Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

and i don't mind cap'n save a french academia. i'm perfectly happy to believe that the american academy is uniquely ignorant + polemical and that europe universities have their shit more together.

hah well that's not the case but when it comes to this issue at least French academia hasn't lost its shit. we have other shit going on, like biweekly strikes against the new labor law for example.

That quote from Shatz is not exactly what I'd call a "denunciation" though of course I haven't read Shatz's whole letter

well he accuses him of not thinking so, like the article says, it's basically a soft denunciation

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. If I wrote that to a friend I'd be saying "you're acting in a way that helps out people who are motivated to say bad things about you that aren't true," and that would not be at all the same as saying "all those bad things about you are true plus you're stupid."

shatz in LRB:

The exaggerations in Daoud’s New York Times piece about behaviour in the Arab world were too sweeping, the leaps of judgment too swift. He seemed to be breaking taboos about Muslim ‘sexual misery’ for their own sake, without realising that some of these taboos are clichés in the West, in racist circles where he would not be welcome except as an ‘Arabe de service’. Daoud has always refused to be muzzled by fears of the ways others might use his writings; if racists choose to exploit his criticisms of Islam, he can hardly be blamed for it. It is an admirable stance. But to write in blithe disregard of nuance and complexity – and of the battles waged by the Arab women in whose name he spoke – struck me as irresponsible, and unworthy of him. I wrote to him in the hope that he would climb down from this mountain of hyperbole, and instead explore the ambiguities of sex and power in his fiction. He replied that my letter had confirmed his decision to ‘return to literature’ and ‘leave journalism’.

Yeah, I would definitely not call that a "denunciation." It's what I'd write about somebody whose work I respected and thought was worthwhile.

i understand there's a difference between saying "your work is useful for racists" and "you are a racist" but ultimately both are censorious moves i thnk

But who knows, maybe I'm going around denouncing people without knowing it!

i understand there's a difference between saying "your work is useful for racists" and "you are a racist" but ultimately both are censorious moves i thnk

I just think that difference is vitally important to keep in the forefront of our mind -- e.g. because I think there are people in BDS to whom both you and I would like to say the former and not the latter (setting aside for a moment the people to whom we would like to say the latter)

and it is super annoying when the response to saying the former thing is "OH STOP LEVELING THAT TIRED ACCUSATION OF ANTI-SEMITISM AT ME," which response elides exactly that difference.

that's fair but i'm not surprised that after what was definitely a clear denunciation of racism he wasn't quite as receptive to the "your work is useful for racists" critique (like probably he saw the shatz letter in the same continuum and not as a distinct critique). nb putting aside whether shatz is right or not i should admit i have not read the novel. i think i do agree with you.

Death of the citer?

http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/UC-regents-committee-OKs-anti-Zionism-as-6988865.php

The 12-page “Principles Against Intolerance”

that's a lot of principles.

Noted feminist and UC Berkeley comparative literature Professor Judith Butler told the regents that she was the daughter of Holocaust survivors and that “anti-Semitism is a despicable form of discrimination.” However, she said, UC should not conflate it with anti-Zionism, “a political viewpoint protected by the First Amendment.”

FWIW anti-semitism is also protected by the first amendment, no? at least if it's not employed in some actionable form of discrimination. you are allowed to be anti-semitic, to say anti-semitic things.

i feel like a lot of academics and administrators have forgotten this.

for instance the chancellor of my university sent out a statement that said something about "nobody is entitled" to express hateful or demeaning speech. um, yes, yes, they are. especially at a public university.

otm

this all ties into the expansion of academic bureaucracy. schools shouldn't have to have these elaborate speech codes, but having them justifies a lot of jobs, and in any case students increasingly seem to see this kind of administrative interference as an end in itself. how many recent protest movements made administrative "statements" and new administrative positions a key part of their demands?

also have we discussed this?:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/emory-u-to-track-down-trump-supporting-chalkers.html

SMDH

thinktanks for the emories

FWIW anti-semitism is also protected by the first amendment, no? at least if it's not employed in some actionable form of discrimination. you are allowed to be anti-semitic, to say anti-semitic things.

I think political expression has always been understood to be at the very center of what's protected by 1st amendment, and is indeed more strictly protected than being a racist yutz (not to say the latter isn't protected)

for instance the chancellor of my university sent out a statement that said something about "nobody is entitled" to express hateful or demeaning speech. um, yes, yes, they are. especially at a public university.

I think they're entitled in a sense, but it's def not the 1st am that entitles them, it's an academic norm. Steven Salaita doesn't have a 1st amendment claim against UIUC, nor would he if he were a student who got expelled for tweeting the same stuff.

speech codes at public universities seem like possible first amendment violations to me and i believe courts have generally ruled against speech codes for that reason. i agree that butler is embarrassingly confused about 1st amendment protections in quote above.

also i think a lot of anti-semites consider their antisemitic speech political and that's probably why it gets mixed up w/ anti-zionism so much since they're both political speech directed against jewish institutions

for instance the chancellor of my university sent out a statement that said something about "nobody is entitled" to express hateful or demeaning speech. um, yes, yes, they are. especially at a public university.

