11 ms·
Free speech is last century. Today’s students want the ‘right to be comfortable’
- rayiner 12y agoAn interesting message that was expressed better by Allan Bloom, 30 years ago and with less rape/misogyny-apologism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Min....
- turbostyler 12y agoWhat part of that article did you construe as rape/misogyny-apologism?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- lwhalen 12y agoThe part that tickled his (her?) trigger warning, of course.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 12y agoThe whole piece is dreck, a defense of bare-faced bullying of women and gays clothed in the pretense of the first amendment. The social value of speech has always been a factor in the first amendment analysis, and e.g. flyers insulting ugly women and gays don't have any. The worst thing about the article isn't the defense of misogyny and homophobia. It's that it makes it that much more difficult to argue socially-conservative viewpoints that really matter without getting lumped in with guys like these and their vacuous assertions.
- bzbarsky 12y agoJust to be pedantic, the author of the article is British, all the students involved are British, and hence the First Amendment (to the US Constitution, as I assume you meant) is irrelevant. Of course the UK has its own concept of freedom of speech, albeit quite different from the US one.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- yzzxy 12y agoI think this is an important discussion to be had. The question of whether ideas like "trigger warnings" should be implemented in academia have good arguments on both sides. On a few of these issues I'm not sure where I stand yet and I'm very interested in hearing intelligent discourse from both sides over the next few years. However, I don't think this is a particularly good article on the topic. It's riddled with character assassinations and complaints that fall low on the oft-cited-by-HN Graham hierarchy of argument[0]. Ironically this comment falls nearly as low because of what it is making reference to, but that's an existential issue for another day. The author's writing paints "Stepford students" in a herdlike way, and many paragraphs open with imagery taking shots at their character. I generally love a bit of prose in an op-ed or news article, though I seem to disagree with a lot of HN readers there. But I think casual, drive-by insults are a bad idea when you're trying to point out something like group hypocrisy or make legitimate criticisms of a social movement. [0] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Graham%27...
- chrismcb 12y agoWhat are the good arguments FOR "trigger warnings?"
- gpcz 12y agoMy understanding based on reading the Geek Feminism Wiki [1] is that the author misrepresented trigger warnings as a signal that something might be offensive when rather they are actually meant to give people a warning that content may re-open deep psychological wounds (such as a PTSD flashback from abuse, urges to self-harm, etc). [1] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago"Trigger warning" and "safe space" are two terms that have sensible, specific definitions, but in practice are very frequently used in an informal, overly expansive way that renders them ridiculous.
- astazangasta 12y agoWhy is this sneering garbage on HN? Look, none of this is new. Universities have always been contentious places, students have always been belligerent and uninterested in hearing the views of their opponents. This is what it is to be young: to believe fully, with or without justification. A generation ago in the US, SDS would have barricaded themselves into the room with both these master debaters and held them hostage with a list of demands for the administration. The verbs have changed, but "We demand" has not. This is a screed from a man who is upset that he is not being handed a platform to speak. Yes, guy. People don't like you. That doesn't make this a free speech issue. No one invited me to speak at Oxford either. Just go home without your rattle.
- mcphage 12y ago> students have always been belligerent and uninterested in hearing the views of their opponents Agreed. But I don't know to what degree the school should accept the students' demands. > This is a screed from a man who is upset that he is not being handed a platform to speak. [...] No one invited me to speak at Oxford either. That's not what the author describes, though: they were invited to speak at Oxford, and students who didn't want that event to take place complained until it was cancelled. > That doesn't make this a free speech issue. It's not, I agree. But it's something, and not a good something.
- morgante 12y agoI don't think it's fair to say that nothing has changed. In previous generations, students absolutely would have protested. But administrations wouldn't have been so quick to give in to social outrage and to ban speakers. One of the unfortunate effects of social media is that allowing controversy of any sort has become much more dangerous. What might once have garnered a few feminist protestors outside a church (or evangelicals protesting outside a school) now elicits thousands of angry reactionaries on Twitter and Tumblr.
- jschwartzi 12y agoThe Robin Thicke song mentioned in the article is so tame, it's pretty ridiculous that it's been banned anywhere.
- PauloManrique 12y agoNice article. It looks like, in the UK they're only on universities. On Brazil they're in charge of the nation.
- omegaham 12y agoI don't like the tone of his writing, but he's got some excellent points. I think that one of the greatest strengths of the university system is the idea that "offensive" ideas can be debated. An enormous amount of knowledge has been gotten from heresy, and I would argue that universities have been so central in the spread of knowledge precisely because they encourage (or at least tolerate) people who go against the grain. This has disappeared, and I think that it leads to bad ideas winning. One of the reasons why the US has such a strong protection toward speech, especially political and ideological speech, is that the Founding Fathers and their successors recognized the unpalatability of conflicting ideas and gave them the strongest possible protection. They recognized that such protection would give assholes the ability to say horrible, offensive things, and they believed that such a side effect was far better than the alternative - stifling free expression and allowing bad ideas to win because their proponents were better represented, better connected, or just flat-out more willing to suppress the other side's viewpoints. The fact that these students are completely ignorant of this history is amusing because our modern academic tradition was based entirely off of this belief in a "marketplace of ideas." Ben Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." I'd love to see what those exact same students would say if the prevailing attitude changed and a massive wave of right-wing ideology took over campus politics. I'm sure that they'd be crying about how their self-evident right to self-expression was being horribly violated. Poor things.
