Category Archives: Free Speech

A protester holds a sign that reads "Make Fascists Afraid Again!" during a demonstration in front of Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus where far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was giving a speech, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, in Seattle. Credit: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

On a recent Civic Cocktail a monthly interview program on The Seattle Channel journalists had a chance to ask University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce and Washington State University President Kirk Schulz about free speech on campus and it was a subject both seemed eager to talk about.

On Inauguration night in January the UW hosted a controversial right-wing provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, and the resulting demonstration resulted in an anti-fascist protester being shot. WSU avoided such controversy, thanks to the weather: Yiannopoulos appearance was cancelled due to snowflakes.

It certainly made for a provocative discussion with the Civic Cocktail panel, which included me and the Seattle Times Katherine Long. The host and chief interviewer on the program is longtime journalist and pundit Joni Balter. (Crosscut was a media sponsor of the event.)

Yiannopoulos, who was an editor of the far-right nationalist news website Breitbart, has since been widely discredited for remarks he previously made where he seemed to condone man-boy child abuse (he is himself an abuse survivor). As a result of the furor over his comments, he quit his post at Breitbart and a major book contract for his memoir was cancelled. Yiannopoulos, known for his hateful trolling, had become a free speech martyr for speech no one wanted to defend.

The question lingers: Should Yiannopoulos have been allowed to speak on campus? He was the guest of a recognized university group and they can invite whomever they like. But as a video of his UW appearance demonstrates, he gave a rambling, crude and generally unprofessional performance, ideology aside. Was this worthy of the space, time and resources of public universities of the stature of ours? Couldnt his views have been presented in a more professional or scholarly manner?

When asked, both university presidents doubled down on their commitment to free speech. Period. Either or both could have nixed Yiannopoulos appearance but chose not to. Cauce described what happened outside the shooting of a demonstrator the UW event as incredibly tragic, and said she felt lucky that the young man who was shot survived. She said she wasnt sure if the UW could have done differently in the contentious circumstances surrounding the talk.

In defending the self-described provocateurs appearance, she said, This is not the moment to try and parse free speech, citing these times when speech and the press are being challenged. This was not someone who wanted to engage in civil discourse and the truth is freedoms can be abused and hes someone whos done that.

I had a question for both presidents that was rooted in local history. In 1934, the president of Washington State College (now WSU) told the German consul in Seattle that he could not come on campus to promote the agenda of Adolf Hitler. The diplomat, Walther Reinhardt, had been going around the state touting the New Germany and denying that there was any anti-Semitism there. But the colleges longtime president, Ernest Otto Holland, drew the line at promoting Nazism. He did not want the campus used to spread Third Reich propaganda. Isnt it OK to set some standards?

WSUs Schulz said he was uncomfortable being a free speech arbiter. I still think its very difficult to start deciding, me personally, whos OK to speak and whos not OK to speak. He said he thought the best way for students to make opinions known about a speaker was with their feet, meaning not giving them the attention theyre seeking or countering the message with peaceful protest.

Cauce added that she had confidence that UW students would not invite someone who was avidly Nazi. Given that many anti-Yiannopoulos protesters consider themselves anti-fascists, the definition of what constitutes avidly Nazi might differ.

The good news for free speech advocates is that both university presidents have essentially said that anything goes speech-wise on campus. I took their comments as setting a very high bar for censoring the views of campus invitees.

The bad news is that the standard for speakers isnt very high. Theres no requirement that they add coherent substance to debate or engage in civil discourse. That to me seems to surrender some of the responsibility of institutions that are supposed to be about higher learning.

I think the stand Washington States president, Ernest Otto Holland, took in 1934 would be considered anti-free speech by current university presidents standards. In the 1930s, many Americans were avidly buying Nazi propaganda, also widely accepted by the media. Part of the consequence: World War II and the Holocaust.

I find it very difficult to say that Holland was wrong in denying Nazi Germany a bully pulpit.

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When free speech is hate speech: Should it be banned? - Crosscut - Crosscut

Respect is difficult when, He's our president and should be respected, is the substance of many letters I've read in The Gazette. Unlike those writers, I cannot respect a person who is a liar, an egomaniac and incompetent; who intentionally fills his cabinet with bigots and incompetents. Then there are the issues of taxes and business dealings. When a person speaks and has the quality of sounding like a whiny little twit, that's difficult to respect.

