The threat from within
news.stanford.edu
news.stanford.edu
"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." -- Justice Brandeis, 1927.
I'd never read the whole opinion until just now. It's great and the paragraph that quote comes from is stirring. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/357#pg_377
edit\addendum: ACLU has a FAQ on this issue that directly addresses the universities: https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...
In a single word: empathize
This is a growing problem in far places more than just universities. It's amplified by the filter bubbles in which most of us participate, whether we realize it or not, thanks to social media and targeted advertising.
Skepticism doesn't entail blocking out viewpoints you disagree with. You automatically lose an argument if you refuse to engage with your detractor.
Nah. If someone who believes the Earth is flat is willing to spend 12 hours a day arguing on forums, your best move is to refuse to engage. You will never convince them, and they will always outlast you and feel victorious.
I have had experience elsewhere with someone who trolls various forums in an effort to spread the "good word" about Jehova. Sometimes, "The only winning move is not to play." It's not always the case, and sure, that line can be used as an excuse by people in bad faith to avoid an argument; it's still the prudent course sometimes.
Trolls are there, all over the place, but there are "True Believers" too, and they're even more immovable and pointless.
The issue is not that people make a serious and earnest effort to understand the opposing side, but tire before they're able to understand the other POV. The issue is rather that they apply one or more of a handful of ethereal, unfalsifiable labels to their opponent, and then believe that gives them license to dismiss the opponent's POV out of hand without addressing or processing it.
When such people hear something challenging to their favored notions, instead of saying "Wow, I'll need to think about that", they say "You're a [bigot|racist|%phobe|redneck|yuppie|commie|socialist|...].", mutter additional insults under their breath, tell you not to try to show your disgusting ignorant face around here anymore or else, and pat themselves on the back for their righteousness while they walk away.
Also most of those labels are falsifiable.
You just described the battle cry of the eternal troll. Your freedom of speech does not equal me being forced to listen to you.
Instead, what I encounter more often is if I don't immediately agree with someone they say, "we have to agree to disagree." Which is no agreement at all. It's shutting down communication and preventing me from understanding why we disagree. I learn nothing from people who say that to me and find it frustrating.
Have you ever heard someone arguing "Reason is on their side"?
If you go to high school debate you see this played out. Neither side arrives at the truth and many viewpoints favoring neither side get left out.
Personally my favorite memory of college was talking politics with a professor who was opposite of me on the traditional political spectrum on almost everything. We enjoyed talking to each other, we argued quite a bit, but I learned a lot. The most important thing I learned was that despite all of our differences we agreed on more than I would have possibly imagined.
A one-on-one conversation with a college professor sounds excellent. On the other hand, I'm having difficulty thinking of any particular area where it would be beneficial to have an entire institution limiting itself to a single belief.
When you accept this, you accept that "censorship" is unavoidable. Some ideas will not be given a platform because of that platform's perceived (correctly or not) distance from the mainstream. There is no society that has ever existed where this is not the case.
So the question is: which views should be denied a platform?
Obviously there's no perfect way to answer this question, but it seems to me that the solution to this problem isn't as difficult as this essay claims. I think that, quite clearly, the criteria that define acceptable speech on a college campus need to change. Specifically, those criteria must expand. Dissenting views need to be given a platform, even if they make some students uncomfortable.
Of course, the speakers with the most universally unpalatable views aren't going to get invited (by student groups) because they won't get enough attendees to fill an auditorium or be worth the hassle. But that's unrelated to whether the university should allow it.
This is not an easy problem, and 'open calls to violence' are not a trivial solution.
I also fear universities which seek to over-represent minority points for the sake of balance, in the same way that news programs often do.
Abortion rights
Abortion opponents
Trade agreements
etc.
No, it's an abusive act though.
The simple answer to your question is: The definition of violence by the courts is physical.
And it's probably a good decision. Otherwise the rabbit hole will take us bad places.
Of course with this in mind, it's significantly harder to oppose Trump's proposal to defund Berkeley (or whichever college). Why is taxpayer support for a political advocacy group somehow sacrosanct?
The issue is the unwillingness of those attending to take advantage of the full diversity of views and life experiences that university life has to offer.
Most importantly though you are taking a simplistic all or nothing approach where any (perceived) transgression disqualifies the entire history of knowledge seeking and sharing of ideas.
