Category Archives: Free Speech

The state of North Carolina has officially enacted the first free speech law based on the legislative proposal by the Goldwater Institute.

The final version of North Carolina Restore Campus Free Speech Act passed the state Senate by a vote of 34 to 11 in late July, with all 11 Democrats voting against the legislation, National Review reported.

In the House, however, 10 Democrats joined their Republican colleagues to pass the bill by an 80 to 31 margin. The Democratic Governor Roy Cooper also allowed the bill to pass by taking no action on the legislation.

[RELATED: Growing number of states consider free-speech bills]

According to the report, the new law prevents the University of North Carolina administrators from disinviting speakers on campus. It also creates a system of sanctions that is designed to discipline individuals who suppress the right to free speech of others.

Moreover, the law authorizes the Board of Regents to create a special committee that will issue annual reports detailing administrative handling of matters related to free speech.

Stanley Kurtz, one of three authors behind the original Goldwater proposal, praised the passage of the bill and the support that it received from some elected Democrats.

That proposal, which I co-authored along with Jim Manley and Jonathan Butcher of Arizonas Goldwater Institute, was released on January 31 and is now under consideration in several states, Kurtz wrote in National Review.

Given the intense party polarization in North Carolina, the substantially bipartisan House vote was impressive. Governor Coopers decision to let the bill become law with no action is also interesting and instructive.

Kurtz also notes that the university successfully weakened several aspects of the bill, including the cause of action provision which would have allowed anyone whose expressive rights under the new law were violated to recover reasonable court costs and attorneys fees.

The university also succeeded in weakening the provision that designates public areas of the campus as public forums. Potentially, this would allow the university to cabin free speech to restricted zones, he argues while noting a special committee within the UNC Board of Governors should still serve as a check on administrative abuse on issues like free-speech zones.

[RELATED: Prof: college campuses are not free-speech areas]

Kurtz further stresses that the law does not contain a provision that would have suspended students who were found responsible for silencing other individuals more than once.

That provision is important for a number of reasons. First, the punishment is just. A student who twice silences visiting speakers or fellow students obviously hasnt learned a lesson from the initial punishment, he writes.

Second, since universities regularly ignore shout-downs or hand out meaningless punishments, the mandatory suspension for a second offense is the only way to prevent schools from undermining the law by handing out wrists-slaps ad infinitum.

Kurtz maintains, however, that any lax enforcement of the law will be documented in the annual report from the Board of Governors and could further lead to consequences for the administration.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @nikvofficial

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NC passes first Goldwater-based free speech law - Campus Reform - Campus Reform

Guy Benson said anti-Trump protesters proved their critics' point this past weekend when they interrupted a panel discussion on free speech.

Benson, author of the new book "End of Discussion," explained on "Fox & Friends" what happened at Politicon, where he and Ann Coulter were speaking about the attempts to curb conservative voices on college campuses.

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A few protesters wore Nazi garb as they tried to shout down the speakers, while another group interrupted with a large red banner and chanted "Trump and Pence must go!"

"It was like: you're proving our point," said Benson about the panel discussion, which was about denouncing censorship in favor of the free flow of ideas.

Benson said he reminded the protesters that there is an election in 2020, where they're free to make their choice for president and vice president. He said their actions "were not constructive at all" as the hecklers yelled at Coulter rather than listen to her statements and offer opposing arguments.

Despite the incidents, Benson urged young conservatives to still go to college campuses so that students are exposed to differing viewpoints.

Benson recalled that he spoke with his co-author at Princeton last year and the school needed extra security because some students found them too controversial.

"What's alarming is some on the hard left have conflated speech with violence. They say your hate speech is violence and we can shut you down using any means necessary. It's very Orwellian," said Benson.

Last week, Ben Shapiro spoke before a House hearing on attempts to silence conservatives on campuses.

Watch the interview above.

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Anti-Trump Protesters Target Benson, Coulter at Politicon Free ... - Fox News Insider

Until this summer, the debate about free speech on college campuses was shaped by small groups of student activists, forcefully protesting an ever-expanding list of controversial speakers, and their critics and defenders, who were mostly reactive.

