Category Archives: Free Speech

Can Florida and Texas weaponize conservative paranoia over Big Techs alleged liberal bias to destroy social media and free speech as we know it? After nearly four hours of arguments on this question at the Supreme Court on Monday, the answer is disconcertingly unclear. The justices split along unusual lines as they grappled with the two laws at issue. A few seemed genuinely torn over the best approach to the whole mess before them. And while uncertainty is finejudges arent godsthe stakes are too high for the court to mess this up.

What are those stakes? Well, Florida and Texas are seeking to subvert basic First Amendment principles to turn the most popular websites on earth into unusable quagmires of hate and extremism. If SCOTUS allows them to succeed, it would be a grave misfortune for free expression, free enterprise, and democracy itself.

The two laws at issue were inspired by Republican lawmakers conviction that social media platforms discriminate against conservative voices. (They dont, but these lawmakers mistake a few anecdotal instances as irrefutable proof of a trend.) In response to outcry on the right, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed substantially similar legislation that limited platforms ability to moderate content posted by users. The Florida law forbids platforms from moderating any speech about political candidates, deplatforming a political candidate, or disfavoring any journalistic enterprises. It also imposes rigid requirements of consistency for all other content moderation. Texas law goes even further, barring platforms from making any editorial choices at all that are based on the viewpoint of the user.

Both laws require companies to notify users who still end up censored and allows them to appeal. Both let individual users sue and collect damageswhich, in Florida, stretch up to $250,000 per day. Both define content moderation broadly to encompass removing, deprioritizing, or shadow banning posts; deplatforming a user; or affixing commentary on others posts. Both are limited to the largest companies on the internet.

These laws were crafted to sound innocuous. They are anything but. Their radical restrictions on content moderation would require platforms to host all manner of odious, revolting speech (including election subversion). Consider the implications of just one provision, Texas ban on viewpoint discrimination. Under this regime, Facebook could not remove a post spreading dangerous lies about voter fraud. YouTube could not remove a video celebrating white supremacist brutality. Instagram could not remove a photo promoting terrorist propaganda. No company could take down run-of-the-mill bigotryyour racist screeds, your antisemitic memes, the garbage that pollutes everyones experience on the internet. They couldnt even deprioritize this content to shield users from it. Which means users would almost certainly flee by the millions as their daughters wedding pictures were suddenly replaced with KKK recruitment videos.

Thats why, in response to the new laws, the platforms sued in both states, arguing that the First Amendment protects their right to moderate content on their own websites. They beat the Florida law but not the Texas lawthough SCOTUS halted it while they appealed. Their theory is persuasive. Every platform seeks to foster a certain kind of community by removing and deprioritizing certain speech. By exercising this editorial discretion, they are engaging in expression themselves. Choosing which speech to boost, obscure, or remove, the platforms say, is fundamentally expressive activity. In that sense, modern content moderation is indistinguishable from a newspapers right to publish or not publish a specific column. The Supreme Court has long held that publicationsfrom newspapers to corporate newslettershave a right to editorial control and judgment. Citizens United, meanwhile, clarified that the First Amendment grants the exact same rights to corporations as it does to individuals and media outlets. These established free speech principles, the social media companies claim, protect their own right to moderate others speech as they see fit.

Paul Clement, a conservative lawyer working for Big Tech, made these points eloquently on Monday. So did Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, weighing in on the side of the platforms. On the other side, Florida Solicitor General Henry C. Whitaker (bumbling) and Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson (obtuse) did a wretched job defending their states laws. This disparity left the justices largely in conversation with themselves, a dialogue that revealed two poles and a mushy middle among the nine.

At one pole, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito defended the laws and disparaged the platforms as totalitarian bullies. Alito suggested that the phrase content moderation succumbed to an Orwellian temptation to recategorize offensive conduct in seemingly bland terms, dismissing it as a euphemism for censors. Thomas derided the platforms for censoring, as far as I can tell, adding, I dont know of any protected speech interests in censoring other speech. (The court has always held that excluding a message is, itself, protected expression.) Thomas also implied that because they are so big, the companies at issue have somehow forfeited their First Amendment rightsa strange argument from the courts proudest defender of corporations right to buy elections. Justice Neil Gorsuch leaned this direction as well.

At the other pole, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh boiled the case down to this: The First Amendment prevents the government from censoring private companies; it does not prevent those companies from censoring their own users. Kavanaugh, despite his recent hard-right turn, has been a consistent champion of corporations right to host any speech they want, which also of course means excluding any speech they want. While serving on the D.C. Circuit, he wrote an opinion opposing net neutrality with broad language that foreshadowed these cases: The government, he asserted, cannot tell Twitter or YouTube what videos to post; or tell Facebook or Google what content to favor. On SCOTUS, he has carefully guarded the distinction between state censorship and private platform moderation. And on Monday, he directly responded to Alitos ridiculous Orwell reference, reminding his colleague: When I think of Orwellian, I think of the state, not the private sector, not private individuals.

Kavanaugh hit this theme about as hard as he could. When the government excludes speech from the public square, that is obviously a violation of the First Amendment, the justice said. When a private individual or private entity makes decisions about what to include and what to exclude, thats protected generally [as] editorial discretion. He also rebutted Thomas suggestion that a company loses its free speech privileges when it reaches a certain size or popularity. Reading from one key precedent, Kavanaugh explained that the concept that the government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment. To ice the point, he noted that previous generations complained that newspapers had unchecked power to shape public opinion, and that that had led to abuses of bias and manipulation. Yet, SCOTUS said that wasnt good enough to let the government force newspapers to carry others speech. His implicit question: Why is the internet any different?

Everybody else sat in the middle. Notably, these ambivalent justices sounded fairly confident that these laws violate the First Amendment when applied to platforms that consist of pure speech, like Facebook and YouTube. They wondered, however, whether they also applied to speech in service of commercethink Etsy or Uberas well as interpersonal communications like Gmail. Justice Elena Kagan asked if the court could hold that the First Amendment protects curated news feeds but not actual services like Venmo and Dropbox and Uber. Those businesses are already forbidden from discriminating on the basis of race or sex, Kagan pointed out. Could a state add viewpoint to the list? (The Big Tech lawyer Clement said no, to the justices consternation.)

Justice Amy Coney Barrett candidly admitted that this is a sprawling statute and it makes me a little bit nervous. She told Prelogar the case contained a bunch of land and worried about its implications for future cases. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson likewise complained about a lot of indeterminacy in this set of facts, noting that were not quite sure who it covers. Jackson sounded deeply skeptical that the Florida law, at least, was unconstitutional in all of its applications, raising the possibility that they might return the case to the trial court for more fact-finding and a narrower judgment. Jackson and Barrett were more receptive to the possibility that Texas law is more blatantly unconstitutional because it applies to only the big speech-oriented platforms.

These concerns about an overly broad or premature decision are understandable. But at the end of the day, Kavanaughs straightforward view of this dispute is clearly correct. Theres a specious appeal to the states argument that they are somehow vindicating free speech principles by forcing platforms to host more speech. But their argument makes no sense, because the First Amendment applies exclusively to the government. The Constitution prohibits the states from censoring speech; it doesnt give them license to tell private companies what speech theyre obligated to host. Florida and Texas want to turn that rule on its head. The result would be bad law and terrible policyand an internet dominated by rotten speech that nobody wants to hear.

Original post:
Big Tech fights Texas and Florida at SCOTUS, and Brett Kavanaugh might be the one saving the internet as we know it. - Slate

On January 2nd, after months of turmoil around Harvards response to Hamass attack on Israel, and weeks of turmoil around accusations of plagiarism, Claudine Gay resigned as the universitys president. Any hope that this might relieve the outsized attention on Harvard proved to be illusory. The week after Gay stepped down, two congressional committees demanded documents and explanations from Harvard, on topics ranging from antisemitism, free speech, discrimination, and discipline, to admissions, donations, budgets, and legal settlements. Some at Harvard might say this is a crisis sparked by external forces: the government, donors, and the public. But it developed long before Gay became president and wont end with her fall. Over time, Harvard, like many other universities, has allowed the core academic mission of research, intellectual inquiry, and teaching to be subordinated to other values that, though important, should never have been allowed to work against it.

