“Free speech” doesn’t mean freedom from the consequences of your speech. Lukianoff is despicable, a serial agitator and ideologue.
Hillsdale College is the gold standard for free speech, perhaps because they do not take Federal money.
Hillsdale College is the gold standard for a college president having a 19-year affair with is daughter-in-law, who proceeded to kill herself on campus with his gun.
You mean the Hillsdale College that banned a gay straight alliance a few years back?
I haven’t the slightest clue why someone would think Hillsdale is a gold standard unless I’m missing some joke.
Here is the link (https://www.thefire.org/spotlight/) to search the FIRE database of 400 schools.
I can’t say that I’m too impressed with the FIRE Spotlight ratings.
This is the policy that earned my kids’ college a red light rating:
Somehow I’m not unduly worried about restrictions placed on my children’s rights to harass and intimidate their classmates.
The problem is that expressing a controversial view is deemed to be intimidation. That’s why those kids at Rutgers had to be hidden in a “safe space” to deal with the trauma of having a gay activist on the same campus as they were.
The problem with harassment policies like Vasser’s is that “confrontation, verbal slurs, insults or taunts” are vague terms that leave too much discretionary power in the hands of the majority (or whoever controls the power structure), whether it’s leftist or rightist, to decide whether someone is crossing the line from permissible free speech into “confrontation” or “taunts” with the intention of causing “ridicule” or “disparagement.” It’s one thing to prohibit stalking or physical threats, but the Vasser policy goes much farther and opens itself up to potential abuse. It can too easily be invoked to shut down unpopular speech.
I think students and faculty are far less free to speak on left-leaning campuses (most LACs) than on ultra-conservative ones, such as Liberty or Bob Jones and the like. On the latter campuses, people know going in what the school is all about, but at schools like Oberlin, which my son attends, people may go in thinking that all speech is acceptable (excluding hate speech, of course) in the quest for truth, but find that expressing support for Israel, say, or the Pope, really isn’t. Consequences don’t have to be formal, such as censure or firing. Sometimes the fear of being vilified is enough to shut a person up. And that’s sad.
@Massmomm I think young people in general tend to bve extremely passionate about their views while simultaneously not being exposed to much of the world. This leads to people being very… vigorous when they think something is important, and very often taking things too far. I don’t think political alignment really factors into it, outside the fact that universities tend left, so the leftists are the ones there to do the overdramatic vicious arguing. If I walked into a room full of 19 year old Marines and started praising Sanders and denigrating Republicans, I’d expect the exact same reaction you get on college campuses, just from the right instead of the left.
@Spaceship, that’s true, but the schools where both left and right speech are tolerated are very rare indeed. Since most schools lean left, there isn’t much room for a thoughtful intellectual who maybe wants to hear or express right wing speech without being also forced to adhere to a set of odious restrictions, such as those at some religious colleges. Thus, there is a loss of true discourse.
@Massmomm Not disagreeing, I’m just saying I think that young people in general tend to go too far, rather than, as some (not necessarily you) say, young people of a specific political bent are the ones who typically go too far.
I totally disagree that there are few schools where left and right speech is tolerated. Heck, my university, which is only on the list because the president expelled students who literally chanted about lynching black people, encourages these speakers. The very conservative American Enterprise Institute is just as welcome to put on events as Students for Sanders, and indeed they do. This is not at all uncommon among schools. Places like Oberlin, Vassar, Liberty, etc are not representative of the broader higher ed landscape.
Is being vilified an actual violation of free speech?
Or is it a possible natural consequence of others exercising their free speech rights to disagree vehemently and infer negative characteristics/traits based on the political views/points one expressed?
For instance, could someone like say Trump validly claim his free speech rights are being violated when he’s vilified for saying Mexicans are bringing crimes, are rapists, and bringing drugs and expanding upon it by stating “It’s coming from more than Mexico,” he added. “It’s coming from all over South and Latin America…”
IME, commissioned officers tend on average, to be much more conservative than the enlisted/NCO ranks.
Among some childhood friends are several veterans of OIF. The ones who were commissioned officers* tend to be more like what you describe. The ones who enlisted straight out of high school are all vehemently anti-Republican and most are enthusiastic Sanders supporters due in large part to their experiences in the military and with the military/political leadership.
To a limited extent, this mirrored my childhood observations of the Vietnam veterans in my old neighborhood in the '80s. Those who were commissioned officers…especially careerists were conservative and vehemently pro-war. Those who were enlisted…including careerists were split down the middle on politics and whether they were pro or anti-war.
- This was confirmed by an older HS alum and elite U graduate who recounted how both fellow officers in his army reserve unit and those outside the military found it remarkable he's one of the few officers with progressive liberal politics in his unit. Vast majority of his officer colleagues regard him as the "tye dyed resident hippie" among officers in his unit.
@cobrat , I would hesitate to believe much of anything in the HuffPost. It’s pretty easy to go to the source material these days, it seems that rags from the Huff to the WSJ write lots of hit pieces about politicians. The reality is that in most colleges, faculty with conservative views just keep quiet or they risk further advancement and gaining tenure so any sort of ‘free speech’ is a myth.
That is why we prefer to follow the latest antics of Jim Harbaugh ; the PC climate is pretty depressing.
I’m still curious about Hillsdale…
Doesn’t seem like Harvard Econ Prof. Greg Mankiw has issues on that score.
And he’s pretty outspoken about his right-leaning free-market perspectives. He was also an economic adviser to several GOP politicians including chairing the Council on Economic advisers during President GW Bush’s administration.
I take a different view from @Massmomm. Most left-leaning campuses host well known conservative speakers and encourage students to attend. The larger ones create many symposiums designed to bring controversial thinkers together on a very large range of topics, including politics, sociology, religion and science. Some of these are the highlight of the calendar year. I daresay there is a young Republicans group on nearly every major campus in America, including some very left-leaning ones. These formal forums and venues, sponsored by or approved by the campus, are quite extensive.
It’s the informal social interactions, often flying under the radar of campus monitors or lacking the imprimatur of the university, that grab headlines. It is in these informal social interactions (parties, dormitory pranks, or anonymous social media postings) that some people are shocked to find that others don’t share it. They assume theirs is a common belief or that it’s otherwise safe to speak their mind on a controversy. They expect their classmates and friends to have their backs and laugh along or jump into the fray. Finding that to not be the case is extremely traumatic, for the speaker and the offended. For the entitled kid who hasn’t been exposed to diversity as well as the over-sensitive kid who feels victimized, these interactions are practice for real life. I would not keep my kid away from a specific campus for fear of something like this happening. It is natural for this to happen. And when it does, we move the conversation forward and hopefully the kids learn something from the controversy.
Yes, and these are the speakers that are most likely to be protested, dis-invited and ultimately silenced.
I think those are just the ones we hear about, @Zinhead .