17 ms·

Improving MIT’s written commitment to freedom of expression

182 points by ondrejzabojnik 5y ago

cwillu 5y ago
I love the explicitness of “they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.”
- tandymodel100 5y ago
- zo1 5y ago
  However, they negate it with this caveat: > "The Institute may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute." Which is vague enough that an enterprising and determined individual or group could use to stifle discussion about things like gender, race, etc (all the hot/touchy topics atm). As an aside, the "violates the law", is a trojan horse that (I understand covers them legally) but also enables laws that violate free speech. Here is a list that speaks to just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#South_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#So... They use the word "hate" speech, but it might be very far from what we'd see as hateful.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    > an enterprising and determined individual or group could use to stifle discussion… This is true. Ultimately no manifesto or written commitment can constrain a people into freedom. The best we can do is strive to say what we intend, see reality clearly, change structures that stand in the way, and then trust ourselves to act with courage.
  - syshum 5y ago
    "violates the law" in this context would naturally have to comply with 1st amendment US protections which would bar any "hate speech" laws like the ones you linked to since 1st amendment to the US Constitution prohibits hate speech laws of that type
  - netcan 5y ago
    No declaration, code or whatnot stands alone. We can always loophole or interpret our way around constitutions and things. Look at religion. Even an absolute, no exception statement doesn't guarantee anything absolutely. It needs more. Culture, history, a base of support, etc. That said, declarations can be meaningful within a greater overall context.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    At some point there has to be trust in people to be reasonable in their interpretation. If that trust isn't possible, the only available strategy is to try and purge the entire administrative apparatus and replace it rather than attempting to play word games. Word games are there to be lost. This statement is pretty clear that the intent is to allow speech that some people find offensive.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      Problem is that there can be no trust since this statement is coming from a group that disinvited a lecturer on climate science because he opposed DEI initiatives https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/06/mit-controversy-over-canceled-lecture https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/06/mit-controver.... Actions speak louder than words. Purging and rebuilding the entire administrative apparatus of the US university system is actually a great idea, and for more reasons than just freedom of expression.
      - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        I see here a climate scientist advocating for public education policy without seeming educated himself on the subject (advocating for trial runs of charter schools and voucher programs as if they haven’t already been tested and studies borne out). I don’t really see the canceling here, it sounds like his talk are moved from one audience to another audience still at MIT, his public advocacy in a field he doesn’t study was published in a national paper, and somehow he’s “cancelled”?
        modo_mario 5y ago
        >The sponsoring department chair at MIT “called to tell me that they would be cancelling the Carlson lecture this year in order to avoid controversy.” I think this is what's being referred to. Surely he wasn't made to retract his statements or fired but it does seem weird. After all said statements have little to do with his lecture. Also whilst i also disagree with the bits you mentioned i don't think they're what started this controversy or made up most of his standpoint to begin with.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    I think it is mostly a reasonable constraint. But I think it needs to be said that it is prudent to err on the side of freedom. Not prosecution of twitter comments and youtube videos. Everyone that was part of that should be deeply ashamed. In my (backward) country a disturbance of the public order is illegal. Some old vices are hard to get rid off.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      Mostly. But "otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute" could be construed to be anything.
  - rory 5y ago
    Those all sound like pretty reasonable caveats that clearly don't, in their spirit, stifle discussion. Could they be twisted by someone who doesn't actually believe in the spirit of this declaration? Sure, but it's not like the declaration itself is a legal document, so it doesn't make sense to overly lawyer the precise language. The "violates the law" thing is a different story, but the South African law you linked to has no parallel in the United States, so I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt until such law exists.
    - Fricken 5y ago
      They all sound to me like reasonable caveats except the last one; which is vague and subjective enough to cover just about anything they don't like.
      - rory 5y ago
        Hm yeah, that last catchall slipped by my read. Whatever that's meant to refer to, it should have been enumerated specifically. It sounds like a catchall added to appease the "moderate" supporters of freedom of expression.
  - tagoregrtst 5y ago