Sometime in the twenty-tens, it became common for students to speak of feeling unsafe when they heard things that offended them. Ive been a law professor at Harvard since 2006. The first piece I wrote for The New Yorker, in 2014, was about students suggestions (then shocking to me) that rape law should not be taught in the criminal-law course, because debates involving arguments for defendants, in addition to the prosecution, caused distress. At the very least, some students said, nobody should be asked in class to argue a side with which they disagree. Since then, students have asked me to excuse them from discussing or being examined on guns, gang violence, domestic violence, the death penalty, L.G.B.T.Q. issues, police brutality, kidnapping, suicide, and abortion. I have declined, because I believe the most important skill I teach is the ability to have rigorous exchanges on difficult topics, but professors across the country have agreed to similar requests.

Over the years, I learned that students had repeatedly attempted to file complaints about my classes, saying that my requiring students to articulate, or to hear classmates make, arguments they might abhorfor example, Justice Antonin Scalia saying there is no constitutional right to same-sex intimacywas unacceptable. The administration at my law school would not allow such complaints to move forward to investigations because of its firm view that academic freedom protects reasonable pedagogical choices. But colleagues at other schools within Harvard and elsewhere feared that their administrators were using concepts of discrimination or harassment to cover classroom discussions that make someone uncomfortable. These colleagues become more and more unwilling to facilitate conversations on controversial topics, believing that university administrators might not distinguish between challenging discussions and discrimination or harassment. Even an investigation that ended with no finding of wrongdoing could eat up a year of ones professional life and cost thousands of dollars in legal bills. (A spokesperson for Harvard University declined to comment for this story.)

The seeping of D.E.I. programs into many aspects of university life in the past decade would seem a ready-made explanation for how we got to such a point. Danielle Allen, a political philosopher and my Harvard colleague, co-chaired the universitys Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which produced a report, in 2018, that aimed to counter the idea that principles of D.E.I. and of academic freedom are in opposition, and put forward a vision in which both are necessary to the pursuit of truth. Like Allen, I consider the diversity of thought that derives from the inclusion of people of different experiences, backgrounds, and identities to be vital to an intellectual community and to democracy. But, as she observed last month in the Washington Post, across the country, DEI bureaucracies have been responsible for numerous assaults on common sense. Allen continued, Somehow the racial reckoning of 2020 lost sight of that core goal of a culture of mutual respect with human dignity at the center. A shaming culture was embraced instead.

Last year, students at Harvards public-health school discovered that Tyler VanderWeele, an epidemiology professor and a Catholic, had signed on to an amicus brief in the Supreme Court in 2015, arguing that the Constitution does not contain a federal right to same-sex marriage and that the issue should be decided by the statesa view similar to that of President Barack Obama until 2012. After some students called for VanderWeeles firing or removal from teaching a required course, administrative leaders at the school e-mailed parts of the community explaining that it seeks to nurture a culture of inclusion, equity, and belonging, that everyone has a right to express their views, even though free expression can cause deep hurt, undermine the culture of belonging, and make other members of the community feel less free and less safe. In light of the harm and betrayal students reported because of VanderWeeles views, the school hosted more than a dozen restorative circle dialogue sessions, for people to process, share, and collectively move forward from the current place of pain. (A spokesperson for the School of Public Health pointed out that students exercised free-speech rights when they demanded VanderWeeles firing and said that the administration never considered disciplinary action against him.)

In 2021, Carole Hooven, a longtime Harvard lecturer on human evolutionary biology who wrote a well-reviewed book about testosterone, stated in a Fox News interview, The facts are that there are in fact two sexes... male and female, and those sexes are designated by the kind of gametes we produce. She added that understanding the facts about biology doesnt prevent us from treating people with respect, and that we can respect their gender identities and use their preferred pronouns. The director of her departments Diversity and Inclusion task force, a graduate student, denounced Hoovens remarks, in a tweet, as transphobic and harmful. A cascade of shunning and condemnation ensued, including a petition, authored by graduate students, which implied that Hooven was a threat to student safety. Graduate students also refused to serve as teaching assistants for her previously popular course on hormones, making it difficult for her to keep teaching it. Hooven found it untenable to remain in her job, and she retired from the department.

Students across the political spectrum, but largely liberals, have told me that they felt it would be foolish to volunteer their opinions in class discussions, or even that they routinely lied about their views when asked. These self-censorious habits became even more conscious with the rise of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, such that a large range of political remarksquestioning abortion rights, calling a fetus an unborn child, doubting the fairness of affirmative action, praising color-blindness, or asking who should compete in womens sportscould be perceived as being on a continuum of bigotry. In this climate, it became increasingly difficult to elicit robust discussions because students were so scared of one another.

In 2021, feeling that the environment for open inquiry was dire, I helped form the Academic Freedom Alliance, a national organization that supports faculty who are threatened with penalties for their exercise of academic freedom. It defends the freedom of thought and expression in research, writing, teaching, and extramural speech, and provides funds for the legal defense of faculty who face official reprisals. The people whose rights weve defended have usually expressed views that I happen to find objectionable and even offensive. For example, the University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax wrote that the United States is better off with fewer Asians and, on a podcast, suggested that the spirit of liberty may not beat in their breast. I wished she hadnt said that, but I held my nose and defended her right to not to be fired or otherwise punished, which many at Penn demanded.

A year ago, I became a co-president of a new group, the Council on Academic Freedom, founded to promote free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse at Harvard. That summer, Gay took office as Harvards president, and the groups leaders soon met with her to press the case that academic freedom desperately needed her attention. In her inaugural speech, in September, Gay acknowledged Harvards long history of exclusion and the weight and honor of being a first, as its first Black president. I was very relieved when she also pointedly said that the goal of intellectual inquiry is knowledge, not comfort. She stated, We serve that purpose best when we commit to open inquiry and freedom of expression as foundational values of our academic community. Our individual and collective capacity for discovery depends on our willingness to debate ideas; to expose and reconsider assumptions; to marshal facts and evidence; to talk and to listen with care and humility, and with the goal of deeper understanding and as seekers of truth. At that time, Gays emphasis on free speech was at odds with the prevailing tone on campus, but she was known as a supporter of D.E.I., which dampened the risk of her words being seen as reactionary or insensitive.

See the original post:
The Future of Academic Freedom - The New Yorker

An excerpt from Wednesday's article:

What made the congressional hearing so sad was not merely the accusatory quality of the committee's questions, or even the evasive quality of the presidents' answers. It was that the presidents were being asked to interpret their own rules on campus speech and couldn't.

They're not alone. Existing campus speech rules have led to all sorts of horror stories. Many are true. Because the regulations tend to be standardless often, deciding what's hateful based on the response of the listener, a so-called "heckler's veto" they give no fair warning of what's forbidden, leading to such absurdities as stopping a student from passing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day; or investigating a professor for the sin of stopping to watch a "Back the Blue" rally; or rebuking an untenured lecturer who in a discussion about race showed a documentary that included graphic images of lynching, and read aloud from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Evidently the film, like the letter, included what we're now supposed to call the N-word. (Full disclosure: I've used the word often in my books fiction and nonfiction alike and, seemingly only yesterday, I used it in the pages of The Times.)

But even were the rules crystal clear, they'd have both students and faculty looking over their shoulders, wondering which of their ideas might bring forth not disagreement the mother's milk of academic life but condemnation from their fellows and, most dreaded of all, investigation. The inculcation of fear as part of daily work on campus is very McCarthyist; more McCarthyist, even, than hauling college presidents before Congress to try to force them to place even more speech off limits. Because having to look over your shoulder is something you contend with every day.

I agree with the philosopher Seana Valentine Shiffrin that when we search for the justifications for free speech, we tend to overlook its value in crafting our own identities, the way that a self can try on ideas like clothes, to discover which fit best. Sometimes the ideas will be beautiful; sometimes they'll be ugly; sometimes they'll look better on one person than another.