The clearest conflict, amid many shades of gray, concerned the subset of those activists who went beyond mere protest and tried to shut down events. They usually purported to do so on behalf of a historically marginalized group, contested the notion that liberal tolerance is a sacrosanct campus value, and rejected the philosophy set forth in Yale Universitys 1974 report on free expression: that the history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable; and that to curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily also deprives others of the right to listen to those views.

Those most extreme activists succeeded in denying campus platforms to some speakers, generated a lot of media attention, and seemed for a while to suffer no consequences, even as observers like the socialist activist and academic Freddie deBoer cautioned that, for few if any gains, they were courting an inevitable backlash.

That backlash is now upon them.

Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia have all passed campus-speech bills, with the Virginia bill garnering broad bipartisan support and a Democratic governors signature. And in North Carolina, a campus-speech bill was just approved by the state legislature and passed into law when a Democratic governor declined to exercise his veto.

That law, modeled on draft legislation created by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, may portend more of the same. The North Carolina Restore Campus Free Speech Act accomplishes the lions share of what the Goldwater model proposed, including important steps forward on discipline for shout-downs, Stanley Kurtz argues at National Review. Goldwater-based bills are under consideration in several states, with more likely to follow next year. Any state bill can be strengthened in a second legislative round if universities continue to abuse their powers.

As he sees it, Campus speech legislation is now in play as never before. Administrators will have to take that into account when they decide how to handle free speech.

Indeed, bills based on the Goldwater Institute model, or very similar to it, are under consideration, or likely to be considered, in states including Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Louisianna, Michigan, and Texas. Variations and amendments could make the difference between a law that would do more harm than good and vice versa.

In Wisconsin, for example, I argued that a campus-speech bills flaws made a vote against it the best course. But in North Carolina, legislators appear to have improved on the Goldwater Institute model, informed by analysis from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. It offers improved free-speech protections to students without chilling mere protest or mandating overly harsh punishments.

In states where such bills are still being debated, legislators need to avoid prohibiting negligible disruptions, like booing, a form of dissent perfectly consistent with robust free speech; and laws that overburden universities with significant new administrative requirements, or incentivize frivolous accusations and disciplinary investigations, which can themselves be used to chill freedom of speech and expression.

So far, most of the action in state legislatures, congressional hearings on campus speech that I noted earlier this week, and Claremont McKennas decision to severely punish students who shut down a speaking event featuring Heather Mac Donald have come during the summer months, when many student activists are away from campus. One wonders whether the fall semester will include protests against these actions; or more attempts to shut down speech; or declines in no-platforming.

Given that Congress, the Supreme Court, most state legislatures, a majority of voters, and huge numbers of college students and faculty oppose the tactic of event shutdowns and no-platforming, at least insofar as they happen at public universities subject to the First Amendment, it is hard to see what more shutdowns would accomplish, and easy to imagine legislative blowback that goes much farther.

And for what?

In the name of free speech, Republican legislators in North Carolina just passed a bill that will better protect core rights of marginalized groups at all state universities.

And as deBoer has noted, the left doesnt seem to have workable plans for regulating speech: No one can state a remotely plausible system where a constitutional amendment would pass the House, Senate, and state legislatures necessary to abolish free speech, and no one can tell me how it would work out where the left actually would be the ones acting as the censors and not the censored.

There are scores of more pressing issues facing leftist activists than pursuing this dead end.

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The Campus-Speech Debate Spends Summer Break in Statehouses - The Atlantic

Ann Coulter was shouted down by brownshirted protesters over the weekend while she tried to lead a panel on campus free speech.

According to PJ Media, the protesters stood in front of their seats dressed as members of the Nazi SA and shouted their protests over the panel conversation until chants of USA drowned them out, after which the Nazis were ushered out of the room.

"That's not how one wins an argument. Anyone can yell."

[RELATED: Defiant conservatives invite Coulter to Berkeley after riots]

When the panel resumed, two more protesters also began chanting and once again were silenced by pro-Trump chanting that drowned out the protest. Finally, the demonstrators were booted from the room, ending the ruckus.

Hearing about protesters disrupting @AnnCoulter at @Politicon, CNNs Jake Tapper tweeted after the event. That's not how one wins an argument. Anyone can yell.

Coulter, according to attendees, later stated that she was glad that liberal protesters showed up in Nazi outfits, being that it is their natural garb.

