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  #1  
Unread 06-25-2017, 01:09 AM
William A. Baurle William A. Baurle is offline
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Default I Couldn't Resist.

http://www.aei.org/publication/refle...in-middlebury/

I wonder if we can have a reasonable and rational discussion about this? Is this what we want in our halls of higher learning?

Last edited by William A. Baurle; 06-25-2017 at 01:11 AM.
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  #2  
Unread 06-25-2017, 01:33 AM
William A. Baurle William A. Baurle is offline
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I should have mentioned in the OP:

This discussion is not about Charles Murray, who may or may not be a complete asshole.

In my opinion, institutions of higher learning should be able to host ANY speaker, be it the ghost of Adolf Shitler, or even satan himself. Or God, Allah, Shiva, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hell, even Maylo...or was it Mylo..Y...anni...piano...opolis, or something like that?

If no-one goes to the speech: isn't that the best resistance? Nobody shows up! An empty hall for the asshole with the empty head? Isn't that terrifically better than what is described in the article I linked to?

Here's hoping that this thread can be productive.

Last edited by William A. Baurle; 06-25-2017 at 01:38 AM.
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  #3  
Unread 06-25-2017, 03:19 AM
Tony Barnstone's Avatar
Tony Barnstone Tony Barnstone is offline
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The issue has been well parsed here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...speech/530094/

The article does a good job of presenting the constitutional issues and showing how recent complaints about a purported lack of campus free speech too often seek to quash just that: the freedom to dissent, protest, argue, all of which are essential to our democracy. Of course, when a few Middlebury protesters resorted to violence, they were not expressing constitutionally-protected dissent; they just gave their enemies an easy way to dismiss their anti-racist message as violent thuggery. Their tactics backfired badly because they gave their rightwing critics the perfect tool to use in dismissing their concerns: an appeal to middle class fear.

Here are some good paragraphs from the article:

First, much of the social pressure that critics complain about is itself speech. When activists denounce Yiannopoulos as a racist or Murray as a white nationalist, they are exercising their own right to free expression. Likewise when students hold protests or marches, launch social media campaigns, circulate petitions, boycott lectures, demand the resignation of professors and administrators, or object to the invitation of controversial speakers. Even heckling, though rude and annoying, is a form of expression.

More crucially, the existence of such social pushback helps protects Americans from the even more frightening prospect of official censorship. Here’s why. Speech is a powerful weapon that can cause grave harms, and the First Amendment does not entirely prohibit the government from suppressing speech to prevent those harms. But one of the central tenets of modern First Amendment law is that the government cannot suppress speech if those harms can be thwarted by alternative means. And the alternative that judges and scholars invoke most frequently is the mechanism of counter-speech.

As Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in his celebrated 1927 opinion in Whitney v. California, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Counter-speech can take many forms. It can be an assertion of fact designed to rebut a speaker’s claim. It can be an expression of opinion that the speaker’s view is misguided, ignorant, offensive, or insulting. It can even be an accusation that the speaker is racist or sexist, or that the speaker’s expression constitutes an act of harassment, discrimination, or aggression.

In other words, much of the social pushback that critics complain about on campus and in public life—indeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctness—can plausibly be described as counter-speech. And because counter-speech is one of the mechanisms Americans rely on as an alternative to government censorship, such pushback is not only a legitimate part of our free speech system; it is indispensable....

Fine, the critics might say. But much of the social pressure on campus does not just demonize; it is designed to, and often does, chill unpopular speech. And given that courts frequently invoke the potential chilling effect of government action to invalidate it under the First Amendment, social pressure that has a potential chilling effect is also inconsistent with free speech.

The problem with this argument is that all counter-speech has a potential chilling effect. Any time people refute an assertion of fact by pointing to evidence that contradicts it, speakers may be hesitant to repeat that assertion. Whenever opponents challenge an opinion by showing that it is poorly reasoned, leads to undesirable results, or is motivated by bigotry or ignorance, speakers may feel less comfortable expressing that opinion in the future.


Put bluntly, the implicit goal of all argument is, ultimately, to quash the opposing view. We don’t dispute a proposition in the hope that others will continue to hold and express that belief. Unless we are playing devil’s advocate, we dispute it to establish that we are right and the other side is wrong. If we are successful enough, the opposing view will become so discredited that it is effectively, although not officially, silenced.

Such has been the fate of many ideas over the centuries, from claims that the earth is flat to declarations that slavery is God’s will to assertions that women should not be allowed to vote or own property. Each of these positions can still be asserted without fear of government punishment. But those who make them in earnest are deemed so discreditable that the claims themselves have mostly been removed from public debate. ”

Last edited by Tony Barnstone; 06-25-2017 at 03:28 AM.
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Unread 06-25-2017, 03:33 AM
William A. Baurle William A. Baurle is offline
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Thanks for jumping in, Tony.

Great article. I would like to cite this para, as it's a bit more straight forward, and neatly condenses what I've been trying to say on the Sphere for several months:

Quote:
Many of the reasons why Americans object to official censorship also apply to the suppression of speech by private means. If we conceive of free speech as promoting the search for truth—as the metaphor of “the marketplace of ideas” suggests—we should be troubled whether that search is hindered by public officials or private citizens. The same is true of democratic justifications for free speech. If the point of free speech is to facilitate the open debate that is essential for self-rule, any measure that impairs that debate should give us pause, regardless of its source.
- [emphasis mine]
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  #5  
Unread 06-25-2017, 03:42 AM
William A. Baurle William A. Baurle is offline
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Quote:
Yet many people continue to believe that pressuring speakers to change their views or modify their language constitutes a threat to free speech.
WOW. Did I just read that?