Socrates was also a professional troll. Should he (if he were not mortal) be barred from universities?
As for Milo, I've never watched him until yesterday. I saw a bunch of journalists claiming he supported pedophilia, yet refusing to quote him or even link to the video. So I figured I was being mislead (I was!) and watched the actual video.
While he is full of hyperbole, flamboyance and ridiculousness, he's also making valid points mixed in with it. For example, one of his major points is that the left wing identity politics is just a rhetorical weapon, not a real principle - that's why a "flaming queer" like him isn't allowed to hide behind it.
LOL @ Socrates being a professional troll. I feel like I'm being trolled when I read stuff like this...
So you were citing the treatment of someone whom "who had never watched until yesterday" in support of your claim about Universities and open acceptance of ideas. That's a pretty good summation of how ideologically driven your arguments are.
It sure didn't stop him from trying to hide behind "being a child abuse victim" to excuse his behavior. But that just makes him a hypocrite, what makes him a troll is that whatever "valid points" he has serves the interest of provocation, not discussion.
I favor free speech, free thought and open inquiry even for ideas that I feel are harmful or dishonest. I want universities to be bastions of these values.
For example, although feminists are far more dishonest than Milo and far more hostile to open inquiry and free thought, I still favor allowing them to speak at universities. They should even have the right to criticize specific individuals (like Milo was going to) and argue against the very freedom that allows them to speak.
My knowledge of a specific speaker is completely irrelevant, because the argument I'm making has nothing whatsoever to do with who the speaker is or the content of his talk.
I've been on a bunch of these little committees. It's a combo of who has a bee in their bonnet, what speakers fit the schedule, and who will talk for free or for cheap if we can't get funding for high-profile speakers. We've managed to get Nobel Prize winners because they were in town for another speaking engagement at the right time and we could broker a deal. You seem to imply that there's a big institution-wide agreement to serve some institution-wide set of interests. On a mundane level, this simply isn't true. You're seeing the outside of a bunch of misfit cats scrapping for meager amounts of cash and drawing some pretty grand conclusions. Patterns emerge out of this system but they're not, in general, intentional or under the control of any single entity.
Would decent people --intelligent students at a university-- truly buy into these arguments? I think not.
What's to fear, then?
The best approach is to actually invite them to make a presentation and thank them profusely for coming. I would start the presentation with a sustained five minute applause.
Imagine, then, the message that would be sent to, say, a white supremacist speaker who, after being received in this fashion watches the entire venue slowly and quietly empty without saying a word until they are speaking to a bunch of empty chairs.
A voluntarily empty hall, not by force, not by burning down the town, is the best vaccination against these people.
So, yes, this means opening the doors to what we might consider to be hateful. Unless we have a fundamental lack of faith in the quality and intelligence of the student body the best approach is to let these speakers in and let them experience talking in an empty room.
Maybe a few will want to listen to them. So what?
Intelligent, quiet and non-violent rejection, that's the way to do it.
The origin of the term 'genocide' arose out of eugenics ('geno'). Eugenics was primarily 'educated' people making fancy sounding (though largely incorrect) arguments which started with justifying sterilization and ended up justifying euthanasia for the 'greater good'.
Critical thinking is not the default state of humans in any group and otherwise decent people have bought into dangerous ideas before.
You've got the etymology confused. 'geno-' comes from Grk 'genos', which means race/tribe. Genocide refers to ethnic killings. Eugenics ('eu' good + 'gen-' race/tribe) refers to the goal of achieving 'better races' and methods to achieve them. Unfortunately those methods involve pruning perceived bad seeds.
They come from the same root word, but genocide isn't derived from eugenics.
This book spent some times talking about it and I thought it was interesting: http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Gene/Siddhartha-Mu...
Say a student group invites the genocide advocate, because they've got time for that. Then another student group wants to protest, because they've got time for that. There are the student groups who will want to protest your way and the student groups who will want to yell so loud that the speaker can't be heard, and these groups won't agree. People will start complaining to the faculty advisors about X inviting Y and Z shouting down Y and W not standing up enough to Y and X, and it will get out on social media, and you'll read about the brouhaha a few days later when the event is cancelled because the admin just doesn't want to deal with the headache and the costs.
