Emily, That may be true. By that token though college kids protesting Israeli occupation of the West Bank in the main quad may get kicked out if other Jewish students consider that to be offensive. Case law is pretty clear; nothing bad happens to such college kids.
Florida26, thought polices are very real, except they happen in totalitarian states (the whole Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, for example) hence Americans are blissfully ignorant of them. They have the First Amendment to thank for that. Hence I find it funny when the same Americans want to dismantle the First Amendment. Anyway, now that I have shown that thought polices are very real (Stassi, for example), I respectfully ask you again the same question.
@awcntdb I only mentiomed my race in case Rand thought difference of experience had anything to do with our opinions. And I assumed that he was trying to make a point that our backgrounds might influence how we respond to his questions. So I’m just going to chalk your message up to miscommunication and ignore your attacks on me for simply stating that hate speech, though legal, should not be without consequence.
I understand how a slippery slope argument works, I just literally don’t agree with you…
These students should not face legal consequences, my opinion on other consequences is more fluid. But thanks for trying to present me as an unaware individual.
@nrdsb4 My children are roughly the same age as yours And I try to help them to avoid despicable people. I think of it as part of my parenting duties. I would hope you do the same. To use your words to infer that I believe one can stay away from all racists all the time “is a bunch of bunk”
A similar logic was once used to oppress AAs. Legal behavior on their part still had negative socioeconomic consequences.Thank goodness we put all that to end by enacting Civil Rights laws.
Be careful about mob justice, TheAtlantic. One day they are with you, one day they are against you. Laws however will always be with you.
“Emily, That may be true. By that token though college kids protesting Israeli occupation of the West Bank in the main quad may get kicked out if other Jewish students consider that to be offensive. Case law is pretty clear; nothing bad happens to such college kids.”
That is because they are protesting againts the Israeli government’s occupation of the West Bank - not protesting against all Jews or Jewish students or individual Jews.
I am Jewish and if I was a college student now I might also be protesting the Israeli governments occupation (you do know that not every Jew believes in that policy.)
When I was in high school and college I protested against many of the things my government and private corporations were doing. For instance, my protesting against the Vietnam War my government was engaged didn’t mean I was protesting against those in the military - though they may very well have considered my protest offensive.
Well, Emily, some may consider protest against Israel tantamount to protest against Jews. It is all in the interpretation of it. So what seems like clear cut logic to you may not seem that way to another.
@TheAtlantic, I believe MOST people posting here believe that racist rhetoric absolutely can and usually deserves to have consequences heaped upon it. However, there is obviously a divide in how far that punishment goes, who gets to mete it out, etc.
I believe in social consequences to hateful speech. In the private sector, there are all kinds of remedy in addition to that. But when we are talking about public universities, where students benefit from the exchange of ideas and disagreements and censure (vs. censorship) of offensive speech, shutting down speech with expulsion should rarely if ever be used. That’s my personal feeling on it because I believe that freedom of speech is a precious right and should only be officially punished by government in only a very very few instances. Punishing people for expressing ideas may seem right when it’s the ones I dislike, but as mentioned many times, not so wonderful when it’s turned against me by someone judging what I may say.
@florida26, you will NEVER be able to shield your adult children from racists or other despicable people. Not now, not ever. And I dispute that shielding our ADULT children from unpleasant ideas is a parenting responsibility.
@RondoInBFlat @Nrdsb4 I thought you’d be getting to this. I think fines are an abnormal form of punishment in this case. Though I’m pretty sure in this case, and as the law stands now, OU was not legally in the right to expel these students, in my “perfect world scenario” a public institution would be able to punish these students for representing the University in a negative light, and for the the possible damages they have put onto the school (students not enrolling due to the uproar and the like). If public schools did have codes stating that students could be punished for behavior that negatively affects the school, then I’d be in favor of punishments as seen at OU. But of course, without such codes in effect at OU and similar public institutions, we’re in a gray area.
“Well, Emily, some may consider protest against Israel tantamount to protest against Jews. It is all in the interpretation of it. So what seems like clear cut logic to you may not seem that way to another.”
They may believe that but the actual protest is about the Israeli government’s policy in regards to the Palestinians.
For instance, many protested against apartheid South African and college students, in particular, protested against their universities investments in SA corporations demanding they disinvestment (similar to what the campus protesters are asking of their universities in regards to Israel.) I don’t know anyone who believed protesting against SA was tantamount to protesting against all whites or white South Africans in general - it was about that government’s policy of apartheid. That is very different then the spewing racial epithets at particular people/groups of people.
