Hmm. Sounds like we have a case of the proposed speaker, not the students, chilling free speech here.
FIRE says Scaramucci’s defamation claims are baseless and intended to chill speech, plus they backfire and essentially have a Streisand effect drawing greater attention to the Tuft student’s opinion piece. https://www.thefire.org/former-white-house-communications-director-anthony-scaramucci-threatens-tufts-student-newspaper-over-opinion-piece/
Why was he even invited? I see he’s on a board there but does he actually have any intellectual or cultural value to add to a university community?
He WAS on the board there…he resigned today @romanigypsyeyes . But the article describes what led to his invitation. He asked if he could speak -
Wow I actually did read the article (how I found about him being on the board) and somehow skipped right over that. Apparently reading for prelims have finally killed my reading brain.
It’s still weird to me that they honored his request. He’s just not relevant. If you want a moderated discussion, bring in someone (even if controversial) who has a richer body of work in whatever X topic is.
From the FIRE article posted by Corinthian -
Indeed.
What was the over/under on the number of f-bombs he’d drop?
Of course he does, just because he probably disagrees with you politically doesn’t mean he lacks heft in the larger culture. He is an alum who has had a great deal of success in private life and a brief but, um, colorful turn in the political spotlight. Limiting speech available to university students to just those who meet some ideological litmus test is antiethical to the foundation of our society and the entire western history of intellectual inquiry. To butcher one of my favorite free speech quotes from a man with the all time best judge’s name, Learned Hand; “The first amendment presupposes that the right conclusions are more likely to be drawn from a multitude of voices rather than any type of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always has been, folly. But upon it we have staked our all.”
On the larger question, there is not much to say. Saramucci is an idiot for threatening to sue a kid for a basic leftist opinion attack piece, and Tufts was wrong to pull his invitation. Let everybody have their say. The idiots always show themselves.
Maybe he thought suing the student in advance would help his moderated discussion with her. Unfortunately for him, Tufts saw it through.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
A reminder to keep politics out of the discussion. Trump-bashing, as an example, is not allowed.