
Campuses must combat growing zeal for censorship - danielam
https://www.city-journal.org/html/get-up-stand-up-15109.html
======
musgrove
Combat it? They could begin by simply not allowing it. They seem to forget who
runs these schools, and it's not the students. At least it used to not be.
That's a great way to invite disaster. It's not a protagonist/antagonist
proposition, but expectations need to be in place from the start. And
leadership at places like Middlebury and Berkeley double-checked.

~~~
tuxracer
The students are customers. It's a business. If these customers will continue
to get themselves into tens of thousands of dollars in debt to pay for
something of sometimes questionable value then let them block or have whatever
speeches they want.

Of course on principle this is a disgusting form a censorship that could come
to bite them on the ass if it continues to be culturally accepted. They seem
to forget that things like interracial marriage, or people of color even being
allowed onto these schools were once unpopular ideas.

If they continue to create a culture of violence and intimidation against
anyone who dares utter unpopular ideas in their vicinity they'll snuff out any
hope of future social revolutions from happening. But this seems to be what
they want. It's in some ways an ultra-orthodox, conservative, perversion of
left wing ideals.

~~~
drawnwren
I think you're wrong who the customers are and what the product is. The
customers are the Dept of Education (and banks) offering low interest loans in
return for guaranteed profit. This would stop if they stopped seeing returns.
Unless they aren't allowed to consider academic prestige when giving loans,
then I'm completely wrong.

Does student censorship affect that directly? Probably not, but students
running the school more than teachers certainly could.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The Department of Education is the entity receiving the majority of profit
from student loans, not banks.

~~~
drawnwren
My bad, I edited the comment to reflect that.

~~~
toomuchtodo
No harm, no foul.

------
douche
Or, you know, they could simply discipline students who have blatantly broken
their disciplinary codes. I'm still waiting on a decent explanation of why
there were no expulsions after the Dartmouth Black Lives Matter protest last
year...

------
pbiggar
From a NYTimes article [1] on the topic:

"Universities invite speakers not chiefly to present otherwise unavailable
discoveries, but to present to the public views they have presented elsewhere.
When those views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech
as a public good.

"In such cases there is no inherent value to be gained from debating them in
public. In today’s age, we also have a simple solution that should appease all
those concerned that students are insufficiently exposed to controversial
views. It is called the internet, where all kinds of offensive expression
flourish unfettered on a vast platform available to nearly all."

and also

"While Yale bemoaned the occasional “paranoid intolerance” of student
protesters, the university also criticized the “arrogant insensitivity” of
free speech advocates who failed to acknowledge that requiring of someone in
public debate to defend their human worth conflicts with the community’s
obligation to assure all of its members equal access to public speech."

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/what-liberal-
snow...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/what-liberal-snowflakes-
get-right-about-free-speech.html)

------
BadassFractal
I enjoyed Jonathan Haidt's lecture from Duke on this subject:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8)

~~~
adekok
Or Thunderf00t's deconstruction at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5MPzQnokMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5MPzQnokMU)

------
rayiner
> From the balcony, I saw a petite blonde female walk by, her face covered by
> a Palestinian head scarf and carrying an amplifier on her back for her
> bullhorn.

Interesting additional context (scroll down to the part about Urban Outfitters
and cultural appropriation):
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_keffiyeh](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_keffiyeh).

------
jrjf940
ugh, you had me until:

> “There is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that black
> lives matter than the police.”

I'm sure there's a way that this statement could be true but that's only if
every other gov't agency has literally zero dedication.

------
JJJJJJSsss
Shakespeare once wrote to suspend one's belief in someone's accusations until
you ask the accused about them.

The accuser has a lawyerly attention to detail and wrote an interesting story
that is sure to bring political outrage, but what does the other side have to
say in their defense?

~~~
rendall
>> Shakespeare once wrote to suspend one's belief in someone's accusations
until you ask the accused about them. <<

I could totally use that quote in an essay I'm writing. Do you have it?

------
wallacoloo
This post was flagged and removed from the front page. Now, I don't know all
of HN's policies - I know political posts were not allowed here around
election time, and maybe the flagging was due not to the content of the
article but rather the exceptional negativity of its comments - but doesn't
this seem, on the surface, at least _somewhat_ ironic?

~~~
notgood
A few of the HN mods are SJW or at least their sympathizers; clearly not
@paulg but a few of the younger members.

~~~
dang
Mods didn't flag that post. As for 'SJW', when people accuse us of moderating
HN ideologically their logic typically goes like this:

    
    
      1. I agree with X.
      2. An X was flagged.
      3. Mods did it.
      4. Mods are anti-X.
    

There's more than one non sequitur in that.

~~~
notgood
It is not about mods flagging it, is about not un-flagging it (guilt by
omission). But sure, there is a chance that what you said is true.

------
jamescostian
I feel like this sentence sums up the opinion presented in the article:

> When speakers need police escort on and off college campuses, an alarm bell
> should be going off that something has gone seriously awry.

Whether you agree with her political stance or not is immaterial. Let's
imagine Hitler (or if you like Hitler, imagine someone you think is/was
horrible) was giving the speech. And then imagine Hitler writing a post on
Medium talking about how terrible it was that he couldn't explain how
important genocide was.

Would you feel sorry for him? Or would you tell him that just because he has
freedom of speech doesn't mean he's guaranteed a platform to exercise it on a
college campus with many students who really hate him?