There are those who can respect immoral persons, even presidents and I have little respect for those who can, like Max Lenington, who wrote scandalous emails on the taxpayer's dime or Sen. Daines, who, as a party lackey, suppressed a First Amendment free-speech right in a body where free speech should be the norm. Daines, without a thought, accepted arcane Rule 19 which, time and again, has not been enforced when senators previously had routinely violated that same rule.

Free speech works both ways. It allows you to speak out on an issue, like Editor Darrell Ehrlick did and it allows a response if a person take umbrage to someone's free speech. Daines, on the other hand, did not respond to an issue but squelched a person's First Amendment free-speech right.

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Daines surpressed free speech - Billings Gazette

March 16, 2017 | :

Debates over free speech and intolerance have become, once again, news. Over the past few weeks, a number of television pundits, columnists and fellow academics have commented on the fracas that took place at Middlebury College. In fact, some professors who teach at the institution such as Environmental Studies professor Bill McKibben wrote an article for The Guardian and Allison Stanger professor of International Politics and Economics at the college penned an op-ed for the New York Times.

For those of you who are unaware of what transpired, on March 2 the usually tranquil and scenic institution found itself engulfed in an ferocious uproar when a couple of conservative student groups invited Charles Murray, a prominent conservative political scientist, sociologist and author to the prestigious liberal arts college known for its stellar academic reputation to deliver a talk.

Murray began to become well known in certain conservative libertarian circles in the early1980s with his often statistically detailed scholarship that examined topics such as marriage, economics and suburbia. He was catapulted into the mainstream in the mid-90s with his best-selling yet controversial book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life in which he argues that certain racial groups harbored superior intelligence over others. The book hit the public arena like wildfire and many prominent individuals and some fellow academics accused Murray of scientific racism. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labeled him a nationalist who ascribed to eugenics (raced-based scientific testing commonplace in the late 19th and early 20th century).

Students and some faculty who were upset that he was his being allowed to speak on their campus and made their displeasure known by signing petitions, shouting him down and refusing to allow him to speak. The situation became so volatile that Murray and several other people suffered physical injuries. Things became volatile. It was chaos and dysfunction of the most disturbing kind.

That a large percentage of students at Middlebury College were offended, upset and outraged at the fact that a person with the reputation of Charles Murray was granted permission to speak in and of itself is not surprising. This is particularly the case in regards to Black, Hispanics, Arab, gay and lesbian, disabled Asian and other marginalized populations on campus. Over the past several years, college campuses have not been the most hospitable and welcoming places for students of color or in some cases, women. On the contrary, they have been environments rife with hostility, intimidation and occasional violence.

Outside the ivory towers of the academia things are just as volatile. The state of political discourse in our nation is as hostile as it has ever been. We recently witnessed one of the ugliest, mean-spirited and divisive presidential campaigns in recent memory. Our current president has engaged in numerous acts of racial invective, employed numerous dog whistles in his rhetoric to appease the racially intolerant and hostile segment of his base of supporters. He has attacked the Fourth Estate and attempted to demonize his enemies through round the clock and wanton tweeting. He has arrogantly defied the separation of powers that have been the foundation of this nation.

Yes, indeed. The humidity has made the climate uncomfortable and many people who fall outside of the White, male, able bodied, Christian, heterosexual, category (at least 70% of the population) are justified in being unsettled by the current state of affairs.

That being said, I still take issue with how Murrays critics handled the situation. Whatever feelings of anxiety and frustration and harbored, refusing to allowing him to speak, his detractors allowed him to gain the upper hand of the situation. The fact is that Murray, like Milo Yiannopolous and a number of provocateurs on the political, social and cultural right live to skewer and discredit their opponents as being intolerant of diverse voices. This is their standard argument.

Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Shawn Hannity, Bill OReilly, and others on the right live for this sort of reaction from the left. They desire and hope for such incidents to occur and reoccur. Such events supply them with ongoing ammunition to denounce and vilify academia, diversity, multiculturalism and other entities that they fear, despise and associate with the other. Such reactions by students are like a dream come true to them.