This process of testing ideas should be encouraged, particularly among the young. But it carries risks, not least because of what we might call influencers, who wind up dictating which ideas it's fashionable to wear and which should be tossed out. When large majorities of college students report pressure to self-censor, this is what they're talking about.

More:
"College Is All About Curiosity. And That Requires Free Speech." - Reason

Editors Note: At the 10:43 mark, Mel misspeaks when she notes that tenured faculty often have the backing of a union. To clarify, tenured faculty often have the support of a union, faculty senates, or professional organizations like the AAUP.

Colleges and universities have long acted as incubators for social movements, and the movement in solidarity with Palestine is no exception. While repression against students and faculty for support of Palestine is nothing new, the upsurge in mobilization and agitation for Palestinian liberation since last fall has been met with a frenzied response from actors within and outside of university administrations. Students and faculty alike have faced retaliation from university administrators and Zionists within and beyond the student body, ranging from revocation of scholarships to expulsions, firings, and even physical assault. David Palumbo-Liu joins The Real News to discuss the growing repression of pro-Palestine activism and what it means for academic freedom.

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of several books, including his most recent publication, Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back. He is also the co-host of the podcast Speaking Out of Place.

Additional links:

Studio Production: Adam Coley Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Mel Buer: Welcome back, my friends, to The Real News Network Podcast. Im your host, Mel Buer. Before we get started on todays episode, I wanted to take a moment at the top of the hour to thank you, our listeners, for your dedicated support of this outlet. Whether youve got our shows on while youre making coffee in the morning, put our podcasts on during your commute to and from work, or give us a listen throughout the workday, The Real News Network is committed to bringing you ad-free, independent journalism that you can count on. We care a lot about what we do and its through donations from dedicated listeners like you that we can keep on doing it. Please consider becoming a monthly sustainer of The Real News Network by heading over to therealnews.com/donate and if you want to stay in touch and get updates about our work, then sign up for our free newsletter at therealnews.com/sign-up. As always, we appreciate your support in whatever form it takes.

Since October of last year, the response to the war in the Middle East has become a flashpoint in an ongoing battle over freedom of expression on university campuses. In the last few months, university faculty members have been suspended, adjunct professors have been investigated, and students and student groups have been harassed and intimidated by outside organizations and university administrations alike. According to reporting by the New York Times, Palestine Legal, a civil rights organization has Received more than 450 requests for help for campus-related cases since the Hamas attack, more than a tenfold increase from the same period last year. The cases include students who have had scholarships revoked or been doxxed, professors who have been disciplined, and administrators who have gotten pressured by trustees. While universities have historically been the site of spirited and often contentious debate over these issues related to Israel and Palestine, the increased instances of censorship and punishment by administrations open a disturbing new chapter in the fight for free expression on college campuses.

With me today to discuss these concerning new developments is David Palumbo-Liu, a Louise Hewlett Nixon professor and professor of comparative literature at Stanford University. His interests include human rights, race, gender, ethnicity, indigeneity, and environmental justice. His writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Truthout, Salon, and elsewhere. His latest book is Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back from Haymarket Books, and hes one of the hosts of a podcast also called Speaking Out of Place where he and fellow co-host Aziza Kanji talk about decolonization, anti-racism, climate chastise, and Palestine, among other important topics. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for coming on the show, David. To start our conversation, I wanted to take a moment to give our audience a brief introduction to the intimidation, harassment, and policies of censorship that weve been seeing on university campuses across the country. Weve seen some of the more high-profile instances like university professors being investigated and sometimes suspended for sharing memes, for example, on their personal social media accounts. Weve also seen student organizations be suspended, most notably The Students for Palestinian Justice, various chapters have had their charter revoked on a number of campuses across the country. The way that we can start this conversation is to take a broad-stroke look at the actions that universities have been taking against their students and faculty. What are some of the stories that youve been hearing or how can we start this conversation?

David Palumbo-Liu: It ranges from everything from being brought to meet administrators to have friendly conversations about, hey, what are you all doing saying these things or organizing these events because they are disturbing students, and thats left open, but understood, to disciplinary actions like the revocation of membership. Or the right of the organization to bear the universitys name, harassment of professors coming in and saying things largely based on hurt feelings, and being upset about certain things being said. In some ways, its important to note that this has been going on for a long, long, long time, but theres a very disturbing new wrinkle these days. So if youd like, I could talk about a brief sketch of the history up to whats happening today and why its so unusual.

Mel Buer: Absolutely.

David Palumbo-Liu: Okay. So I would say autobiographically, Im a scholar of comparative literature, race, and ethnicity, and my first work was on Asian-American studies, et cetera. So way back in 2013, the Association for Asian-American Studies became the first academic organization to endorse BDS. We were a mighty group of 500 people and we voted unanimously for it because it made all the sense in the world. We were hit immediately by the press, by members of Congress getting down on our case. This was amazing to me that we were insignificant. We would like to believe we were significant in important ways, but no, it was purely because of our vote. What we see today has so many elements of it. I was thinking about that when I was invited onto your show because the way I got involved was there was a lot of racism along with upset about criticizing Israel, and the racism took the form of what would Asians know or care about Israel-Palestine? And so you all dont know this stuff, stay in your lane, et cetera.

This is the first piece I ever wrote publicly on this. I said, well, Hawaii was annexed, the Philippines were colonized, the Japanese and Americans were interned, and Vietnam was attacked. So we understand these issues of indigeneity and colonization and imperialism fine, thank you. But it was the year later in 2014 when the Association for American Studies voted for the boycott and that blew everybodys mind because this was a real academic organization. It wasnt Asian American, which is marginal, but American. It was the bread and butter of American studies. But these things followed a decade earlier, in 2004 at Columbia, a group of pro-Israel people I dont know if they were faculty, students, or a combination thereof, probably with some outsiders too Produced a film called Columbia Unbecoming and it was a hit job on anybody who was pro-Palestinian or vaguely anti-Israel. And that created a huge stir and that was the first salvo of things.

Skip forward to today, all those things are still happening and you can almost see the same rhetoric, and the same phrases are being used. Whats new today and extremely disturbing is its piggybacked on top of attacks on DEI and theres a good reason for that: The current hearings that the ICJ bear it out, this is a battle about imperialism and colonialism and the racial elements come out very starkly. You have people like Chris Ruffo from Manhattan Institute playing his song but partnering up with this guy Bill Ackman, whos this hedge funder who has his own ax to grind. They attack a Black woman and they bring her down with every possible tool and pseudo-tool they can use because theyre freaked out. Its important for your listeners to understand that Israel has a whole wing in its propaganda arsenal thats specifically devoted to squelching any hint that Palestinian causes are in any way related to the Black cause, related to Indigenous causes. They have a whole rap about that because thats what theyre so afraid about.

Whats happening now is that theres this new legislation that brings in the exploits of already existing legislation about partnering with foreign elements, and it works in both ways. Students for Justice and Palestine and a new group called Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which is a supporting organization, are being threatened with being characterized as under the sway of a foreign terrorist organization, that we support Hamas and therefore we are much like South Africa. As you remember, at the ICJ, were accused of being agents for Hamas. The same thing is being extended across the ocean to the US.

By the same token, a lot of these pro-Israel groups are partnering with Israel. I can tell you from my experience, that theres clear evidence. Theyre proud of the fact that a lot of the anti-boycott people in the US are colluding with or working with the state of Israel. So its become an international issue that is taking shape in nearly every country in the West in these formations. Its not just the US, I would say in Germany its worse, but France and England all have some version of this going on.

Mel Buer: Right. Its important to draw attention to the tiered nature of work in higher education in the context of this conversation because what we see is tenured professors, who have often the backing of a union and are full-time workers at the university, are experiencing a different type of censure, perhaps suspension. The classes get canceled, but theyre still employed by the university. Theres an additional element of intimidation that happens to contingent faculty, adjuncts, and associate professors who often dont have the benefit of union representation, and who are often regarded as independent contractors.

