Unbelievable.
So when I heard about this story I assumed that the headline was a clickbait exaggeration, and that the questioner/petitioner in question was using coded language or not being clear with what he was asking and that the students were falling for deception. Out of curiosity, I watched the video. I was already admittedly biased against the source, too (Fox News).
But no. Unless there’s some really really good editing going on, these students are actually agreeing to sign a petition to repeal the First Amendment. The man in the film - a documentary maker named Ami Horowitz - straight-up, in no uncertain terms, asks the students to sign a petition to “repeal the First Amendment.” He says the most preposterous things - “I don’t think we should have to listen to things that we don’t agree with,” “I just think we should just get rid of it!”, “I think the Constitution should be one big safe space,” anything that hurts feelings “should not be protected speech”…and the students in the video were just nodding along, saying inane things like “this is excellent,” “I totally agree,” and “I really appreciate what you are trying to do here.” Then they signed a petition that was designed to take away their right to freedom of speech.
I’m pretty liberal but my jaw was on the floor.
Caveat emptor of course: the article I read stated that “within an hour” Horowitz was able to collect “over 50 signatures.” However, Yale is a big university, with nearly 5,500 undergraduates and an additional 6,800 graduate students. 50 people (or 53) is a very small percentage (only 1% of the entire undergraduate population). Moreover, this is edited to be a digital short, so we have no idea how many people - if any - Horowitz asked who looked at him like he was a space alien, who berated him, who ignored him, or who tried to get him to leave.
Still, the fact that he was even able to find 50 young adults at…well, any university, let alone Yale…to agree to sign his “petition” fills me with dismay. And it’s been several hours and I have yet to see any articles claiming that the video was doctored or edited or misrepresented the students.
And he didn’t try to deceive them or obfuscate either. In many of the encounters he came right out and said the goal was to repeal the First Amendment. Having followed the civics and history curriculum of my 3 children, I can’t say I am that surprised this generation is ignorant. And to get that many signatures in an hour, assuming it took about a minute to talk to each person and wait for him to sign, means very few people said no.
One of the first comments I read when this popped up was “did anyone notice that the people he actually spoke to about the First Amendment were not shown signing the document? And the ones who did sign there was either no audio or the things he was saying did not directly reference the First Amendment.”
I think there was a lot of really good editing going on here.
The Ivy League doesn’t necessarily get the best students, but they do seem to strive to get the “activists.”
Well, Ivy admissions committees, enjoy your “diversity” and “activism.”
You reap what you sow.
I wondered about the editing and also whether the film just doesn’t show a majority who said no to the petition. Just watched again and there are some pretty fishy elements to this video.
Has anyone seen a copy of the paper these students (and non-students?) were signing. If the paper they signed mentioned repealing the first amendment, then they are responsible- no matter what the petitioner said or what editing was done…
How ironic that the signers expressed support for a petition that wants to remove the right to petition!
I’m suspicious, for the reasons mentioned above. I also have to note that there are lots of people walking through the Yale campus who aren’t Yale students.
It might show, though, that a lot of people will sign petitions without paying much attention to them.
People will sign petitions because they need to get to class and it’s an easy way to get canvassers to stop talking to you. Had he done this on Comm Ave at BU he would have gotten triple the signatures he got at Yale.
I am going to be a bit of a contrarian. College is supposed to be a place where fringe ideas and positions are examined, and while I think it is a valid concern that virtually all of the “fringe” ideas discussed on campus come from only one side of the political spectrum, but that is a different question. The First Amendment is a uniquely American convention, and it is not irrational to debate its suitability in the modern world. Certainly, the types of arguments raised about the Second Amendment above can be applied to the First. It is unlikely that Jefferson and Madison were thinking about the Internet when the bill of rights was drafted.
Plus, to those of you surprised by the ideas expressed in the video, I can only say you must have not paid close attention to the demands of the protestors in this last wave of protests
Ami Horowitz, the filmmaker, is described as a satirist and is quoted as saying he was influenced by both Michael Moore and Sacha Baron Cohen.
Horowitz started a series of satirical Fox News.com videos called “Ami on the Street”. Horowitz has covered topics such as Iran and their pursuit of nuclear weapons, Ferguson, the IRS scandal, The Affordable Care Act and Taxes. He received a lot of attention and millions of views from his video where he waved an ISIS flag and then an Israeli flag on the Berkeley campus. according to Wikipedia.
I can’t understand if he presents this as real news or satire. Or if they are one and the same in this case. What do others think? I guess we see what we want to see.
I would imagine he was hoping for a certain result. Again, not sure how much he manipulated things to get it.
Sometimes, surveys like this are an interesting social observation. Perhaps people really don’t understand what they are signing, and sometimes there is value in following up to interview those that signed. I wish there were some followup to the video in that regard. As an example, I was approached to sign petition to take the cheese cut out to make the holes in swiss cheese and donate it to the local food bank. Ridiculous really. I declined, but my kids (very small at the time, and really did not understand) kept telling me what a horrible person I was. So I went back to sign and the guy asked me why I came back. “To make my kids happy” Turned out he was a researcher simply gathering reactions to something simultaneously preposterous and meaningful.
How does it compare with Late Night Shows that send a “reporter” on the street to ask the public general knowledge/current event questions and then makes a clip of “funny” answers? I haven’t seen that show in years (and it may not still exist) or Horowitz’s Fox show.
My favorite was one in which they asked people “who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” and “who lives in a pineapple under the sea.”
Is there a fictional character, I don’t know about, living in a pineapple under the sea??
eta: oh wait. got it. that was only ever background noise to me, so I would have failed that test 
Yes. There’s also a character who lives under a rock.
a whole lot of rocks
a mountain of rocks
@Hunt So, how many people knew where the President lived as opposed to SpongeBob?
They only showed a couple, but the ones they showed knew about SpongeBob.
@alh, SpongeBob’s best friend Patrick lives under a rock, right next door to the pineapple.
It’s increasingly clear to me I get no jokes at all.
and that I need to find some way to watch tv
The last cartoon my kids tried to explain to me was on adult swim and had a hamburger and french fries from outer space