To be sure, it is tough to have to listen to rhetoric from others who see you as less than equal that denies, and in some cases, dehumanizes your very right to exist as a human being. Moreover, when you are in your late teens and early 20s, your emotions are often tender, reactionary and fertile. You are often inclined to react in an irrational manner if you feel that you are being disrespected and disregarded. Nonetheless, the answer is not to prohibit others with whom you disagree the right to express their viewpoints. Rather, the appropriate and more effective response to challenge such abhorrent rhetoric with facts and logic that will effectively dispel such morally irreprehensible and indefensible speech. To coin the old saying sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Free speech is crucial to our democracy. Either you have it or you dont. When you attempt to deny others the right to speak, it may be only a matter of time before you, yourself will be silenced. Attempting to deny others the right to speak is a misguided and dangerous activity that can result in disastrous efforts for all. Such Stalinistic behavior cannot be tolerated or allowed in our society. Period.

Dr. Elwood Watson is a professor of history, African American Studies, and Gender Studies at East Tennessee State University.

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Respecting the Right of Free Speech - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

Three panelists with expertise in higher education agreed that the right to free speech encompasses most controversial things said on college campuses, however, teaching the students how to engage in civil, persuasive discussions is the best bet for ensuring productive dialogue among those with opposing viewpoints.

The panelists made their points at the Jewish Federation of Clevelands community relations committee Sidney Z. Vincent Memorial Lecture and annual meeting at The Temple-Tifereth Israel on March 15. More than 230 people attended the event, where the speakers considered topics like boycott, divestment and sanctions, free speech and controversial speakers on college campuses.

The speakers were Mark G. Yudof, former president of the University of California; Susan Kruth, program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; and Blake D. Morant, dean and the Robert Kramer research professor of law at The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. Each speaker had 10 minutes to talk and then moved into a panel discussion, moderated by Kevin S. Adelstein, CEO and publisher of the Cleveland Jewish News and president of the Cleveland Jewish Publication Company.

"In recent months, speakers from all backgrounds have been blocked from speaking on various college campuses, Adelstein said. Some of those have been met with very strong student-led protests. How has this phenomenon impacted students and the overall college environment?"

Yudof said not inviting controversial speakers has a very bad impact on the schools environment.He referred to the incident at the University of California, Berkeley in February, when a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, who was then senior editor at Breitbart News, was canceled after demonstrators set fires and threw objects in protest. Although many of the protesters who caused damage were thought not to be students, Yudof said that incidents like that cause universities to not invite controversial speakers because of the eventual backlash from people on both sides, not to mention damage expenses.

Kruth added that canceling controversial speakers "sends the wrong message to the students that this is how you win."

"But they haven't won anything, because they haven't persuaded anyone to any other ideas. And it's not like (the speaker) is gone, they are just going to go talk to different people."

Kruth said that students opposed to a campus speaker should attend the talk, listen carefully and then ask good questions to embarrass the speakers position.

That is how you win, she said.

Morant said he encourages students to engage in civil discourse, where the school creates an atmosphere where students express opinions with the goal of persuasion, rather than name calling or yelling. Adelstein asked if enforcing civil discourse restricts free speech, and Morant said it should not.

"That to me is not censorship, that is creating an atmosphere for exchange of ideas," Morant said. "Your are not telling people that they can't say something, it's getting people invested in being effective communicators."

When an audience question asked the panelists why college students may lack tolerance toward beliefs contrary to their own, Yudof speculated that it goes beyond common stereotypes that students belong to a pampered generation and that students today are hurting.

"They went through the Great Recession, which was difficult, they have uncertain prospects over the job market, Yudof said, adding that Muslims and students of color face further challenges as well.

"I don't know what to do about it, but I think it's more subtle than just saying, 'there you go again, we indulge this new generation of students."

Although the crowd at the event was mostly well past the typical college age, the Cleveland Jewish News spoke with Alan and Joel Jaffe, college students from Solon on spring break.

Alan Jaffe, 20, said that as a junior at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he hasnt experienced many incidents at his school related to free speech restrictions, however there is a fence on campus where students are only supposed to write one message a day. One day a student wrote Trump and other students crossed it out, violating the courtesy one message a day rule. Regardless, he said the speakers had interesting and diverse takes on the issues and would like to hear more solutions.