    In the US, thanks to the first Amendment and its interpretation by SCOTUS, what is legal is very broad. Thats why elites have outsourced the censorship to private entities. Ironically most universities, since they are public, violate the law when they deplatform someone they don't like and have lost numerous court cases. Of course they keep doing it because litigation is an insignificant cost for rich non-profits, theres no personal risk for the administration and it makes them feel virtuous.
  - fny 5y ago
    These are well established legal boundaries to free speech.
onos 5y ago
Meanwhile, the University of California seems to have implemented a DEI litmus test on all applications for faculty positions and promotion. Does anyone know if this is actually true? Is this reasonable? https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wokeademia.html?m=1 https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wokeademia.html?m...
- sdoering 5y ago
  Just as a side note. The link to this post was flagged after being submitted to HN yesterday within a very short time frame. You might want to consider your karma points and preemptively remove it and pay your dues to the community by apologizing for not adhering to group speak. I very much stand on the left side of the political spectrum, while the linked blogpost clearly comes from the liberal to right spectrum. But I still think that the old Rosa Luxemburg quote should apply: > Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter (Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden) I valued the posting yesterday as it provided differing views that made me think, evaluate and understand my own position better afterwards. Edit: Please excuse my sarcasm in the first paragraphs, but I was troubled yesterday that the link was flagged to death and that not a civil discussion was able to arise. I was only used to this way of dealing with dissenting opinions on other forums until then.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    > You might want to consider your karma points Karma points are worth less than skee-ball tickets.
    - sdoering 5y ago
      I wholeheartedly agree. That's the reason I used the term in the sarcastic part.
  - skrebbel 5y ago
    I think you're mistaking groupthink for people who are simply tired of seeing the same old culture war debate on HN repeated over and over again. Plenty HN discussions about exactly this subject in the past have shown that: 1. Unlike some subjects, HN commenters have widely differing opinions here. The free speech hardliners and the anti disinformation/bigotry/*ism hardliners are both well represented, and many on both sides are capable of intelligent debate. 2. Nevertheless, the discussion never really gets anywhere. Nobody adds new information and nobody convinces anybody. I might be projecting, but i can imagine that many people flagged it with a "here we go again" sigh and not with the "must suppress anti woke sentiments!!" thought you. I bet comparably inflammatory articles from the woke side of the debate are flagged equally much.
Invictus0 5y ago
This is likely in response to the recent Dorian Abbot cancellation: https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/620352/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/620352/ (Sorry about the AMP link, I couldn't figure out how to get a normal link.)
- justinclift 5y ago
  If you remove the "amp" fragments in that url (https://theatlantic.com/article/620352/ https://theatlantic.com/article/620352/), it seems to work and redirects to this: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest-campus-cancellation-different/620352/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  That's funny. So what does this change actually mean? Next time this won't happen?
- teddyh 5y ago
  > Sorry about the AMP link, I couldn't figure out how to get a normal link I suggest the Redirect AMP to HTML browser extension: https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-extensions/amp2html.html https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-extensions/amp2html.html
- Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
  Could be. I can attest that as of the late 1970s MIT and some of these professors did not care about free speech. My source on the state of the campus has since retired and is not looking back at all, but told me in the middle of the last decade the most rightward a student could be was libertarian, and I have to wonder if that's still allowed. More likely these professors, having done their part to turn MIT into "an oasis of totalitarianism in a desert of freedom" are now worried the monster they helped create is going to cancel them. Which is how holiness spirals have worked throughout history.
evancoop 5y ago
Most responses to this will be positive, and they should be. Typically, the real evaluation is the market (will more students and professors be drawn to MIT?). However, there is already a tremendous demand for admission (from students) and competitive hiring processes (for professors). So...how many other comparable institutions will follow suit? Will universities in California adopt, oppose, or ignore?
- netcan 5y ago
  >> Typically, the real evaluation is the market. Typically in what sense? I don't think there's much history of success from consumer/student "action." Market discipline exists where and when it exists. It's not always, or even often, a major factor.
- cowl 5y ago
  >> Typically, the real evaluation is the market Last years experience tell us that the perception on Media is the driving factor not the market. No-one is waiting for market effects to be visible. They are just reacting to anything that makes enough noise.
- thematrixturtle 5y ago
