" I do wonder though what you think such suppression accomplishes in the long run."
Maybe just a little less hatred. Maybe a little less racism. Maybe a little more belief in true science. Maybe a little less belief in alternative fact universes. Maybe a few less conspiracy theories put out without any evidence. Those are my hopes
But @collegedad13 the speakers’ views will then still be out there in print and other media going unchallenged. Wouldn’t you rather have the opportunity to push back and expose others in the audience to an alternate POV.
At the end of the day all Murray did was to take a data set and interpret it to support a conclusion. Certainly individuals with expertise in analyzing that sort of data could come up with a different interpretation no? That seems to me a more effective way of dealing with The Bell Curve.
Why give him any attention is my concern, which is another reason why I am disturbed by how the protesting was handled. Too much free publicity is being given to Murray this week.
I agree with that thought. Murray’s other speaking engagements at other universities got far, far less publicity than the Middlebury event. The protests actually draw a fair amount of national press attention.
@doschicos, what exactly is it you are accusing me of now?
@Consolation, if you didn’t want to be understood to be conflating the aftermath of a murder with the aftermath of the election of a president, “common sense” should have told you not to use the example of a murder when talking about a presidential election. That should be blindingly obvious.
I’m not accusing you of anything, @Ohiodad51. Where are you getting that from?
My last comment to you was: “@Ohiodad51 Again, I don’t think anyone here is debating that violence was okay. I think most here support the right to protest peacefully as its own form of free speech.” in response to your comment to me: “@doschicos people on the right absolutely complained about Amajhanedad speaking at Columbia. But again, protest itself is ok. It is what came after here and at Berkeley that is the problem.” I don’t see any accusations.
@doschicos, You asked if there should be any restrictions on campus speakers, and I said that it depended on the college.
I wrote: “Perhaps there are speakers a college would not want to invite. My list is going to be different from yours, and yours, and yours. But that should be up to the individual college.”
This most certainly is not the same as being “okay” with someone from NMBLA speaking.
I’m not sure if you were serious about your suggestion of NMBLA–Did you mean it literally, or to use it as an example of some group that everyone agrees is beyond the pale?
The problem is that it isn’t a good example because it is advocating not only something most people find abhorrent but something that is *illegal." Furthermore, invited speakers at colleges are public figures, not shady people doing illegal activities. I doubt colleges would invite a representative from NMBLA.
So we’re back to the original problem. How do you decide if a public speaker or thinker or artist or politician is so beyond the pale that he/she should not be invited to speak? Who decides?
You raise a point I’ve seen before, that certain invited speakers are problematic because of the “message it sends by providing a pulpit from which to speak.”
Again who decides? I’d like that to be answered in this thread.
Also, could you explain what exactly this means to you–I mean, ‘the message it sends,’ what this means? (Or someone else?) What is the message it sends?
The message it sends to me is that there are diverse opinions out there, and as a thinking person I can choose to be exposed to them or not. I may change my mind and broaden my horizons. Or I may come up with better supports for my arguments. Or I may realize I misunderstood what the other person had been arguing.
And if I truly don’t want to hear them, I can not go, or else protest peacefully, as is my right.
This isn’t religion–speakers are not ministers speaking from a ‘pulpit.’ They are speakers. They are not accorded special religious or quasi-religious status.
To me, this has nothing to do with political parties. It could be a speaker from the Left or the Right we are talking about. The issue to me has to do with fundamental American values of freedom of speech, rational discourse, and diversity and freedom of thought.
Just throwing out examples, even extreme ones, to see where people would draw lines. Thanks for responding, @generations, since you are the only one willing to do so.
The message it sends: I could see it at different levels - the values the college community embraces and represents, what message it sends to members of that community who may feel personally attacked ex: a speaker who attacks trans gender people in a community where transgender people reside. A college campus is a student’s home for 4 or more years. It’s not like it is happening on some offsite location that they can choose not to go to even if it isn’t happening right in their dorm room.
“This isn’t religion–speakers are not ministers speaking from a ‘pulpit.’ They are speakers. They are not accorded special religious or quasi-religious status.”
Given that I am not religious I give ministers or other religious leaders no more weight than any other speaker. Perhaps I should have used the word “platform” to remove any religious connotation.
How about the other examples I gave. Would you have been okay with all of them speaking on one of your kid’s college campuses?
@doschicos, thanks for your discussion!
My own kids have actually had bad experiences in college, and grad school too, not from speakers, but from pressure to conform to what they feel is dogma. (Their own point of view.) So I’m probably more passionate about this since the current climate has negatively impacted my kids.
But to answer your question specifically–Could you list the other examples? I can’t find what you said.
To provide context, I would have identified myself as conservative in the past but voted for Hillary, so take that for what it is worth.
I would be fine with any speaker you listed. I would probably attend all of them to listen if I could.
“By the way, as far as I can see, no one here is advocating racism or hatred. No one.”
