Category Archives: Free Speech

John Kass, Tribune Content Agency 11:44 a.m. CT May 5, 2017

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Chicago Tribune columnist, John Kass(Photo: Bill Hogan)

The lie we were told as kids was this: The end of American liberty would come at the hands of the political right.

Conservatives would take away our right to speak our minds, and use the power of government to silence dissent. The right would intimidate our teachers and professors, and coerce the young.

And then, with the universities in thrall, with control of the apparatus of the state (and the education bureaucracy), the right would have dominion over a once-free people.

Some of us were taught this in school. Others, who couldn't be bothered to read books, were fed a cartoon version of the diabolical conservative in endless movies and TV shows. The most entertaining of these were science fiction, sometimes with vague references to men in brown shirts and black boots goose-stepping in some future time.

Women would become handmaids, subjugated and turned into breeders. And men would be broken as well. The more lurid fantasies offered armies of Luddites in hooded robes, hunting down subversives for the greater good.

But the lie is obvious now, isn't it?

Because it is not conservatives who coerced today's young people or made them afraid of ideas that challenge them. Conservatives did not shame people into silence, or send thugs out on college campuses to beat down those who wanted to speak.

The left did all that.

It's there in front of you, the thuggish mobs of the left killing free speech at American universities. The thugs call themselves antifas, for anti-fascists.

They beat people up and break things and set fires and intimidate. These are not anti-fascists. These are fascists. This is what fascists do.

Some wear masks to cover their faces, or hide bike locks in scarves and swing them at the heads of any who disagree. They're all about intimidation. And intimidation on a national scale, so angry and violent, is a fascist thing of the left.

Many liberals journalists, senators, television comedians and others are properly appalled at what their political children, born of the hard left, have done. Many liberals have warned about this, and so many must wince as the fruits of their labor turn bitter in their mouths.

But they are also complicit, because they've taken advantage of the anger and energy of this hard-left fascism to leverage their own politics. And Democratic operatives still hope to use this emotional frenzy and muscle for political gain in the next elections.

What is the cost for all this?

Free speech, without which there is no republic.

American universities were once thought to be the last great refuge of ideas, where ideas could flourish and be challenged and debated. But today, the university is the place where liberty and ideas go to die.

The American university is where intellectuals with dissenting views are silenced even physically assaulted by mobs. And administrators sit by and watch, afraid to anger those mobs.

What has been the general liberal response to Americans who insist on speaking after being threatened?

Annoyance. The response sounds like this: Hush. Go away. Come back later when it's quiet. Why cause trouble? Shhh.

Right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter has been silenced at Berkeley, where the free speech movement was born. And other intellectuals, including Charles Murray and Heather MacDonald, have been silenced at other colleges, attacked by mobs.

If the left agrees with your views, you may speak. If the left doesn't agree, they will shut you down. This is America now.

Some liberals also have seen their careers ruined by mob rule. Those two professors at Yale, a husband and wife, come to mind. She told Yale students not to worry if some other student wore a sombrero as a Halloween costume, that there were more important things to worry about than political correctness and a student wearing a sombrero.

But a Yale student, a woman, a minority, screamed in response, weeping in hideous self-indulgent theatrics captured on video. And all of this caught fire on the internet and sparked the virtual mob on social media. The professors, the husband and wife, with decent records and obvious care for the intellectual development of their students, were shamed out of Yale.

And all educators across the country took note.

University administrators have made a show of wringing their hands. But they're hypocrites. They're part of this. They are of the same cloth. They allowed this seed to bloom. They watered it, by giving in to the young who demanded a safe space from intellectual challenge.

Safe spaces are not about learning or critical thinking. Safe spaces belong to education camps, where future bureaucrats are trained in the Orwellian shaping of language and the culling of threatening ideas.

The universities molded the federal education bureaucracy, which turned out teachers that shaped the minds of American children. And some of those children are in college now.

Surveys suggest that many young Americans think the First Amendment should be amended so as to not allow offensive speech. So the students have learned their lessons well.

All speech challenging the status quo is offensive to the establishment. And free speech is what American liberty is about.

Unless, of course, you're of the hard left, and can hunt free speech at American universities and crush it.

That's not fiction. That's not fantasy. And it is not a lie. It's happening now, in the United States.

JOHN KASS is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Twitter: @john_kass

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The lies we were told about who would silence free speech - DesMoinesRegister.com

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE / campus culture wars May 5, 2017 05/05/2017 3:23 pm By Jesse Singal Share Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

College students, you may have heard, are increasingly opposed to free speech. Especially liberal ones they just cant handle views they disagree with, especially conservative ones. Except: It might be more complicated than that. Thats the takeaway of a new survey of Yale University students who made national headlines for an uproar over a Halloween-costume email back in 2015 summed up by James Freeman in The Wall Street Journal.