  Universities in California are going in precisely the other direction by mandating ideological purity tests aka "diversity statements" for staff. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-professor-demonized-for-criticizing-required-diversity-statements-for-academic-jobs/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-prof...
  - yucky 5y ago
    >mandating ideological purity tests Are we saying that its bad? I mean, I think it's bad, but it is in fact "progressive" so I dunno what the consensus is.
    - animal_spirits 5y ago
      Who's to say what ideology is the "pure" ideology? If everyone is striving for one way of thinking, where is the diversity of viewpoints?
mrd3v0 5y ago
Taking this with a grain of salt after what they have done to rms.
- VictorPath 5y ago
  Or Aaron Swartz...
- coffeeisyummy 5y ago
  RMS brought it on himself. Although, yes, MIT turned a blind eye to his behavior until his comments about Epstein.
  - thematrixturtle 5y ago
    If you read what RMS actually wrote, it's kind of hard to disagree with the line of argument: "It is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17". Of course, it was incredibly tone deaf to write this out in a thread about Epstein no less, and promptly got twisted into "RMS advocates raping little children".
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      What he was really guilty of was sharing his opinions on a dangerous subject when he really had nothing interesting or original to add. He might as well complain about the speed limit on a particular road being 65 instead of 75. We set standards and conventions to keep order. And while I completely approve of RMS, that argument works just as well for 10 year olds and has often been made. Listen to screaming Gajdusek about his right (or even duty) to have sex with consenting children at the end of The Genius and the Boys.[0] Maybe when RMS said it, he set an age in his mind of some precocious post-pubescent teenager. Whatever his mental imagery was, it was just as arbitrary as the law. We set a standard to give kids a bit of runway before they are a legitimate object of the desires and efforts of adult men (and women.) 18 is fine, it gives them a little time. 17 would probably be fine, too. I don't see any reason why it couldn't be 19. But it is what it is. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxppDxzSww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxppDxzSww
finite_jest 5y ago
Based. Abelson and Sussman, of SICP fame, are among the signatories. So is Ronald Rivest, the R in RSA (and CLRS). Chomsky too.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
verisimi 5y ago
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Such invitations are often extended by organizations in the university, not the university itself. Those organizations can definitely be politically far afield from the university median. The test of a declaration like this will be how the school responds when another organization on campus reacts to such an invitation by protesting it.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      > It used to be a common expression in left wing circles to say - 'I may not agree with your views, but I will fight for your right to say them'. Sadly those are long gone. The way I do the math, I wouldn't say they were long gone... I trace the death to approximately 2017. It was a philosophy predicated on a certain amount of tit for tat, and I think that philosophy took a big hit when during a pretty bog-standard protest / counter-protest someone stabbed the left wing protesters in the back (or, more accurately, drove a car into them from behind). Other people may identify first shot fired in different places... The man in Seattle who got shot and the aggressor claimed self-defense, for example... But enough incidents happened in a short enough amount of time that "defend to your death the right to say it" got supplanted by "No quarter for fascists" and not enough people stood up to shout that opinion down because, well, people were getting killed. I don't know how one puts the genie back in the bottle. It may not be tractable without people getting tired of violence. And historically, that can take a long time.
      - legostormtroopr 5y ago
        > I think that philosophy took a big hit when during a pretty bog-standard protest / counter-protest someone stabbed the left wing protesters in the back (or, more accurately, drove a car into them from behind). Lets not pretend that "the left" only started using violence to silence dissenting voices until after Charlottesville. Earlier that year, there were riots over Milo Yiannopoulos being invited to speak at Stanford. And then a few months prior, there were mass riots at the Trump Innaguration (before he'd even done anything). Its disingenuous to pretend this isn't a "both sides" problem based on issues of hyper-partisanship of the US over the past 10 (or more) years. I think one way for us to put this genie back in the bottle is firstly, for people to stop trying to place partisan blame, and instead say this is an "extremist" problem, and actually work in good faith to try and reconsile. Anything less is doomed to failure. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Berkeley_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Berkeley_protests [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/21/trump-inauguration-protests-acquittals https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/21/trump-inaugura... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMN
tokai 5y ago
Is this really needed? I'm not trying to be obstinate. But in the north european country where I reside, while we have hate speech laws etc., my speech is protected by the law - both from the state and my employer (a university). This commitment seems very bombastic for what feels like a work environment policy to me. Am I misunderstanding something cultural here? EDIT: thx for the comments, it makes it more sense to me now.