~~~
safek
I wouldn't feel sorry for _him,_ but I'd certainly want to interrogate the
psychology of the people who insisted, wailing and screaming, that he be
disinvited.

The arguments I've seen on this subject revolve around two poles. One argues
that if we give "hateful" (replace hateful with whatever fashionable
adjective) speakers a platform, it will "promote," "validate," and "normalize"
them. If Hitler gets to give a talk, it "sends the message" that he's a
reasonable guy.

The other pole argues, "sunlight is the best disinfectant." If this Hitler guy
really is as bad as you say, let him babble without interruption. The more the
talks, the more people will realize how crazy he is. And if they don't, have
someone sane and reasonable respond to his ideas. The stark contrast will be
apparent to the audience.

It seems to me that the first camp always uses such vague language. What on
earth does it means to "validate" or "normalize" someone? What does it mean to
"send a message?" Who is the recipient of this message? Who is the
hypothetical citizen today who will look on the stage, see Hitler there, and
think to himself, "Hmm, that man is standing on a stage. That's where the
important people stand. Gee, his ideas must be pretty good."? Who is
conceivably that dumb, and why should political theory be informed by such a
mentality?

As someone who sometimes attends these college talks as a member of the
audience, I find it insulting that I should be disallowed to listen to someone
on the basis that they are so odiously toxic I have to be protected from them.
Can't I just decide for myself?

~~~
ivanbakel
I don't believe the argument is that people are convinced by power, but rather
that people who agree with the speaker will be encouraged to be more vocal and
confident in expressing and acting on views that the protestors oppose.

>What on earth does it means to "validate" or "normalize" someone?

To make their views appear valid, and to make it appear more normal to hold
them, respectively. I really disagree that this is vague language.

~~~
glenra
What really _validates_ is all this protesting. If the protestors are _so
afraid_ of a mild-mannered speaker that they need to prevent the speech from
happening at all, that sends a pretty strong signal that the views being
suppressed must be really _powerful_ and probably contain a kernel of truth
worth listening to.

Or perhaps protests send the message that the views of the protestors are
really _fragile_ and can easily be disproven by the arguments of these
speakers.

The bigger the protest, the less credible the protestors seem. It's odd that
they haven't yet noticed this.

~~~
ivanbakel
>The bigger the protest, the less credible the protestors seem.

I wouldn't agree. I've certainly never looked at a large protest and thought
"wow, certainly those people look insecure", or seen someone speak unopposed
and come to the logical conclusion that everyone who disagrees with them is so
confident as to not show up.

>If the protestors are so afraid of a mild-mannered speaker that they need to
prevent the speech from happening at all, that sends a pretty strong signal
that the views being suppressed must be really powerful and probably contain a
kernel of truth worth listening to.

There's a big debate as to what "mild-mannered" means, but I think it sends
the stronger signal that there's a large group of the population who strongly
oppose the speaker and will do the same to anyone who agrees with them: this
is definitely effective, since articles like the one in the OP keep cropping
up about how these people should be allowed to speak without fear of the
protestors.

In any case, the protest is not over how convincing the views are, but whether
they should be expressible at all.

~~~
safek
What shows weakness isn't that the protestors are protesting rather than
staying home. It's that they're protesting rather than engaging in debate.

There seems to be this idea that especially outrageous views ought to be
banned outright. This seems weird to me, since the more obviously crazy an
idea is, the _easier_ it is to dismantle it. I'd rather debate Hitler than
some of these speakers who get protested, because in front of an educated
audience _I 'd win so quickly._

Protesting speakers to bar them from speaking entirely certainly is effective
as you say, but the effect of it is for onlookers to view the protestors as
infants throwing their toys out the pram. What they're doing is an energetic
way of saying, "I don't like what you're saying, so you can't speak." Their
most promising defense is that speech is a threat to their safety, but I've
yet to see the chain of reasoning that supports this.

As a side note, I don't know how old you are and make no presumptions, but
it's sometimes hard for me to explain to people over, say, 35 why this is a
problem. "Well, social justice is good! Young people should be applauded for
caring about it!" Right, but the banhammer has extended far beyond genuine
racists, fascists, and nationalists. I encourage anyone to go on YouTube and
listen to some of the speakers who've recently gotten banned. They're just not
Hitler. They have criticisms, which frankly no one should be exempt from
anyway, and they're right about some things and wrong about others. A lot of
people would like to hear the bits they're right about.

