Freedom to speak is not freedom from consequences, and if a professor wants to rail against the patriarchy and blame it for the Las Vegas shooting, then consequences should be expected. Same as if he wanted to blame the shooting on Hillary Clinton.
And again, you keep conflating decisions made by organizations as a consequence of speech (or actions) with actions taken by mobs of 18-22 year olds to prevent speech. It’s not even close to the same thing.
As far as the riots on inauguration day, no one will be put in jail for protesting. Throwing stuff, destruction of property, is a different story.
That said, I am troubled by the attempts to find riot participants by looking through IP addresses, because that seems to me to be a pretty obvious chilling of speech. We will have to see what the courts say there.
Professors are employees of the university. Students and guest speakers are not employees, so students and guest speakers should be entitled to greater free speech protection than the faculty of a university.
@OHMomof2, your assuming the 197 inauguration protesters are being charged for only protesting.
Wahington post story stated 230 people arrested with the majority being charged with rioting. Rioting isn’t protesting.
a comment from the story, “Faison said attacks were done with “nuance and intention,” while conceding that some may view the violence as undermining their cause. He said that what appeared chaotic was purposeful in its symbolism and that vandalism at a Starbucks shop and a Bank of America branch were executed as attacks on capitalism and corporate greed.”
I totally agree, with respect to the classroom. Not so sure about the world beyond it, that’s a pretty grey area. If a professor engages in racist or sexist speech in his free time (like in personal facebook group), is that OK? We know it is for students now, as it happened at Pomona.
Wheaton College (IL) decided their professor had no right to her own opinion with respect to the concept of “People of the Book”, whether expressed outside the school or not. AFAIK she’s still fired.
I agree, of course. But obviously the line is not always clear. Violence against people and to a lesser degree, property? Of course that’s not protected. But what of the others in the group, part of the same protest (or riot, if you will) who do not commit violence or property damage?
What about the fellow protesters/rioters that created the conditions for, say, a white supremacist to drive his car into a crowd in Charlottesville and kill a woman? I’m not aware of any arrests other than of the one man driving the car in that case (for that - there were a few arrests of protesters and counter protesters for specific offenses).
And as objectionable as that is, it’s probably the right thing - despite the fact that the torch rally etc were well organized ahead of time, sometimes someone goes rogue. I think people who broke windows or threw concrete at a limo or whatever on inauguration day went rogue too. And people who expressed themselves legally should not be caught up in that.
Same org protecting the speech of the white supremacists in court are doing the same for the inauguration day people:
I may have visited this web site. 1.3 million people apparently did. Are their rights not protected because some subset of 200 people helped break windows?
Freedom is a big problem for some individuals since there are people who are going to say and do things they don’t like and vehemently disagree with. However, as long as no laws are broken, people are allowed to say and do things which we find are racist, cruel, etc.
This discussion about freedom reminds me of a Frank Burns quote with a similar subject, “Individuality is fine as long as we all do it together.”
Freedom doesn’t mean people are only allowed to say and do approved things.
I don’t understand why we don’t treat a college protest like a protest at an abortion clinic. (I do not in anyway want to discuss if abortion is right or wrong, but discuss how the courts have handled protest at these places.)
Those who are protesting against the clinic can do so but must stay a certain distance away from the clinic so that it can conduct its business. The workers and those who are using the services of the clinic can not be stopped or delayed in anyway from entering the clinic. Those who are protesting can do so and aren’t stopped unless they break certain rules which have put in place to allow the business and those who use their services their rights to conduct and participate in a legal business.
Seems some college cheerleaders who knelt for the anthem were subsequently moved off the field until it ended. For political reasons.
The politicians in question admit that they couldn’t legally keep them from kneeling for first amendment reasons, so they just decided to keep them off the field until after.