[RELATED: UC Berkeley will not silence conservatives]

The panel also featured Axios Vice President Evan Ryan, stand-up comic Gregg Proops, Townhall.com Political Editor Guy Benson, and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin, along with Coulter, and was reportedly well-received by spectators despite the interruptions.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @MrDanJackson

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Ann Coulter interrupted by 'Nazi' protesters at free speech panel - Campus Reform

Protesters dressed in Nazi garb interrupted a free-speech panel featuring conservative pundit Ann Coulter who was set to discuss censorship on campus at the Politicon convention in Pasadena, California, over the weekend.

Our Nazi leader! Our Nazi leader! one of the protesters was heard shouting on video. In a separate clip she also was heard yelling, Heil, Trump! while giving the Nazi salute while accompanied by a similarly dressed man.

Think the capacity crowd of political junkieswas going to put up with it? Heil no.

The protesters were drowned out by chants of USA! USA! USA! and Trump! Trump! Trump! as the pair were led away.

But it didnt end there.

Another couple began shouting Trump, Pence must go!KCAL-TV reported. And like the first pair of interlopers, the station said they were drowned out by the crowd reprising its Trump! Trump! chant before getting the hook from security.

CNNs Jake Tapper weighed in on the action and made his stance clear:

Coulter has recent personal experience with the free speech crisis on college campuses. She had been set to speak this spring at the University of California, Berkeley where left-wing protesters previously rioted over the prospect of conservative views being publicly aired but Coulter canceled her speech due to lack of security and support.

Attendee Patrick Lindsay told KCAL he wanted to hear Coulters views given the growing number of voices against free speech.

I think our First Amendment is under attack right now, he told the station.

But Coulter apparently got the last laugh at the swastika-wearing malcontents:

(H/T: Truth Revolt)

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Nazi-clad protesters try shouting down Ann Coulter at free-speech panel and are badly outnumbered - TheBlaze.com

David Harsanyi Published 10:56 p.m. ET July 31, 2017

Opaque notions of fairness and tolerance have risen to overpower freedom of expression in importance, Harsanyi writes.(Photo: Max Ortiz / The Detroit News)Buy Photo

Ads That Perpetuate Gender Stereotypes Will Be Banned in U.K., but Not in the Good Ol USA! reads a recent headline on the website Jezebel. Yay to the good ol USA for continuing to value the fundamental right of free expression, you might say. Or maybe not.

Why would a feminist or anyone, for that matter celebrate the idea of empowering bureaucrats to decide how we talk about gender stereotypes? Because these days, foundational values mean increasingly little to those who believe hearing something disagreeable is the worst thing that could happen to them.

Sometimes you need a censor, this Jezebel writer points out, because nefarious conglomerates like Big Yogurt have been targeting women for decades. She, and the British, apparently, dont believe that women have the capacity to make consumer choices or the inner strength to ignore ads peddling probiotic yogurts.

This is why the U.K. Committee of Advertising Practice (and, boy, it takes a lot of willpower not to use the cliche Orwellian to describe a group that hits it on the nose with this kind of ferocity) is such a smart idea. It will ban, among others, commercials in which family members create a mess, while a woman has sole responsibility for cleaning it up, ones that suggest that an activity is inappropriate for a girl because it is stereotypically associated with boys, or vice versa, and ones in which a man tries and fails to perform simple parental or household tasks.

If you believe this kind of thing is the bailiwick of the state, its unlikely you have much use for the Constitution. Im not trying to pick on this one writer. Acceptance of speech restrictions is a growing problem among millennials and Democrats. For them, opaque notions of fairness and tolerance have risen to overpower freedom of expression in importance.

You can see it with TV personalities like Chris Cuomo, former Democratic Party presidential hopeful Howard Dean, mayors of big cities and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It is Sen. Dianne Feinstein arguing for hecklers vetoes in public university systems. Its major political candidates arguing that open discourse gives aid and comfort to our enemies.

If its not Big Yogurt, its Big Oil or Big Somethingorother. Democrats have for years campaigned to overturn the First Amendment and ban political speech because of fairness. This position and its justifications all run on the very same ideological fuel. Believe it or not, though, allowing the state to ban documentaries is a bigger threat to the First Amendment than President Donald Trumps tweets mocking CNN.

