Thank you for that link in #152, Ohiodad51. I hope the President keeps this up. We parents need to use this as a teachable moment, making sure our kids understand how fundamentally important the first amendment is in our political system. I did this over the weekend with my kids. We obviously can’t count on the schools to do this for us.
Pardon the self-promotion, but this whole “safe space” thing has me so pissed off that I wrote a song and made a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaAr5f6hO00
Kind of glad I was rejected now lol.
You know, yesterday I signed a petition to get something on the ballot up here.
The fun thing is that I vehemently disagree with the ballot initiative—but I firmly believe that it deserves the sort of public discussion that a ballot initiative gets.
The fact that people are so completely and unquestioningly equating the signing of a petition to debate a proposition with support for that proposition troubles me.
Do we know what the petition itself actually said?
Thanks so much, hitmeister. Your song is awesome!
Just curious as to how many of the folks here actually are previous or current students? Or teach at Yale?
Otherwise it seems all the speculation about the current environment at Yale is just that…
Great video!
I work at Yale. I meet a lot of Yale students. They’ve all taken American history in high school, if not college, and they’re all capable of understanding it. I absolutely do not believe that you could find 50 Yale students in an hour or a year who would seriously advocate repealing the first amendment. When I saw the video, my immediate reaction was that it was a joke and that the signers went along with it. I do think it’s plausible that you could find Yale students who went along with the joke, or humored the crazy person, or that the film maker used creative editing or some combination of the three.
I think some of us are in denial.
Over half of millennials want to ban hate speech. I’m sure you can find 50 Yale radicals who would take it a step further.
“I think some of us are in denial.” @Zekesima - wow, way to be condescending. How about considering the possibility that a satirical videographer hired by a media company with a definite political point of view may not be presenting gospel truth? I would never claim that Yalies are universally or even mostly brilliant. But I do think that they are mostly smart, and this video strains the limits of credulity. I agree that many current undergrads would be very willing to ban hate speech. But that’s VERY different from willingly signing a petition to repeal freedom of speech.
He was clever to do this during exams when the Yale Daily News isn’t publishing.
@CIEE83, speaking of being condescending, saying “it’s from Fox, they suck” is not really going to convince people who are not already way over on your side of the fence.
Can any one of you explain to me how you can ban “hate speech” without repealing the First Amendment? Because unless you can do that, you are just willfully ignoring the consequences of the positions already taken.
Furthermore, who defines hate speech? That determination could get really ridiculous.
Lots of people think “hate speech” should be one of the forms of speech (like threats, libel, etc.) that are not protected by the First Amendment. Indeed, every time we discuss free speech here, there are people who already think that hate speech isn’t protected.
Yes, but isn’t one of the premises underlying the incredulity exhibited here that Yale students are smarter than the average bear? Seems a mighty fine needle to thread between not being sophisticated enough on one hand to understand the breadth of the First Amendment, but too sophisticated on the other to willingly sacrifice its protections.
I understand I keep banging this point, but one of the things that truly troubles me in today’s political climate is an inability of people to admit the consequences of actions and positions taken by their fellow travelers, on either side of the aisle. I will say that whether because of the echo chamber that is the national media, or my own individual biases, I tend to see this behavior exhibited on the left more frequently than the right, but it happens on both sides. In my opinion, this is the greatest stumbling block to holding a serious national discourse on any one of a number of issues our society is grappling with today.
Do we know if these kids signed their actual names? Maybe they signed “Donald Trump” just to get rid of him?
My incredulity might be lessened if I knew exactly what the petition said, what was said to the students, what names they signed, etc. We’ll probably never know more about it, though, unless the Yale Daily News follows up on it after the break. I suspect there won’t be much interest in it by that time. Classes don’t resume until Jan. 19.
@Ohiodad51 It’s not saying “it’s from Fox, they suck,” it’s saying that anything from a self-described satirist should be taken with several large grains of salt, especially if that satirist is working for a company known for having a political agenda which lines up with the video.