I tend to agree with you that the empty hall is the best vaccination. It just requires a coordination among the student body that would be remarkable, that would require real leadership from someone who saw this all coming. People are so mired in the day-to-day that this leadership is generally lacking. How to foster it, if that's what we want?
Silly idea: Each group gets to pick one speaker to invite. They all have to accept what other groups picked. If group A wants to boycott group B's choice then both speakers are eliminated and they both have to choose new speakers. Yes, it will be carnage at first, but very soon everyone is going to realize they have to play nice with each other or nobody gets a speaker, ever.
Then there's education. Each group has to publish a one page summary profiling the speaker and what he/she will discuss. This will serve to allow others to decide whether they want to go listen or not.
Finally, occupancy. If a speaker can't attract a certain audience size, say, 25% of available seats, the group's rating is reduced which means other groups have priority over them.
It's a complicated mish-mash of stuff. I know. And probably impossible to implement. The point is that there must be a way to game-ify this business of speakers on campus in order to avoid conflicts and operate under a set of well understood rules. Prohibit all demonstrations in the name of tolerance.
The idea is to support free speech while having some kind of a self-regulating system that does not require yelling and screaming at each other or worst. There's also a degree of forced tolerance, which, sad to say, is necessary. Universities have become almost the worst example of intolerance and bigotry in our society. They have to force themselves to peacefully allow other ideology to have a stage. This is important.
This doesn't mean endorsing anyone at all.
With regards to the funding available to pay for travel for speakers, I think the regrettable reality is that if we are going to respect the concept of free speech we need to accept the idea that we have to listen to those we might consider to be repugnant. At least for a little bit.
Free speech does not guarantee an audience. If we invite and pay for a white supremacist to give a speech, applaud them at the start of the speech and just walk out without saying a word...well, these people need an audience. They'd catch on pretty quickly that you made complete fools out of them with this move.
The university might waste some money the first year this approach is taken. Very soon the crazies are going to come back and say "no thanks, not interested in giving a talk". In other words, invite them, house them, feed them, even embrace them and take a picture with them...and then give them an empty room to talk about anything they want to talk about.
Simple, peaceful and, I think, very powerful. The crazies would have no audiences but intelligent contrasting ideas would and that's exactly what you want.
You want students to not live in an echo chamber yet you want a degree of control of the quality of the material they are exposed to.
Also, another quick point: The empty hall treatment completely disarms the crazies. In sharp contrast to that, rioting in the streets, burning cars and vandalizing businesses generates huge media attention and elevates the crazies. In other words, the protest is actually great marketing for the nut-case whereas the empty hall treatment ridicules them and makes them irrelevant, nobody will be interested in covering them at all.
I think that, with modifications, this is a good strategy.
Your scare quotes indicate that when you say "censorship" you mean "the right to choose which points of view I/we will legitimize," I guess? Or "not censorship at all as it turns out?"
Dissenting views need to be given a platform, even if they make some students uncomfortable.
Should newspapers be forced to print my letters to the editor, even if they are a bunch of fevered ravings, because my incoherent hate-screeds need to be given a platform?
If you want to promote unpopular points of view, you may have to build your own platform. And 2017 is actually the best time in history for this very thing, and people who do no-kidding advocate genocide seem to have no trouble banding together and making their arguments available to anyone who's interested.
All I said is that we need to step back and reassess what is being denied a platform, today, and whether we're denying too much speech a platform and dismissing too much speech as "fevered ravings."
What does it mean to you when you say that something has been "denied a platform?" It seems to me that the very notion depends on the assumption that ideas have some sort of natural right to an audience and outside support.
But your unpopular ideas do not entitle you to special outside help. You may have to build a platform for your unpopular idea, as was the case for so many once-unpopular ideas in history. That's what it means to be unpopular. It might be a lot of work. Nobody owes your idea a donation of that work.
The notion that some ideas are "denied a platform" today is both inaccurate and incoherent. No one has the right, the authority, or the power to "deny a platform" to a particular idea in general.
Similarly, some brave institutions may decide to host speakers that are near-universally condemned for views that society has decided to be abhorrent. By giving such speakers a forum, they're endorsing that such views are worthy of being heard or debated, whether they are enthused by those ramifications or not. Such behavior requires calculated risk, risk that may pay off if attitudes change in the future.
It's intellectually lazy to dismiss views via ad-hominem attacks, but it's also intellectually lazy to consider all views morally equivalent. White supremacy has entered the political discourse and it does not deserve equal time.