The survey was commissioned by the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale, and there were 872 respondents. Freeman, who is on the board of that organization, notes that 72 percent of respondents were opposed to the idea of Yale having speech codes to regulate speech for students and faculty. And when presented with an either-or question about controversial views, 84% opted for intellectual diversity and just 5% favored muzzling people with controversial views.

Freeman cites this as both good news, from his point of view, and as a novel finding: The first sentence of his column is At last, theres hopeful news on intellectual liberty from a college campus. But this isnt entirely new, even for Yale. Last year, in the course of debunking some claims about how ostensibly anti-free-speech college students are, I highlighted a previous iteration of that same survey of Yale students which found that they generally reported being staunchly supportive of free-speech rights, at least when the question was asked in certain ways (the slide deck I reference doesnt appear to be available online anymore, unfortunately):

Now, surveys are complicated and susceptible to rather wild swings based on question wording, so it would be wrong to cherry-pick any limited set of findings and then make sweeping generalizations about college students these days. Plus, there were some items on the survey where students werent quite so free-speech-friendly. And it goes without saying that what happens at Yale might not be applicable to the rest of the college population.

But whats striking is, zooming out a little, just how little empirical evidence there is to suggest college students differ in big ways from the broader population when it comes to their support for free speech, despite how often we hear confident assertions that campuses are free-speech no-go zones. People clearly think there is a big difference and will sometimes point to survey evidence to support this view, the best recent-ish example being a Pew survey from a year and a half ago finding that 40 percent of students favored government bans on certain forms of offensive speech. I initially covered that finding as though it were alarming, but when I looked around at other past surveys of Americans views on free speech, it was clear that the 40 percent number wasnt an outlier. In other words, as I wrote in a subsequent mea culpa:

Part of whats going on here could come down to preference intensity and opportunity. By which I mean that college students who are in favor of expanding restrictions on free speech might feel relatively more strongly about it than do their pro-free-speech peers, and they have highly visible opportunities to express those views by attempting to no-platform speakers they dont like, or responding assertively to instances of perceived administrator insensitivity. Whenever they do so, of course or whenever they engage in any other act that can be portrayed as yet another instance of out-of-control college activists it gets blown up to the status of a national news story. Twenty years ago, no one would have heard of a small group of Oberlin students protesting about the cultural appropriation of Banh Mi going on at a dining hall there, or about any of the dozen other similar blowups that seem to occur on a monthly basis.

Furthermore, its very hard for stories that buck the trend stories about how most college students arent sent into conniptions by appropriated Banh Mi to get much traction because of the whole dog-bites-man thing: No one wants to write about college students who are acting like everyday American adults with fairly standard views on free speech. So while the phrase silent majority has some unfortunate political baggage affixed to it, it might accurately capture whats going on here. There may not have been much real, substantive movement in the anti-free-speech direction on campus a lot of kids dont see the need to ban or no-platform offensive speakers, but they arent in the streets about it, and may simply not want to bother stating their own views during those instances in which things get out of hand. Because theyre quiet, they dont get much coverage, skewing everyones view of college students as a group.

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What If College Students Have the Same Views on Free Speech As Everyone Else? - New York Magazine

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to guide the executive branch in formulating and implementing policies with implications for the religious liberty of persons and organizations in America, and to further compliance with the Constitution and with applicable statutes and Presidential Directives, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy. It shall be the policy of the executive branch to vigorously enforce Federal law's robust protections for religious freedom. The Founders envisioned a Nation in which religious voices and views were integral to a vibrant public square, and in which religious people and institutions were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by the Federal Government. For that reason, the United States Constitution enshrines and protects the fundamental right to religious liberty as Americans' first freedom. Federal law protects the freedom of Americans and their organizations to exercise religion and participate fully in civic life without undue interference by the Federal Government. The executive branch will honor and enforce those protections.