I was an adjunct professor for a couple of years before I became a full-time journalist here so I understand the precarity. I understand the anxiety of precarity and I understand the anxiety of self-censorship on tough topics that arent remotely related to what were speaking of today in order to preserve livelihood. That adds an additional element to this. I imagine that these campaigns that are waged against faculty members and students But faculty members like were speaking of from these donors These outside organizations, the folks who are engaging a lot of the resources and time and money in doxing these professors and putting them up on these websites like The Canary website that contributes to this anxiety and makes it difficult for this free expression to continue on these campuses. Do you have any thoughts about that?

David Palumbo-Liu: Yes. Well, Im glad you mentioned unions because here at Stanford last year, graduate student work was unionized and one of their first big public acts was to come out in support of Palestinian labor. So this is another whole set of connections that Israel absolutely hates. But you raised an important point, and Im glad you mentioned the idea of self-censorship because it works in pernicious ways within the tenured faculty. And let me explain that by the time people become tenured, they become institutionalized, they become socialized to the institution. So if they have And Ive seen this sadly in so many cases Strong liberal edging into progressive, probably not radical positions, by the time you become socialized, you dont want to make waves, so you are self-censoring. So even if you have tenure, you are reluctant to use it, and precisely the purpose of tenure is to be used.

A friend of mine whos an activist said tenure is not like a get-out-of-jail-free card that you use every single day to say things other people cant say. In savvy organizing on campuses, what one does is distribute the labor so that faculty who are tenured do certain things that untenured faculty cant do, and then graduate student employees, et cetera, et cetera. And this is another thing that freaks people out: It is when we are talking with each other and strategizing and understanding, doing power mapping in institutions, that makes us formidable. What they want to do most is draw and splinter things apart so you offer some perk to one group or flatter another group, but precisely because this has been such an ongoing struggle. People are savvy to this, and this is another thing that frustrates our antagonists is because they only have one tune to play.

They have more people joining the course but its the same message. If you look at the playbook of hurt feelings, thats as old as the hills and its so thin. And yet whats scary now is its because of this collusion of hedge funders Amher, Panary mission, the state of Israel, and then the DEI folks, the Manhattan Institute, and this ilk, they have more amplitude plus the fact that the media is bought into this because it sells whatever, and it confirms the narrative of this whole issue began on October 7. The programmed amnesia as to how we got to this point in the first place is something that media, especially the American media, is bought into.

So we have much more power than we had before because its now a global movement, but also the stakes are higher for the other side. And so they are amping up their game and its going to be a war of attrition essentially. Were going to win, frankly, because we have so many people coming into this, and youre of that generation and those younger than you even, their first recognition of whats going on in Palestine will be the gutted-out buildings and slaughtering Gaza. It wont be the Holocaust, which is my generation. This will be their Ground Zero.

Mel Buer: I like that youve brought up this point that history did not begin on October 7 and that this particular issue has been ongoing. The ongoing occupation of Palestine and its violence has been ongoing in the last couple of years. What weve seen on social media, the bombing of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and the various violent responses to peaceful protests in Gaza and the West Bank are important moments to highlight here. This is a very large mobilization of students who are a powerful political force in this country, and were seeing the largest mobilization, anti-war mobilization since the Iraq war. Its a wonderful thing to see the power that students are taking back. And as a former academic, I love it. I love to see it.

Its good to point out that this cannot be viewed in a vacuum, and that the legacy of this extends farther than propaganda would like us to believe. A huge problem is that especially in the last 10 years or so, what weve seen is this concerted effort by French groups on the far right who have made their way into positions of power at the federal and state levels to separate us from that history and to pervert the sense of academic expression and freedom in order to continue this project of censorship. I wonder if you had additional thoughts about that.

David Palumbo-Liu: When we talk about the media, and you brought this up earlier, so much of what we know and understand and act on the basis of does not emanate from the mainstream media. That we are so tuned into alternate media. And I would say that that could stand as an analog to the fact that most young people, frankly, I dont know what language I can use on your show, but dont give a shit about college administrators. The college administrators and the others will be saying, we wont let this And people say, stop us. They are less cowed by power than Ive ever seen before in my life. Theyve grown up with a healthy cynicism, if not minimally skepticism, but healthy cynicism because theyve seen from the George Floyd moment onward the failure of our institutions, the complete bankruptcy of our institutions, that they understand that maybe theres a one in five or one in seven chance, perhaps something will work the way the institution says it works.

But what we have at Stanford, and Id like to mention this, is that theres a sit-in. Students for Palestine and allies have been engaged in a 24/7 sit-in since October. Its the longest-standing occupation of the Stanford campus. The administration was thinking, well, its California. When it starts to rain and get cold, theyll leave. They were there 24/7 throughout the break. What they did was they had a wonderful time sharing things. So students, especially Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian, would go back to see their families, and other people would come in, right?

Mel Buer: Right.

David Palumbo-Liu: What they created there was a sense of community that all universities say we want people to believe they belong. They never do. Its when its organic that it is durable and lasting. I dont see that sit-in ending anytime soon, but the spirit is going to live on forever. This is something we always have to underscore is that generationally theres a healthy gap and that almost, I wouldnt say immunizes, but it protects those of us who are fighting the struggle because we are leaning on each other. We realize that administrators, theyre not I said this at the vigil, and I didnt mean it to be insulting to administrators, but I said you have to realize these arent people. They probably, God willing, have good, vibrant family lives at home when they clock off, but when they come to campus, they become functionaries. They feign humanity. But we cant let that seduce us into believing that were dealing with this. We have to understand how power works and endow each other with the power rather than rely on it externally.

Mel Buer: Thats a good point to bring up. I was reading a recent New York Times article that talked about the battle for free academic expression on campuses as it relates to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Theres a crucial point in there that students do not view these reactionary, uneven applications of policies or the restricting of these campus groups as anything other than ham-fisted attempts by the university to exert some control. And they will naturally react to that because thats what happens when you have this power imbalance on college campuses. We saw this when I spoke to these wonderful Dartmouth undergrads who are very smart young people. They also viewed the same thing. They were arrested for trespassing. The university president had called the police on them for maintaining a 24/7 vigil, and eventually, it came to the point where the university president said this is unsafe, which you and I both know is absurd. Its a peaceful occupation of a space.

So it began this conversation on their campus about the utility of such vigils, of such occupations, which is a very important educational space where young activists can use this as the springboard for more coherent thought as they move forward into their adulthood, as they become more entrenched in the university systems, they begin to understand their place as students. Thats great. Its encouraging to see because it has not stymied the efforts of one of the largest student mobilizations weve seen in a generation. But there is the problem of these outside organizations engaging in harassment campaigns and intimidation campaigns. Im thinking of students faces being plastered on billboards and driven around school campuses and these policies of protecting students are being often applied unevenly.

Theres no consistency in this because you can make the argument that these policies are meant to protect students from this harassment, but were not quite seeing that. I dont know exactly what its like on Stanfords campus, but we are seeing this is what created the maelstrom around Claudine Gays resignation is this inability to protect students from rising incidents of antisemitism, but were not seeing the same effort being put forth for students who are being subject to Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hate. Were seeing some very horrible violence against young people from individuals in this country as a result of this conflict.

So in terms of conversation point, thats something that I want to bring up. And I also would like us to maybe think about what is the way forward for universities. The opinion in this New York Times article is that these policies need to be applied even-handedly, consistently, and without prejudice in order to protect all students who are involved in an important very contentious conversation. What are your thoughts about that? What do you think about the broad application here and how we can move forward without unnecessarily curbing the free expression and free speech of students on university campuses in the US?

David Palumbo-Liu: Well, a wonderful Palestinian American poet, Remi Kanazi, posted on his Instagram, that something that has stuck with me is he says everybody has the right to be safe, but you dont have the right to feel safe. Thats an important distinction. I want to commend our leadership; We began our term with a very brief statement that said were a university. Our stock and trade is debate, contesting assertions, and being able to learn from the different back and forth, the usual stuff. And they said that with that comes our obligation that everybody is physically safe. I wrote them immediately thanking them because its important to underscore that yes, everybody has the right to feel and to be physically safe. And I would extend that in a materialistic way to saying, no, you shouldnt fear that your job or your livelihood, your material existence would be threatened, which is what these folks are doing.