It is aiding and abetting evil. It actively undermines reasoned discourse.
This is the point Jon Stewart was trying to make way back in 2004 when he took down Crossfire. The situation clearly has not improved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_(TV_series)#Jon_Stew...
Once you have a moral compass that is not even open to debate, it is a short step to suppressing all debate and even persecution of the "filthy scum" that dare question your morals.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on feminism and black nationalism. Do you consider these viewpoints to be "morally equivalent" to white supremacy?
Black nationalism (American variety): feeeeeh.
So, to get started, these are all objects in some category, but I'm not sure what the defining features of this category are. They all have beliefs about groups of people, sort of (libertarianism going for "all individuals" often, veganism involving animals on par with people with respect to certain rights). Several involve thoughts on government (black nationalism, Zionism, libertarianism) and others don't (white supremacy, feminism, veganism) so that can't quite be it. Some explicitly put down other groups ("supremacy" is a giveaway) and others don't (feminism doesn't, black nationalism often doesn't, depends on the flavor of veganism and Zionism).
Even if you leave out my additions, what makes feminism, black nationalism, and white supremacy comparable? Why did you put them together? One's racist, one's separatist, and one is about equality; they don't have the same relationships to governance; going back to category theory how are you going to construct morphisms between these to compare them?
Which is what I was trying to get at - I don't think that identity politics are useful anymore in the modern age we live in.
What's inconsistent to me is if one accepts the moral superiority of one type of identity politics over another. Either you accept them all or you categorically deny them all.
"Identity politics" is not about what people say, it's about how they organize. It neither validates nor invalidates one's arguments. I reject your assertion.
Bear in mind, there's a "feminist" out there who's advocated for reducing the male population of the earth by 90%. Obviously a radical example, but my point is, you can treat these widespread viewpoints as cut and dry as you've placed them.
The only way to really reliably tell the difference is to look at the actual substance of the points of view - which is the thing very thing attacks push to the side.
I must have missed that. Can you link to a few (mainstream) examples? The only thing I'm aware of are smears against Bannon...
No, they're not. In almost all cases speakers at a University are invited by a group of individuals, be it a student group or some other association. They are the ones who are saying the speaker has ideas worthy of discussion. If a University has any respect for diversity of opinion, it will refrain from suppressing any significant subgroup within its walls.
The current environment in universities is such that students are protected from ever dealing with uncomfortable topics, which leaves them inadequately prepared to intellectually engage them in the real world.
There seems to be an idea that you have to listen silently with socially-appropriate nodding to speakers about uncomfortable topics in order to have "dealt with them", and instead a lot of students argue back these days. Which is better, lie back & listen or have a discussion? While it's occasionally uncomfortable to have students argue with me, it's much less a waste of my time than talking to a room of cell-phone-illuminated slack expressions.
Arguing back is great! What's not is petitioning to have you banned from the campus or punished in a title 9 inquisition[1] because the topics you taught made them uncomfortable.
1. http://laurakipnis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/My-Title-I...
The title IX investigation was ridiculously mishandled, agreed, and the two grad student complainants also allege it was mishandled [2]. The whole thing involves at least 4 title IX investigations and four+ lawsuits if you're going to count the original sexual harassment lawsuits Kipnis wrote about in her Chronicle article (which is where she made the initial factual errors that led to some of the subsequent title IX complaints). I have to say, none of this was about anything she taught: it was about her commentary in a national publication on specific ongoing harassment lawsuits and countersuits.
[1] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScr34pXKmDVPSXbi4TQ...
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/31/laura-kipnis-essay-...
That's what makes it so much worse. Just expressing an opinion off campus in public was enough to bring this on.
Exactly. Free and open debate of controversial ideas, however heinous, say in a classroom setting is very different from actively providing hate-mongers a prominent forum from which to spread their hate. Former is academic freedom, the latter is a political decision.
One of his arguments was that people have blocked anti-LGBT rights and anti-BLM people because it hurts the feelings of the students in respective groups. Then, why is it not reasonable to block the Dalai Lama because it hurts the feelings of many Chinese students on campus?
After reading that, I sighed really loudly and went on with my day.
1: https://qz.com/908922/chinese-students-at-ucsd-are-evoking-d...