Sec. 2. Respecting Religious and Political Speech. All executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall, to the greatest extent practicable and to the extent permitted by law, respect and protect the freedom of persons and organizations to engage in religious and political speech. In particular, the Secretary of the Treasury shall ensure, to the extent permitted by law, that the Department of the Treasury does not take any adverse action against any individual, house of worship, or other religious organization on the basis that such individual or organization speaks or has spoken about moral or political issues from a religious perspective, where speech of similar character has, consistent with law, not ordinarily been treated as participation or intervention in a political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) a candidate for public office by the Department of the Treasury. As used in this section, the term "adverse action" means the imposition of any tax or tax penalty; the delay or denial of tax-exempt status; the disallowance of tax deductions for contributions made to entities exempted from taxation under section 501(c)(3) of title 26, United States Code; or any other action that makes unavailable or denies any tax deduction, exemption, credit, or benefit.

Sec. 3. Conscience Protections with Respect to Preventive-Care Mandate. The Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall consider issuing amended regulations, consistent with applicable law, to address conscience-based objections to the preventive-care mandate promulgated under section 300gg-13(a)(4) of title 42, United States Code.

Sec. 4. Religious Liberty Guidance. In order to guide all agencies in complying with relevant Federal law, the Attorney General shall, as appropriate, issue guidance interpreting religious liberty protections in Federal law.

Sec. 5. Severability. If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any individual or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its other provisions to any other individuals or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

Sec. 6. General Provisions.

(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

Donald J. Trump The White House, May 4, 2017

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Executive order: Promoting free speech and religious liberty - Fox News

State legislators introduced another bill Tuesday that would penalizeUniversity of Wisconsin System faculty and staff who interrupt speeches on campus.

The bill is similar tothe Campus Free Speech Act which was introduced oneweek ago. The bill was created to help free speech in Wisconsins academia. In this bill, UW System campuses would have to be open to controversial speakers, coercion of faculty or students of a certain idea would not be permitted and universitiescould not shield students from expression.

According to the Campus Free Speech Act, students could face expulsion if they were to inhibit free speech in any way.

Under the new proposal, professors and staff could lose rank for impeding campus speakers. Penaltiesextend to students, faculty and staff at technical colleges as well.

The reason behind the bill, Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Brookfield, said in a statement, is because free speech rights are under assault across the country.

Students, professors and administrators are using intimidation tactics to silence those they disagree with, Vukmir said. Now is not the time to treat this issue lightly; well thought-out legislative action is required. This must end.

The measure comes after college campuses opposed certain lecturers likeBen Shapiro. Former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos talkwas also canceled at University of California, Berkley because of backlash.

GOP-backed legislation looks to address free speech rights on campusRep. Jesse Kremer,R-Kewaskum, unveiled new legislation Wednesday intending to help protect free speech at University of Wisconsin System schools. Kremer, Read

The bill looks to ensure free speech isinclusive of all, Vukmir said in an interview with1310 WIBA. The bill stated inhibiting speech includes dissuading, intimidating, organizing protests or inciting violence to threaten an invited speaker from attending a campus event.

Furthermore, the proposed bill would make it so administrators at UW would be prohibited from expressing their views in controversial public matters.

The bill would also enact statutesmandating theBoard of Regents to require legislative oversight, meaning individual UW administrators cannot decide the rules, Vukmir said.

We wanted in statute that [the Board of Regents] have to propagate rules and that these rules require legislative oversight, Vukmir said.

UW students protest alt-right, call on chancellor to condemn hate speechOne week after a University of Wisconsin student attempted to start an alt-right group on campus, students and community members Read

Don Moynihan, director of the LaFollette School of Public Affairs said in a tweetthe language of the bill is extraordinarily broad. While the bill regulates students, faculty and staff, Moynihan believes most attacks on speakers come from non campus actors.

Democratsalso expressed concerns about the similar Campus Free Speech Act. Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Director Matthew Rothschild said in a statementhe believes everyone has the right to free speech, but also recognizes that students should be allowed to respond to statements they find offensive.

Far from protecting free speech, [the Campus Free Speech Act]would interfere with it, Rothschild said.

Democrats are yet to respond to Vukmirsbill.

Vukmir said the bills broadness wouldprotect general free speech and be inclusive to staff, faculty and invited speakers. Free speech, she said, goes beyond the students.

[Protecting free speech] is what our universities are supposed to be about, Vukmir said. [Universities are] the market place of ideas. And ideas should be allowed to stand or fall on their own merit.

The bill is being circulated for co-sponsors.

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Proposed bill would penalize faculty members who impede free speech - The Badger Herald

A new study findsa correlation between defending racist language and expression as free speech and racially prejudicial attitudes and beliefs.

The correlation between using the free speech defense and peoples own racial prejudice is pretty high.