Its about authoritarians like Laura Beth Nielsen, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University and research professor at the American Bar Foundation, who argues in favor of censorship in a major newspaper like Los Angeles Times. She claims that hate speech should be restricted, and that Racist hate speech has been linked to cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and requires complex coping strategies. Nearly every censor in the history of mankind has argued that speech should be curbed to balance out some harmful consequence. And nearly every censor in history, sooner or later, kept expanding the definition of harm until the rights of their political opponents were shut down.

When I was young, liberals would often offer some iteration of the quote misattributed to Voltaire: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

You dont hear much of that today. Youre more likely to hear I disapprove of what you say, so shut up. Idealism isnt found in the notions of enlightenment but in identity and indignation. And if you dont believe this demand to mollycoddle every notion on the left portends danger of freedom of expression, you havent been paying attention.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at the Federalist.

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Harsanyi: Be worried about the future of free speech - The Detroit News

July 31, 2017 | :

PASADENA, Calif. The unconventional convention Politicon brought together political wonks and fans from all over the country for a full weekend of panels, debates, art and entertainment. A debate sponsored by Turning Point USA, a non-profit organization that promotes conservative grassroots activism, sparked both praise and criticism of safe spaces on college campuses.

The wave of student protests over the past academic year as a result of conservative speakers being invited to college campuses served as an opening focal point for the debate. Among the incidents cited were administrators at De Paul University banning conservative speaker and author Ben Shapiro from entering the campus and Ann Coulter losing a speaking engagement at the University of California at Berkeley after officials informed her that they could not accommodate her due to threats of violence.

Turning Point USA Executive Director Charlie Kirk took on The Young Turks host Hasan Piker on the necessity of safe spaces and the idea that conservatism deserves a place in academia in a session moderated by the bipartisan Millennial Action Project founder Steven Olikara.

College campuses represent a microcosm of American society, Piker said. Definitions of safe spaces are not narrow and conservatives are claiming that liberals are looking for safe spaces yet believe they are victims because they are less popular. Free speech allows people to say what they want but it does not make people more popular.

Kirk, who said he had not attended college, agreed with Piker that conservative speakers such as Shapiro should be able to speak at campuses that will host them. It was pointed out, however, that when colleges promote intellectual diversity, higher education administrators still are responsible for serving the best interests and safety of students.

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Should college administrators not listen to what the students want? asked Piker. Every speaker has the right to exercise their free speech rights. If there a divisive speaker that wants to come to a campus, administrators have to decide whether to put up money to protect an extremist speaker when students protest their appearance.

Piker indicated that he was at Rutgers University when freshman Tyler Clementi was cyber bullied for being gay by his dorm roommate and committed suicide in 2010. After that happened the Rainbow perspective housing dorms were created at Rutgers, said Piker. If you have been discriminated against your entire life and then enroll at a diverse college where people should tolerate you and then be bullied by your roommate for something you cannot change . . . A safe space would have saved his life.

Kirk rejected Pikers justification for safe spaces on college campus. There is a difference between a space where students can go receive mental health treatment and a space that is discriminatory and creates a culture that is inherently for students that are offended by something because they experience trigger words and microaggressions and complain they need a safe space.

The debate was packed with both conservative and liberal onlookers, particularly young people and college students. While carrying a hardbound copy of the U.S. Constitution, College of the Desert student Crystal Pasztor said that she wished the debate wasnt peppered with petty attacks on each other.

I came here to learn something. Although I learned a couple of things about what Kirk and Piker individually do, there was not enough about conservatives views or progressives views, she said. I love Hasan and watch The Young Turks but debates should not be about personal attacks. Debates like this should use official rules that have timed responses and rebuttals so people can take away more of the issues.

MSNBC contributor and Morgan State University School of Global Journalism and Communication professor Dr. Jason Johnson referred to Politicon as an explosion of political fandom.

As a first-time attendee, I wanted to see what happens when you have rival political parties in the same space, said Johnson, who also noted that students should be versed in politics when pursuing journalism. I do think that students should be more informed about politics [when they] are pursuing journalism and I found that they are not. It is not [an] HBCU issue, its a preparedness issue. What I bring back to the classroom to teach political communication is making sure students have some sense of humanity at the center of why you are pursuing this line of work.