"It would have been interesting to hear some more ideas about how to really solve this problem, Alan Jaffe said. They gave a lot of opinions on what the law is, but not really any approaches on how to make sure people really are able to exercise their right to free speech."

His brother, Joel Jaffe, 18, a freshman at The Ohio State University in Columbus, saw some relevance between the event and the recent divestment campaign at his school, which was struck down by undergraduate government March 8.

"It was really unfair, like the wording (of the petition),Joel Jaffe said. He added that Yudof was the only panelist who eagerly and directly addressed Israel and BDS.

Maybe they didn't want to say anything too political," he said.

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Experts discuss free speech on college campuses at CRC meeting - Cleveland Jewish News

NEWS U.Va. president emphasizes role of higher education leaders in protecting First Amendment rights by Bridget Starrs | Mar 16 2017 | 03/16/17 2:09am

University President Teresa Sullivan addressed free speech on college campuses and the role leaders in higher education play in protecting First Amendment rights in a keynote speech at the 99th annual American Council on Education conference in Washington, D.C. on March 12.

Almost 2,000 university presidents, deans and other academic leaders attended the annual meeting, which aims to discuss pressing issues facing higher education today. Sullivan gave the keynote address at the Robert H. Atwell Plenary Session.

President Sullivan was honored to have delivered the Atwell Lecture at the annual conference of the American Council on Education, University spokesperson Anthony de Bruyn said in an email to The Cavalier Daily.

The plenary session asked attendees to deeply reflect on their leadership styles, and attendees will likely relate to at least one of Sullivans challenges on their own campus, according to the events website.

In her address entitled, When the Middle Ground is the High Ground: Free Speech and the University, Sullivan examined recent free speech controversies on college campuses across the country and defended the need for free speech in order to promote cultural awareness and tolerance.

If we protect college students today from opposing views and diverse perspectives through speech codes or other restrictions on free expression, we do them a great disservice, because were leaving them unprepared for the intellectual and social fray that they will enter the moment they step off our campuses, Sullivan said.

Sullivan directly addressed the heightening intensity of the free speech debate, citing examples from Texas Tech, Williams College and Kean University.

She also mentioned recent controversies from this year, specifically University of California, Berkeley officials cancellation of a talk by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos after violent demonstrations leading up to the event. She also noted that at Middlebury College earlier this month, students shouted down Charles Murray, a writer accused of holding racist views, as he gave a public lecture. The lecture was cut short in response to the disruptive protests, and a Berkeley faculty moderator was injured by protesters as she and Murray were exiting the room.

Sullivan decried the recent attacks, and expressed alarm at individual colleges policy attempts to limit potentially offensive speech.

We need to remember, and we need to remind our students, that the First Amendment protects all speech unless it includes threats of physical violence and this includes speech that some may consider intolerant and offensive, Sullivan said.

Throughout her speech, Sullivan referenced the principles upon which Thomas Jefferson founded the University, including the illimitable freedom of the human mind and the need to combat errors with reason.

Sullivan also discussed Jefferson in the context of the faculty letter against the use of Jefferson quotes in emails meant to console the University community, namely her post-election email.

"In response, about 500 U.Va. faculty and students sent me a letter asking me to stop quoting Thomas Jefferson in my messages to the University community, Sullivan said in her address. They criticized me for using Jefferson as a moral compass, noting his involvement in slavery during his lifetime."

Following the criticism, Sullivan defended her choice to use a Jefferson quote by saying Jeffersons words, although contradictory in his time, have become more applicable towards real equality in the modern day context.

Quoting Jefferson or any historical figure does not imply an endorsement of all the social structures and beliefs of his time, she said last November.

For those faculty and students, I made it clear that I disagreed with their argument, Sullivan said in her speech at the plenary session. At the same time, however, I said that I fully endorsed their right to speak out on issues they care about, including U.Va.s complicated Jeffersonian legacy.

According to Sullivan, the university leaders in attendance should stand in defense of all free speech.

As leaders in higher education, when free expression seems to be under attack from all sides of the political spectrum, we can set the right example by standing in the middle ground to defend it on all sides, Sullivan said.

The American Council on Education conference began March 11 and concluded March 14.

