Lawsuit: free speech in academia
The University of Michigan has a comprehensive anti-free-speech policy.
Oh, the school doesn’t call it that. They say it’s:
…a disciplinary code that prohibits “harassment” and “bullying,” and increases the penalties if such actions are motivated by “bias.”…Michigan defines harassment as “unwanted negative attention perceived as intimidating, demeaning, or bothersome to an individual.”… Michigan has created a Bias Response Team that receives complaints of “bias” and “bias incidents” from offended students and is tasked with investigating and punishing those who commit offenses.
More than 150 reports of alleged “expressions of bias”””through posters, fliers, social media, whiteboards, verbal comments, classroom behavior, etc.””have been investigated by the university’s bias response team since April 2017. According to Michigan, “bias comes in many forms,” can be intentional or unintentional, and “can be a hurtful action based on who someone is as a person.” In the school’s words, “the most important indication of bias is your own feelings.” As a result, a student whose speech is seen by another student as hurtful to his or her feelings may receive a knock on the door from a team of school officials threatening to refer the student for discipline unless he or she submits to “restorative justice,” “individualized education,” or “unconscious bias training.”
Back when I was at school, if someone had told me this was the future for a place like the University of Michigan, I would have thought they were stark raving mad or describing the plot of some dystopian novel. But we here are.
Progress. Progressive progress.
The website I linked in this post is for a group called Speech First, which I just heard about for the first time today and which has filed a lawsuit challenging the University of Michigan’s speech code as a violation of the First Amendment, and asking “the court to declare that Michigan’s speech code is unconstitutional and to enjoin the bias response system.”
Good for them for fighting the pernicious effects of a policy that can’t help but have a chilling effect on freedom of speech, all in the name of protecting the feelings of students who profess to be grownups.
I went back to school in the early 1990s to get my graduate degree, and noticed these trends were already in place for faculty, although they had not yet taken root in codes that targeted the students themselves. I wrote this post about an experience I had back then that opened my eyes to the problem:
I discovered it when the young women in an undergraduate class I was required to take for my Master’s””a class which, being in the social sciences, consisted almost entirely of women””were virtually all in favor of a definition of actionable offensive speech that went something like this: “speech that offends any person in the subjective sense, rather than speech that is in fact objectively offensive.” In vain I stood up in front of the 100-or-so students, most of them around twenty years younger than I, to ask what the limits of this might be, to suggest that it was wrong to allow the most sensitive among us to dictate what was unacceptable, and to speak up for free speech in general. I was met with uncomprehending stares and impatient dismissal, a fossil in my own time.
I realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Not one person appeared to agree with me, or if they did they weren’t saying so publicly or privately.
I also remember saying something about the dangers of using a subjective measure of what was offensive speech. It all fell on deaf ears.
I wish the Speech First people well. Here is a description of the organization:
…[W]e’ve created a nationwide community to reassure students that they won’t fight these cases alone ”“ and that they’ll be supported every step of the way: on campus, in the media, and in court. We’re a membership association of students, parents, faculty, alumni, and concerned citizens from across the country who’ve had enough, and who want to fight back.
We believe that free and open discourse is an essential component of a comprehensive education. We are committed to restoring the freedom of speech on college campuses because we believe that by exposing students to different and challenging ideas, they will emerge stronger, smarter, and more resilient.
Speech First will protect students’ free speech rights on campus. Through advocacy, litigation, and other means, we will put colleges and universities on notice that shutting down unwanted speech will no longer be tolerated.
I’m glad to see a growing number of such organizations fighting the pernicious effect the left has had on freedom of speech on campus and elsewhere (see also this).
[NOTE: England is way ahead of us. And I don’t mean that in a good sense.]
“I also remember saying something about the dangers of using a subjective measure of what was offensive speech. It all fell on deaf ears.” —
That is the result of relentless indoctrination in early years.
We — back in the dark ages — had textbook covers* that Kipling would have approved, including what must be one of the Rules of the Copy-book Headings: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Were some of us called mean things by others? Sure.
Did we call other people mean things in turn? Some did.
Were any of us so psychologically damaged that we could no longer function? Not that I remember.
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* the book covers were heavy paper, provided to the school by GE, with their mascot Reddy Kilowatt prominently featured endorsing the familiar didactic memes — catch that happening today.
However, the company used to have true conservative principles, back before they fell to the Progressive demon of crony rent-seeking capitalisme.
Some attribute President Reagan’s winning campaign to his principles and character being already so well-known to the public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_Theater
“General Electric Theater was an American anthology series hosted by Ronald Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. …
General Electric Theater made the already well-known Reagan, who had appeared in many films as a “second lead” throughout his career, wealthy, due to his part ownership of the show. After eight years as host, Reagan estimated he had visited 135 GE research and manufacturing facilities, and met over a quarter-million people. During that time, he would also speak at other forums such as Rotary clubs and Moose lodges, presenting views on economic progress that in form and content were often similar to what he said in introductions, segues, and closing comments on the show as a spokesman for GE. Reagan, who would later be known as “The Great Communicator” because of his oratorical prowess, often credited these engagements as helping him develop his public-speaking abilities.”
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I don’t remember ever watching the show, as it’s airtime was certainly well past my bedtime back in the day.