- ghaff 5y ago
  In the US, your speech is largely protected by law from the state. But while there's a strong tradition of free speech in a university environment--arguably eroded in recent years, hence this letter--that is certainly not the case in most companies, especially if it's public speech.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  There's some concern in some circles in the United States that universities have gotten into the habit of stifling speech on controversial topics. The reality is a bit more complicated, but MIT is choosing to go out of its way to confirm that such stifling is not part of its principles. The proof will be in the pudding... At the end of the day, a declaration of this sort only has value in so much as it shapes what the school practically chooses to do when one group on campus hosts a speaker and another group sets up a picket line to shut them down.
- colpabar 5y ago
  > my speech is protected by the law - both from the state and my employer (a university). Can you elaborate what it means that your speech is protected by your employer? Because that seems like something that doesn't happen here in the US - you can lose work over disagreeing with political ideologies, especially at universities.
  - tokai 5y ago
    If I made public speech and I was terminated over that (or even if it could be proven that it possibly had an influence) that termination would be unlawful.
irq-1 5y ago
Promotion and making venues available are unaddressed issues here. The power of the institution is not just that of 'hard' censorship but of the 'soft' censorship we experience so often in the online tech world. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
timthebeaver 5y ago
Some speech issues that come to mind which, I sometimes wonder, how they would have gone down today: * The 6.001 porn * The ghetto party * The Reg Day porn (particularly Deep Throat, but many) * The Visualizing Cultures display (with CSSA opposition) * Some 10% of the day to day traffic on senior-house@, bexley-minus-fascists@, and ec-discuss@ Norms around speech have evolved a lot even as the fundamentals of ethics and laws on the electronic frontier have stayed the same. I often think that folks in the 80s and 90s enjoyed, for better or worse, considerable latitude in their speech which wouldn't fly today.
- jeremyis 5y ago
  Uhm what was the 001 porn?
  - coffeeisyummy 5y ago
    http://tech.mit.edu/V118/N8/aporn.8n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V118/N8/aporn.8n.html Prof. Abelson wanted to hammer home the point porn was a problem on the internet back in 1998 and thought putting up a porn site for the first slide of a lecture would make his point. It was pretty shocking when it happened.
    - vanusa 5y ago
      Was his flashing the room like that a free speech issue - or a thoughtless dickhead issue? Independent of his legal "right" to conduct a class in that manner - it's basically kind of asinine to assume your students need to have their buttons expressly pushed in order to appreciate the basically obvious point he felt he needed to make. Or that if people object his resorting to such a stunt - that means they're "offended" by it.
- ghaff 5y ago
  >The Reg Day porn (particularly Deep Throat, but many) Today? Clearly not. But you don't need to fast forward that far. They were discontinued in I think 1980 or 1981 when things went from "we don't think you should do this" to "this is no longer a polite request."
woolion 5y ago
We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. This statement is so weak that it is necessary to consider this climate to even understand how this can be published as a statement. After explicitly saying that illegal speech is not free speech, it lists 6 exceptions for things that are not free speech either, including speech "that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute". Which is even written twice, while being clearly a catch-all. And it mentions "In addition, MIT may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the Institute." Why not have "free speech safe spaces", which would be small individual-sized sound-proof rooms where you are allowed to say what you think? If you also pad the walls, you could find many uses for these rooms. With principles so weakly held, why have principles at all?
- qsort 5y ago
  There's always the tennis court.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. I disagree. There is a very vocal, very small minority that's ruining it for everyone else. Certainly not mainstream.
  - syshum 5y ago
    I have to ask, which side are you taking, because I honestly do not know, and I dont think it is "small minority" on either side. There are ALOT of people that oppose free speech as a concept, hiding behind statements like "hate speech is not free speech" or "words are violence" So while think you are attempting to defend free speech, I can also see how your statement would be "free speech absolutist are ruining everything"
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
enriquto 5y ago
sounds great! Does this mean that fuck-the-skull-of-jesus.mit.edu will, finally, be back? It was an important--I would say, constituent--part of the internet for many years.
oversocialized 5y ago
This is the same institution that railroaded Aaron Swartz and accepted donations from Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of Bill Gates (pedophile arrested at Gates' house). Anyone looking to these self serving institutes for morality or upholding the Constitution is in for a rude awakening.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  whataboutism 101.
- vanusa 5y ago
  arrested at Gates' house Which arrest are you referring to here?

