5 ms·

No matter how much a university in 2017 might laud free speech, that university is not going to invite a speaker who openly advocates for genocide. When you ac

by tps5 10y ago

No matter how much a university in 2017 might laud free speech, that university is not going to invite a speaker who openly advocates for genocide. When you accept this, you accept that "censorship" is unavoidable. Some ideas will not be given a platform because of that platform's perceived (correctly or not) distance from the mainstream. There is no society that has ever existed where this is not the case. So the question is: which views should be denied a platform? Obviously there's no perfect way to answer this question, but it seems to me that the solution to this problem isn't as difficult as this essay claims. I think that, quite clearly, the criteria that define acceptable speech on a college campus need to change. Specifically, those criteria must expand. Dissenting views need to be given a platform, even if they make some students uncomfortable.

bpodgursky 10y ago
I don't see any good reason for universities to use different standards than the courts have used for the first amendment -- open calls for violence can be censored (your genocide example), just about everything else is fair game. Of course, the speakers with the most universally unpalatable views aren't going to get invited (by student groups) because they won't get enough attendees to fill an auditorium or be worth the hassle. But that's unrelated to whether the university should allow it.
- richardwhiuk 10y ago
  Why are open calls to violence the standard? How marked does the call need to be? What does the violence need to look like? Is displacing people a violent act? Is yelling abuse at people a violent act - or are we so naive that only direct physical contact constitutes a violent act? This is not an easy problem, and 'open calls to violence' are not a trivial solution. I also fear universities which seek to over-represent minority points for the sake of balance, in the same way that news programs often do.
  - mc32 10y ago
    I think the line has to be physical violence, else we'd allow very few people to speak as any other interpretation kind of dismisses just about anything and everything: Abortion rights Abortion opponents Trade agreements etc.
  - tertius 10y ago
    > Is yelling abuse at people a violent act No, it's an abusive act though. The simple answer to your question is: The definition of violence by the courts is physical. And it's probably a good decision. Otherwise the rabbit hole will take us bad places.
- brians 10y ago
  Open calls to genocide are legitimate speech protected by the first amendment. Only speech likely to produce imminent lawless action is banned---so there has to be a target and a plausibly exhorted actor right there.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Taking this as a given, lets accept and openly acknowledge that universities are not seekers of truth, but rather political and social actors seeking to serve their own interests. Any claims they make otherwise are just propaganda. Of course with this in mind, it's significantly harder to oppose Trump's proposal to defund Berkeley (or whichever college). Why is taxpayer support for a political advocacy group somehow sacrosanct?
- dandersh 10y ago
  No universities are seekers of truth and knowledge, even a cursory glance at the progress of knowledge and understanding will demonstrate this to be true. I mean, seriously, where would technology be without universities? Don't let your political ideology blind you to the actual world that we live in. The issue is the unwillingness of those attending to take advantage of the full diversity of views and life experiences that university life has to offer.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    It's unreasonable to claim to be seekers of truth and knowledge when asking for money (as you are) and then immediately eschew those ideals when Milo comes to speak (as tps5 is doing).
    - dandersh 10y ago
      Except Milo is a professional troll interested in self-promotion, not knowledge and truth. Most importantly though you are taking a simplistic all or nothing approach where any (perceived) transgression disqualifies the entire history of knowledge seeking and sharing of ideas.
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        I'm saying that if universities want to ask for money based on claims that they are about knowledge and the sharing of ideas, then they should be held responsible when they fail to uphold those ideals. In much the same way, I want to very strictly ensure that the police uphold the law. The police hold a privileged position and they should be held to stricter standards. Socrates was also a professional troll. Should he (if he were not mortal) be barred from universities? As for Milo, I've never watched him until yesterday. I saw a bunch of journalists claiming he supported pedophilia, yet refusing to quote him or even link to the video. So I figured I was being mislead (I was!) and watched the actual video. While he is full of hyperbole, flamboyance and ridiculousness, he's also making valid points mixed in with it. For example, one of his major points is that the left wing identity politics is just a rhetorical weapon, not a real principle - that's why a "flaming queer" like him isn't allowed to hide behind it.
rebootthesystem 10y ago
The best way to deal with a speaker who openly advocates for genocide is to let them be heard and be rejected on the (lack of) merits of their argument. Would decent people --intelligent students at a university-- truly buy into these arguments? I think not. What's to fear, then? The best approach is to actually invite them to make a presentation and thank them profusely for coming. I would start the presentation with a sustained five minute applause. Imagine, then, the message that would be sent to, say, a white supremacist speaker who, after being received in this fashion watches the entire venue slowly and quietly empty without saying a word until they are speaking to a bunch of empty chairs. A voluntarily empty hall, not by force, not by burning down the town, is the best vaccination against these people. So, yes, this means opening the doors to what we might consider to be hateful. Unless we have a fundamental lack of faith in the quality and intelligence of the student body the best approach is to let these speakers in and let them experience talking in an empty room. Maybe a few will want to listen to them. So what? Intelligent, quiet and non-violent rejection, that's the way to do it.
- fossuser 10y ago
  > Would decent people --intelligent students at a university-- truly buy into these arguments? I think not. The origin of the term 'genocide' arose out of eugenics ('geno'). Eugenics was primarily 'educated' people making fancy sounding (though largely incorrect) arguments which started with justifying sterilization and ended up justifying euthanasia for the 'greater good'. Critical thinking is not the default state of humans in any group and otherwise decent people have bought into dangerous ideas before.
  - jhanschoo 10y ago
    > The origin of the term 'genocide' arose out of eugenics ('geno'). You've got the etymology confused. 'geno-' comes from Grk 'genos', which means race/tribe. Genocide refers to ethnic killings. Eugenics ('eu' good + 'gen-' race/tribe) refers to the goal of achieving 'better races' and methods to achieve them. Unfortunately those methods involve pruning perceived bad seeds. They come from the same root word, but genocide isn't derived from eugenics.
wokky 10y ago
When you accept this, you accept that "censorship" is unavoidable. Your scare quotes indicate that when you say "censorship" you mean "the right to choose which points of view I/we will legitimize," I guess? Or "not censorship at all as it turns out?" Dissenting views need to be given a platform, even if they make some students uncomfortable. Should newspapers be forced to print my letters to the editor, even if they are a bunch of fevered ravings, because my incoherent hate-screeds need to be given a platform? If you want to promote unpopular points of view, you may have to build your own platform. And 2017 is actually the best time in history for this very thing, and people who do no-kidding advocate genocide seem to have no trouble banding together and making their arguments available to anyone who's interested.
- tps5 10y ago
  I don't understand how you got this out of my post. I clearly said that some speech will be denied a platform, and that's an unavoidable feature of communities of people living together. All I said is that we need to step back and reassess what is being denied a platform, today, and whether we're denying too much speech a platform and dismissing too much speech as "fevered ravings."
  - wokky 10y ago
    I clearly said that some speech will be denied a platform... What does it mean to you when you say that something has been "denied a platform?" It seems to me that the very notion depends on the assumption that ideas have some sort of natural right to an audience and outside support. But your unpopular ideas do not entitle you to special outside help. You may have to build a platform for your unpopular idea, as was the case for so many once-unpopular ideas in history. That's what it means to be unpopular. It might be a lot of work. Nobody owes your idea a donation of that work. The notion that some ideas are "denied a platform" today is both inaccurate and incoherent. No one has the right, the authority, or the power to "deny a platform" to a particular idea in general.

