What 76% of people think and what is true are two different things. They may overlap, they may not. Due to the ink, virtually speaking, given to this recently I am not surprised that 76% of people think that’s what’s going on everywhere.
While I generally think that it’s RUDE of those students to shout over speakers they don’t like, they have the right to speak as much as the invited speaker does. I do not think anyone is breaking the law or infringing on constitutional rights as the rights of the students and the speaker to speak are in conflict in that situation. The constitution doesn’t describe taking turns or raising your hand or setting aside a quiet half hour for a speech while everyone else remains silent.
That said, yes, it’s not polite and it doesn’t serve the interest of education. Ideally at a college the speaker speaks without people yelling, and there is plenty of time for opposing viewpoints to be presented - a Q&A, perhaps.
Right or left, if you poll a group you will find a much higher percentage of the group willing to countenance banning speakers who disagree with the group as opposed to speakers who express the group’s views. It’s not all that comforting that “only” 47% of all Republicans believe it’s appropriate to ban speakers who would disrespect the police, while a majority of Democrats believe it is appropriate to ban speakers who would say that Islam is inherently an evil religion.
The “party” of people who care about free speech as a value is neither Republicans nor Democrats, but has members of both. I think, however, that support among liberals/Democrats has been significantly weakened by the Citizens United case (and other similar cases). They now tend to hear the free speech question as “Is this something the Koch brothers should be able to spend millions of dollars ramming down our throats?” and also to view free speech, not so much as an individual right against the state, but rather as a tool the wealthy and powerful use to get their way.
@sushiritto actually, the truth is far more nuanced than that. Italians, Salvs, Russians, etc were all on his to-remove list. The Jews were just the first and easiest because, y’know, they lived in Germany and surrounding areas.
American eugenicists were the same way. Eastern & Southern Europeans weren’t quite “white” enough.
The actual CATO report says that about 50% of those with “college experience” would chose to keep speakers off their campus that say transgender people have a mental disorder (50%) or that whites and Asians have higher IQs (48%) as well as one that disrespects the police (49%) or says that all Christians are backward and brainwashed (also 49%). The report seems to show there is support on both sides of the aisle for keeping out speakers that promote views that are out of the mainstream, regardless of which side they support.
I don’t agree with shutting down speakers that have a legitimate educational purpose, regardless of their politics. It is tough to not think that some speakers don’t have much educational vale and simply hope to incite a negative reaction on a campus (often with outsiders, not students). .Of course, their right to free speech must be protected even if it costs colleges extra money for security.
It may not just be that. Compared to years ago, a greater percentage of political speech that one hears/sees is in the form of short misleading sound bites hating on something.
Many people get their news from television. Television news is now much more editorialized and often intentionally misleading. Note that Fox, then MSNBC, moved in the direction of being explicitly partisan. But perhaps viewers like that, since they left CNN in distant third place.
Political postings are common on social media. But 140 characters is too little to capture nuances of complex ideas. The same goes for internet meme pictures. Of course, those who post are often the more extreme partisans, who are more likely to intentionally mislead and care less about what is actually true. But many people may not have the attention span to look deeper into the nuances of complex ideas rather than taking 140 characters or a meme picture at face value. (280 characters is still too little in many cases.)
When reading print newspapers, there is commonly a clear demarcation between news articles and editorials/opinions. While reading the same newspapers on the web makes it easier to check different sources, it is also easier to overlook the distinction between news articles and editorials/opinions. Of course, there are also new web-focused publications that inject more editorials/opinions into the news articles.
If free speech looks like it is mostly a way to spew “garbage”, it may not be surprising that people (of all political leanings) end up devaluing it. But then many have themselves to blame for giving the “garbage” more attention than reasoned political discourse.
The president of Williams wrote an op-ed on this today:. I found myself nodding in agreement with this:
^ though it is true, and happens with great regularity on college campuses.
And this - IDK if it addresses the “who pays a half million dollars for security when Spencer comes” issue that’s come up in this thread already, but it’s thoughtful.