AesopFan:
The events in my classroom occurred in the early 1990s. The students in that room had all been born by 1975. They were attending grade school and high school during the Reagan years. I know some indoctrination was already occurring, but it was nothing compared to now.
Neo,
My wife and I are watching the first season of The Orville on TV these days. It’s a Star Trek knock off–sort of like the movie, Galaxy Quest. At any rate, the episode we saw last night was titled “Majority Rule” (Episode 7), and it’s very germane to this discussion. It’s about a whole planet run by people voting on whether they’re offended or not by some action. No judicial system at all. Just everyone voting. Ten million negative votes, and the victim, or defendant gets an electrical lobotomy. Scary. I can see it happening here.
Waidmann Says:
May 11th, 2018 at 5:31 pm
..Ten million negative votes, and the victim, or defendant gets an electrical lobotomy. Scary. I can see it happening here.
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Suddenly I had visions of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” — coming to a town near you !!
PS love Galaxy Quest — a Story for Our Times
Alexander Dane: By Grapthar’s hammer, you shall be avenged!
Jason Nesmith: Never give-up, never surrender.
Proposing to impose serious prison time for ‘offensive’ online posts is a sign of desperation and fear on the part of the UK’s liberal elite. The degree of fear and desperation is indicated by the severity of the proposed repression.
The UK’s Left and its CINOs (Conservative In Name Only) who in the UK’s parliamentary system politically dominate are desperately trying to repress reaction to the consequences of allowing millions of unassimilable Muslim migrants into the country.
In 2016, a poll revealed that 43% of UK Muslims admitted to wanting Sharia law to be implemented in the UK. While only 22% of UK Muslims oppose it. And, when push comes to shove, the 35% who took no position will go along with the 43%…
The escalating violence ensures that eventually the attempt to repress the truth of the societal situation will fail. A tipping point will be reached and at that point denial will no longer be sustainable for all but the most willfully blind.
The vote on Brexit however revealed a divided electorate and so a mandate arising to fully reverse course is perhaps unlikely. So a majority vote to expell the UK’s ‘undesirables’ is equally unlikely. But only returning Britain to the British can save England from its self-imposed fate.
That raises the possibility of a military coup occuring. As half the UK’s citizens are committed to cultural suicide and a disarmed public lacks the means to resist, an SAS General or Colonel emerging as England’s next Oliver Cromwell will be the only means left to restoring national security.
In our modern hubris, enabled by centuries of stable democratic republicanism, we forget that when civilian leadership utterly fails in its primary duties, the military becomes the final arbiter of a nation’s fate.
If they do nothing, England is lost.
Not to hijack the thread or anything, but you guys brought it up first… Galaxy Quest – one of the rare ‘perfect’ movies.
Guy Fleagle; ‘Don’t any of you even WATCH the show?’
Trying to preserve human rights at universities is like trying to secure human rights in the USSR. It’ll take decades and the successor governor will be former secret police.
Better to cut ‘em lose* to wallow in their ideology. The world needs bad examples.
* starting with no money from the legislature.
Faculties and higher ed apparatchiks resort to try-every-door noncompliance when they’re told by courts, legislatures, and voting publics that they are to do what they do not want to do. FIRE and the NAS have been contending with campuses for 25 years to little avail. You have to change authority structures (particularly the size and mode of election of trustees) and go Kenesaw Mountain Landis on campuses if you want real change in faculty cultures. As we speak, faculty and administrators cannot emotionally process dissent and fancy none of it is legitimate. We do not need institutions of higher education with this kind of culture and should start shutting them down.
https://gellerreport.com/2018/05/uk-jail-islam.html/
Courtesy the British ‘administrative class’.
But, but, but “free speech” is alive and well on the campuses of America’s universities.
(Though maybe that should be qualified as, “on the campuses of America’s finest universities”…)
https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/05/09/columbia-university-professor-blames-israel-for-every-dirty-treacherous-act-happening-in-the-world-claims-iran-nuke-deal-opposed-by-fifth-column-zionists/
Molly Brown Says:
May 12th, 2018 at 3:51 am
Not to hijack the thread or anything, but you guys brought it up first… Galaxy Quest — one of the rare ‘perfect’ movies.
Guy Fleagle; ‘Don’t any of you even WATCH the show?’
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Molly, we ARE the show!
Jason Nesmith: Stop for a second, stop. It’s all real.
Brandon Wheeger: Oh my God, I knew it. I knew it! I knew it!
Art Deco Says:
May 12th, 2018 at 7:01 am
You have to … go Kenesaw Mountain Landis on campuses if you want real change in faculty cultures.
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Thank you for introducing me to someone I had never heard of before (not a big sports fan); an aptly chosen figure for your metaphor.
From Wikipedia’s article on Landis, who was a judge and then baseball commissioner who cleaned up the gambling scandals of the early 20th century:
“Before 1920 if one player approached another player to throw a contest, there was a very good chance he would not be informed upon. Now, there was an excellent chance he would be turned in. No honest player wanted to meet the same fate as Buck Weaver … Without the forbidding example of Buck Weaver to haunt them, it is unlikely Mann and Sand would have snitched on their fellow players. After Landis’ unforgiving treatment of the popular and basically honest Weaver they dared not to. And once prospectively crooked players knew that honest players would no longer shield them, the scandals stopped.”
“Kenesaw Mountain Landis put the fear of God into weak characters who might otherwise have been inclined to violate their trust. “