When people make appeals to democratic principleslike freedom of speechthey dont always represent a genuine interest in that principle, says Mark H. White, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Kansas and coauthor of the study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

We think of principles as ideas we use to guide behavior in our everyday lives. Our data show something differentthat we tend to make up our mind on something based on our attitudesin this case, racial attitudesand then decide that the principle is relevant or irrelevant. People do whatever best fits their pre-existing attitudes, White adds.

We look at people who defend anothers racist speechfor example, defending someone who got fired for going into a racist rant at workwith a free speech argument, says Christian Crandall, professor of psychology and study coauthor. What do we know about people making this argument? The correlation between using the free speech defense and peoples own racial prejudice is pretty high. Its racists defending racists.

Indeed, the new study reveals a positive correlation (Pearson r = .43) between having racial prejudice and defending racist speech using the free speech argumenta stronger correlation than the researchers expected.

White and Crandall recruited hundreds of participants via the Amazon Mechanical Turk service, conducting several interrelated studies where participants responded to descriptions of recent news events or readings involving someone being punished for racist speech. The racial attitudes of the respondents themselves were gauged using the Henry and Sears Symbolic Racism 2000 scale, a standard measure of racial prejudice in social psychology and political science.

One finding suggests many who defend racist speech using the free speech argument might not extend the same principle of free speech to negative comments aimed at authority figures or the public in general.

You might think that, Maybe people who defend this racist speech are just big fans of free speech, that theyre principled supporters of freedom,' Crandall says. Well, no. We give them a news article with the same speech aimed at policeand prejudice scores are completely uncorrelated with defending speech aimed at policeand also uncorrelated with snarky speech aimed at customers at a coffee shop, but with no racial content.

White and Crandall wondered whether prejudiced people felt personally threatened when they hear about someone getting fired for expressing their attitudes; maybe they felt theyd be punished for their own beliefs.

We wondered why people would go out on a limb to defend someone elses misbehavior, Crandall says. We thought, maybe they felt personally implicatedtheyre defending an extension of themselves. We did three studies and found no evidence for this idea at all.

We thought that people would rush to the defense of people fired for saying prejudiced things because, firstly, people know theyre prejudiced and, secondly, watching someone getting punished for that same prejudice makes them feel like bad people, White says. Across three experiments, we found exactly no support for this idea.

It isnt so much that these controversies make prejudiced people feel bad about themselves; instead, it seems to be driven partially by prejudiced people feeling like they are not free to live how they want to live and say what they want to saythey feel as if their freedom is under attack, he says.

Indeed, people with high levels of prejudice were very sensitive to their own freedom of expression.

They werent defending their own attitudes, as much as defending to the death their right to say it,' Crandall says. Just so long as the it is the prejudiced speech they share.

Ultimately, the researchers conclude the value of free speech appears for the prejudiced person when it suits their needs but is absent when it does not. Freedom of speech defenses are unprincipled; it only appears for prejudiced people when it is needed. Values may be used as guiding principles to live by, but they are also strategically deployed to justify prejudices.

It would be irresponsible to say that everyone who makes this free speech argument is prejudiced, White says. However, our data do show that racial prejudice is one of the many attitudes that go into people deciding to make this argument. We should not ignore the free speech defense, but we shouldnt assume that the motives are purely based on an abstract democratic principle, either.

A Clara Mayo Grant from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and a University of Kansas Jack Brehm Award for Basic Research in Social Psychology funded the work.

Source: University of Kansas

Originally posted here:
Does defending racist 'free speech' reveal prejudice? - Futurity: Research News

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Posted: May 04, 2017 12:01 AM

Liberal censorship is technically an oxymoron. But today liberal censorship is a common reality.

Where once free speech reigned on college campuses and in other secular institutions (or at least it was so thought), today you have the totalitarianism of political correctness. Say the wrong thing, and you may be fired.

Dissenting Justice Samuel Alito said after the Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision in June 2015: I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.

Ann Coulter, conservative firebrand, has proven recently that free speech is all but dead in America. Her aborted attempt last week to speak at Berkeley---the supposed birthplace of free speech in America---went up in flames. Almost literally.

Young Americas Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans had invited Coulter to speak, but the school would not ensure her safety, while the protesters vowed to violently shut her down. Coulter said to The New York Times: Its a sad day for free speech.

As we see repeatedly, the tolerant folk are the most intolerant among us. Their attitude is simple: Free speech for me, but not for thee

Historically, Christianity played a seminal role in the struggle for free speech---not that Christians have always gotten it right by any means.

The 17th century British Puritan writer John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, wrote a plea for a free press, Areopagitica. He stated, Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on.For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious. Gods truth stands on its own, needing no artificial man-made props.