In a world of weaponized memes, the battlegrounds may be entirely in controlling their exposure and thus their R0.
In "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" one of the most important habits (my opinion) is:
"Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood"
This is incredibly important and it can only be achieved through dialogue. Regrettably our universities have become some of the most intolerant and bigoted mono-culture environments around. What kids are exposed to is nothing less than indoctrination with caustic effects. These kids don't arrive at university with such ideologies but the ideas are pounded into their heads by often-militant professors who, due to their twisted, intolerant and one-sided ideology should, in reality, be kept as far away from kids as humanly possible.
Yet, as the article states, universities have, over time, become echo chambers for a single world view that is violently intolerant of anything that does not align with their ideology. This is wrong and it will eventually have consequences, again, as explained in the article.
Bravo.
Look at the British National Party, they were piratically nothing until the BBC decided to massively increase their coverage. Was the BBC's coverage fair and impartial? Probably, but just giving them the attention causes people to look into their platform and realize blaming everyone else is a pretty comforting thing to do rather than take responsibility.
The deep question is who should be the gatekeepers, and I guess John Etchemendy is saying it shouldn't be universities. Perhaps he's right in a way, the board shouldn't be making those decisions. I do think the faculty and students do have a right and duty to though as giving platforms for hate speech empowers it.
Who are you to draw that line? This argument hinges on the belief that people attending these universities are not capable of critical and rational thought and should therefore be treated like children via a curated and censored list of speakers.
If you do believe that, then I hope you see that censorship does nothing but perpetuate a cycle of intellectual infantilism.
Have some faith in the truth. If it is true, then it will stand on its own, and if it is false it will eventually be exposed. For that to happen there must be debate.
Many faculty and students were against him speaking and protested. While my opinion on it certainly does not matter, I think those staff and students do have a say and should matter.
We cannot and should not say voices of protest should be ignored so hateful speakers get a platform. You may have faith in "rationality" winning out but I really don't. People really fall victim easily to blaming outside groups and get stirred up by hate speech.
Rationality is postponed when people are unhappy.
This just isn't true: these people already have power. When bad ideas already have a following, attempting to silence them isn't denying them power but reenforcing it as silencing becomes a rallying cry.
Bad ideas fall to reasoned debate. Bad ideas thrive when they inherently have a subconscious or emotional appeal and are allowed to spread in isolated communities and are never challenged in open forums. Denying them platforms isn't going to stop the spread of these ideas (the internet is still a thing). It just passes up on another opportunity to challenge those ideas head on and gives the charlatans another instance of suppression to use as a rallying cry.
Perhaps what students should insist on is instead of giving them an open platform to speak, invite them to a debate. Force them to defend their ideas under harsh scrutiny.
Clearly not. Haven't we learnt anything from the recent victory of bad, horrible hateful ideas on the platform of media manipulation and louder-than-thou debating techniques?
No, they don't. For that to work, this requires the proponents of bad ideas to respond to logic, and for the acolytes of reprehensible ideas to be ashamed of what they are doing.
The skinhead shouting "Hitler did nothing wrong" isn't going to back down when you call him out for what he is, and he isn't going to be convinced by logic, facts, or rationality.
If he were, the second world war would have been called "World Rational Debate Competition, Part II."
Likewise, the religious fundamentalist isn't going to back down, or stop preaching hate, just because you point out the absurdities and inconsistencies in his holy book, or the hypocrisy in his prattle.
For some reason, though, liberals are falling head-over-heels to defend the right of the former to amplify his message.
Freedom of political discourse is not fundamentally incompatible with zero tolerance of fascism - just like freedom of religion is not fundamentally incompatible with zero tolerance of violent fanaticism.
What is fundamentally incompatible in a tolerant society, is toleration of intolerance.
I think this has to be the most galling thing to see among so many of my liberal (of course white) friends and family: coming out strongly to support Milo's right to speak at a college campus.
A lot of them were pretty quiet too during BLM protests but they felt it was their civic duty to say everyone should have a right to speak their view. I know those people too, and they view themselves as very progressive, but when you decide to most vociferously defend the free speech of Nazi's over minority voices, what the hell have you become?
They almost certainly don't like Milo's message either, but, as the saying goes, "He isn't the one calling us a basket of deplorables."
His advocacy will make problems for other people.