Yes, pressuring speakers to change their views or modify their language is most certainly a threat to free speech.

Something tells me I'm not going to like the rest of the article...

Alright, it didn't go foul like I thought it would. In fact, it states explicitly the very thing I've been trying to communicate on the Sphere in these political debates:
Quote:
Does this mean any form of social pressure targeted at speakers is acceptable? Not at all. One of the reasons government censorship is prohibited is that the coercive power of the state is nearly impossible to resist. Social pressure that crosses the line from persuasion to coercion is also inconsistent with the values of free speech.

This explains why violence and threats of violence are not legitimate mechanisms for countering ideas one disagrees with. Physical assault—in addition to not traditionally being regarded as a form of expression —too closely resembles the use of force by the government.
- [emphasis mine]

Last edited by William A. Baurle; 06-25-2017 at 03:53 AM.
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  #6  
Unread 06-25-2017, 05:29 AM
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Jayne Osborn Jayne Osborn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by William A. Baurle View Post
. . . In my opinion, institutions of higher learning should be able to host ANY speaker, be it the ghost of Adolf Shitler, or even satan himself. . .

If no-one goes to the speech: isn't that the best resistance? Nobody shows up! An empty hall for the asshole with the empty head? Isn't that terrifically better than what is described in the article I linked to?
Bill,
I'm in a rush, but I wanted to stop by and say I agree with you, in principle. I know very little about Charles Murray, but the behaviour of those students was absolutely appalling.

Not showing up to hear a speaker is one way of protesting quietly, but university students should be exposed to radical views, so better still would be for them to learn how to participate in a reasoned debate, and put their alternative opinions forward!

They're supposed to be intelligent, and just shouting, screaming and being violent towards someone with whom they disagree is ludicrous.

(Simplistic thoughts, I admit, but it's all I have time for!)

Jayne
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Unread 06-25-2017, 05:58 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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What I thought worked well was the students at the historically black college who simply turned their backs this year on their graduation speaker, Betsy DeVos. Their president threatened them with not being awarded their degrees, which hardly encourages free speech. Few things are more non-violent than just turning around.

Cheers,
John
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Unread 06-25-2017, 06:59 AM
Emitt Evan Baker Emitt Evan Baker is offline
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I think this piece (below) by the professor who was injured does a better job of getting to the point and observing that this is not happening in a vacuum. There is no outlet for the rage that is building in this society as the police, the State, and corporations enact a violence that is piling up bodies in cells and in morgues. Just look at the recent verdicts in almost every single police execution case. This is just a slight shimmering image of the sort of identity politics that actually runs the world, turning its back not on a professor speaking but on entire nations, whole classes, and racial subsets as well as most other species. Strange how violent and unnerving it looks when it comes from the margins instead of the badged, the uniformed, or the stock holder empowered.

A poorly organized protest and a lack of adequate self-criticism on the part of a good cause. Ok. But where is the anger coming from and what do you suppose should be done about the roots of that anger? Here is the injured prof's take below:


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/o...sion.html?_r=1
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  #9  
Unread 06-25-2017, 01:53 PM
Tony Barnstone's Avatar
Tony Barnstone Tony Barnstone is offline
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Emitt,

The injured prof is playing innocent in that article when she complains that those who opposed Murray had not read him, and had come to false conclusions based on rumor. When you actually do read Murray's words, there is no doubt that he is a racist. The conclusion of The Bell Curve is that differences in IQ scores between African Americans, Caucasians and Asian Americans are to some extent a result of genetics, not just of environment, and the only question for him is to what extent. In brief, he's making an argument for racial (racist) superiority. He gets to those conclusions by using tainted, pseudoscientific sources: studies and surveys conducted by South African white supremacists and others associated with the white supremacist movement. In brief, he is an ugly charlatan who coats his foul racist views with a patina of "science" in order to give cover and comfort to the worst of us.

For his sources, see: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994...he-bell-curve/ For his hidden agenda, see: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...he-bell-curve/ For his racist conclusions in his own words, plus a discussion of his belief that women are inferior to men, see: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-h...charles-murray

The question of whether such a con man should be given the academic imprimatur of an invited talk at Middlebury is a real one. It is not a question of his foul politics. It is a question of whether he has any academic credibility to begin with, if you believe The New York Review of Books, Scientific American, and The Southern Poverty Law Center. Having said that, I do think that Middlebury and other institutions should invite (reputable) speakers from across the political spectrum. It is good to have a full marketplace of ideas.

Best, Tony
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  #10  
Unread 06-25-2017, 02:04 PM
Emitt Evan Baker Emitt Evan Baker is offline
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You got the wrong address here if you read my post as soft on Murray. I think his work is junk. The prof was referring to the cadence calls, some of which were directed at Murray as homophobic. He apparently isn't. She was just rightly pointing out that stuff like that waters down the power of resistance as well as questioning the violence of the action.

I think what Bill is linking this whole discussion here to is his belief that a growing "regressive" left is taking over the campuses of the US and, in some strange relation he sees between this and the crimes of Stalin, that the Sphere is populated with "liberals" blind to the terror of the new identity-politic-addled youth. That is my read of Bill's concerns. He can freely correct me. I have been clear in my critique of these concerns. I though the letter from the injured prof. headed off some of the nonsense that had been made of the even on the internet.
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