I love the explicitness of “they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.”

tandymodel100 5y ago
zo1 5y ago
However, they negate it with this caveat: > "The Institute may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute." Which is vague enough that an enterprising and determined individual or group could use to stifle discussion about things like gender, race, etc (all the hot/touchy topics atm). As an aside, the "violates the law", is a trojan horse that (I understand covers them legally) but also enables laws that violate free speech. Here is a list that speaks to just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#South_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#So... They use the word "hate" speech, but it might be very far from what we'd see as hateful.
- afarrell 5y ago
  > an enterprising and determined individual or group could use to stifle discussion… This is true. Ultimately no manifesto or written commitment can constrain a people into freedom. The best we can do is strive to say what we intend, see reality clearly, change structures that stand in the way, and then trust ourselves to act with courage.
- syshum 5y ago
  "violates the law" in this context would naturally have to comply with 1st amendment US protections which would bar any "hate speech" laws like the ones you linked to since 1st amendment to the US Constitution prohibits hate speech laws of that type
- netcan 5y ago
  No declaration, code or whatnot stands alone. We can always loophole or interpret our way around constitutions and things. Look at religion. Even an absolute, no exception statement doesn't guarantee anything absolutely. It needs more. Culture, history, a base of support, etc. That said, declarations can be meaningful within a greater overall context.
- roenxi 5y ago
  At some point there has to be trust in people to be reasonable in their interpretation. If that trust isn't possible, the only available strategy is to try and purge the entire administrative apparatus and replace it rather than attempting to play word games. Word games are there to be lost. This statement is pretty clear that the intent is to allow speech that some people find offensive.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    Problem is that there can be no trust since this statement is coming from a group that disinvited a lecturer on climate science because he opposed DEI initiatives https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/06/mit-controversy-over-canceled-lecture https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/06/mit-controver.... Actions speak louder than words. Purging and rebuilding the entire administrative apparatus of the US university system is actually a great idea, and for more reasons than just freedom of expression.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
      I see here a climate scientist advocating for public education policy without seeming educated himself on the subject (advocating for trial runs of charter schools and voucher programs as if they haven’t already been tested and studies borne out). I don’t really see the canceling here, it sounds like his talk are moved from one audience to another audience still at MIT, his public advocacy in a field he doesn’t study was published in a national paper, and somehow he’s “cancelled”?
      - modo_mario 5y ago
        >The sponsoring department chair at MIT “called to tell me that they would be cancelling the Carlson lecture this year in order to avoid controversy.” I think this is what's being referred to. Surely he wasn't made to retract his statements or fired but it does seem weird. After all said statements have little to do with his lecture. Also whilst i also disagree with the bits you mentioned i don't think they're what started this controversy or made up most of his standpoint to begin with.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I think it is mostly a reasonable constraint. But I think it needs to be said that it is prudent to err on the side of freedom. Not prosecution of twitter comments and youtube videos. Everyone that was part of that should be deeply ashamed. In my (backward) country a disturbance of the public order is illegal. Some old vices are hard to get rid off.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    Mostly. But "otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute" could be construed to be anything.
- rory 5y ago
  Those all sound like pretty reasonable caveats that clearly don't, in their spirit, stifle discussion. Could they be twisted by someone who doesn't actually believe in the spirit of this declaration? Sure, but it's not like the declaration itself is a legal document, so it doesn't make sense to overly lawyer the precise language. The "violates the law" thing is a different story, but the South African law you linked to has no parallel in the United States, so I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt until such law exists.
  - Fricken 5y ago
    They all sound to me like reasonable caveats except the last one; which is vague and subjective enough to cover just about anything they don't like.
    - rory 5y ago
      Hm yeah, that last catchall slipped by my read. Whatever that's meant to refer to, it should have been enumerated specifically. It sounds like a catchall added to appease the "moderate" supporters of freedom of expression.
- tagoregrtst 5y ago
  In the US, thanks to the first Amendment and its interpretation by SCOTUS, what is legal is very broad. Thats why elites have outsourced the censorship to private entities. Ironically most universities, since they are public, violate the law when they deplatform someone they don't like and have lost numerous court cases. Of course they keep doing it because litigation is an insignificant cost for rich non-profits, theres no personal risk for the administration and it makes them feel virtuous.
- fny 5y ago
  These are well established legal boundaries to free speech.