As Ackman said, well, lets make sure all these people are never employed doing this. That is reaching into that level of unsafety. But to feel safe is such an atmospheric thing that we need to trace that back to whatever source that is. I would say we should embrace the struggle against antisemitism frontally and say look at white supremacy. Lets look at the real virulent and violent antisemitism and not let it get sidetracked into the exploitation of the term. Its such a cheapening of the term like genocide, the way that is saying how we could not possibly bring that. Hamas isnt applying genocide, and Im a literature person, and so are you apparently, right?

Mel Buer: Yes.

David Palumbo-Liu: When you cheapen language that way, youve taken away any scaffolding you have for any morality or ethics. So I would say embrace antisemitism and say, yes, were all for that. Where do you see it? Wheres the real threat coming from? Lets join each other in this battle against all bigotry. The free speech issue has to be, as you say, evenly applied, but more importantly, perhaps is the step that we need to take before we get there, which is to find out on what terrain and through what arguments is it being unevenly applied. But lets disarm that bifurcation so we understand better whats going on. Because in understanding the bifurcation, we already have gone a long way toward being able to be more even-handed about this.

Mel Buer: Right. Just to clarify, what were talking about here is embracing the attempts to combat antisemitism, to embrace anti-antisemitism, and to understand that You are correct The white supremacist project loves to pervert this and to use these terms, to use these struggles as a way to further the white supremacist, white nationalist project, especially on college campuses. Prior to this, we were seeing it in the anti-critical race studies on campuses. This is the next chapter in a longer project of attempting to remove any chances of having those conversations on a college campus and to reduce the institution and the power that the institution can have for young people to a shadow of itself. And to make it impossible for young folks, myself included, to be able to maintain any space within the institution and to be able to contribute very important conversation, research, and education to the wider institution in the US.

David Palumbo-Liu: It is such a typical element in the reactionary playbook. The fight against affirmative action, the fight for individual freedom. Its this doubling up of language, and this is something else we should talk about. The Supreme Court cutting down affirmative action. This is all part of the racist movement in this country toward more and more silencing and de-legitimizing a protest and difference, flat-out difference.

Mel Buer: I agree. Its a multifront assault on the ability to ferment descent and its extremely disturbing to see how its playing out and how it has played out in the last 10 years, this true and total descent into fascism in this country.

David Palumbo-Liu: Absolutely.

Mel Buer: Of which we are going to see what happens at the end of this year when we get through our new election year.

David Palumbo-Liu: Im deeply pessimistic.

Mel Buer: I am as well, unfortunately. I do think that there are things to be somewhat stoked about. I do think that the student mobilization on these campuses is incredible. That is a wonderful thing to see. Labors renaissance and resurgence over the last couple of years is something to be hopeful about.

David Palumbo-Liu: Absolutely.

Mel Buer: I am not quite as hopeful that our saviors are not going to be found in the federal government and the way that its currently run. I do not believe that we are going to see anything good come out of this election. And we havent seen that in a long time. Its been working people, its been the working class, its been politically engaged, socially engaged individuals that have moved the needle in this country since its inception and beforehand, and its going to continue to be that way.

David Palumbo-Liu: I absolutely agree, and organization is everything. Thats the key element here. I would say fine, elect Biden and then impeach him. We have to have some semblance of a structure, which Trump is now, in mainstream news, theyre calling a fascist, but they dont understand what that means because those folks are all pretty well impervious. Its the people on the ground that are going to be hit hardest and most immediately. So as much as it disgusts me to think of voting for genocide Joe, Im not voting for him, Im voting for a few more years to fight.

Mel Buer: Unfortunately, I cant tell you which direction Im voting, but I understand the impulse and I understand the discourse that surrounds that. Electoralism at that level, becomes a bandaid on a gash, and its ultimately, its not the thing that keeps communities together.

David Palumbo-Liu: Absolutely.

Mel Buer: And moves us in a direction, a progressive forward direction that improves the lives, material, and otherwise of working people in this country. But yeah, I get the impulse.

David Palumbo-Liu: We have to preserve that space above all because the more we invest in electoral politics, the more we are sucked into that discourse and that mode of living. Its a mode of living. And you put your faith in things that probably in some part of your soul, are a one in five, one in seven chance of working. And we have to revitalize that spirit all the time. This is what I see globally. One thing I would add to this, as much as I was talking about the wonderful global efforts that we see now for Palestinian liberation, I cant underscore enough the fact that the US, the people in the US have a special obligation to stop this because we are funding. Its our tax money. Lets imagine all these billions of dollars going toward healthcare, education, or housing. Why are we supporting a fascist regime to support our fascist regime? Ive answered my own question. Its the retention of power, but its obscene and its awful.

Mel Buer: Theres a special helplessness that comes from seeing this play out because if you look at any of the more respectable polls in this country, no one is happy about this. A very small group of people are excited about this consistent funding of horrible conflicts and proxy wars and everything else, and were suffering. People in this country are suffering. And yeah, you feel a little bit stuck in the belly of the beast.

David Palumbo-Liu: Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Mel Buer: Ive had many conversations with friends and comrades about how to combat that hopelessness. The biggest thing for our listeners, if theyre also feeling that hopelessness, is that the only way out is through together. There will be moments in the future where we can as there are moments now where we can push back against this, and our dissent as small as it may feel is mighty, powerful, and important. Otherwise, sometimes the only solace is that you came out on the right side of history. And thats something, thats something.

David Palumbo-Liu: I dont know what the ethics of podcasting are but could I mention something, a conversation that took place on the podcast I did?

Mel Buer: Sure.

David Palumbo-Liu: Is that okay?

Mel Buer: Sure. Absolutely.

David Palumbo-Liu: Im cross-branding here. I interviewed this amazing Taiwanese activist couple that is older than me, and they started working against fascism in Taiwan Because of the layers of Japanese occupation Then The Kuomintang came in and they were fighting for indigenous land rights in Taiwan. They came to the US to study chemistry. They landed in Chicago in 1968. They immediately become radicalized. They learn about the Americas dirty wars in Latin America. They protest whats going on in Chile. They were in the Turkish flotilla that tried to breach the blockade of Gaza. He was on board that ship where the Israelis killed people.

Then they took it upon themselves to become interested in the Spanish Civil War and the International Brigade and the way that Asian and South Asians were involved. They start interviewing all these veterans of the International Brigade and one of the people they talked to first is Kenneth Grabber: David Grabbers father. Long story short, theyve been very active here at Stanford. I met them at a Palestine rally and I interviewed them and the woman said, thinking about the international debate when you have 40,000 volunteers Most of whom didnt speak each others language They saw that as the frontline of the fight against fascism and they could see WWII on the horizon.

And she said, when I think of those people, and when I think of what the Palestinians are going through now, I feel I dont have the right to despair. That theres something that drives you beyond any calculation of victory or particular outcome. You just feel, and this is how I feel every day when I dont know how you feel, but sometimes I catch myself smiling. I think, how can I smile? How can I feel happy with whats going on in Gaza? And then by the same token, the Palestinians are depending on us. We cant afford to have that despair weigh on us so much that we dont do whatever we can manage to do that day or that moment. So your work and the work of others like you are so important. We have to keep the rhythm going because one person will pick up the beat when the other person falters.

Mel Buer: I agree. I do want to talk about your podcast, by the way. I do have a question about it. So thank you for bringing it up. But to put a pin in this conversation were having, I have a lot of conversations, particularly with another podcaster, a wonderful friend of mine, his name is Aaron. We talk a lot about the existential anxiety of being politically active, being progressive, and staring down the barrel of what climate apocalypse, a breakdown of empire, what that looks like for those of us in the empire. Its not pretty now. We dont want to fall into despair. And for us, weve taken a long view of our participation in these movements as we may not see the ultimate outcome in our lifetime, but we have carried the torch forward.

