Been meaning to engage for awhile on this topic, but I kind of hesitated because it's not something that has inspired a lot of intelligent discussion in the past. Although hopefully that was more of a JamieBMore problem. Hopefully with his exaggerations out of the way, people can discuss this a little more rationally. Here's a clip from William & Mary yesterday when they shut down a speech by an ACLU member. One of the chants was "The revolution will not uphold the constitution". For me this sentiment is beyond nonsensical. There is no better ally for a campus protester than the ACLU. These guys in particular seem affiliated with BLM. One of the slogans was "liberalism is white supremacy". But I don't necessarily want this thread to become a BLM thread. This is just an example that happened yesterday. But there's plenty of content to discuss with other groups like antifa, young socialists, environmentalists, pro Palestine groups etc ... And certainly would be interesting to discuss the other side of the coin too, campus fascism. I'm particularly interested in opinions from posters here who actively work on campus. Seems like we have quite a few here. I haven't been on a university campus in at least 3 years, so I'm pretty far removed. My only input is the things that pop up in the media, which does have a tendency to sensationalize relatively minor incidents. My question is whether this tendency to shut down conversations is real? Is this a tendency reinforced by faculty? Is it just a generational thing? Perhaps kids growing up in the social media world have a harder time with nuance, empathy and attention spans? Or maybe campuses have always been this way, it's just that now the right wing media is more laser focused in exploiting the worst impulses.
Don't work on campus but it is nothing new. I remember plenty of stories of campus protestors (usually left leaning) shutting down a speech, lecture, or talk back in the late 90s early aughts when I was in college.
I'll get back to this later, but right now I have a truckload of papers to grade. Plus, I have two H.R. workshops this afternoon: Issuing Effective Trigger Warnings, and Making A Stand Against Microaggressions, Or Else.
I want to go to the other extreme - UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley has been targeted by right wingers in order to undermine its reputation. UC Berkeley is one of the finest public institutions, of any type, anywhere in the world (*). It is one of the top universities in the world, and it's public, paid for by California and US taxpayers, in order to make the world a better place. It is a shining example of the good that government can achieve. So right wingers hate it. Right wingers have been trying to set up Berkeley as opposed to free speech for some years now. They book talks there, and then if the talk gets shouted down, they go to the right wing wurlitzer (Breitbart, Infowars, Fox News, etc.) and talk about how Berkeley is against freedom. If protestors show up, same thing. If someone gets hurt, they claim victim status. And if nothing bad happens, they strut around like they own the place. It is said that the best antidote to hate speech is more speech, but by the time a grown-ass adult has decided to be a Nazi or a fascist, assuming they're not developmentally disabled, if they looked at the options and said to themselves, you know, those Nazis make a lot of sense - more speech isn't going to fix that. There's no debate to be had with someone whose idea of a debate is, "should we execute all the black people in America, or just round them up and send them back to Africa?", any more than there is a way to debate the monkey at the zoo who flings poo at you, or win the proverbial chess match against the pigeon. Here's an example. That jackass Milo promoted a "free speech event" at Berkeley last month, but given that they never paid the required fees, and announced speakers who said they weren't actually going to be there, the whole thing appears to be trolling - it was never meant to happen. And still, Milo claims that the university cancelled the events, and the right wing wurlitzer gleefully promotes that story, painting Milo as a victim and Berkeley as opposed to free speech. Berkeley was in a no-win situation - they gave Milo extra time to come up with the fees, and he still didn't; they called in extra security to deal with the inevitable protestors, costing them (i.e. us, the taxpayers) extra money; but they can't make Milo not lie about what happened, and they can't stop Fox News from publishing pieces that say Berkeley is to blame. So the end result is that a big chunk of America thinks that UC Berkeley is not a top public institution, but an anti-American place that hates freedom and apparently supports Al Queda, or something. I mean, ask a Fox News viewer if they would let their child attend Berkeley - chances are excellent they will say "no". (*) Seriously. Name some other public institutions that have contributed as much to the world as UC Berkeley. The Center for Disease Control and NASA are a couple of institutions that do nothing but good and/or achieve greatness, but I'm having a hard time thinking of other examples.
Oh, I totally agree that these fascist stunts to speak at Berkeley are nothing more than attempts to generate propaganda. There is no attempt at academic dialogue. In the case of Milo, he should be banned from campuses altogether. Not for his opinions. But it's well documented that Milo has targeted students personally and by name in his speeches. He has made fun of students by name for their sexuality or beliefs. That has no place in an academic setting. Students are paying good money to study, not to be personally targeted by guest speakers. As soon as Milo crossed that line, he should have been black balled. In fact to me it shows how tolerant the university administrators are trying to be by still tolerating these stunts.
