Excuse me @zinhead. Commuted, not pardoned.
And one more time for the peanut gallery - if we care about free speech the nuances do not matter anyway, right?
But he’s not a college student! He’s just the most powerful person in the country so it doesn’t count. I cannot imagine the outcry if the previous president had suggested shutting down, say, Fox, over coverage of him. But another day, another “I can’t imagine”.
Just a question, but who ever said that? There is an obvious difference between permitting speech and participating/approving of such speech.
and
Not a Trump fan. Not a fan of the way he tweets. But let’s not pretend that Obama wasn’t clear in his disdain for Fox. Like many things, we see an escalation here with Trump, both in the way he is covered by the media (surely neither of you can argue that Trump has gotten anywhere near the favorable treatment from the press that Obama received), and in his attacks on the media. Don’t like either side of that, never said I did. And credit where credit is due, Obama was 100% correct in killing the efforts to revive the “fairness doctrine”, which was the favored progressive weapon in their two decade attempt to shut down Rush Limbaugh.
That was a response to quibbles about pardon vs commutation, which specific felonies were committed, etc.
Getting the facts correct is important. It is clear that you do not let facts get in the way of letting people know what you pre-conceived opinions are.
The following is from the statement from Dean Elmendorf regarding the invitation to Chelsea Manning to be a Visiting Fellow that you posted earlier in the thread:
The title was Visiting Fellow was taken away, and Manning’s speech was never “chilled.”
You can go around saying that the sky is green, but that does not make it so.
Are you seriously saying the difference between pleading guilty to treason (technically aiding the enemy under the UCMJ I think) and being convicted of making a false statement/obstruction is a quibble? If that is true, I assume you were a full throated supporter of removing Bill Clinton from office, right?
Either way, I have no idea what point you are trying to make. If Harvard ever offered Libby a fellowship (I know, don’t laugh) and a couple people made a stink/withdrew which caused Harvard to withdraw the offer, I would be ok with it. Those are the types of decisions an institution is supposed to make. It might tell you something about their priorities, but it is unquestionably the institution’s right to make those calls.
^ Too late to edit, but I just looked it up (should have done that first, lol) and Manning did not plead to aiding the enemy, and was not convicted on that charge. She was convicted on 19 of 21 charges, including six involving espionage
Does any of that alter your view that the person’s speech is protected? If not, then yes, it’s a quibble, because that is how I’m using it here.
That’s fair, and I agree.
I think it’s OK for a college to say that speakers who make their living being provocative and hateful (let’s say, Milo Y or Richard Spencer), that cost the college hundreds of thousands of dollars in security should be able to limit those engagements, because that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars colleges should be spending on education, not on preventing people from running cars into protesters or students from shouting during the speech or whatever.
That’s MY call, I understand yours would be different.
Uh, yeaaaah!
Is it really that out of line for the head of the CIA to not want to support or associate with a person who has ~20 charges of high level espionage against her? I mean, come on people…
This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with Manning being an untrustworthy sleazeball.
More survey evidence that general support of free speech seems to be weak among all adults, not just college students:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/a-sneak-peek-at-new-survey-data-on-free-speech/542028/
http://reason.com/blog/2017/10/10/republicans-are-far-from-consistent-cham
Looks like the full results have not yet been released; the writers of the above pieces had advance access. But what they did mention are results showing a strong tendency toward politically and ideologically selective support of and opposition to free speech, on both the right and left. This is similar to some of the results in the FIRE survey linked in post #0.
I never said Manning’s speech wasn’t protected. @zinhead and I keep pointing out that Manning was not disinvited nor was she prevented from speaking. She was “disinvested” I guess would be the word with the designation visiting Fellow based at least in part to the speech and actions of others. To the extent the concept of free speech is involved here at all (and I know, Harvard is a private school, state action, blah, blah, blah), it operates to protect the decision by those who chose to disassociate themselves from the decision to “honor” Manning. I don’t see how her rights were chilled or infringed at all.
Honestly I go back and forth on that a lot. I agree that professional provocateurs (Milo, Spencer, Ann Coulter, some of the crazier lefty professors I guess) should bear the cost of the anticipated consequences of their actions, and in that sense I see the point in charging those speakers more for security services, etc for the reasons you state. The wall I keep running up against there though is that this is quite clearly a one sided problem, and nobody worries about a bunch of college republicans storming the stage when fringe leftists speak, but we see lots of problems when even people like Charles Murray talk. It’s hard for me to support the use of the heckler’s veto by charging pretty much every right of center speaker a “tax” because some portion of the faculty and student body doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. It’s a tough situation.
I’ll give this one last shot. The visiting fellows program is integrated into the HKS program. It inherently involves the university making judgment calls on who to include and who not to. That’s very different than the question of whether to allow a speaker invited by some random student group or some individual faculty members to the university. I think Lewandowski would be interesting, even if you don’t agree with his politics. He was at least temporarily the chief campaign manager in an election political scientists will be studying for decades. However, if the university decided to offer someone else a visiting fellow slot instead, I would view that as a pedagogical issue. If Harvard said Lewandowski couldn’t be a guest speaker, when invited by the college republicans, I would view that as clearly a free speech issue. For what it’s worth, I’m not aware of any evidence Morell is a conservative. He was the acting Director under Obama and he endorsed Hillary. That doesn’t support OHMomof2’s narrative of Manning being silenced by conservatives.
@Ohiodad51 you are better than that…you understand that Milo and AnnC are playing to a certain lower common denominator. They add NOTHING to any conversation about conservative and liberal dialogues…it’s actually really sad to me that what should be a vivacious intellectual environment for my and your son has digressed into a sorry environment. That’s not the fault of the “right” or “left” per say but more akin to an unwillingness to see beyond our differences. I’m offended that folks like Milo and AnnC are associated with the Right. My father is quite conservative but would be very offended at being associated with these folks.
^ whether you or I like a particular speaker is completely immaterial to whether that speech should be prohibited or circumscribed. That’s the entire point.
Manning’s invitation to speak at Hahvaad was not withdrawn. She threw a hissy fit about having the fellowship withdrawn, and then she decided to cancel her speaking engagement.
Well, powerful conservatives shut down a speaker they did not like at Whittier College last week. Guess who reported on it.
And guess who condemned it:
California AG and Ann C or Milo are now equivalent speakers?
I’m not saying you don’t have a “right” to invite every Tom, Dick and Harry to speak at a college but when a group goes out of their way to invite incendiary speakers just to cause a #%%* storm they should be called out for it. These are institutions of higher learning. I’d hope for a higher bar on both sides of the political spectrum…
Sadly reality TV norms seem to be spreading…
That does not matter if they are equivalent speakers. Students should not be shutting down speech by an AG, Coulter or Milo, or Richard Spencer, Chelsea Manning or any other controversial figure.
Yes FIRE also reported negatively on the Manning dis-invitation. Like the ACLU, it seems to be somewhat equal-opportunity when it sees censorship.
What about the students’ right to free speech, assembly, protest? It seems that’s being threatened now.
More at https://psmag.com/education/why-do-pundits-keep-getting-student-protest-so-wrong
Whittier was also covered by Reason, and additionally discusses a left-wing professor’s dismissal for…speech.
http://reason.com/blog/2017/10/16/whittier-college-speakers-trump-shutdown