That in itself is a worthy endeavor, and God willing, we see it in our lifetime. We see the clouds breaking and all of the work of generations of individuals will be rewarded with something beautiful and the same thing in Palestine. To take that view of things takes the edge off the existential dread and makes you feel as if you should feel part of a much larger project that is way bigger than you, me, or anyone else. Thats an important note there to remember that optimism is important, that that long view of your participation in history is important, and that without it, you arent effective. You as a person cant participate fully in your own life or in the movements in which you esteem so highly.

David Palumbo-Liu: Well, ironically, our opponents or antagonists have done us the great favor of consolidating into a very identifiable group. In other words, they dont know what theyre fighting. Its like wokeness. Its very amorphous. And we can whack-a-mole. We can pop up any place. I see it in my students, and its ironic in the middle of Silicon Valley, or maybe not, maybe its the most logical thing in the world, but its capitalism. It is. So it all bleeds into this capitalist class. And environmentally, people get the extraction, the ruthless exploitation of everything in the world, everything for what? For the instantiation of endless need for things that we dont need and the siphoning off of resources. Look at the Middle East; We wouldnt care if it wasnt oil. Thats an overstatement, but that is such a vital part of it.

Mel Buer: The US is supposedly bombing Yemen over shipping containers, so it makes sense.

David Palumbo-Liu: Capitalism is itself a symptom of a way of life that more and more people are rejecting. They see with the climate crisis, we have a shrinking window. So what are we going to do with that time? Its got to be with jettisoning things that are unnecessary to focus on whats necessary and because of our vast generational difference, I can tell you when you get older, you realize how precious life is and what you need to jettison to enjoy life. This is happening to your generation much sooner than it should and the strength will lie in us pulling ourselves back from the precipice altogether. And again, we have the advantage of locating it very clearly.

Mel Buer: Right. To close our conversation, I did want to take a moment to alert our listeners to your podcast, because I listened to a couple of the episodes and it is so good. It is now on the regular rotation for my listens. Its Speaking Out of Place, and it gives listeners a wealth of information on a number of important issues that might help broaden their thinking on these topics. You discuss decolonization and anti-racism, and you talk about Palestine. Can you tell us about your podcast, your cohost, and why you think its important to speak on these issues? Are there interesting and good conversations that you can point to that would help our listeners have a broader understanding of what weve been talking about today? How about it? Lets talk about it.

David Palumbo-Liu: Oh, thats so kind of you, and thank you for doing this. What happened to me is that at a certain point Because Ive been blogging an awful lot Wrote for Jacob in Truthout and Salon and other places, and finally I decided to pull back from that and write another book but I didnt want it to be an academic book. I had placed some essays and books that Haymarket did so I approached Haymarket and they were very, very accommodating and very kind, and they published this book called Speaking Out of Place. And I thought, well, now its out in the world. I thought it was a good book, what to do now? At that point, I had been writing with a person named Aziza Kanji, whos in Toronto. Shes a legal scholar and activist. We at some point got tired of working with editors Especially after Trumps election, the media space shrank enormously And so we were pitching to places that we had usually gotten very quick responses from, and we were getting shut out. So we golfed back.

Then a friend of mine said, you have a nice voice He was a good person to talk to And you should do a podcast. I said, ah, yet another medium to try to master. I dont want to make too much of a long story about it at, Stanford, it was decided that would be a new Race Institute. And the advertising for the Race Institute was, frankly, obnoxious, terrible, toxic, and managerial. I was invited to do a book launch on Speaking Out of Place by some people associated with the Race Institute. I thought, well, Im going to speak out of place. And so I went there and some friends said, I cant make it this and that. Could you record it? I asked the sponsors, can I record? And they said fine. And I got there and I realized that I was embodying what I was telling other people to do. And I said, look, Im going to speak out of place.

And the idea of doing racial justice at an institution is oxymoronic. Its a liberal adjustment. And that became my first piece of audio tape, and I put it out there and I thought, hey, I learned garage band. I can fiddle around with this stuff. And then I had a wonderful friend in Paris who taught me a lot of things. Weve done things on Palestine, weve done things on sexual violence, we did a wonderful episode with Sarah Ahmed. We did one with Eliza Featherstone about labor victories on public utilities in New York City. Were very wide open to anything thats under-covered or covered poorly by the mainstream press. But basically, its my lifeline into the world outside of stuff. I invite any listener of yours to contact me and pitch something. I love talking with people. We did one with an Indigenous legal expert in Canada about how Indigenous law doesnt look at the laws of humans, but the laws of nature. We paired him up with a guy named Paco Cabo who talks about plant sentience.

Oh, we did a wonderful one with two people who This is one of my favorite ones, we just put it up Wrote a book called We Are Nature Defending Itself. The French tried to build an airport on 4,000 acres of wetlands, it was a 40-year struggle, and these folks went there and they won. The French government accused them of being like ISIS to begin with, which is hilarious. And theyre, among other things, anarchists, but they partnered with local farmers. It was a beautiful act of solidarity. Finally, it was probably the highest compliment the French government could give them. They said this land was lost to the republic. They said, yes, they won. Theyre now in that common sense. So those kinds of stories are what youll find on Speaking Out of Place.

Mel Buer: Great. Great. Ill make sure to put a link to your podcast in our show notes for everyone.

David Palumbo-Liu: Oh, thanks so much.

Mel Buer: Thats a great way for us to end this conversation, but thanks again for coming on the show to talk about these important topics, David. This has been great. Im glad that we got a chance to do this and thank you for coming on so quickly. Can you tell our listeners where we can find your work? Whats your email or do you have social media that you would like folks to know about?

David Palumbo-Liu: Right. Well, you can contact me through Speaking Out of Place, we have a website. Its one word, speakingoutofplace.com. Im on social media, mostly on my Instagram. I have a private Instagram, but our public Instagram is @SpeakingOutofPlace, so you can reach me through the public Instagram, which is probably where I am most of the time.

Mel Buer: Great. Thank you.

David Palumbo-Liu: Thank you.

Mel Buer: Thanks.

David Palumbo-Liu: Its been a wonderful conversation.

Mel Buer: I agree. I agree. Thats it for us here at The Real News Network Podcast. Once again, Im your host, Mel Buer. If you loved todays episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get notified when the next one drops. You can find us on most platforms, including Spotify and YouTube. If youd like to get in touch with me, you can find me on most social media. My DMs are always open, or send me a message via email at mel@therealnews.com. Send your tips, comments, questions, concerns, or episode ideas; Id love to hear from you. Thank you so much for sticking around and Ill see you next time.

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Palestine and the crisis of free speech on college campuses - The Real News Network

I have served happily as a professor at Yale for most of my adult life, but in my four-plus decades at the mast, I have never seen campuses roiled as theyre roiling today. On the one hand are gleeful activists on the right, taking victory laps over the tragic tumble from grace of Harvards president, Claudine Gay. On the other is a campus left that has spent years crafting byzantine and vague rules on hate speech that it suddenly finds turned back on its allies. For those of us who love the academy, these are unhappy times.

The controversy began with criticisms of some universities, Harvard included, for soft-pedaling their responses to the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and for then ignoring the overheated rhetoric of many pro-Palestinian protesters on campus. It has since spiraled into a full-bore battle in the never-ending culture wars.

Theres something sad but deeply American about the way that the current crisis stems not from the terror attacks but from a subsequent congressional hearing at which the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave such cautious responses that it was hard to understand their positions. It was all very embarrassing; and, in its way, very McCarthyist.

Still, some good may yet come of the debacle. I have in mind not, as the left might think, a fresh rallying of the angry troops; nor, as the right might think, an eager readiness for the next battle. Rather, the controversy provides us with an opportunity to engage in a serious debate about what higher education is for.

The Oct. 7 attack was hardly an auspicious moment to unfurl campus demands that the world pay attention to the context underlying the vicious assault. Measured by casualties, the Hamas attack is the third-deadliest terror incident in the half century for which we have data; measured in per capita terms, it was by far the worst, with more than 1 in every 10,000 Israelis killed. I have a fair degree of sympathy quite a lot, actually for many aspects of decolonial theory. I have taught, for example, the works of Frantz Fanon and Talal Asad, both of whom seek, in different ways, to offer an explanation for anti-Western violence that most observers find inexplicable. I have no sympathy whatsoever for the intentional targeting of children and the weaponization of sexual violence. Drawing a distinction between civilian and military targets might benefit the more powerful side, but the distinction is nonetheless correct.