by tps5 10y ago

bpodgursky 10y ago

I don't see any good reason for universities to use different standards than the courts have used for the first amendment -- open calls for violence can be censored (your genocide example), just about everything else is fair game. Of course, the speakers with the most universally unpalatable views aren't going to get invited (by student groups) because they won't get enough attendees to fill an auditorium or be worth the hassle. But that's unrelated to whether the university should allow it.

richardwhiuk 10y ago
Why are open calls to violence the standard? How marked does the call need to be? What does the violence need to look like? Is displacing people a violent act? Is yelling abuse at people a violent act - or are we so naive that only direct physical contact constitutes a violent act? This is not an easy problem, and 'open calls to violence' are not a trivial solution. I also fear universities which seek to over-represent minority points for the sake of balance, in the same way that news programs often do.
- mc32 10y ago
  I think the line has to be physical violence, else we'd allow very few people to speak as any other interpretation kind of dismisses just about anything and everything: Abortion rights Abortion opponents Trade agreements etc.
- tertius 10y ago
  > Is yelling abuse at people a violent act No, it's an abusive act though. The simple answer to your question is: The definition of violence by the courts is physical. And it's probably a good decision. Otherwise the rabbit hole will take us bad places.
brians 10y ago
Open calls to genocide are legitimate speech protected by the first amendment. Only speech likely to produce imminent lawless action is banned---so there has to be a target and a plausibly exhorted actor right there.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

Taking this as a given, lets accept and openly acknowledge that universities are not seekers of truth, but rather political and social actors seeking to serve their own interests. Any claims they make otherwise are just propaganda. Of course with this in mind, it's significantly harder to oppose Trump's proposal to defund Berkeley (or whichever college). Why is taxpayer support for a political advocacy group somehow sacrosanct?