This reminds me of the quote from Church Father Tertullian, writing about 200 A.D.: Truth asks no favours in her cause. She doesnt need any. Truth wins out in the marketplace of ideas.

In 1777, Thomas Jefferson noted that Jesus (the Holy author of our religion) is the reason we should allow civil freedom. This was in his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, passed 1786.

Jefferson wrote: Almighty God hath created the mind freeall attempts to influence it by temporal punishment or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was his Almighty power to do. Jesus gives us freedom---who are we to deny it from others?

The alternative media continues to be a major lifeline for those in America who have dissenting views from the politically correct orthodoxy. We see a powerful example of this in WorldNetDaily, founded by journalist Joseph Farah. The pioneering independent online news source, WND celebrates its 20th anniversary this week. For his efforts, Southern Poverty Law Center profiles Farah as a supposed Extremist of hate. I emailed him their outrageous, derogatory profile of him. He emailed me back, Same old. Same old.

One of the saddest aspects of the Coulter-Berkeley story was the statement from former Democrat Chairman Howard Dean, who said, Hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.

Tragically, many in our society today---including liberal protesters shutting down conservatives and Christians from being able to speak---do so supposedly in opposition to hate speech. First of all, where does the First Amendment make a provision for silencing hate speech? And secondly, who defines what is real hate and what is not? It seems that hate now is often, speech I disagree with.

I know a brother in Christ, David Kyle Foster, who used to be a male prostitute in Hollywood. He once told me that he probably had slept with more than a thousand different men before the Lord saved him.

Foster has interviewed hundreds of former homosexuals and lesbians and people struggling with all sorts of sexual issues, who found healing through the gospel of Jesus. Up until recently, these powerful, sensitive videos were available on Vimeo, which fashions itself as a high quality version of YouTube.

But Vimeo told Foster recently that all his videos had to be deleted because of their hate messages. Testimonials of lives set free through Christ are hate speech? That is another example of free speech for me, but for not for thee.

Now, if only our universities and media companies could come to grips with the First Amendment as designed by our founders, how better off things would be.

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Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee - Townhall

A recent poll found that 69 percent of college students were in favor of some limits on campus free speech. This would have been inconceivable to students in the 1960s and 1970s.

Left: A Free Speech Movement rally at Berkeley in 1966. (Wikimedia Commons) | Right: The Battle of Berkeley, February 1, 2017. (Ben Margot/AP)

When I attended Philadelphias Charles Morris Price School of Journalism, in 1970, America was waging the Vietnam War. Students at that time were either pro-war (a hawk) or pro-peace (a dove). At Price, however, the majority of students were reluctant to take a side: They didnt want to voice their opposition to the war because peaceniks in those days were often labeled dirty long-haired hippies in need of a bath. And sometimes these labels were bestowed by teachers.

When Price teachers would occasionally blurt out a pro-hawk sentiment during class, they would usually accent it with an acerbic anti-hippie comment. Hearing these impromptu attacks was always unsettling for those of us against the war, but we took it in stride. We viewed teacher snits of this sort with a grudging tolerance. Their disapproving words often echoed what we were hearing at home from parents and siblings, yet we never allowed the clash of ideas to bring us to the brink of despair.

But this is no longer true on many college campuses. Today when a college professor voices a view that goes against the prevailing PC canon, students dont take it in stride they make their discomfort known by boycott, demonstration, or efforts to get the unorthodox offender fired. Much the same goes for outside speakers.

Two campus speakers who have generated intense student protests this year are former Breitbart journalist/provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and writer Ann Coulter, a woman Washington Times columnist Wesley Pruden described as a slender woman who might weigh 90 pounds stepping out of a shower. Yiannopoulos had a planned February appearance at UC Berkeley canceled after violent protests caused thousands of dollars in property damage at the campus. Coulter, the author of Never Trust a Liberal Over Three and Adios America!, had a talk canceled in April after threats of more protests. (Yiannopoulos vows to to bring an army to Berkeley in September to make sure that conservative speakers have a platform.)

A 2016 Gallup Poll found that 69 percent of students were in favor of some limits on campus free speech if that free speech was upsetting or perceived as hateful by some student groups. But thats not all. At some colleges the latest trend is banning white male poets like T.S. Eliot and John Milton. This would have been inconceivable to students in the 1970s.

There were no space spaces at Price, no padded side rooms with play dough, licorice-flavored binkies or plates of milk and cookies to soothe over a students hurt political feelings when a professor said something controversial. There was zero coddling at Price, for instance, when one teacher invited a pro-war colonel to speak to a class or when the school sponsored a Support the Troops day code, of course, for Support the War.