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College Is All About Curiosity. And That Requires Free Speech. - The New York Times

Many people seem to think that the freedom of some to express their opinions is more important than the freedom of others to peacefully go about their daily activities; that free speech by blocking a road or an air terminal takes precedence over the freedom of somebody else to catch a flight to visit a loved one, to take a vacation, or just simply to earn a living. Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley raises this issue when criticizing pro-Palestinian protestors who recently blocked access to bridges, roads, and air terminals in order to draw attention to their cause (If Police Wont Back Up Mr. Brooklyn, Maybe a Lawyer Will, January 23).

Except if one favors conflicting and unequal freedoms among individuals, free speech does not entail my freedom to go and speak in your living room nor arguably to block a road supposed to belong equally to everybody. What free speech means is the equal freedom to express ones opinions on ones property, or on property one has leased such as a convention hall, or on public property provided that other users are not excluded, or on a piece of property whose owner welcomes the speaker such as the pages of a newspaper. Paradoxically, those who block roads or organize or inspire protests typically have the best access to the media. What would they say if a mob blocked the printing presses of the New York Times or the Washington Post? Freedom of speech is closely related to private property, which explains why it does not exist under collectivist regimes of the left or the rightthe regimes protesters often defend.

Many on the left show a logical incoherence that Donald Trump, certainly not handicapped in this department, could envy them.

Anthony de Jasay, the economist and political philosopher who was both a classical liberal and an anarchist (portrayed in the featured image of this post), often becomes an iconoclast when he follows the logical implications of his theories. He labels freedom-talk or rightsism the political theories that favor conflicting rights picked up from thin philosophical space. In his view, liberties simply but wholly consist of everything that does not cause an actual tort to somebody exercising his own equal liberty; and a right is nothing but a benefit obtained from another party through a voluntary contract (generally against consideration). Protesters, newspapers, and travelers have the same liberties to do anything that does not interfere with the equal liberty of others and anything within their contractual and property rights. As usual, public property raises special problems, but why would one group have the power to deliberately exclude another group of individuals who have supposedly the same liberty to access it? (On freedom-talk and rightsism, see de Jasays book Social Justice and the Indian Rope Trick, especially Chapters 3 and 4 of Part 1; and the chapter Before Resorting to Politics in his Against Politics. Expect to be challenged.)

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"Rightsism," Free Speech, and Freedom of Action - Econlib

People often extol the virtue of open-mindedness, but can there be too much of a good thing?

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Read more here:
In the 'big tent' of free speech, can you be too open-minded? - Athens Messenger

An interesting and, I think, sound analysis by Greg Lukianoff (FIRE), responding to ACLU National Legal Director (and Georgetown law professor) David Cole's review of Lukianoff & Rikki Schlott's The Canceling of the American Mind in the New York Review of Books. An excerpt:

[A]fter 9/11 only about three professors lost their jobs for speech related to the attacks or the subsequent wars, and all three were fired for reasons that extended well beyond protected speech. Meanwhile, since the dawn of Cancel Culture in 2014 there have been more than 1,000 professor cancelation attempts, with two-thirds resulting in some form of sanction and one-fifth resulting in termination .

It's also important to note that the problem will only get worse as older faculty, who are generally far better on free speech, begin to retire in large numbers. In our2022 survey of faculty, we saw that the younger the faculty were, the more acceptable they found anti-speech activity .

What about students, though? Using data from UCLA'sHigher Education Research Institute,Jean Twengehas shown thatsupport for censoringextreme speakers on campus has spiked in recent years: "While only 1 out of 4 students wanted to ban extreme speakers during the 1970s and 1980s, themajority wanted to do so in 2019."

There's much more at the link.

Read the original:
"Yes, the Last 10 Years Really Have Been Worse for Free Speech" (Focusing on Universities) - Reason

According to the New York Times, Barnard College is in a big kerfuffle involving free speech, institutional neutrality, and academic freedom. The problem is that theyre conflating them all, so the campus is full of stress and argument that, with some good will, could be avoided. Here I proffer a simple solution to the Colleges woes.

First, some terms. These are my takes, so others might disagree. Free speech is the ability to express yourself without censorship. The First Amendment protects your speech from being censored by the government, but not necessarily by anybody else, including your boss on the job. Public colleges and universities, however, must adhere to the courts construal of the First Amendment (theyre considered arms of the government), while private colleges need not. In my view, however, they should, for free speech is seen by many academics as the best way to get to the truth, with everybody able to discuss issues without being quashed. The University of Chicago, a private school, adheres to the First Amendment in our Principles of Free Expression, also known as the Chicago Principles, and these have been adopted by more than 100 colleges.

In contrast, institutional neutrality in academia means that colleges and universities remain neutral on political, moral, or ideological issues, and make no official statements about them. (Faculty and students, of course, are welcomed to express their personal views.) Thus, at Chicago, which adheres to institutional neutrality, you will (or rather should) find no department or unit of the university making any kind of statement about politics or ideology on its websites. This is an adherence to our Kalven Principles (also see here), which allow exceptions to neutrality only when the issues at hand are intimately connected with the mission of the University. Sadly, only a few schools in the country, including Vanderbilt and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have officially adopted institutional neutrality, though I think all of them should. Thats because the purpose of Kalven is to not chill speech by avoiding intimidating people who want to speak up against positions that might be construed as official. Kalven and the Principles of Free Expression are designed to buttress each other.

There is, of course, a difference between free speech and institutional neutrality. You can have free speech without institutional neutrality, so that individuals can speak their minds but departments and universities can also take official positions. (I cant imagine, however, having institutional neutrality without free speech, as the former makes sense only if you have the latter.) The problem with Barnard College, as outlined in the NYT article below (click to read), is that it has adopted free speech but isnt trying that hard to be institutionally neutral. And this is causing problems.

As for academic freedom, thats usually construed as the freedom of academics to teach and do research on what they want without interference. In other words, it is a freedom of inquiry. This is somewhat connected with freedom of speech (can a professor say whatever she wants to in a classroom? Nope.), but its not the issue at hand today, though both Barnard and the ACLU are conflating freedom of speech with academic freedom and with institutional neutrality. If they adopted the Chicago Principles and Kalven, they wouldnt be in trouble. But there are lots of faculty who think that departmental websites, official emails, and other official venues should be able to express political opinions, and thats where they get in trouble.

Click to read, though you may be paywalled:

First, Barnard College (in New York City, affiliated with Columbia University) has adopted the Chicago Principles, and so has free speech (NYT text is indented).

The Barnard faculty also held a vote in December affirming the Chicago Principles, a commitment to free expression, several professors said.

Its in the institutional neutrality issue where they get balled up, because the professors cannot refrain from making political statements on official websites:

Three weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Department of Womens, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College in New York posted a statement on itsdepartmental websitein support of the Palestinian people.

Below the statement, the professors posted links to academic work supporting their view that the struggle of Palestinians against settler colonial war, occupation and apartheid was also a feminist issue. Two days later, they found that section of the webpage had been removed, without warning, by Barnard administrators.

What happened next has sparked a crisis over academic freedom and free expression at Barnard at a time when the Israel-Hamas conflict has led to tense protests on American college campuses and heated discussions about what constitutes acceptable speech.

Acceptable, however, means speech that can appear on departmental websites. The departmental statement was removed because, at least for this issue, Barnard was enforcing institutional neutrality, which is good. (The claim that the Hamas/Israel war is a feminist issue is the way department always try to get around these restrictions. In fact, Id argue that if youre a feminist, youd want to support Israel, which doesnt oppress women or gays. But I digress.)

Asked to explain why the page was removed, college administrators told the department that the statement and links were impermissible political speech,a statement from the department said.

And if that applied to all official political, ideological, and moral issues, that would be great. Barnard would then be like the University of Chicago. The problem is that Barnard College seems to have taken it upon itself to judge whether some official political/ideological speech is okay, and other speech isnt. And that puts them in the position of being, as W. said, The Decider. What speech is acceptable, and what is not.