onos 5y ago

Meanwhile, the University of California seems to have implemented a DEI litmus test on all applications for faculty positions and promotion. Does anyone know if this is actually true? Is this reasonable? https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wokeademia.html?m=1 https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wokeademia.html?m...

sdoering 5y ago
Just as a side note. The link to this post was flagged after being submitted to HN yesterday within a very short time frame. You might want to consider your karma points and preemptively remove it and pay your dues to the community by apologizing for not adhering to group speak. I very much stand on the left side of the political spectrum, while the linked blogpost clearly comes from the liberal to right spectrum. But I still think that the old Rosa Luxemburg quote should apply: > Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter (Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden) I valued the posting yesterday as it provided differing views that made me think, evaluate and understand my own position better afterwards. Edit: Please excuse my sarcasm in the first paragraphs, but I was troubled yesterday that the link was flagged to death and that not a civil discussion was able to arise. I was only used to this way of dealing with dissenting opinions on other forums until then.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > You might want to consider your karma points Karma points are worth less than skee-ball tickets.
  - sdoering 5y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree. That's the reason I used the term in the sarcastic part.
- skrebbel 5y ago
  I think you're mistaking groupthink for people who are simply tired of seeing the same old culture war debate on HN repeated over and over again. Plenty HN discussions about exactly this subject in the past have shown that: 1. Unlike some subjects, HN commenters have widely differing opinions here. The free speech hardliners and the anti disinformation/bigotry/*ism hardliners are both well represented, and many on both sides are capable of intelligent debate. 2. Nevertheless, the discussion never really gets anywhere. Nobody adds new information and nobody convinces anybody. I might be projecting, but i can imagine that many people flagged it with a "here we go again" sigh and not with the "must suppress anti woke sentiments!!" thought you. I bet comparably inflammatory articles from the woke side of the debate are flagged equally much.

Invictus0 5y ago

This is likely in response to the recent Dorian Abbot cancellation: https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/620352/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/620352/ (Sorry about the AMP link, I couldn't figure out how to get a normal link.)

justinclift 5y ago
If you remove the "amp" fragments in that url (https://theatlantic.com/article/620352/ https://theatlantic.com/article/620352/), it seems to work and redirects to this: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest-campus-cancellation-different/620352/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
JohnWhigham 5y ago
That's funny. So what does this change actually mean? Next time this won't happen?
teddyh 5y ago
> Sorry about the AMP link, I couldn't figure out how to get a normal link I suggest the Redirect AMP to HTML browser extension: https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-extensions/amp2html.html https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-extensions/amp2html.html
Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
Could be. I can attest that as of the late 1970s MIT and some of these professors did not care about free speech. My source on the state of the campus has since retired and is not looking back at all, but told me in the middle of the last decade the most rightward a student could be was libertarian, and I have to wonder if that's still allowed. More likely these professors, having done their part to turn MIT into "an oasis of totalitarianism in a desert of freedom" are now worried the monster they helped create is going to cancel them. Which is how holiness spirals have worked throughout history.

evancoop 5y ago

Most responses to this will be positive, and they should be. Typically, the real evaluation is the market (will more students and professors be drawn to MIT?). However, there is already a tremendous demand for admission (from students) and competitive hiring processes (for professors). So...how many other comparable institutions will follow suit? Will universities in California adopt, oppose, or ignore?

netcan 5y ago
>> Typically, the real evaluation is the market. Typically in what sense? I don't think there's much history of success from consumer/student "action." Market discipline exists where and when it exists. It's not always, or even often, a major factor.
cowl 5y ago
>> Typically, the real evaluation is the market Last years experience tell us that the perception on Media is the driving factor not the market. No-one is waiting for market effects to be visible. They are just reacting to anything that makes enough noise.
thematrixturtle 5y ago
Universities in California are going in precisely the other direction by mandating ideological purity tests aka "diversity statements" for staff. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-professor-demonized-for-criticizing-required-diversity-statements-for-academic-jobs/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-prof...
- yucky 5y ago
  >mandating ideological purity tests Are we saying that its bad? I mean, I think it's bad, but it is in fact "progressive" so I dunno what the consensus is.
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    Who's to say what ideology is the "pure" ideology? If everyone is striving for one way of thinking, where is the diversity of viewpoints?

mrd3v0 5y ago

Taking this with a grain of salt after what they have done to rms.