You're missing what's at stake here. It is emphatically not to convince the speaker he is wrong. Often times they have ulterior motives at play that prevent them from recognizing or acknowledging that they were wrong. The point is to convince those who are on the fence or otherwise could be persuaded by the bad ideas. Seeing someone like Milo get pummeled in a debate does incredible damage to his brand and his ideas. It may do absolutely nothing to convince Milo he's wrong, but the ideas he's espousing now have resistance in the minds of potential followers.
Give potential followers the mental tools to resist the appeal of these messages, and the ideas die out with the hardliners.
Internet trolls are not visiting universities to engage in vigorous intellectual debate in good faith. They're on campus to raise their profile and gain a patina of respectability. They are entitled to their free speech. They are not entitled to get access to large platforms to spread their message of hate.
Milo doesn't host events so that he can be debated. He hosts these events so he can preach to the choir.
It's not like he showed up to a meeting of the debate club - he's holding what is, essentially, a political rally.
I repeat - they are not debates. They are lectures, speeches, whatever the hell you want to call them - but no part of them leave open the possibility that Milo will be proven wrong.
You can't openly engage with someone who is not willing to listen to reason - or someone who is not willing to listen, at all. He doesn't care to stand up to public scrutiny, or discourse - only to have a megaphone.
This. My love of free speech and a free exchange of ideas is entirely compatible with my refusal to allow my platform to amplify messages of hatred that I find repugnant.
In case there are any illusions, the hate-mongering trolls are not there to engage in intellectually vigorous debate. They are there to buy themselves a patina of respectability by attaching themselves to these respectable brand names. These institutions would be fools to allow themselves to be used that way.
History also hasn't taught "liberals" that words loose meaning if you overuse them. If every man is a "rapist", every comedian is a "racist" and everyone who oposes illegal immigration is a "fascist", those words lose all meaning.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new...
There's tons of stories like this one.
What John misses is that this isn't a university problem. It's a society problem.
I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, but there's a lot of evidence this forms earlier, via peer group, media, and parenting.
Unfortunately universities are capitalist organizations with all the accompanying weaknesses. We'll only see action from them if the probable return of action is positive.
Most traditional universities are either state institutions or private charity nonprofits, neither of which are "capitalist organizations" in any normal sense of the word.
That's the problem, where's the worthy opponent? I'm sure they exist, but I rarely see or hear of them. I see a lot of demagogues, and those are not worthy by definition and should not be brought into the conversation especially in a University.
Bring us worthy opponents and I'm sure there won't be protests from students.
It's for that reason that I don't think we should prevent anyone from speaking. The only solution is more speech.
Also: Universities are doing a pretty poor job of bringing in certain kinds of speakers. If you want change, make it.
Ideally too, especially if you're to speak at a well respected university, I'd like you to have some credentials, a book, research, a strong presence in existing circles related to the problems you'll address, etc. Something that indicates you've spent a good amount of time (like above the 90th percentile) thinking this through by yourself first, and by a few others.
Also, did you know that every single person in Mexico is actually an American! Yup, they are all 100% Americans who just haven't illegally crossed the boarder yet. As soon as they do, refusing to give them citizenship is betraying our American values as a Nation Of Immigrants (TM).
You've been using HN primarily for political arguments. That's an abuse of the site—it's destructive of the thoughtful, varied discussion we're hoping for. We ban accounts that do this, so please stop doing this.
Perhaps it's not that there aren't worthy opponents, but that we deliberately choose to ignore them, because it's much easier to portray yourself as a paragon of virtue fighting against uncivilized, uncouth barbarians.
Germaine Greer, famous feminist faced an attempted "no platform" in UK because of her trans-phobic views.
This article mentions some other protests from students, although luckily most of them don't get anywhere.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/05/boris-tatc...
This line from that article sounds bad:
> NUS president Megan Dunn distanced herself and the union from the group, saying: “Hope Not Hate is not on NUS’s no-platform list. I would happily share a platform with anyone from Hope Not Hate tomorrow.”
But the list includes jst 6 groups:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Platform
> Al-Muhajiroun;
> British National Party;
> English Defence League;
> Hizb-ut-Tahrir;
> Muslim Public Affairs Committee.
> National Action
Some of these organisations are proscribed terrorist organisations, so not allowing them a platform isn't unreasonable.