The Barnard administration then, in late October and November, rewrote its policies on political activity, website governance and campus events, giving itself wide latitude to decide what was and was not permissible political speech on campus, as well as final say over everything posted on Barnards website.

And so we get stuff like this:

At both Columbia and Barnard, an all-womens college that is formally part of Columbia University but has its own leadership and policies, administrators have asked the community to refrain from slogans and words that others may find hurtful. Both institutions have also issued reworded administrative rules that officially apply to everyone. But critics say that in reality, they are being used to curtail views the college does not want aired.

Under new rules Barnard emailed to faculty on Nov. 6, for example, all academic departments must submit changes to the content of their websites to the Office of the Provost for review and approval. All content on the colleges website may be amended or removed without notice, arelated policystates.

Arthur Eisenberg, executive counsel with the N.Y.C.L.U., said that the policy gives the administration discretion to determine what is permissible academic discourse on the website. And thats the problem, he said.

While the pro-Palestinian statement was taken down, for example, astatementby the Africana Studies Department decrying anti-Black racism and state-sanctioned violence in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020 was permitted to stay up.

No hurtful speech? Trying to maintain a position like that is asking for trouble.

At Chicago, statements about George Floyd, structural racism, state-sanctioned violence, and Black Lives matter on departmental websites was taken down, simply because these were political statements that had nothing to do with the mission of the departments who issued them or our University.

And now the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is warning Barnard that institutional neutrality amounts to censorship, not realizing that it is intended to prevent chilling of ideas. The problem is when you are trying to draw lines between hate speech and other speech. Its best to just adopt Kalven and not permit any official speech on politics or ideology.

Apparently, the NYCLU doesnt understand that, nor does it understand academic freedom:

The moves caught the attention of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which wrotea letterto Barnards new president, Laura Rosenbury, in December, warning that the website and political speech policies violated fundamental free speech principles and were incompatible with a sound understanding of academic freedom.

Such a regime will inevitably serve as a license for censorship, the letter said.

In a statement, the Barnard administration said that it had barred college resources from being used for political activity for at least a decade. Another policy barring political signs from being posted on campus was not directed at any ideology, it contended.

But the statement about George Floyd and state-sanctioned violence above is certainly a political statement. It would be barred here and, if Barnard adheres to its principles, it should be barred there. As for the ACLU defending academic freedom, thats simply not whats at issue.

The upshot seems to be that Barnard will approve of some political speech on department websites, but not all such speech. Sure, its fine to have the administration decide in advance what additions to department websites should be made, but they should simply ban all additions that make political, ideological or moral statements.

This kerfuffle is easily resolved:

Dear Barnard College,

The solution to your problems is this: adopt both the Chicago Principles of Free Expression, which youve already approved, but also the Kalven Principles of institutional neutrality.

Cordially, Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago

The big impediment is that some professors are so bursting with political bombast and feeling of virtue that they INSIST that their political views must be broadcast on their departmental websites. One example:

The Department of Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies has now created its own websitethat is not administered by the college, and posted its pro-Palestinian statement and resources there. It has for the past two months been in discussions with Barnards provost office about permitting a link from its official website to this website, Dr. Jakobsen said.

Fine, have your unofficial website. But the answer to whether this should link to the departmental website is NOPE! If Barnard says its okay, then theyre opening Pandoras box.

Original post:
Confusion at Barnard about free speech, institutional neutrality, and academic freedom - Why Evolution Is True

Harvard professor and international relations expert Joseph Nye has had a long and distinguished career, working on the ground in the Carter and Clinton administrations as well as many years teaching foreign policy. His new memoir, A Life in the American Century (Polity Books), is a diary of his life, including his years in the university and government and his thoughts about where the U.S. stands in today's global world order. In this Q&A, Nye talks about his advice for the interim and future president of Harvard in the wake of Claudine Gay's resignation, which countries should be highest on our radar to prevent the threat of nuclear war, what role the U.S. should play in the Russia-Ukraine war and the significance of U.S. alliances in the Middle East and more.

Q _ Has Harvard's reputation been tarnished by the controversy about campus antisemitism and allegations of plagiarism against former President Gay?

A _ Any time a president is compelled to resign, it is bound to tarnish an institution's reputation, but the fundamentals of Harvard's academic excellence have not changed.

What advice would you give to Harvard's interim and future presidents?

The next president must continue to pay attention to diversity but avoid bureaucratizing it or creating rigid rules. Since private universities are not bound by the First Amendment, a president can establish norms such as prohibiting calling for genocide of any people; but he or she must be careful that they do not jeopardize free speech that is fundamental to the institution. Private institutions can establish their own norms but should stay as close as possible to the First Amendment.

In the Carter administration, you worked on nuclear non-proliferation policy. In today's world, what should we be most concerned about relating to nuclear powers?

In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy said he expected more than 20 countries to have nuclear weapons in the 1970s. When I was put in charge of Carter's non-proliferation policy, the Arab oil embargo and ensuing energy crisis led many to believe that Kennedy's prediction would come true. Carter, a nuclear engineer, elevated the priority of non-proliferation and took a number of unpopular steps to slow down the spread I describe in my book. Today there are nine states with nuclear weapons. We have to focus on keeping numbers low, and in the immediate context that means focusing on Iran and North Korea.

You also worked on energy policy, but the world has changed a lot. Fracking has dramatically increased U.S. oil and gas production. Climate concerns also loom larger. How should the U.S. consider managing our energy needs?

In the '70s and '80s, the U.S. became increasingly dependent on imports of oil, particularly from the Middle East, and some analysts argued that the U.S. exploration had reached "peak oil." The technology of fracking (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) proved the skeptics wrong and the U.S. became virtually energy independent. The dilemma today is not too little oil but too much given the increasing scientific evidence of fossil fuels creating costly climate change. We have to design policies for a smooth transition away from fossil fuels, and once again technology can help.

As chair of the National Intelligence Council under President Bill Clinton, you grappled with issues related to the expansion of NATO. The possibility of membership for Ukraine was one of the reasons Russia has offered for invading. Given where we are now, what should the U.S. do about the conflict?

Vladimir Putin has used NATO expansion as an excuse to justify his invasion of Ukraine, but it was well known in Europe in 2022 that Ukraine was not about to join NATO. Putin's own writings describe how he did not regard Ukraine as a legitimate state but as a renegade that had to be reunited with the Russian world"Russkiy Mir." If Putin gets away with this effort to expand the Russian empire, it will put other states such as the Baltics and much of Europe at risk. The U.S. should continue to help Ukraine in its efforts to resist this imperialism.

You argue that the balance of power is essential for global interdependence. Which elements are the most significant in today's Middle East and how should it inform U.S. policy?

The world has benefited from an enormous increase in global trade and interdependence which continues despite wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. But every market depends on a security framework. Buyers and sellers may ignore security in the short term, but security is like oxygen. Once you start to miss it, you can think of nothing else. Since 1945, the global balance of power has depended on the role of the United States as the preeminent power. If our foreign policy turns away from the alliances and institutions we have created, there will be negative effects on the global economy and, in turn, our own prosperity and security.

Defense of its sovereign borders is one of a government's most important responsibilities. Israel's border was breached by Hamas, with over 1,200 people killed and about 250 taken hostage. The Israeli government says it didn't have a choice but to respond by attempting to dismantle Hamas in Gaza. Do you agree? Was there an alternative?

Every country has the right to defend its own borders, and the Hamas atrocity of October 7 meant that Israel had to react strongly. But overreaction is a mistake, because for every civilian killed in a counterterrorism operation, there is a danger of creating a next-generation terrorist. Terrorism is like jujitsu. The smaller player tries to exploit the strength of the stronger player against itself. This is the trap that Hamas set for Benjamin Netanyahu, and he fell into it. A smarter strategy would have involved a more targeted approach with more attention to reducing civilian casualties. As American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, there is a danger of winning the tactical battle and losing the strategic war.

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Don't 'Jeopardize Free Speech That Is Fundamental' to Harvard, Says Prof - Newsweek