https://socialistworker.org/2017/04/12/whos-behind-the-free-speech-crisis-on-campus
(anyone interested in this issue should read this. The more I think about it the better I realize it is.)
The socialists and communists as beacons of hope for free speech? How has that worked out in any socialist/communist country in history? The articles best shot at the answer is that college administrators are too many and too well paid and the poor faculty (who are overwhelmingly liberal) are underpaid.
I’ll comment on one of the examples as I have a D who is a freshmen at Ohio University. The students were protesting inside the entrance to the Baker Center which is the Student Union. The entry Hall had a few hundred students protesting in it and they were prohibiting other students from being able to enter the building creating a safety hazard. The university offered them a room to hold their protest which wouldn’t inhibit the freedom of movement (it was right off the main entrance so they would have been heard). They gave the students over an hour to decide. There were 70 who refused and it was then the police began making arrests. Ohio University has an upper and lower campus and the Baker Center has a series of escalators that act as a sort of funicular for those going from upper to lower campus. The protestors were also impeding that use of the building. In the end a local judge ruled in favor of one of the students and all the charges were dropped. Police still maintain that they were not trying to prevent the protest just protect the safety of all the students who use the building. This wasn’t about the speech it was about preventing others from using the facility safely.
I think that we do have a crises in free speech on universities in the US. To a large extent I think that the problem is related to the polarization of US politics. Basically people are moving more towards talking at each other, rather than talking to each other.
However, I haven’t heard of any cases of conservatives trying to prevent liberals or socialists from speaking. What I keep hearing about is progressive liberals preventing conservatives from speaking. Apparently for some people free speech is growing to mean “you can say anything you like, as long as you agree with me”.
I will point out that the students weren’t actively preventing people from entering it was that the entry area was designed for students to move freely within the building. Once they filled the area people couldn’t enter or get to the exit. Since you have escalators ending at that point and people with nowhere to go it became a safety hazard.
I think the use of this example in the article unjustly portrays the university as prohibiting free speech and makes me questions the situations and back stories behind their other examples. One other point is that those who chose to move still held the rally.
Just like college “diversity” has come to mean different skin color, but nothing else.
Some in Ohio remember the joke, if you want diversity at Oberlin, send a Republican. Yes it’s a joke and is not meant to be taken literally, and it doesn’t apply to just Oberlin but, there was some truth in it years ago, and maybe even more truth in it now.
A remarkably dishonest article.
I’m eagerly awaiting your reasoned refutation.
@lvvcsf - what exactly was the “safety” issue?
In the late 70’s the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Newport, Kentucky caught fire. People could not move freely to the exits. A large number died, and laws about marking capacity, door opening direction, and signage were both changed and enforced in the aftermath. Friends (plural) of my in laws died that night.
Obstructing people from entering a building also keeps people from leaving. The people who can’t leave will die.
It’s not an Orwellian “safety” issue, it’s the real deal and we needn’t belittle it by encasing it in “quotes.”
From an institution that has epitomized dishonesty since it was founded.
I’ll send you a picture when I am on a device I can reliably copy and paste. The issue was that there were so many students protesting in an area not designed to have that many students congregate. It was designed for students to move through the area not congregate. The building itself is quite large but they congregated around the entrances and exits where the escalators went. Again the issue was not the protest OU is liberal on the whole and open to discussion and protests.
Is this the picture you’re looking for, @lvvcsf? http://woub.org/2017/03/29/remaining-charges-against-baker-center-protesters-dismissed/ Here’s an article by FIRE praising the decision by the municipal court judge in the OU case who ruled in favor of the student protestors. https://www.thefire.org/students-absolved-of-both-criminal-charges-and-school-sanctions-after-ohio-university-protest/
People on both sides of the partisan divide want college administrators to permit speech they like and restrict speech they dislike. Often the loudest voices for the school administration to regulate speech come from the students themselves. So someone might be happy to see FIRE defend the OU protestors but the same people might be mad if FIRE defends someone who is the subject of a disciplinary hearing in the context of a “bias reporting” incident, or be mad if FIRE defends a school newspaper from calls to de-fund it for its content (e.g., Wesleyan Argus). But the author of the socialist worker op-ed has obviously recognized that sometimes socialists and FIRE can have a common goal, which is to stop administrators from restricting speech rights.
Not just talking at each other, but more of such talk is hating, insulting, bullying, inciting, and baiting, rather than any sort of reasoned discussion to try to convince people of any ideas. For any sort of sensible political environment, freedom of speech is necessary, but not sufficient. But now people just want to pick fights.
The real crisis (not just at colleges) is that people are not using freedom of speech in a way that promotes reasoned discourse on policy, so American politics is descending into the kind of “we versus they” hate politics that leads to ruin in so many examples because people and politicians are so busy hating the other side that coming up with workable policy is no longer the priority.
“The real crisis (not just at colleges) is that people are not using freedom of speech in a way that promotes reasoned discourse on policy, so American politics is descending into the kind of “we versus they” hate politics that leads to ruin in so many examples because people and politicians are so busy hating the other side that coming up with workable policy is no longer the priority.”
I have felt for a while that the underlying problem is that the US as a nation has been too successful for too long. There have been many great countries in the world in the past. They have generally failed in very similar ways. Greatness seems to create arrogance. Arrogance leads to a variety of issues such as running up large debts and/or squandering the national treasury, an over-reliance on “credentials” or “authority” rather than merit, a belief that a country can try to get the rest of the world to do what it wants leading to expensive foreign wars, arrogant leaders who talk but don’t listen, and a population that assumes that they should be handed stuff because they are “Romans” or “Athenians” or “British” or “Americans” or …
A few years ago I read The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. I found it fascinating. However, for me one of the main take aways is that the political debates of the Greeks 2,600 years ago were very similar to our political debates today. People are people, and we can repeat past mistakes just fine. Athens ran into huge problems when in the middle of the war with Sparta (and allies) Athens decided to fight another way in Sicily, to help an ally there. Thus they got themselves involved in a distant war that they couldn’t win, couldn’t end, and couldn’t afford. It is a good thing that we would never make that same mistake today. 
Perhaps what we are seeing is just what people do when they are citizens of a great country which has been great for too long.
More insightful, reasoned refutation. Very revealing.
@50N40W - so what exactly does that tragic supper club story have to do with this story? Are there any similarities that you’re aware of? How do you know this was a real safety issue? The courts found that it was not.
@ucbalumnus - why do you think this is more common now than in the past? Do you have any support for your suggestion that discourse in the past was more reasoned and civil? My understanding is that that was not the case at all.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/uncivil-political-discourse-is-a-part-of-history/
I would not say there was a golden age of political civility, since there always existed the practitioners of hate politics. But it used to be that people of differing political viewpoints sometimes did actually respect each other as people, rather than enemies who must be destroyed, and could see that sometimes people on other parts of the political spectrum had an idea that was worth considering. That seems to have disappeared from political discourse today, leaving hate politics to dominate any political discussions.
Related is the tendency to base opinions on an idea based not on the idea itself, but on who it is (most recently) associated with. There has always been such a tendency, but it has increased now.