Not that anyone should be surprised of this A video shows Milo Yiannopoulos singing “America the Beautiful” at a bar in 2016 as a crowd, including Richard Spencer, makes Nazi salutes pic.twitter.com/UjLXTvlDnp— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 5, 2017
Totally agree as well, but as your first post implies, the ACLU isn't Milo Yiannopolis. Still don't have time to weigh in.
I would love to talk about this but I have six student meetings with juniors trying to teach them how to write.
CCNY back in the day: Dr. John O'Keefe, a 1963 alumnus of The City College of New York, was today awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is CCNY's tenth Nobel laureate. CCNY's nine previous Nobel Laureates are: Dr. Julius Axelrod, '33 (medicine 1970); Dr. Robert Hofstadter, '35 (physics 1961); Dr. Jerome Karle, '37 (chemistry 1985); Dr. Herbert A. Hauptman, '37 (chemistry 1985); Dr. Arthur Kornberg, '37 (medicine 1959); Dr. Kenneth Arrow, '40 (economics 1972); Dr. Leon M. Lederman, '43 (physics 1988) Dr. Arno A. Penzias, '54 (physics 1978); Dr. Robert J. Aumann, '50 (economics 2005)
An interesting editorial from the NYT's Michele Goldberg.... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/...-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0 Her conclusion... I understand that for a lot of young leftists, it doesn’t make sense to equate what they see as hate speech with the speech of the oppressed. It’s harder for me to understand why they think that if First Amendment protections are weakened, the left — and not, say, the Trump administration — will be allowed to define what is hateful and what is not. After all, it is extremely common to hear people on the right describe Black Lives Matter as a hate group. A Louisiana police officer injured in a protest against police brutality recently tried to sue the movement and one of its most prominent members for incitement. It’s certainly true that it’s easier to enjoy free speech when you’re privileged. It doesn’t follow from that, however, that eroding free speech protections helps the vulnerable. When disputes about free speech are adjudicated not according to broad principles but according to who has power, the left will mostly lose. If the students at William and Mary aren’t frightened off activism by their experience with national notoriety, they’ll probably learn that soon enough. Luckily, if they ever do come face to face with forces determined to shut them up, the A.C.L.U. will be there.
Many on the young left do not want debate (that time is over, they want action). They have the gospel of "woke" anyone that disagrees is not only wrong but evil, racist, an enemy that does not deserve an opinion. What could go wrong with such a radical religious beliefs.
Well, they shared that honor with a few other schools: LIU, NYU, Manhattan, as well as Bradley and a few other midwestern colleges.
I've always suspected that the NCAA title surpassed the NIT title due to the New York-centricness of the scandal. Coaches didn't want to take their poor, impressionable farm boys to New York anymore. I think it's kind of funny the way the NCAA conflates "national championship" with "NCAA championship" in the era before 1952 or so. Yeah, I know, hardly the most corrupt aspect of the NCAA...but still funny. If you want to piss off a Kentucky fan, point out that 3 of their championships came in an era when the NIT winner was just as much a national champion as the NCAA winner. In fact, in one of those years, Kentucky fell into the NCAA after losing in the NIT.
Nearly a fifth of students think it acceptable to shut down unacceptable speech with violence https://t.co/bKJEP5nTxN— The Economist (@TheEconomist) October 14, 2017
This is not a strong period for campus activism. Young voter turnout, although up slightly in 2016, is down sharply from that of the Sixties. The college kids are not very important for elections. And the public perception is low; even many lefties distance themselves from the campus doings, and the right (and center) is universally contemptuous. They appear, by and large, to be talking to themselves.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-if-trump-proposed-it/?utm_term=.5d7df7d0e966 So yeah, sure. 20% of college students favor something undemocratic. Half of Republicans favor something undemocratic. Sounds terrible. But fifteen years ago half of America wanted to criminalize sodomy. So we're not doing terrible on all fronts.
Agree with Brummie -- 20% isn't a very large number. The problem for college activism is that, correctly or not, the public perception is those people come from the left, and in particularly from the active left -- the SJWs. I doubt that is largely true, or even perhaps even modestly true. I also doubt that the campus right believes any more about free speech than does the left. But such is the perception.
Seriously. Midterms and finals are brutal on grandparents. Also during those periods, the suicide rate skyrockets among the "friend of a friend" demographic.