speech. The point is not to self-censor, but to prudentially judge and at least be *aware* of, the effect & consequences of your speech, how it’s likely to be (mis)interpreted by others, on campus or in the wider world. To shelter campus activists from that wider world and potential negative responses to their speech— a futile and imo counterproductive fantasy— is not going make them more effective activists, more effective participants in the cultural conversation, when they get *out* of campus.

There are at least two sources of pressure - the right-wing elements setting the attack dogs on 19-y-o students for expressing an opinion and the semi-sympathetic liberals who think they're making the cause look bad. These students will clearly have considered and been prepared for pushback from within the campus community. I'm not going to criticise them for failing to anticipate hot takes from half the news outlets in the U.S.

The prudent / pragmatic course of action for minorities, most of the time, is to keep their heads down and say nothing. The more negative signal boosting the far right does when they fail to follow that path, the more prudent and pragmatic that becomes. These are not the normal consequences of free speech.

In your example, ryan, it's exactly the majority who needs free speech - without it, the minorities might revolt.

isn't it kind of antidemocratic to feel like you need to protect the heathens from hearing the wrong ideas? like these students could've seen the american sniper movie as an opportunity to write op-eds to the student paper, run counter-programming, have a guest speaker address the film -- like if you were really committed you could make it more painful to show the film for ppl w/ an ideological axe to grind, than to not show the film. is anyone concerned that a college showing birth of a nation today would be courting sympathy w/ the KKK? and if the argument is that birth of a nation has already become ideologically toxic but american sniper has not - isn't the way to remedy that by demonstrating in yr speech over and over why american sniper is ideologically toxic? not showing the film really only capitulates to the pov of the ideology - american sniper is too dangerous to be shown. nb the students as far as i can tell were arguing that showing the film was dangerous to their safety. idk whether it's a realistic concern that screening american sniper on a college campus is threatening to students but ok, even if we say it is, anyone can go to a movie theater or rent the flick on their own. you aren't even effectively censoring anyone. what exactly is accomplished besides amplifying yr belief that there's something enticing/seductive about american sniper's ideology?

double nb i haven't seen american sniper but nothing has made me want to see it more than the controversy lol

you're posing a certain (marxist?) ideological critique of "free speech" here and that's true as far as it goes, but the thing about that critique is that it has a really hard time accounting for real empirically verifiable instances of oppositional speech (unless you re-define oppositional so far as to be without content). majoritarian speech isn't totalizing and identical to itself. oppositional tendencies are always already there for the taking--and this is not to minimize the real oppression effects of power, but to suggest that the fact that power has to oppress at all gives the game away.

xposts to Frederick

@ Mordy: You get to watch paddington bear instead?

Xps to Mordy,

It's fundamentally important to recognise the difference between a university administration as a participatory, self-regulating entity capable of taking moral / political stands and prohibited speech in the wider sense. The university can not restrict access to American Sniper, a film that will be playing in theatres all over Michigan and probably be on Netflix in a few months. It can decide that it won't form part of an administration-sponsored event.

bc the problem isn't even that the speech is dangerous. it's that you want to demonstrate your political pov by banning it. it's the worst kind of anti-free speech since it's entirely toothless + only meant to demonstrate righteousness.

What if they knew it wouldn't be banned and they went ahead anyways because the message of not everyone being alright w this movie is more important than them winning the Free Speech olympics?