#campus speech

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

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[bilgitorbasi-blog]

A chilling study shows how hostile college students are toward free speech

A chilling study shows how hostile college students are toward free speech

Here’s the problem with suggesting that upsetting speech warrants “safe spaces,” or otherwise conflating mere words with physical assault: If speech is violence, then violence becomes a justifiable response to speech. Just ask college students. A fifth of undergrads now say it’s acceptable to use physical force to silence a speaker who makes “offensive and hurtful statements.” That’s one finding…

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[profkew]

The freedom to offend the powerful is not equivalent to the freedom to bully the relatively disempowered. The enlightenment principles that undergird free speech also prescribed that the natural limits of one’s liberty lie at the precise point at which it begins to impose upon the liberty of another. During the debates over the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Senator J. Lister Hill, of Alabama, stood up and declared his opposition to the bill by arguing that the protection of black rights would necessarily infringe upon the rights of whites. This is the left-footed logic of a career Negrophobe, which should be immediately dismissed. Yet some variation of Hill’s thinking animates the contemporary political climate. Right-to-offend advocates are, willingly or not, trafficking in the same sort of argument for the right to maintain subordination. They are, however, correct in one key respect: there are no safe spaces. Nor, from the look of things, will there be any time soon.

Jelani Cobb, “Race and the Free Speech Diversion”

[wendyparker-blog]

‘After you win a culture war, free speech is a nuisance’

Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic absolutely nails the sad state of the humorless college campus, where many of today’s top comedians -- including Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld -- will not perform due to so-called “trigger warnings” from offended students. 

She says it’s not really their fault; after all, they’re “the inheritors of 30 years of identity politics” that have rendered even non-offensive, robust discussion of race, gender and sexuality off-limits for more than professional funmeisters:

“These young people have decided that some subjects—among them rape and race—are so serious that they shouldn’t be fodder for comics. They want a world that’s less cruel; they want to play a game that isn’t rigged in favor of the powerful. And it’s their student-activities money, after all—they have every right to hire the exact type of entertainment that matches their beliefs. Still, there’s always a price to pay for walling off discussion of certain thoughts and ideas. Drive those ideas underground, especially the dark ones, and they fester.”

[garbanzotoons-blog]

Trigger Warnings, Campus Speech, and the Right to Not Be Offended