Glen Harlan Reynolds, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Tennessee, believes the term hate speech is meaningless because all speech is equally protected whether its hateful or cheerful. Yet this solid Constitutional definition doesnt wash with campus social-justice warriors, especially at schools like Swarthmore, Brandeis, UC Berkeley, Smith College, Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, Wesleyan, Oberlin and Sarah Lawrence.

Students in the 1970s seemed to understand that college is a trial run for adulthood. And adulthood, after all, is an Upton Sinclair jungle of clashing opinions and warring ideas. Colleges that seek to protect students from the world of ideas are not colleges at all, but four-year vacation retreats. Better to be born a hothouse flower in Longwood Gardens than a human being if you are afraid of honest dialogue.

When a friend and I were named co-editors of the Price school magazine, we were able to respond to our hawk professors with antiwar material. Although many teachers came to object to the magazines editorial slant and register letters of protest (which we always printed), we were never called into the deans office and told we had to cease publication, although we expected this to happen at any time.

We thought the magazine would be shut down because the fight for free speech then was all-consuming. This was a time when books and plays were banned, when comedians like Lenny Bruce went to jail, when Banned in Boston was more than an archival, historic joke.

Perhaps the strangest twist of all an example of how one can have respect for opposing points of view was on Price graduation day, when those same hawk professors awarded us a journalism award for our commitment to the (civilized) exchange of ideas.

Thom Nickels is a journalist and author of 11 books, including Philadelphia Architecture, Spore, and Literary Philadelphia. He was awarded the Philadelphia AIA 2005 Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. Hes written for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, New Oxford Review, and many other publications.

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Originally posted here:
Free Speech on Campus, Then and Now - Philadelphia magazine

In all such examples, theyre at least conceding that were not wrong. Illustration: Rob Dobi

When you read rightwing commentators, youll notice that any grains of truth are frequently delivered along with a poison pill. A principled defense of free speech comes with a demand to wave through Ann Coulter. An acknowledgement of the destructive nature of inequality comes with a recommendation of more of the same. Sound analysis of problems with news media is salted with praise for Richard Nixon. And frank assessments of Trumps failures are accompanied by a castigation of the left or lots of shouting.

Still, we take what we can, where we can.

Look at it this way: in all such examples, theyre at least conceding that were not wrong.

Publication: The Week

Author: Anthony L Fisher is a libertarian journalist and film-maker who holds down an editing role at Reason, a column at the Week, and talking-head gigs at places ranging from Fox News to NPR.

Why you should read it: Fisher responds to recent liberal efforts to erect a category of hate speech as a way of finding loopholes in the first amendment. (The stimulus was a recent tweet by Howard Dean on the topic of Ann Coulters histrionic schtick.) Forcefully, he argues that the category of fighting words, often mobilized in this debate, has dubious legal force. In passing, he notes the irony that the precedent which is often imagined as establishing this category involved an antiwar Jehovahs Witness describing a police officer as a fascist. Rightly, he observes that the right to unpopular or offensive speech has been a foundation for progressive political projects. Professors, politicians and the left more broadly should know better than to put their faith in authority when it comes to the competition of ideas.

Extract: These characters might not deserve free speech, but they are entitled to it. Rights are not earned by the righteousness of ones values. Theyre just rights. And the right to freedom of expression is the tool that cultivated the fight to win every civil right in this countrys history. There is no civil rights movement, no gay rights movement, no feminist movement, and no anti-war movement without broad free speech protections for unpopular expression.

Publication: National Review

Author: David Alexander is a former Australian conservative apparatchik he served as an adviser in the government of John Howard who has trod the well-worn path to lobbying. He has written for rightwing outlets in Australia and the UK; this is his debut at US conservative mothership, National Review.

Why you should read it: Up to a point, this is extremely interesting. Alexander acknowledges the obvious limitations on neoliberalisms beloved Pareto principle, which states that if one groups spending power improves, we should assume zero impairment to other groups providing their absolute position does not go backward. But some assets marriage partners, job status, land are zero-sum and do drive inequality into the future. Meanwhile, conservative rhetoric about taxes has convinced the rich that they are the victims of middle class and working class takers who, the theory goes, pay no net tax. Thus, widening inequality has been a recipe for bottom-up and top-down resentment.

Unfortunately, Alexanders main recommendation is to follow the lead of former Australian PM John Howard. As any Australian can tell you, Howard squared the circle by scapegoating refugees, drumming up war fever and dishing out electoral bribes to the middle class.