I do think people have different thresholds and definitions - and internal prejudices that they may be blind to - as to what they view as racism. Some people seem to have a much higher tolerance for racism/hatred than I do. Some racism is more subversive or subtly couched and prettied up behind numbers and “statistics”.
@hebegebe But I bet you could imagine a group of people, who might be perfectly okay with Murray, raising objections to any commie speaking on campus, right? If the Dems are called commies, I’m sure heads would be rolling about any of the people I listed. I doubt there would be cries of “everyone deserves free speech!” for them. I would bet my bottom dollar that everyone posting here in support of Murray’s right to speak wouldn’t be okay with them. Just where do “we” draw the line?
@generations Hebegebe reposted them right above. As far as dogma on campuses, sure it exists, across the political spectrum IMO. I guess I expect a little less from college students and are willing to see them as developing young adults with cerebral cortexes still being developed. People go to college campuses to try new ideas, new areas of study, even new sexualities at times, you name it. College is about academic and personal growth in many ways. I veer more towards a willingness to cut people some slack for their dogma (don’t mistake that with cutting slack for violence). How many insufferable fools did we know in college that turned out to be okay later in life? How many of us felt we knew it all and had it all figured out between 18 and 23 when, in hindsight, we didn’t know jack?
There’s a gulf of difference between a local government…or any branch of the government or its employees banning a public demonstration on public streets in a given municipality and a private college/university voluntarily granting a legitimizing pulpit to speak on campus…especially when sponsored by its higher admins and/or one of its academic departments.
Or implicit endorsement as shown by the invitation being extended and supported not only by a student group, but also the Middlebury admininstration and Poli-sci department.
What if say…proponents of the long debunked pseudosciences of Lysenkoism and Physiognomy were not only supported by a student group supporting such pseudosciences as “valid science”, but also the Cornell University administration and the Biological Sciences faculty/department(s)?
Would their very legitimacy as serious academic and institutions be maintained or seriously undermined by doing so?
Of course there would be objections. And in those cases people on the left should remind people on the right about the importance of free speech.
“if there should be any restrictions on campus speakers”
There are almost always some restrictions. A university usually has a guest speaker policy such as: “The University has the right and responsibility to take actions (including the removal of the speaker) to protect the campus at large from unlawful conduct, such as speech likely to incite or produce imminent violence or property damage or speech that is, under current legal standards, libelous or obscene.”
In general, a guest speaker has a higher degree of freedom of speech (so long as safety and legal compliance is not an issue) than members of the university. The faculty and students are bounded by an additional set of codes of conduct, professional standards, and ethics.
@Cobrat - President Patton was quite clear when she addressed the crowd before Murray was introduced – she said she neither endorsed nor agreed with many of his views.
The Political Science Dept. was divided on whether they should co-sponsor his appearance. Their respective arguments were laid out in a link within a link upthread. At the end of the day it made no difference – their refusal to co-sponsor would not have prevented his appearance pursuant to the procedures Miiddlebury has in place for inviting speakers – at least that is what the link indicated.
thanks @doschicos, I removed my earlier comment as soon as I posted it, because I thought it was unnecessarily judgemental.
“You’re giving examples though of dictators and terrorists. Not sure these are good examples.”
Just trying to ascertain the outer boundaries of what is and is not acceptable to people advocating that everyone should have a right to free speech on a college campus.
@doschicos, love this discussion, and thanks for asking.
Your particular examples are perhaps not the best because they are dictators and terrorists. It might be better to ask about thinkers or politicians I personally find very offensive, or my kids do. To answer your question, though, yes, over the years, my kids in college and grad school have been exposed to many speakers they and I very much disagreed with. Some they felt to be outright deeply offensive and virulently anti-semitic and dangerous to them as Jews.
I do not think the college should have blocked them. I think it’s fine as long as they expose the students to multiple points of views
@cobrat, you ask, what if the college invited those who support Lysenkoism and Physiognomy? If they had a speaker there to do so, why not? If it’s so ludicrous I don’t know what purpose it would serve, but I might find it interesting to hear what they have to say.
Murray isn’t on that level to my mind. However, if you feel he is operating from 100% pseudo-science, why would his invitation be a problem? There are many speakers who are invited who have very poor or selective use of stats and science. As an educator, for example. I’m often driven crazy by the utter lack of science behind so many 'Reforms." I don’t think the speakers should be blocked though.
That’s a false equivalency for two reasons. First, at the time The Bell Curve was published, many academics defended it as mainstream science. Second, Murray was there to talk about Coming Apart which is much less controversial and in some ways rather prescient about how society is diverging (and I say this even though it too has flaws).
Adding to my post above 290: I veer towards considering people’s feelings and towards kindness and realizing that a student who is a minority in our current political climate may feel threatened and on edge with certain speakers on campus, in their current home. Sometimes, we must look beyond our own opinions and values and think about how others in our community feel and their needs.