VictorPath 5y ago
Or Aaron Swartz...
coffeeisyummy 5y ago
RMS brought it on himself. Although, yes, MIT turned a blind eye to his behavior until his comments about Epstein.
- thematrixturtle 5y ago
  If you read what RMS actually wrote, it's kind of hard to disagree with the line of argument: "It is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17". Of course, it was incredibly tone deaf to write this out in a thread about Epstein no less, and promptly got twisted into "RMS advocates raping little children".
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    What he was really guilty of was sharing his opinions on a dangerous subject when he really had nothing interesting or original to add. He might as well complain about the speed limit on a particular road being 65 instead of 75. We set standards and conventions to keep order. And while I completely approve of RMS, that argument works just as well for 10 year olds and has often been made. Listen to screaming Gajdusek about his right (or even duty) to have sex with consenting children at the end of The Genius and the Boys.[0] Maybe when RMS said it, he set an age in his mind of some precocious post-pubescent teenager. Whatever his mental imagery was, it was just as arbitrary as the law. We set a standard to give kids a bit of runway before they are a legitimate object of the desires and efforts of adult men (and women.) 18 is fine, it gives them a little time. 17 would probably be fine, too. I don't see any reason why it couldn't be 19. But it is what it is. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxppDxzSww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxppDxzSww

finite_jest 5y ago

Based. Abelson and Sussman, of SICP fame, are among the signatories. So is Ronald Rivest, the R in RSA (and CLRS). Chomsky too.

deleted 5y ago

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verisimi 5y ago

shadowgovt 5y ago
Such invitations are often extended by organizations in the university, not the university itself. Those organizations can definitely be politically far afield from the university median. The test of a declaration like this will be how the school responds when another organization on campus reacts to such an invitation by protesting it.
- verisimi 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    > It used to be a common expression in left wing circles to say - 'I may not agree with your views, but I will fight for your right to say them'. Sadly those are long gone. The way I do the math, I wouldn't say they were long gone... I trace the death to approximately 2017. It was a philosophy predicated on a certain amount of tit for tat, and I think that philosophy took a big hit when during a pretty bog-standard protest / counter-protest someone stabbed the left wing protesters in the back (or, more accurately, drove a car into them from behind). Other people may identify first shot fired in different places... The man in Seattle who got shot and the aggressor claimed self-defense, for example... But enough incidents happened in a short enough amount of time that "defend to your death the right to say it" got supplanted by "No quarter for fascists" and not enough people stood up to shout that opinion down because, well, people were getting killed. I don't know how one puts the genie back in the bottle. It may not be tractable without people getting tired of violence. And historically, that can take a long time.
    - legostormtroopr 5y ago
      > I think that philosophy took a big hit when during a pretty bog-standard protest / counter-protest someone stabbed the left wing protesters in the back (or, more accurately, drove a car into them from behind). Lets not pretend that "the left" only started using violence to silence dissenting voices until after Charlottesville. Earlier that year, there were riots over Milo Yiannopoulos being invited to speak at Stanford. And then a few months prior, there were mass riots at the Trump Innaguration (before he'd even done anything). Its disingenuous to pretend this isn't a "both sides" problem based on issues of hyper-partisanship of the US over the past 10 (or more) years. I think one way for us to put this genie back in the bottle is firstly, for people to stop trying to place partisan blame, and instead say this is an "extremist" problem, and actually work in good faith to try and reconsile. Anything less is doomed to failure. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Berkeley_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Berkeley_protests [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/21/trump-inauguration-protests-acquittals https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/21/trump-inaugura... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMN

tokai 5y ago

Is this really needed? I'm not trying to be obstinate. But in the north european country where I reside, while we have hate speech laws etc., my speech is protected by the law - both from the state and my employer (a university). This commitment seems very bombastic for what feels like a work environment policy to me. Am I misunderstanding something cultural here? EDIT: thx for the comments, it makes it more sense to me now.