Extract: Once we understand the causes of increasing frustration at both the top and bottom of the economic ladder, the deeply destabilizing political consequences of widening economic gaps become clearer. Where underlying inequality expands we can see the development of increasingly intense grievances at both ends of the spectrum: Those at the bottom feeling less and less competitive in important areas, while those at the top feel increasingly resentful about the proportion of tax coming from them and insist that those below start paying more. If the bidding-power gap grows wide enough it is possible to imagine the system crumbling through a combination of frustration, illiberal measures, populist demagoguery, repression, and stagnation the sorts of cycles that Latin American countries, with the highest inequality levels in the world, go through regularly.

Publication: The American Conservative

Author: Pat Buchanan is Americas grandfather of paleoconservatism, the founder of the American Conservative, and, until Trump came along, the man who ran the most anti-immigration and isolationist presidential campaigns in modern American history. He fell hard for Trump, and despite the presidents reversals and stumbles, Buchanan cant quite seem to get over him.

Why you should read it: In between the gloating, there are some horrible truths in Buchanans celebration of Trumps war on the news media. The institutions that deservedly took down Nixon are, today, themselves objects of significant scorn, derision and mistrust. This unhappy state is partly the result of a deliberate, decades-long campaign of demonisation by conservative politicians and their captive, partisan outlets. MSM is practically a dirty word; somewhere, Nixon is smiling.

Extract: Whatever happens to Trump, the respect and regard the mainstream media once enjoyed are gone. Public opinion of the national press puts them down beside the politicians they cover and for good reason. The people have concluded that the media really belong to the political class and merely masquerade as objective and conscientious observers. Like everyone else, they, too, have ideologies and agendas.

Publication: Conservative Review

Author: Does Mark Levin have the loudest yell in conservative talk radio? Only a shirtless Alex Jones could hope to come close. Certainly, his dulcet tones have proved irresistible to this column before.

Why you should listen to it: Levin was a #nevertrump Cruz guy, and hes only ever offered grudging praise of the president. This is his niche, and therefore his job: hes the tribune of the same grumpy-but-principled constitutional conservatives that swelled the ranks of the Tea Party; he and his loyal listeners have always suspected that Trump was a crypto-Democrat. Trump and Paul Ryan were, as Charles Krauthammer put it, rolled in the recent budget negotiations, and Levinites have little patience with the explanations that have emphasized keeping Republican powder dry for the bigger fight in September. They want Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, the EPA and the NEA buried now. Levin here articulates and stokes their rage. If Trump doesnt start winning like he promised on domestic issues, he will face a full-blown rebellion from these folks. But then again, its hard to imagine that he could ever have pleased them. Theyre uncompromising.

Extract: From 0:13 right to the end of this cut from Levins show, this is a bravura performance of the conservative rage that Trump and Congressional Republicans will have to deal with for so long as they do not meet every demand of Tea Party conservatives. They may not have gotten their man (Ted Cruz) but they can still cause incalculable political damage by firing up the Republican base just ask John Boehner and Jeb Bush.

Publication: The Wall Street Journal

Author: Peggy Noonan is the grande dame of conservative opinionators. She was a Reagan speechwriter, has written five New York Times bestsellers and has held down her slot at the Wall Street Journal since 2000 (she won a Pulitzer for her column this year). She leans establishment and moderate by the standards of contemporary American conservatism she famously criticized Sarah Palins bearing and credentials in 2008, and the base was not well pleased. Shes been increasingly critical of Trumps chaotic tenure in the White House.

Why you should read it: Noonan thinks that the only thing saving Trump from his own blunders is the character of his enemies. She notes the perfect historical irony that if the Trump administration ends in failure (a result that is looking more likely by the day), it remains true that because of the anger of the base, Donald Trump was the only Republican who could have won the GOP nomination and also the only Republican who could have won the general election.

Only the incoherence of the Democrats response and, according to Noonan, the fact that the resistance has become identified with the far left is preserving his administration from total collapse. Naturally, Noonan does not canvas the role of rightwing media in demonizing protesters as violent insurrectionists. Progressives, though, should take note of the feedback loop here between the smearing of protesters and more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tut-tutting like Noonans. This is how movements get wedged.

Extract: The cursing pols, the anathematizing abortion advocates, the screeching students they are now the face of the progressive left. This is what America sees now as the face of the Democratic party. It is a party blowing itself up whose only hope is that Donald Trump blows up first. He may not be lucky in all of his decisions or staffers, or in his own immaturities and dramas. But hand it to him a hundred days in: Hes lucky in his main foes.

