>There is absolutely nothing that Milo has said (and more importantly, done) that ought to revoke his First Amendment right to give a speech on a college campus.
Woah, slow down there. Neither Milo or anybody else has a first amendment right to give a speech on a college campus. The right to free speech does not equal a right to a podium, the university or their students telling Milo to go away is not a first amendment issue. Cancelling his speech does not give him any sort of moral high ground. (lighting things on fire, on the other hand...)
The only potential free speech argument here is if somebody were to tell Berkeley that they had to allow certain speakers, then the university's free speech would be impinged. The right to tell somebody else to shut the hell up is an important part of free speech. The only entity that doesn't have that right under the first amendment is the government.
Public universities do not have the right to restrict student activities based on politics. If a student organization is able to host one kind of political speaker, they should be able to host any kind of political speaker. Private universities can do whatever they want for all I care, but it's certainly against the spirit of free thought and scholasticism to intentionally discriminate based on politics.
There's also a distinction between the legal notion of free speech and the moral notion of free speech. The moral notion of free speech is that A) you shouldn't use violence to suppress people's ideas and B) if your ideas are so hot, you should be able to defend them instead of trying to deplatform competing ideas.
> The only potential free speech argument here is if somebody were to tell Berkeley that they had to allow certain speakers, then the university's free speech would be impinged.
Government agencies and organizations which choose to receive tax funding give up certain rights, among those the ability to discriminate in any capacity based on politics, religion, etc. If a Berkeley student group wanted to host a Satanist Nazi who endorsed eating babies, Berkeley would have no grounds to prevent them from doing so.
> Neither Milo or anybody else has a first amendment right to give a speech on a college campus. The right to free speech does not equal a right to a podium, the university or their students telling Milo to go away is not a first amendment issue. Cancelling his speech does not give him any sort of moral high ground. (lighting things on fire, on the other hand...)
If one group invites a speaker to a public place, another group does not have the right to shut down the speech.
This is exactly the sort of misconception Milo is looking to expose in order to acquire defense on his behalf.
It is the only thing that gives him moral high ground. The rest of his arguments are hateful. His right to speak is protected.
Students' right to protest are also protected. Violence is not protected.
> The right to tell somebody else to shut the hell up is an important part of free speech
False. You can ask them to shut up. You cannot force them.
Trump and his confederates would like to undo free speech and turn America into a de facto Christian state in order to fight against other religions. Today, it's Muslims. The proliferation of your argument will only help them dismantle free speech.
> The right to tell somebody else to shut the hell up is an important part of free speech.
Woah, you better be careful with that double edged sword, because you might cut yourself.
So according to you: any angry mob that is large enough is allowed to shut down any speech they disagree with?
I find it amusing that so called liberals are so keen to silence people they disagree with them, yet they accuse the other side of being fascist, ohhh the irony.
Somehow one faction has an inalienable right to compel speech from its ideological opponents out of pure spite, because sacred principles of antidiscrimination or whatever, but when it comes to giving a speech by express invitation, having raised the necessary funds for security etc, we are maximally minimalist about what a government institution has to allow.
And I might expand this to consider any university accepting federal funds to be public for this particular purpose because the government shouldn't be funding universities that, for example, only allow one religion on campus.
Freedom of speech and freedom of association are key rights in a democracy, and they apply everywhere. I get to talk, but you get to walk away. I get to say what I want, but you are not compelled to help circulate my views. I have the right to say what I think; you have right to say that makes me an asshole.
In this age, nobody in the US is "effectively" censored. At basically no cost, anybody can set up a web server and share their views across the globe. Today, everybody's a publisher, but nobody has to listen.
Nobody caring what I have to say isn't censorship for me; it's freedom for everybody else.
Except the argument here is person X doesn't get to talk.
The argument is Berkeley can stop people talking they politically don't like (Or any other reason) because as a business they have every right to discriminate on political views.
And sure that's legally true perhaps, we all understand that, but it's not right and against the idea of the first amendment.