Jamal Evan Mazyck, Ed.D. can be reached at j.e.mazyck@gmail.com or on Twitter @jmbeyond7

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Free Speech, Safe Spaces Hot Topics at Politicon - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

Hypocrisy among the American political class is not all that unusual, but sometimes the naked expression of it takes on shocking proportions.

Proposed federal legislation known as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which attempts to criminalize the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian rights, is a perfect example.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently issued a letter urging the 46 US senators -- 32 Republicans and 14 Democrats -- who have co-signed the Senate version of the bill, S. 720, to reconsider their support. A similar House measure has support from 185 Republicans and 64 Democrats.

According to the statement:

Under the bill, only a person whose lack of business ties to Israel is politically motivated would be subject to fines and imprisonment -- even though there are many others who engage in the very same behavior. In short, the bill would punish businesses and individuals based solely on their point of view. Such a penalty is in direct violation of the First Amendment...

By penalizing those who support international boycotts of Israel, S. 720 seeks only to punish the exercise of constitutional rights.

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If passed, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act would have chilling implications not only for supporters of Palestine, but also anyone who cares about the right to dissent in the Trump era. The bill not only exposes the hypocrisy of politicians who trumpet the right to free speech while they pass legislation to undermine it, but it also should serve as a cautionary tale for how the issue of "free speech" can be weaponized in ways that target dissenters while defending corporate power and apartheid states.

Apartheid Israel, for example, regularly violates the right to free speech, academic freedom, the right to a fair trial, indeed the very right to life of Palestinians living under its settler-colonial regime.

Thus, it's no surprise that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the fiercely pro-Israel lobbying group, helped draft the bill and considers its passage a top priority for 2017.

The bill seeks to amend two pieces of legislation -- the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945.

While these two laws currently criminalize compliance with the Arab League boycott of Israel, the newly proposed legislation seeks to expand their scope to include other "international boycotts of Israel," such as those that originate in the European Union or the United Nations, though the bill's main target is the BDS movement.

If passed, the felony charges associated with the previous bills would apply in relation to BDS, exposing "perpetrators" to a jaw-dropping minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

While Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the proposed legislation does not differentiate between boycotts that target Israel as a whole from those that specifically target settlement production -- causing even J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy organization openly hostile to BDS, to come out against the bill.

As Dylan Williams of J Street wrote:

This bill could give Attorney General Jeff Sessions the power to prosecute any American who chooses not to buy settlement products for a felony offense. That kind of authority should not be given to any administration, let alone one that has engaged in extreme rhetoric against political opponents, including threats to 'lock [them] up.'

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It should be noted that this bill and others like it that attempt to criminalize BDS have nothing to do with stopping anti-Semitism.

As Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Intercept, said on Democracy Now! in response to Sen. Chuck Schumer's claim that BDS is "veiled anti-Semitism":

The irony here is that [this bill] doesn't criminalize all boycotts of Israel. So if you are a neo-Nazi group, and you are driven by explicit anti-Semitism, and you call for a boycott of Israel, you would not fall under this statute. Only if you're supporting BDS through the EU or through the UN from a pro-Palestinian perspective would the precise same action then be criminalized. And for the ACLU, that is the definition of a First Amendment violation, because the same act becomes criminalized only based on your political motivation for carrying out that act.

But besides the conflation of Zionism and anti-Semitism, this bill also exposes the hypocrisy of politicians and other mainstream institutions, such as college campuses and the mainstream media, which have recently championed the First Amendment when it comes to defending the right of racists to speak and mobilize, yet casually dismiss the right to free speech when it comes to advocacy on behalf of Palestinian rights.

For example, while there have been dozens of articles about the new "free speech wars" at the University of California-Berkeley after students protested right-wing speakers Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, there has been only a faint whisper about the egregious free-speech violations embedded in the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.

The bill also exposes the hypocrisy of politicians who boast about their free-speech credentials, yet turn a blind eye to the denial of free speech to pro-Palestine activists.

As Josh Israel noted at Think Progress, just three years ago, in considering an amendment that would have overturned Citizens United, several senators who are co-sponsors of the anti-BDS bill objected strongly on the basis of the free speech rights -- of corporations.