We were privileged to have President Sullivan deliver this years Atwell lecture," Jonathan Riskind,Assistant Vice President for theAmerican Council on Education, said in an email to The Cavalier Daily on Thursday."The Robert H. Atwell Plenary, named by the ACE Board of Directors for the former ACE president who served from 1984-96, is steeped in a history of thought-provoking talks by national higher education leaders, and President Sullivans address was very much in that distinguished tradition.

Campus free speech has become a topic of interest at the state level, with a bill concerning the increasingly contentious issue passing the General Assembly last month. Intended to protect First Amendment rights, the proposed law prohibits limitations on free speech on college campuses. Although the bill is largely supported, some opponents view it as unnecessary, and even as a potential invitation to hate speech on campuses. Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has yet to take any action on the bill.

This article has been updated with a comment from Jonathan Riskind.

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Sullivan defends free speech in keynote address - The Cavalier Daily - University of Virginia The Cavalier Daily

Pitzer students debate free speech, student safety and cultural ... Inside Higher Ed A one-line critique of the fashion choices of some white women leads to debate over journalism and cultural appropriation, and to threats made to Latina ... and more »

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Pitzer students debate free speech, student safety and cultural ... - Inside Higher Ed

Censorship of free speech and cultures that have become increasingly PC are not just phenomena on campuses across the U.S. a new report shows that they are also having a chilling effect on more than half the campuses in the United Kingdom.

The British Internet magazine spiked, which focuses on politics and society,released its third-annual report on campus censorship in the United Kingdom, and the results paint a grim picture.

The Free Speech University Rankings (FSUR) looked at 115 universities throughout the U.K. using a traffic-light systemred light, being the worst, marks a prohibition on a certain type of speech; the yellow category prevents speech from being too provocative; and a green light rating marks a clean bill of health.

The 2017 analysis showed that 63.5 percent of universities in the United Kingdom actively censor speech, and 30.5 percent stifle speech through excessive regulation, creating what the magazine calls a steady rise in censorship during the past three years. Only 6 percent of universities in the U.K., the study says, are truly free.

They are regulating speech to a chilling degree across the board by restricting discussion of religion, transgenderism, offensive Halloween costumesyou name it and its cutting through most of the university sector, 25-year-old Tom Slater, coordinator of the Free Speech University Rankings at spiked, told Fox News. The underlying problem is political correctness. And, the problem is, if you allow that kind of censorship on campus, it tends to go unchecked and then its going to spread, with more and more people latching on.

Spiked said the reports results were produced through Freedom of Information requests and analysis of university student unions, published documents and policies, along with executive bans for universities over the past three years.

Examples of the regulations on free speech, according to Slater, including the ban of tabloid newspapers like The Sun as well as the censoring of Robin Thickes single Blurred Lines, which was banned at 25 universities in the U.K.

Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of U.S.-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, told Fox News that political correctness is an American thing that has spread to Britain in the last five years.

Britain is in a dead sprint trying to catch up to American universities, and the problem is that [the U.S.] is protected by the First Amendment and theyre not, Lukianoff told Fox News. Its hard to directly compare to the U.K., but is there a problem there? Yes. Absolutely.

Both Slater and Lukianoff said the type of censorship being seen on college campuses is chilling.

If you make people have to guess whether or not theyll be arrested for something they say, that is a chill on the First Amendment and on free speech, Lukianoff said.

Slater said the suppression of free speech at U.K.universities was further fueled by the election of President Trump, which poured gasoline over a problem that was already there. But it is social media, he said, that created and spread the PC-culture in the U.K.

The Trump phenomenon has just brought to the surface the quite hysterical approach people have to opposing views, Slater said. Social media has played a role, because it lets politicos on both sides of the pond share ideas, and that has been somewhat of a catalyst.

Slater said that students in the U.K. suppress speech in the name of liberalism and progressivism.

Things have gotten so bad and everyone has gotten caught up in this, Slater said. But I dont see anything liberalor progressivein offending free speech.

Brooke Singman is a Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @brookefoxnews.

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Free speech under attack at UK colleges, report says - Fox News

A A

Jay Ambrose

Charles Murray, someone who makes his living by thinking and appreciates its grandeur as a guiding force, recently had a firsthand encounter with a mob of college students insisting instead that fury should rule the day.