See the rest here:
Burst your bubble: five conservative takes on free speech - The Guardian

The report follows a five-day visit by Ben Emmerson QC on behalf of the UN to Riyadh. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

Saudi Arabia has been accused of using anti-terror laws to suppress free expression and failing to carry out independent inquiries into its Yemen bombing campaign in a hard-hitting report published on Thursday by the UN special rapporteur on human rights.

The report follows a five-day visit by Ben Emmerson QC on behalf of the UN to Riyadh, where Saudi officials refused to grant the rapporteur access to prisoners the UN believes are being wrongly held under anti-terror laws.

He also said he had heard repeated stories of wrongful arrest, misuse of court procedures, cases of torture to extract confessions and clear cases of miscarriages of justice in recent beheadings.

Emmerson also called specifically for the release of 10 named Saudis who he said had been arbitrarily arrested, largely because they had expressed criticism of aspects of the kingdom.

His strongly worded statement, passed to Saudi authorities on Wednesday, is unusually powerful since he was granted numerous conversations with senior Saudi judicial figures, who were clearly eager to impress on him that the kingdom was either reforming or acting proportionately in the face of a genuine terror threat.

Emmerson praised Saudi rehabilitation work and the standard of its prisons as among the best in the world, but his criticism of human rights abuses gives substance to the concerns openly voiced by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on her visit to Riyadh this week.

He said that, contrary to the basic international human rights standards, Saudi anti-terror laws enable the criminalisation of a wide spectrum of acts of peaceful expression, which are viewed by the authorities as endangering national unity or undermining the reputation or position of the state.

At a press conference he said: I have received numerous reports about prosecution, on the basis of this law, of human rights defenders, writers, bloggers and journalists in connection with their expression of non-violent views. Despite repeated requests and efforts, the government was unable to give access to any of the individuals whose names I provided to be interviewed.

I strongly condemn use of counter-terrorism legislation with penal sanctions against individuals peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, as well as freedom of religion or belief and freedom of peaceful association and assembly.

Emmerson urged the Saudis to set up an independent mechanism to examine all crimes allegedly committed by speech or writing in order to determine whether they violate the protected rights of expression, thought, conscience, religion or belief, assembly or association.

He said there was evidence that complaints of torture were not systematically investigated and called for lawyers to be present within the first hour of detention and not after permission of the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution.

In Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition war to fight back against Iranian-backed Houthis, Emmerson reminded Saudi Arabia of its international legal obligation to conduct a fact-finding investigation, independent of the chain of command involved in the strike, in any case in which there are reliable indications that civilians may have been killed or injured and to make the results public.

He said he wanted the Saudi government to ensure that such investigations were conducted in every case and the true civilian death toll made public.

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UN accuses Saudi Arabia of using terror laws to suppress free speech - The Guardian

If you dont know about the current and impending removal of Confederate-related monuments in New Orleans, including Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis and the Liberty monument (already removed under cover of darkness last week), you must be under a rock, because it has made the national news.

This weekend, The Holy Ground bar on the corner of South Jeff Davis Parkway and Canal Street had a run-in with some pro-monument protestors, who, according to the Mid-CityMessenger, say that the bar refused them service and trash talked them while liquoring up the enemy. The owners deny the charges; but Facebook came to the pro-monument protestors rescue.

The protestors apparently barraged the bars Facebook page with negative reviews and the bar owner shut down the bars Facebook page on Sunday due to the negativity.

I agree that both sides should have the ability to express themselves vis a vis the removal of the monuments. However, no protestor should not have the right to damage abusinesss reputation by creating negative posts. Its nasty and its dirty pool. Heres the problem with Facebook and social media: they areliterally being used to intimidate people, patrons and viewers of the media. Its impact is incredible, be it for good or evildepending on your POV. Social media is being used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Let me draw an analogy here: social media is being abused. Its become a cannonthat shoots or threatens to destroyothers anonymously. And damage occurs on both sides, becausetrust methe real story can never be determined by reading Facebook or Twitter posts. Its so sad that people buy whatever is shoved in their face by internet users, with no credibility, no research,limited perspective, and out of pure emotion.

This is why its important to have objectivity in reportage. This is why credible media journalistic reporting is so crucial to a viable democracy. As far as Im concerned, everything on Facebook and Twitter is twisted and spun by their posters, who, as you should be aware, are only trying to influence the mob and have no credibility. Stop paying attention to this baloney!

Is social media actually killing free speech? When is the backlash going to come?

Read more from the original source:
Free Speech Run Amok - OffBeat Magazine