dandersh 10y ago
No universities are seekers of truth and knowledge, even a cursory glance at the progress of knowledge and understanding will demonstrate this to be true. I mean, seriously, where would technology be without universities? Don't let your political ideology blind you to the actual world that we live in. The issue is the unwillingness of those attending to take advantage of the full diversity of views and life experiences that university life has to offer.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  It's unreasonable to claim to be seekers of truth and knowledge when asking for money (as you are) and then immediately eschew those ideals when Milo comes to speak (as tps5 is doing).
  - dandersh 10y ago
    Except Milo is a professional troll interested in self-promotion, not knowledge and truth. Most importantly though you are taking a simplistic all or nothing approach where any (perceived) transgression disqualifies the entire history of knowledge seeking and sharing of ideas.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      I'm saying that if universities want to ask for money based on claims that they are about knowledge and the sharing of ideas, then they should be held responsible when they fail to uphold those ideals. In much the same way, I want to very strictly ensure that the police uphold the law. The police hold a privileged position and they should be held to stricter standards. Socrates was also a professional troll. Should he (if he were not mortal) be barred from universities? As for Milo, I've never watched him until yesterday. I saw a bunch of journalists claiming he supported pedophilia, yet refusing to quote him or even link to the video. So I figured I was being mislead (I was!) and watched the actual video. While he is full of hyperbole, flamboyance and ridiculousness, he's also making valid points mixed in with it. For example, one of his major points is that the left wing identity politics is just a rhetorical weapon, not a real principle - that's why a "flaming queer" like him isn't allowed to hide behind it.

rebootthesystem 10y ago

The best way to deal with a speaker who openly advocates for genocide is to let them be heard and be rejected on the (lack of) merits of their argument. Would decent people --intelligent students at a university-- truly buy into these arguments? I think not. What's to fear, then? The best approach is to actually invite them to make a presentation and thank them profusely for coming. I would start the presentation with a sustained five minute applause. Imagine, then, the message that would be sent to, say, a white supremacist speaker who, after being received in this fashion watches the entire venue slowly and quietly empty without saying a word until they are speaking to a bunch of empty chairs. A voluntarily empty hall, not by force, not by burning down the town, is the best vaccination against these people. So, yes, this means opening the doors to what we might consider to be hateful. Unless we have a fundamental lack of faith in the quality and intelligence of the student body the best approach is to let these speakers in and let them experience talking in an empty room. Maybe a few will want to listen to them. So what? Intelligent, quiet and non-violent rejection, that's the way to do it.

fossuser 10y ago
> Would decent people --intelligent students at a university-- truly buy into these arguments? I think not. The origin of the term 'genocide' arose out of eugenics ('geno'). Eugenics was primarily 'educated' people making fancy sounding (though largely incorrect) arguments which started with justifying sterilization and ended up justifying euthanasia for the 'greater good'. Critical thinking is not the default state of humans in any group and otherwise decent people have bought into dangerous ideas before.
- jhanschoo 10y ago
  > The origin of the term 'genocide' arose out of eugenics ('geno'). You've got the etymology confused. 'geno-' comes from Grk 'genos', which means race/tribe. Genocide refers to ethnic killings. Eugenics ('eu' good + 'gen-' race/tribe) refers to the goal of achieving 'better races' and methods to achieve them. Unfortunately those methods involve pruning perceived bad seeds. They come from the same root word, but genocide isn't derived from eugenics.

wokky 10y ago

When you accept this, you accept that "censorship" is unavoidable. Your scare quotes indicate that when you say "censorship" you mean "the right to choose which points of view I/we will legitimize," I guess? Or "not censorship at all as it turns out?" Dissenting views need to be given a platform, even if they make some students uncomfortable. Should newspapers be forced to print my letters to the editor, even if they are a bunch of fevered ravings, because my incoherent hate-screeds need to be given a platform? If you want to promote unpopular points of view, you may have to build your own platform. And 2017 is actually the best time in history for this very thing, and people who do no-kidding advocate genocide seem to have no trouble banding together and making their arguments available to anyone who's interested.

tps5 10y ago
I don't understand how you got this out of my post. I clearly said that some speech will be denied a platform, and that's an unavoidable feature of communities of people living together. All I said is that we need to step back and reassess what is being denied a platform, today, and whether we're denying too much speech a platform and dismissing too much speech as "fevered ravings."
- wokky 10y ago
  I clearly said that some speech will be denied a platform... What does it mean to you when you say that something has been "denied a platform?" It seems to me that the very notion depends on the assumption that ideas have some sort of natural right to an audience and outside support. But your unpopular ideas do not entitle you to special outside help. You may have to build a platform for your unpopular idea, as was the case for so many once-unpopular ideas in history. That's what it means to be unpopular. It might be a lot of work. Nobody owes your idea a donation of that work. The notion that some ideas are "denied a platform" today is both inaccurate and incoherent. No one has the right, the authority, or the power to "deny a platform" to a particular idea in general.