"Could we really have entered a world so extreme that our common ground no longer even includes the First Amendment of the Constitution?" said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a floor speech at that time.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) also waxed eloquently about how the cause of democracy is served by enshrining the right of corporations to buy and sell politicians like so many talking billboards:

In our system of government, all voices have the right to be heard. The First Amendment gives them that right... We have a system that allows all voices to be heard, even those that oppose the majority. That is not antithetical to democracy; it is the essence of democracy. So it is time, it seems to me, to stop pretending that allowing more voices to be heard somehow poses a danger just because we don't like what they are saying.

***

Both Cruz and Roberts have co-signed the anti-BDS bill, illustrating how these politicians will use the First Amendment to stand up for corporate rights to buy elections, but when it comes to Israel they are all too happy to sign off on legislation that could imprison activists in the US for decades simply due to their political beliefs.

Perhaps more counterintuitive is the support of liberal Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) for the anti-BDS bill.

Wyden is known for speaking out against the National Security Agency for violating American citizens' right to not be spied on as well as being a staunch proponent of net neutrality.

Furthermore, in late May, Wyden stood up for the right of neo-Nazis to hold a demonstration in Portland, Oregon, back in June when he opposed Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler's problematic plea to the federal government to revoke their permit.

"The First Amendment cuts both ways, that's why it's so special," Wyden told the media. "The challenge is going to be for the officials in our community to find ways to deal with [the growth and confidence of the right] that don't, in effect, set aside the Constitution."

Yet Wyden is one of many Democratic backers of the anti-BDS bill, illustrating the all-too-familiar bipartisan "Palestine exception" when it comes to free speech for pro-Palestine activists.

***

In addition to speaking out and organizing against the passage of the anti-BDS bill, we should take its proposal as a stark reminder of the potential danger posed by liberals and progressives who call on the state or university administrators to ban hate speech or far-right mobilizations.

Such calls to ban right-wing speech do more to embolden the right by allowing them to play the victim than it does to weaken their forces.

Furthermore, because the definition of what constitutes "hate speech" is made by politicians, such calls end up legitimating their power when their use of such bans invariably end up getting aimed at left-wing dissenters who pose a much greater threat to their interests than right-wing ones.

Take Steven Salaita, the professor who lost his job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for his vocal support for Palestine during Israel's 2014 bombing of Gaza.

Salaita recently announced he is leaving academia because, despite having done nothing illegal and despite being a respected academic, pro-Israel forces have undermined his ability to secure a teaching job on four continents. Salaita is only one of several scholars targeted for speaking out against racism, sexism and imperialism since Trump's election.

Back at UC Berkeley just last fall, the administration suspended a student-led class on Palestine titled "Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis" due to its political content.

These are just the tip of the iceberg of a fierce campaign to silence the speech of students, professors and activists who speak out about Palestine and challenge Israel's human rights abuses.

Our side must not only continue to stand up for Palestine, but also continue to defend free speech at every turn. That right is not only one we have historically fought for and defended, but one we will need at every step in the fight for our freedom, which itself will be linked to freedom and justice for Palestine.

John Monroe and Mukund Rathi contributed to this article.

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This Anti-BDS Bill Is an Assault on Free Speech - Truth-Out

Reviews and News:

Why have university administrators allied themselves with progressive campus activists? They have found common ground in the safe space of intellectual mediocrity through consumer sensitivity. This alliance is unlikely to collapse any time soon. Administrators and campus activists have much to gain from supporting one another. And both can rely on a phalanx of Title IX regulations by the Department of Education to stifle any faculty or student dissent that might arise. Critics can easily find themselves charged with some trumped-up Title IX violation certain to upend their lives for months.

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How a French juggler and unicyclist helped create the Information Age: The great Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov put it like this in 1963: In our age, when human knowledge is becoming more and more specialized, Claude Shannon is an exceptional example of a scientist who combines deep abstract mathematical thought with a broad and at the same time very concrete understanding of vital problems of technology.

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Ian Tuttle reviews Theodore Dalrymples The Proper Procedure and Other Stories: The volume is filled with lousy neighbors. They play music loud and all night; they deal drugs; they urinate in the stairwells. The women seduce the men, and the men beat the women. The police visit occasionally but are loath to insinuate themselves. Everyone is, as the unhappy Miss Falkenhagen says, a predatory beast.