I am tempted to generalize about a sickeningly spoiled, intellectually betrayed younger generation out to announce its moral superiority by way of moral thuggery. That goes too far. Were talking about 100 people. But they symbolized more than themselves. Something significant is indeed going on. And it is pathetic.

The setting for this story is Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vt. Murray, a libertarian author and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, had been invited to speak at the school by libertarian students, and no wonder.

A few years back, he had written an amazing book that as much as predicted what we witnessed in the 2016 presidential election. It was called Coming Apart and was about an upper-middle class more and more separated from a white working class letting go of self-reliance, industriousness, marriage and religion. A nation once unified in its norms was no more and the result was gated communities over here and increased poverty, crime and family dissolution over there.

You could read the book and not be persuaded by every sentence while nevertheless feeling that, yes, it is crucial to restore the exceptionalism of earlier days. Worry about all of this grew in 2016 when we witnessed so much talk about the establishment masses growling at the elites who in turn looked down on the deplorables. Donald Trump then made vulgarity his calling card as he rose mightily against political correctness.

It was legitimate to do so. Political correctness can be incorrect to the point of pulling a professors hair, hurting her neck, making her fear for her life and sending her to a hospital. This was what happened to a woman who was on the scene to debate Murray after his talk. To its credit, the administration did its best to maintain peace and sanity, and the professor was there to assure another side got told. But the protesters were not about to permit something as civilized as an exchange of views.

So the students unleashed obscenities in chants and signs, pushed, threatened, banged on a car, roughed up the professor and left one thinking of what else we have seen lately: the violence, speech oppression and vandalism at Berkeley, still other frenetic, mindless protests, silly university speech codes, safe zones, microaggressions, trigger warnings and no-sombrero rules.

Look around and its clear mean-spirited, self-absorbed, holier-than-God attitudes are definitively with us. They did not arise out of nothing but out of modes of askew child rearing, cultural degeneration and too many postmodernist, leftist professors preaching what should never be practiced. To what extent could our future be shaped by those caught up in such a self-satisfied la la land of absurdist rationalizations and desires for collectivist control?

It is hard to say, but I am not just indulging ad hominem displeasure here. The main thing is the assault on free speech. Without it, there is no democracy. Truth becomes harder and harder to find. We do not grow. We do not learn. Without free speech, life shrinks, goodness shrinks, meaningfulness shrinks.

A few incidents do not give us the end of the American creed but they do point to ways in which it is being subverted. An incident in which a powerful, creative thinker is shut up is all the more frightening because it tells us how much we would be hurt if the villains of this tale were to grow as much as they would like in their power and influence.

Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for McClatchy-Tribune. Readers may send him email at speaktojay@aol.com.

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Ambrose: Stick up for free speech, America - The Columbian

Barry Evans / Today @ 8:25 a.m. / Growing Old Ungracefully GROWING OLD UNGRACEFULLY: Free Speech or PC?

the reason to listen to people who disagree with you is not so you can learn to refute them. The reason is that you may be wrong.

William Deresiewicz

###

Eons ago during the 1988 presidential campaign, President George Bush, running for a second term, accused his rival of being a card-carrying member of the ACLU as if that was a bad thing. Dukakis could hardly deny it he was the one who said he was an ACLU member in the first place but his polite Yale-schooled liberalism worked against him, and he lost in a landslide.

Im a huge supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and yes, Im a card-carrying member, just in case Im asked to prove it. Coming from the UK, where theres no Constitution, no Bill of Rights, just a mish-mash of common law going back to the Magna Carta of 1215, Ive always been hugely impressed by the freedoms that the founders built into the law of the land. Especially that of the right to free speech and a free press, enshrined (I love that word) in the First Amendment.

Actually, I sharpened my free speech chops many years before arriving on these shores. At age 18, I was starting my civil engineering education at Queen Mary College (dahn the Mile End Road, innit?), a school within the University of London. The student union had invited Max Moseley to speak, and the debate whether he should be disinvited for his far-right views was acrimonious and lengthy.