ghaff 5y ago
In the US, your speech is largely protected by law from the state. But while there's a strong tradition of free speech in a university environment--arguably eroded in recent years, hence this letter--that is certainly not the case in most companies, especially if it's public speech.
shadowgovt 5y ago
There's some concern in some circles in the United States that universities have gotten into the habit of stifling speech on controversial topics. The reality is a bit more complicated, but MIT is choosing to go out of its way to confirm that such stifling is not part of its principles. The proof will be in the pudding... At the end of the day, a declaration of this sort only has value in so much as it shapes what the school practically chooses to do when one group on campus hosts a speaker and another group sets up a picket line to shut them down.
colpabar 5y ago
> my speech is protected by the law - both from the state and my employer (a university). Can you elaborate what it means that your speech is protected by your employer? Because that seems like something that doesn't happen here in the US - you can lose work over disagreeing with political ideologies, especially at universities.
- tokai 5y ago
  If I made public speech and I was terminated over that (or even if it could be proven that it possibly had an influence) that termination would be unlawful.

irq-1 5y ago

Promotion and making venues available are unaddressed issues here. The power of the institution is not just that of 'hard' censorship but of the 'soft' censorship we experience so often in the online tech world. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.

timthebeaver 5y ago

Some speech issues that come to mind which, I sometimes wonder, how they would have gone down today: * The 6.001 porn * The ghetto party * The Reg Day porn (particularly Deep Throat, but many) * The Visualizing Cultures display (with CSSA opposition) * Some 10% of the day to day traffic on senior-house@, bexley-minus-fascists@, and ec-discuss@ Norms around speech have evolved a lot even as the fundamentals of ethics and laws on the electronic frontier have stayed the same. I often think that folks in the 80s and 90s enjoyed, for better or worse, considerable latitude in their speech which wouldn't fly today.

jeremyis 5y ago
Uhm what was the 001 porn?
- coffeeisyummy 5y ago
  http://tech.mit.edu/V118/N8/aporn.8n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V118/N8/aporn.8n.html Prof. Abelson wanted to hammer home the point porn was a problem on the internet back in 1998 and thought putting up a porn site for the first slide of a lecture would make his point. It was pretty shocking when it happened.
  - vanusa 5y ago
    Was his flashing the room like that a free speech issue - or a thoughtless dickhead issue? Independent of his legal "right" to conduct a class in that manner - it's basically kind of asinine to assume your students need to have their buttons expressly pushed in order to appreciate the basically obvious point he felt he needed to make. Or that if people object his resorting to such a stunt - that means they're "offended" by it.
ghaff 5y ago
>The Reg Day porn (particularly Deep Throat, but many) Today? Clearly not. But you don't need to fast forward that far. They were discontinued in I think 1980 or 1981 when things went from "we don't think you should do this" to "this is no longer a polite request."

woolion 5y ago

We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. This statement is so weak that it is necessary to consider this climate to even understand how this can be published as a statement. After explicitly saying that illegal speech is not free speech, it lists 6 exceptions for things that are not free speech either, including speech "that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute". Which is even written twice, while being clearly a catch-all. And it mentions "In addition, MIT may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the Institute." Why not have "free speech safe spaces", which would be small individual-sized sound-proof rooms where you are allowed to say what you think? If you also pad the walls, you could find many uses for these rooms. With principles so weakly held, why have principles at all?

qsort 5y ago
There's always the tennis court.
ur-whale 5y ago
> We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. I disagree. There is a very vocal, very small minority that's ruining it for everyone else. Certainly not mainstream.
- syshum 5y ago
  I have to ask, which side are you taking, because I honestly do not know, and I dont think it is "small minority" on either side. There are ALOT of people that oppose free speech as a concept, hiding behind statements like "hate speech is not free speech" or "words are violence" So while think you are attempting to defend free speech, I can also see how your statement would be "free speech absolutist are ruining everything"
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

enriquto 5y ago

sounds great! Does this mean that fuck-the-skull-of-jesus.mit.edu will, finally, be back? It was an important--I would say, constituent--part of the internet for many years.

oversocialized 5y ago

This is the same institution that railroaded Aaron Swartz and accepted donations from Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of Bill Gates (pedophile arrested at Gates' house). Anyone looking to these self serving institutes for morality or upholding the Constitution is in for a rude awakening.

pelasaco 5y ago
whataboutism 101.
vanusa 5y ago
arrested at Gates' house Which arrest are you referring to here?