I think they're entitled in a sense, but it's def not the 1st am that entitles them, it's an academic norm. Steven Salaita doesn't have a 1st amendment claim against UIUC, nor would he if he were a student who got expelled for tweeting the same stuff.

Don't know the details of the Salaita case enough to comment, but like 30 minutes ago I was listening to a podcast where a law professor made the exact opposite point re:students--that student speech in non-university forums (like twitter) is subject to first amendment protections against university disciplinary actions.

specifically applied to public universities like UIUC

If a law professor said that, I stand corrected.

yeah, I am no lawyer and can't back it up beyond my initial statement. it was a weird confluence of listening to a podcast at random and then opening up this thread to see the exact same discussion. The law professor in question was either Eugene Volokh from UCLA or Geoffrey Stone from UofC, fwiw.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/25/brown-students-shut-down-trans-activist-s-speech-because-israel.html

http://www.manchesterspring.org.uk/2016/02/23/the-end-of-emo-politics/

kpunk on EMO-POLITICS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/03/student-accused-of-violating-university-safe-space-by-raising-he/

According to EUSA safe space rules, only gestures that indicate agreement are “permissible”, and then only as long as “these gestures are generally understood and not used in an intimidating manner”.

is that real

It's a good question. The EUSA is not part of the University of Edinburgh, afaik, and they set their own rules. They also have an extremely hostile relationship with the student newspaper that 'broke' the story. They have a rep for pushing edicts like asking student discos to not play Blurred Lines, etc, but it is worth taking anything written about them with a pinch of salt unless it is backed by a lot of evidence.

no i mean like, are there orgs that even do that??

it occurred to me that perhaps some parliamentary bodies have, at least, customs on only voicing disagreements in prescribed ways

The association seems to have a very strict policy on how members are expected to behave when others are speaking. I don't think that's necessarily culturally unusual but it might not be codified often.

http://chronicle.com/article/What-Students-Think-About-Free/235897

paywall :(

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/10/students-censorship-safe-places-platforming-free-speech?CMP=fb_gu

I don't know if this article has been posted here before. One of the authors believes in something called 'concept creep' which I thought might be relevant to this thread (I wish I could now put some disclaimers on the OP because thread makes me look like an idiot, but moving on).

So how did it come to pass that many Emory students felt victimised and traumatised by innocuous and erasable graffiti?

Emory students are not unique. Many other universities have been rocked by protests this year over what seem like small things to outsiders (...). What on earth is going on?

Part of the answer can be found in cultural shifts that have changed the meanings of many words and concepts used on campus, making it hard for people off campus to understand what the protesters are saying. One of us (Haslam) recently published an essay titled “Concept creep: Psychology’s expanding concepts of harm and pathology.” Many concepts are “creeping” – they are being “defined down” so that they are applied promiscuously to milder and less objectionable events.

Take bullying. When research on bullying began in the 1970s, an act had to meet four criteria to count: it had to be an act of aggression directed by one or more children against another child; the act had to be intentional; it had to be part of a repeated pattern; and it had to occur in the context of a power imbalance. But over the following decades, the concept of bullying has expanded in two directions.

It has crept outward or “horizontally” to encompass new forms of bullying, such as among adults in the workplace or via social media. More problematic, though, is the creeping downward or “vertically”so that the bar has been lowered and more minor events now count as bullying. (...) As the definition of bullying creeps downward for researchers, it also creeps downward in school systems, most of which now enforce strict anti-bullying policies. This may explain why Emory students, raised since elementary school with expansive notions of bullying and subjective notions of victimhood, could perceive the words “Trump 2016” as an act of bullying, intimidation, perhaps even violence, regardless of the intentions of the writer.

A second key concept that has crept downward is trauma. Medicine and psychiatry once reserved that word for physical damage to organs and tissues, such as a traumatic brain injury. But by the 1980s, events that caused extreme terror, such as rape or witnessing atrocities in war, were recognised as causing long-lasting effects known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The original criteria for PTSD required that a traumatic event “would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost everyone” and would be “outside the range of usual human experience”. But in recent trauma scholarship these stringent criteria are gone; like bullying, trauma is now assessed subjectively. (...)

A third key campus concept that has crept downward is prejudice. As overt prejudice has declined precipitously, the term has crept outward and downward. For example, the concept of “modern racism” was developed to refer to people who may show no overt prejudice, but who endorse policy positions that might be associated with prejudice, such as opposing the use of racial preferences in college admissions. More recently, the concept of “implicit prejudice” has become popular after experiments showed that it takes most people slightly longer to associate pictures of Black people (vs. White people) with good words (vs. bad words).