Max Moseley is the youngest son of Oswald Moseley, leader of British blackshirts, a bunch of pro-Hitler thugs modeled on El Duce Mussolinis 1930s fascist paramilitary organization in Italy. Maxs father had once entertained the prospect of being Britains Prime Minister, and Max briefly took up the banner in the late 50s and early 60s under the guise of limiting immigration (sound familiar?) from Commonwealth (read: black) countries. We, the student body of QMC, ended up deciding to let the invitation stand, and Max Moseley did address us. We were hoping for fireworks, of course, but as I recall, it was more of a damp squib of a speech, nothing comparable to our current POTUS claiming, for instance, that Mexicans are bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. But this was England, 1963. (Max soon grew bored following in his fathers right-wing footsteps, finding Formula One auto racing more to his liking.)

###

Fast forward to the recent anti-free-speech display at Berkeley, where the venomous ex-Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos was denied a platform after being invited to speak; and last weeks alarming scenes at Middlebury College, Vermont, where Charles Murray was shouted down and prevented from speaking. Murray is co-author of the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve, which claimed that 40 percent of intelligence is genetic, with the unsubtle sub-text that blacks are less intelligent that whites. (I tried reading it at the time, but got bogged down in statistics; the general consensus from reviewers was that the book was long on racism and short on hard facts.)

The plan at Middlebury was that Murray would be invited to take questions after his speech from Professor Allison Stanger, a left-leaning political scientist at the college and presumably a tough interlocutor for the right-wing Murray. (Shes been a member of the non-partisan Council for Foreign Relations think-tank for the past 13 years.) Didnt happen. Instead, she ended up in the hospital after her neck was wrenched by a protester in a scuffle following the non-event.

Allison Stanger and Charles Murray. Photo: Middlebury College.

I quoted above from an article by author and critic William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar, in which he mourns the self-righteousness of students at liberal colleges who have convinced themselves that theirs are the only views worth listening to and hence right-wing views dont deserve a hearing. The popular refrain Its not a question of free speech, its a question of hate speech is a shallow and unconvincing defense for objecting to anything you dont like.

Deresiewiczs final paragraph nailed it, when he asked, of private (liberal!) colleges, if they want to be socialization machines for the upper-middle class, ideological enforcers of progressive dogma? Or do they want to be educational institutions in the only sense that really matters: places of free, frank, and fearless inquiry? His accusation is a bit unfair: in the case of Berkeley and Middlebury, the college authorities supported the right of controversial speakers to be heard. It was the students, apparently, who objected.

But thats what I love about the ACLU. Sure, they support a bunch of leftie causes. But this is also the organization that supported the right of American Nazis to hold a rally in predominantly Jewish Skokie, Illinois in 1978 (losing many members in the process). The ACLU has argued in the Supreme Court for the rights of a fundamentalist Christian church and for the International Society for Krisha Consciousness. It supported Oliver North in the arms-for-hostages debacle of the fading Reagan presidency. And much more. The ACLU models the notion that you dont have to agree with Nazi fascism, or Charles Murrays racist claims, or the misogynistic bullshit of Milo Yiannopoulos, to stand up for their right to speak.

And of course, nothings as black and white as my title implies. No one, in my view, deserves a platform to encourage violence, or pedophilia, or any one of a thousand gotchas. I remember, years ago, a representative of the ACLU spoke to our group of nuclear-freeze advocates in Bellingham. I naively asked if it was obvious which cases the organization took on. You have no idea how tough it is, she said, We never stop arguing about what to advocate for and what to leave.

Mostly, though, in a democracy, all you and I have to do is simply support the right of those we disagree with to be heard. When political correctness trumps free speech, all of us, left and right alike, are in trouble.

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GROWING OLD UNGRACEFULLY: Free Speech or PC? - Lost Coast Outpost

The State

Bill would chill free speech on college campuses The State As an educator and a Jew, I am troubled by the support in our Legislature for H.3643, which purports to protect Jewish students and faculty but in practice would harm free speech at educational institutions, where robust political debate on important ... A cartoon protest threatens to redefine free-speechJewish Journal Activists Defiant on Israel's Travel Ban Targeting BDS Supporters: "It's a Sign We're Winning"Free Speech TV 'We may no longer be permittednor permit ourselvesto enter Israel,' scholars writeMondoweiss all 204 news articles »

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Bill would chill free speech on college campuses - The State