Emily, Are you then saying that the original intent of the protestors is more pertinent than how the protest is received/perceived? In that case, how would you think about the UoA case? The kids, after all, may just have been singing the song because … they liked the tune of it? In reality, how an act is perceived is given pertinence. However, perception and outrage thereof is not given precendence over freedom of speech. That’s how most of US society works.
TheAtlantic, The law is always with you, but the Execution Branch may not be. That’s why we have the legal system where you can complian about the Execution Branch of the Govt and ensure that laws start to become effective. But of course nothing is 100% effective; that would be utopia and we live in a real world. That doesn’t mean however that the law is not with you.
By the way, no public college may have a code of conduct that trumps the Constitution.
In those cases yes - because the intent is clear. They are protesting a specific government policy. In the SAE case they are spewing racial epitaphs at one particular group of people. There is no question about their intent or intended target.
@nrdsb4 You really need to work on making the correct inferences from statements. I dont think I can shield my children from all despicable people but I do try to help them avoid situations where despicable people are at. I guess you see it as okay. I personally feel bad for you and your children
To you, obviously. But others clearly disagree - in the UoA case as well as in the case of protesting the Vietnam War as you yourself mentioned. What to do in such cases? Who becomes the final arbiter?
Usually, it is the legal system. And usually, the legal system comes out in favor of free speech. This of course doesn’t make the populace happy, because they clearly know that they are right and the legal system is wrong.
As for me, I thank the gods that we have a legal system in the USA and not a court of public opinion deciding these things. As, after all, the court of public opinion is typically wrong, just like common sense is very common, but rarely sensible.
@RondoInBFlat
So if the execution branch is not always effective, then the law is not always with us (or I guess “on our side” is the better statement). And if interpretations of law often change with the times, doesn’t that mean that majority rule does affect law?
TheAtlantic, the Executive Branch is made up of politicians. Of course they are not always effective. They are thinking about winning an election and not about logic. However, the legal branch (at least the upper echelons of it) is made up of legal scholars who are trained to think logically. That doesn’t mean that they are always right, but odds are that they will always be far more right than the population at large who act emotionally and not logically.
The law, by the way, is not supposed to be “on our side”. It is just supposed to be “always with us”, with a clear logical standard. Sometimes that logical standard will result in a conclusion that is on our side, sometimes it will be ont he side of the other party. That’s the way things work. We all (secretly for all, publicly for many) wish that the whole society would just work the way we individually want it to work, which is why mob rule is a chaos. The law is supposed to set objective, logical standards out of this mess. The law is not fickle like the court of public opinion.
Interpretations of law do change with time as well it should. But the change in the interpretation, once again, comes out of a logical framework, and not an you tube campaign that has gone viral. Big difference.
Do you realize that you are a perfect example of why hate speech is dangerous to be defined in terms of punishment by entities such as schools etc.?
I wrote a post where I intellectually disagreed with you, based solely on what you wrote. I made nothing up. I read your post and reacted to your post.
I laid out in Socratic fashion the reasons I disagreed with you. And I gave examples of where it leads in its ultimate form, and your response is I attacked you? OK. And that is a logical response to you? I guess we have very different ideas what is attacking.
Oh wait, hum… seems similar to having different ideas of what speech is hate speech. I guess the next step is since my very logical post was an attack on you then I must be threatening you? Better call the police about this threat to your person. See the problem - words soon may mean nothing and everything when you just throw them around, as a way to shield yourself. Thus, hate and attacking become words used to simply define something you do not like to hear, even if 100% wrong in the interpretation - but they sure sound like you have conviction, but does not strengthen your position. Those words do not make you powerful; they make you weak because they are devoid of intellectual substance.
Therefore, your use of the word attacking, which is demonstrably false in its application, illustrates that when some speech is censored / punished by the authorities, then all speech is essentially censored / punished by authorities, just depends which words and which authorities at what time.
And the legality argument you cite, again, misses the fundamental point of the argument - it is the entity that is doing the punishment that is the problem. Social retribution is not punishment in the terms we are talking about, but taking away the frat members education at OU on the grounds of speech is. The latter runs counter to the Constitution. Now, if the entire campus decides never to talk to them, who cares…
“Usually, it is the legal system. And usually, the legal system comes out in favor of free speech. This of course doesn’t make the populace happy, because they clearly know that they are right and the legal system is wrong.”
^ That is a bunch of nonsense. No one on this thread has said the students don’t have the right to bring suit and I haven’t seen anyone say that the Court would be wrong if they ruled for the students or vice versa.
Most of us are adults and we accept rulings from SCOTUS as the final arbiter (like we did after the Court ruling in Bush v Gore.)
Pardon me, Emily. I got confused by your assertion that this is clear and that is clear. I didn’t realize that what you meant was Let the Courts Decide. Now we are in full alignment.