- thenmar 12y agoI'd love to see what those exact same students would say if the prevailing attitude changed and a massive wave of right-wing ideology took over campus politics. I'm sure that they'd be crying about how their self-evident right to self-expression was being horribly violated. Poor things. This kind of attack is completely unnecessary. How is anyone supposed to respond to this comment when you've already constructed a straw man for your opponent and trivialized it?
- MrDom 12y agoIt's not an attack, it's what's happening to the public discourse right now. There are areas of the internet that are right wing. Left wing people go to those areas to debate ideas, but when they see the comments sections aren't on their side, they claim harassment. This harassment may or may not come with requests for the moderators to make the comments a "safe space".
- chroma 12y agoI've made this point before, but I feel compelled to repeat it in response to this post. The late Christopher Hitchens, in one of his greatest orations[1], made some excellent points about free speech: ...it’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard. It is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear. And every time you silence someone you make yourself a prisoner of your own action, because you deny yourself the right to hear something. In other words: Your own right to hear and be exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view. In other words, freedom of speech is really about freedom of hearing. Later, he asks who should be trusted with the job of censoring: Who's going to decide? To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful or who is the harmful speaker, or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor? Did you hear any speaker in opposition to this motion (eloquent as... one of them was) to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you, what you could read? To whom you'd give the job of deciding for you, relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear? Do you know anyone- hands up- to whom you would give this job? Does anyone have a nominee? You mean there's no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read? Or hear? I had no idea... but there’s a law that says there must be such a person. Or there's a subsection of some piddling law that says it. Well to hell with that law then. It's inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently already know already. And finally, he notes that religious texts contain passages that would need to be censored, yet religious conservatives often call for censorship. Look anywhere you like for the warrant for slavery, for the subjugation of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for antisemitism, for all this you look no further than a famous book that's on every pulpit in this city and in every synagogue and in every mosque. And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force that is the main source of hatred is also the main caller for censorship. And when you've realized this you'll therefore this evening be faced with a gigantic false antithesis. I hope that still won't stop you from giving the motion before you the resounding endorsement that it deserves. Thanks awfully. Night-night. Stay cool! (If you haven't watched the whole speech, I recommend doing so. I've only transcribed a few choice passages, but the whole thing is great.) And of course, there's the absurdity factor. Nobody thinks that censoring actually stops people from endorsing verboten opinions or talking about banned topics. Everything just gets driven underground. This gives the holders of censored beliefs an excuse to behave more extremely than they otherwise would. After all, they're being persecuted. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY#t=1240 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY#t=1240
- im3w1l 12y agoMy problem with "the right to be comfortable" is that it gives creates lopsided debates. One side can be argued everywhere, whereas the other, the offensive one, can only be argued very carefully in the right places. The solution, as I see it, is to disallow the inoffensive side too. For instance if there were a forum, that didn't allow attacks on whole classes of people, then it is best if they don't allow defenses either.
- handle_bars 12y agoGood job for the students painting their peers as weak, and unable to have a well thought position for themselves. Thought paternalism at its finest.
- woqias 12y agoGood job for the students painting their peers as weak, and unable to have a well thought position for themselves. Thought paternalism at its finest.
- comrh 12y agoAuthor arguing for free speech complains about people exercising their speech to disagree with him speaking?
- PauloManrique 12y agoHe's arguing about people not allowing him to speak. Did we read the same article?
- boomlinde 12y agoAs far as I understood the article, a student organization made a big fuzz about the abortion debate, prompting the organizers to cancel it. The way I see it, no rights were denied in doing so, and both the students and the author are and were exercising their right to free speech. Although I don't fully agree with the post you responded to, no one was not allowing someone to speak.
- PauloManrique 12y agoHe also mention examples on how conservatives are being shut in universities all the time.
- comrh 12y agoI certainly didn't read the government was not allowing him to speak. There isn't a right to a platform.
- kuni-toko-tachi 12y agoThe culture of comfortableness is exactly what Vaclav Havel described in "The Power of the Powerless" Comfortableness is a misnomer. What it is conformity. Havel.correctly identifies this as "post-totalitarian". It is the same sick mindset of communism and the Salem witch trials and Inquisition. It is political control and it is used by malicious actors to manipulate and destroy. Millions have suffered and been killed and imprisoned under such regimes, and Havel describes the casual brutality of it. The endpoint of this is obvious. And learning about it is important. http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html