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The Rand Corporations art: It's not as though the hallways of the Rand building, located a couple of blocks from the beach on Main Street, are teeming with boisterous researchers and pontificating analysts gesturing at various artworks. The corridors are frequently quiet; conversations are conducted in indoor voices. But some of those conversations are about or inspired by the art they encounter every day in the 310,000-square-foot building.

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A new theory of ball lightning: Ball lightning comes in most colors of the rainbow and ranges in sizefrom a typical toy marble, to those extra large exercise balls some people sit on instead of office chairs. It can form inside closed spaces and move down chimneys and horizontally through closed windows. In addition to producing light, ball lightning can give off sparks and is associated with hissing or buzzing noises and a strong, irritating odor. It typically lasts for only seconds, glowing with the intensity of a bright household light bulb. The unpredictable and variable nature of ball lightning has made it difficult to develop a conclusive theory explaining how it works, but accounts of its strangeness are numerous and have been published for centuries.

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Essay of the Day:

Why is free speech suppressed on university campuses? In Modern Age, Roger Scruton argues it is fear: Why protect a belief that stands on its own two feet?

In universities today...studentsand certainly the most politically active among themtend to resist the idea of exclusive groups. They are particularly insistent that distinctions associated with their inherited culturebetween sexes, classes, and races; between genders and orientations; between religions and lifestylesshould be rejected, in the interests of an all-comprehending equality that leaves each person to be who she really is. A great negation sign has been placed in front of all the old distinctions, and an ethos of non-discrimination adopted in their stead. And yet this seeming open-mindedness inspires its proponents to silence those who offend against it. Certain opinionsnamely, those that make the forbidden distinctionsbecome heretical. By a move that Michael Polanyi described as moral inversion, an old form of moral censure is renewed, by turning it against its erstwhile proponents. Thus, when a visiting speaker is diagnosed as someone who makes invidious distinctions, he or she is very likely to be subjected to intimidation for being a supporter of old forms of intimidation.

There may be no knowing in advance how the new heresies might be committed, or what exactly they are, since the ethic of nondiscrimination is constantly evolving to undo distinctions that were only yesterday part of the fabric of reality. When Germaine Greer made the passing remark that, in her opinion, women who regarded themselves as men were not, in the absence of a penis, actually members of the male sex, the remark was judged to be so offensive that a campaign was mounted to prevent her speaking at the University of Cardiff. The campaign was not successful, partly because Germaine Greer is the person she is. But the fact that she had committed a heresy was unknown to her at the time, and probably only dawned on her accusers in the course of practicing that mornings Two Minutes Hate.

More successful was the campaign in Britain to punish Sir Tim Hunt, the Nobel Prizewinning biologist, for making a tactless remark about the difference between men and women in the laboratory. A media-wide witch hunt began, leading Sir Tim to resign from his professorship at University College London; the Royal Society (of which he is a fellow) went public with a denunciation, and he was pushed aside by the scientific community. A lifetime of distinguished creative work ended in ruin. That is not censorship, so much as the collective punishment of heresy, and we should try to understand it in those terms.

The ethic of nondiscrimination tells us that we must not make any distinctions between the sexes and that women are as adapted to a scientific career as men are. That view is unquestionable in any territory claimed by the radical feminists. I dont know whether it is true, but I doubt that it is, and Sir Tims tactless remark suggested that he does not believe it either. How would I find out who is right? Surely, by considering the arguments, by weighing the competing opinions in the balance of reasoned discussion, and by encouraging the free expression of heretical views. Truth arises by an invisible hand from our many errors, and both error and truth must be permitted if the process is to work. Heresy arises, however, when someone questions a belief that must not be questioned from within a groups favored territory. The favored territory of radical feminism is the academic world, the place where careers can be made and alliances formed through the attack on male privilege. A dissident within the academic community must therefore be exposed, like Sir Tim, to public intimidation and abuse, and in the age of the Internet this punishment can be amplified without cost to those who inflict it. This process of intimidation casts doubt, in the minds of reasonable people, on the doctrine that inspires it. Why protect a belief that stands on its own two feet? The intellectual frailty of the feminist orthodoxy is there for all to see in the fate of Sir Tim.