This is the same reason I was so opposed to the witch hunt of punishing everyone associated with Peter Thiel. Trying to get someone fired for their political beliefs sends the middle people underground. They are fearful, and their whole lives are not centered around their political identity, so they just stop talking about it.
The result is that the only people willing to talk about these things are the extremes, or the weird or the people who really take "I don't care what you think of me" to the extreme. This is why Milo Yiannopoulos is the spokesman for these ideas to people. He is the only one willing to talk publicly. He is an extreme, and deeply flawed person, but he is willing to say things no one else is, so he has a following. Trump is also a version of this. Lots of his supporters are more reasonable than him, but they got shouted out of the public discourse and were call racists anyway, so that only left the extremes left to represent the center.
I think there are lots "worthy opponents" out there, but if they said they support less immigration, they would be called racists and everything they ever said would be quote-mined until something unacceptable was found and they would be run out of the public space.
The result is that the extremism rampant today has a chilling effect on the voices of what I believe is the vast majority of people. Where that may lead is something that could be quite scary.
/sarcasm
Seriously?
I'm on your side (I guess) but they have speakers that are credible.
What of the transition from full-time tenured faculty to adjuncts with little income, less job security, and who are terrified of students' reviews? Should universities continue to shift away from employing instructors and researchers, and towards supporting increasingly byzantine hierarchies of administrators?
What of the publish-or-perish imperative that emphasizes quantity over quality, and shiny new results over testing results obtained elsewhere?
What of dramatic inflation in tuition costs and resulting student debt?
It seems to me that these factors are all slowly undoing the universities. It'd be really interesting to hear a high-ranking administrator discuss these issues seriously instead of carefully confessing his preference for free speech over highly charged identity politics (which is a totally safe and uncontroversial thing to do).
https://www.aaup.org/about/awards/alexander-meiklejohn-award...
Alexander Meiklejohn was a former president of Amherst College and a staunch defender of the First Amendment and the ALCU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Meiklejohn
The irony here is of course is that those complaining about not being heard on campuses today are actually the most privileged members of western society who support restrictions on media and suppression of freedoms for marginalized groups. Tolerance as a value can't survive if the tolerant are required to provide a platform to the intolerant.
I dont think universities should shut down the other side, but they can create a framework for communicating ideas .... one way OXFORD does it is via debating (which you can find on youtube).
Not because I don't actually value diversity in philosophies or modes of thinking, but because the phrase itself has been used recently as a weasel phrase by reactionary forces acting to scale back decades of work to improve actual diversity of backgrounds including race, national origin, genders, sexualities etc. in the workplace and positions of power. I'm not accusing him of using it deliberately in that sense but I think it's important to keep that connotation of this phrase in mind while discussing his talk.
If I say something controversial, I don't automatically undo decades of change. The impact of a statement grows as more people react to it. If you disagree with a statement, the best response is to debate and illuminate the foundations of the statement.
This isn't directed at you per se, but in general I hope people come to understand the Streisand effect is an observable phenomenon. I'd even go as far as saying it was a major contributor in getting Trump elected.
I am a liberal and a progressive, but there are many progressive ideas that have failed and thanks to that.
Stanford is the last place on earth that I'd expect to actually confront university PC culture.
What an exciting discussion that will follow this!
I call bullshit. The price of college, the elevation of it's utility in our society, and the economic illiteracy of most of it's professors and attendant lack of preparation of it's students all present far more danger to society in the long term than blocking a speech from Milo or some other overblown vacuous controversy surrounding "free speech".
Perhaps he should go and live in the dorms, where scam after scam after scam is apparent. From dining/meal plans to textbooks and all of the additional fees we're charged, while the college builds millions of dollars of new buildings, facilities and infrastructure.
Education is no longer about education (not that it ever was, but in a time long past---perhaps when he was getting _his_ education---it was a closer ratio), it's about money. And all I feel I'm going to get from them for my money in the end is a piece of paper. Everything I learn while I'm there is on me.
In short, I think we should tax the hell out of them if it's for the benefit of the American taxpayers.
When Universities, creditors and banks see numbers double [1], all they do is build twice as fast, hire twice as many adjuncts and raise tuition.
Sources:
[1] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/times-up-student-loan-in...
The central point is: >I have watched a growing intolerance . . . a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.
You may want to reread the article because it appears you're missing the point.