To argue it's ok for universities to censor speakers is a very scary point of view, and this is what you are doing by bringing in the straw person 'it's legally allowed'
UC Berkeley is not a business. It's a public university. The "UC" being short for "University of California".
I was addressing your notion about businesses, "this legal loophole, businesses can do what they want". And I presumed you were actually talking about businesses, because a) you mentioned Twitter, a business, and b) UC Berkeley is not a business.
> sure that's legally true perhaps [...] it's not right and against the idea of the first amendment
No. No, no, no. The idea of the First Amendment is not that you are owed a platform. It's just that the government cannot stop you from saying what you want in public or with your own platform. It starts out with "Congress shall make no law" for a reason.
That is not the idea of the First Amendment. It is your idea of the First Amendment. It's a common one, but that doesn't make it the right one, or the only one.
> The problem with this argument is that it was not Berkeley itself that invited Yiannopoulos. It was the Berkeley College Republicans, who are legally a separate entity. And as Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks explained, “long-standing campus policy permits registered student organizations to invite speakers to campus and to make free use of meeting space in the Student Union for that purpose.” So the issue is not whether Berkeley should have given Yiannopoulos a platform. It is whether Berkeley should have denied some of its students the ability to give him a platform. And “consistent with the dictates of the First Amendment as uniformly and decisively interpreted by the courts,” Dirks argued, “the university cannot censor or prohibit events, or charge differential fees.”
> somebody were to tell Berkeley that they had to allow certain speakers,
Somebody has told Berkeley just that, the people speaking through the courts.
Here is more of the same from various Law Professors and Chancellors of UC
> Campus officials at Berkeley recognized that Yiannopoulos had a First Amendment right to speak. Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks rightly resisted demands, including from Berkeley faculty, to ban Yiannopoulos’ appearance.Even the expression of hate is constitutionally protected; court cases have addressed this very issue on college campuses in the past. Although hate speech unquestionably causes harms, it nonetheless is expression that is covered by the First Amendment. We therefore strongly disagree with those who say that campus officials at Berkeley could keep Yiannopoulos from speaking because of his hateful and offensive message.
> Second, campuses must do all they can to ensure that audience reactions against a speaker are not allowed to silence the speaker. Free speech can be undermined, not only by official censorship and punishment, but also by individuals who seek to disrupt or shut down others when they attempt to exercise their rights. If officials do not work to prevent or punish disruption then there will be a “heckler’s veto” of all unpopular or controversial speakers, and this is not consistent with free speech principles. Campus officials have a duty to protect the free speech rights of protesters, but they must also protect speakers and prevent heckling. Apparently, this, too, occurred at Berkeley. Staff members spent weeks planning extensive security arrangements, including bringing in dozens of police officers from nine other UC campuses.
> Third, there may be situations where controlling the audience proves impossible and there is no choice but to prevent a speaker’s presence to ensure public safety. This should be a last resort taken only if there is no other way to prevent a serious imminent threat to public safety. This appears to be exactly what occurred at Berkeley, where the riotous demonstrators could not be controlled. In such cases, authorities should do all they can, after the fact, to identify and punish those who used violence and violated the law, and should assess how different security arrangements might be more effective in preventing future disruptions. Campus officials should also do what they can to reschedule the speaker for another time.
> By Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the School of Law, University of California, Irvine and Howard Gillman, Chancellor, University of California, Irvine
I encourage you to level up on your knowledge of and defense of free speech rights. Your repeating your mistruths may be part of the problem.
Woah, slow down there. Neither Milo or anybody else has a first amendment right to give a speech on a college campus. The right to free speech does not equal a right to a podium, the university or their students telling Milo to go away is not a first amendment issue. Cancelling his speech does not give him any sort of moral high ground. (lighting things on fire, on the other hand...)
The only potential free speech argument here is if somebody were to tell Berkeley that they had to allow certain speakers, then the university's free speech would be impinged. The right to tell somebody else to shut the hell up is an important part of free speech. The only entity that doesn't have that right under the first amendment is the government.