As with bullying, prejudice is now in the eye of the beholder. If a person feels that a word, facial expression or even a subtle hand movement makes them uncomfortable in a way related to a protected identity, then an act of prejudice has occurred. For Emory students steeped in training about prejudice and inclusion, there is no need to know the intentions of the midnight chalker. The word “Trump” activates associations to racism in their minds. Therefore, anyone who writes his name has committed an act of racism, perhaps even traumatizing racial violence.

Concept creep does not happen to all psychological terms – it happens primarily to those that are useful in what sociologists have called a “culture of victimhood”.

This feels plausible. 'The meaning of words changes over time, therefore some older people don't get why some younger people call some things bullying, traumatic or prejudiced'. I haven't read the actual case they use to back it up though, so I'm not going to dive in and agree that, for example the definition of bullying has changed as they say. I believe they provide a link at the bottom of the article.

Mind you, this article is also a perfect example of that creepy vibe I mentioned right back at the start of this thread. Quite a lot of it could be paraphrased as 'Hmm ... but why would anyone feel that Donald Trump or one of his supporters was a threat to their life?'

oh look, another think piece

http://chronicle.com/article/Slogans-Have-Replaced/236099

'course as a card-carrying creepy lib, this is the part that gets me:

More to the point, the claim that a college campus should be a locus of absolutely unfettered free speech is a pose. There are certain opinions and topics which an enlightened society can today justifiably exclude from discussion. No university any of us would want to be associated with would entertain "free speech" in favor of genocide, slavery, or withdrawing women’s right to vote, even in the vein of airing them in order to review the arguments against them, as John Stuart Mill advised be done with repugnant ideas. There comes a point where all will agree that we have made at least some progress in social history and, in the interests of time and energy, need not revisit issues that have been decided.

The problem is in deciding when an issue has been settled. If tens of millions of people believe something we find to be wrong can it really be not worth discussing anymore?

I went to college at a place where ppl really loved to argue that women's place was in submission to men, and that women shouldn't be allowed to lead groups of mixed genders, wear pants, etc. So maybe that's why I think you all are not understanding the exhaustion of fighting this shit over and over like it's your job to be a sounding board for ppl who aren't affected by whether their argument is true or not.

i feel the same way but joy karega is still on staff at oberlin so colleges need to decide whether they are or aren't a place for "all speech" no matter how offensive

there's a distinction between "if someone wants to say this stupid thing then fine they can and people can pay attention" and "we specifically are creating a venue for people to listen to this horseshit and treat it as something that is potentially not horseshit" and it gets eclipsed, which i think is malicious.

because if people say "ok maybe it's not a great use of time and resources to ask people to take this horseshit seriously" then that turns into "censorship" when of course it isn't.

there are plenty of things that you can find a loony person spouting somewhere near a college campus. for example, that judgment day came 30 years ago and people just haven't realized it yet. or that the moon landing was a hoax.

that doesn't mean that you then invite the shouty person in rags soaked with their own urine to then give a commencement lecture.

or that the person who says "maybe don't do that" is like censorious

More to the point, the claim that a college campus should be a locus of absolutely unfettered free speech is a pose. There are certain opinions and topics which an enlightened society can today justifiably exclude from discussion.

Opinions and topics?

No university any of us would want to be associated with would entertain "free speech" in favor of genocide, slavery, or withdrawing women’s right to vote, even in the vein of airing them in order to review the arguments against them, as John Stuart Mill advised be done with repugnant ideas.

I wouldn't mind attending a university where we looked at why people in the 18th century thought slavery was a good idea?

There comes a point where all will agree that we have made at least some progress in social history and, in the interests of time and energy, need not revisit issues that have been decided.

I dunno I find reading about the Great Schism quite interesting and that was in about 1000 ad

Think this person doesn't understand what the history department is for, and envisions a college rather as a series of platforms where people advocate for things and other people counter-advocate?

I thought I was going to agree with them when they said 'the claim that a college campus should be a locus of absolutely unfettered free speech is a pose' - I assumed what followed would be about how you're never going to get total freedom of speech because always there's going to be one party with less command of English, less ability to put their story across in newspapers, or a point of view no-one involved in the discussion has thought of because it's not theirs, etc.

Anyway I think the idea that the whole of society looks at certain ideas and says 'right, this is done' and just agrees not to go over old ground anymore is wrong. Too many different people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLlTlYfqQV4

Not a current event. Just remembered this old and it made me think of you guys.

'No university any of us would want to be associated with would entertain "free speech" in favor of genocide, slavery, or withdrawing women’s right to vote, even in the vein of airing them in order to review the arguments against them, as John Stuart Mill advised be done with repugnant ideas.

I wouldn't mind attending a university where we looked at why people in the 18th century thought slavery was a good idea?'

Sure, and I can't imagine a course on the topic that wouldn't discuss or critique those ideas. You're conflating teaching with the issue of whether student organisations should ban certain speakers or groups from their events. To give another example, banning fascist groups from campus hasn't stopped anybody teaching about Nazism.