Read the rest.

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Photos: Earliest crossing of the Northwest Passage

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Poem: Heinrich Heine, The Devil Take Your Mother

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Prufrock: Free Speech on Campus, Why Academics Love Jargon, and Ball Lightning - The Weekly Standard

When a Hollywood celebrity testifies before congress on their pet environmental or social justice issue its usually met with fawning press coverage and sanctimonious intonations from self-righteous politicians eager to share the limelight with an actor or singer or reality show regular.

So when actor, writer, producer, director, author, radio host, podcaster and, yes, reality show regular, Adam Carolla testified last week at a House Oversight hearing, youd think it would get a little more attention than it did.

Carolla, along with conservative pundit and author Ben Shapiro, at a hearing titled Challenges to Freedom of Speech on College Campuses and his testimony was bracing, smart and undeniably entertaining.

With one wickedly well-constructed line Carolla blew apart the coddling instinct so many take when trying to wear kid gloves while confronting the very real and dangerous, totalitarian climate on American campuses:

Were talking a lot about the kids and I think theyre just that, kids. We are the adults. And I dont think that were doing the children I mean, these are 18- and 19-year-old kids at these college campuses. They grew up dipped in Purell, playing soccer games where they never kept score and watching Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, and were asking them to be mature. We need the adults to start being the adults.

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Children are the future, but we are the present, and we are the adults and we need to act like it. And I feel that whats going on on these campuses is we need law and order. We need to bring back law and order. But I think if we just had order we wouldnt need law. So, could we just bring back order, and could the faculty and administration on these campuses act like faculty and administration?

Carolla followed up his appearance before congress with an op-ed in The Hill:

Ive been doing talk radio for more than three decades and I host a daily podcast. This means I constantly have guests on who disagree with me on many subjects. Challenging their ideas and points of views while they do the same to me is an important part of the public discourse. One thing Ive learned about Americans from talking with them for more than 30 years is that we like to argue and debate, even among friends and were damn good at it.

The element of debate is a hallmark of our country, from the time of Sam Adams. By the way, he was not named after the beer, the beer was named after him. So, if you learn nothing else from today, hang on to that.

But seriously, America has been that safe space where truth can be spoken to power. Where We the People can challenge a king and a corrupt idea like a monarchy. This right has been reaffirmed through our history. Its been fought for, and people have died for it. We must understand that we have the right to free expression, not the right to not be offended. This fundamental difference is being lost on todays college campuses.

We should not be teaching students to retreat from debate, but to charge intellectually into it. This is one of the most valuable and profound gifts given to us in the founding of America.

Carolla is set to roll-out a documentary film on the campus speech issue which he created with fellow talk radio host Dennis Prager. The film, titled No Safe Spaces, was funded through an online effort and the fundraising trailer gives a good idea of the approach Carolla and Prager will take:

This is good stuff and the kind of argument against the rioting snowflakes that hardly get made or heard by someone from the corridors of influence in the entertainment industry. At the films website youll see a headline stating Hollywood Wont Make This Film, and sadly, that appears to be true.

Youd think those who make millions off the first amendment (and I dont begrudge them one cent) would be a little quicker to fret about the mob using violence to silence speech because they dont like the message being delivered. What were seeing at Berkley is a little more disconcerting than a radio station burning some Dixie Chicks CDs. (Remember that?)

The destruction of Dixie Chicks CDs was compared to Nazis burning books (because everything that happens during a Republican presidency is a baby step away from Nazism) and there were endless interviews and think pieces about the horrible ordeal Natalie Maines had to endure during the darkest time in American history up until November 8th 2016, of course.)

However, compared to that wartime controversy theres nary a peep today from the same artists who were horrified at those peaceful protests against the Dixie Chicks. Yet the violence on college campuses prohibiting speeches by Carolla, Shapiro, Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannoupolis, Charles Murray and others is far more dangerous, chilling and insidious. After all, UC Berkley is owned, operated and funded by the California state government. Maybe its me, but I find that a little more problematic than a publicity stunt byWDAF in Kansas City, MO.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

Original post:
Adam Carolla Goes to Washington For Campus Free Speech: 'We Are the Adults, We Need to Act Like It' - Mediaite