It's good they're talking about this. But I'm surprised there's no mention of the "more speech" quote, how old this issue is, and how clearly the solution has been declared by the supreme court over the years (discussion not silence).
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." -- Justice Brandeis, 1927.
Many people seem to have forgotten about the Nazis vs. Village of Skokie case from the 70's. The Nazis were defended by the ACLU. This idea that "hate speech" isn't protected by the 1st amendment is a weird development that has no basis in law.
This is maybe orthogonal to the point, but i receive more than a little bed-time satisfaction by reading supreme court decisions. Those judges ain't dummies!
"The first step is to remind our students and colleagues that those who hold views contrary to one’s own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand things that we do not."
In a single word: empathize
This is a growing problem in far places more than just universities. It's amplified by the filter bubbles in which most of us participate, whether we realize it or not, thanks to social media and targeted advertising.
Before you can empathize you have to be sincerely curious, "What is it that they're seeing that I don't?". Unfortunately the lack of intellectual curiosity, the disinterest in thinking critically, is something that has infected universities from the outside and universities have been powerless to stop it.
Personally my favorite memory of college was talking politics with a professor who was opposite of me on the traditional political spectrum on almost everything. We enjoyed talking to each other, we argued quite a bit, but I learned a lot. The most important thing I learned was that despite all of our differences we agreed on more than I would have possibly imagined.
I enjoy a friendly political debate, but only in very small groups. Beyond 2-4 people and it's difficult for everyone present to participate enough to feel they're genuinely being heard.
A one-on-one conversation with a college professor sounds excellent. On the other hand, I'm having difficulty thinking of any particular area where it would be beneficial to have an entire institution limiting itself to a single belief.
That is not a universal truth. It can often be true. In the real world there is also hate speech, lying, cheating, and bullying and it is far from rare. You need to figure out which one it is.
And in order to be able to do so you have to exposed to all of the above...as well as legitimate viewpoints that can be conflated with all of the above.
Reminds me that supposedly debate in Greece originated in trying to convince others of your side rather than as a means of understanding the other side.
If you go to high school debate you see this played out. Neither side arrives at the truth and many viewpoints favoring neither side get left out.
Agreed. The tendency to cling to views and debate rather than pursue truth is extremely unfortunate. Sam Harris gave a talk on this subject that I found quite interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOL3kUHjp2Y
More to the point, communication is necessary for empathy, and thus reason. If you don't tell me what you think and engage me in dialog, there's no way for me to come to an understanding of your manner of thinking and thus synthesize a compromise between our opposing viewpoints.
Instead, what I encounter more often is if I don't immediately agree with someone they say, "we have to agree to disagree." Which is no agreement at all. It's shutting down communication and preventing me from understanding why we disagree. I learn nothing from people who say that to me and find it frustrating.
The word "reason" (or its friend, "logic") is misused so many times that it has become basically a marketing term. The most outrageous instigators branded themselves with "reason", from Nazi to Marxists to 9/11 hoaxers to alt-right.
Have you ever heard someone arguing "Reason is on their side"?
> You automatically lose an argument if you refuse to engage with your detractor.
Nah. If someone who believes the Earth is flat is willing to spend 12 hours a day arguing on forums, your best move is to refuse to engage. You will never convince them, and they will always outlast you and feel victorious.
I think it was meant more in the general sense, not the absolute. Naturally you have to ascertain the good faith and sanity of your potential counterpart, but in general, there's a difference between attempting to have a discussion and being unable to find common ground in a reasonable time frame and flat out refusing to engage with someone whose beliefs you've illegitimately labeled taboo.
The issue is not that people make a serious and earnest effort to understand the opposing side, but tire before they're able to understand the other POV. The issue is rather that they apply one or more of a handful of ethereal, unfalsifiable labels to their opponent, and then believe that gives them license to dismiss the opponent's POV out of hand without addressing or processing it.
When such people hear something challenging to their favored notions, instead of saying "Wow, I'll need to think about that", they say "You're a [bigot|racist|%phobe|redneck|yuppie|commie|socialist|...].", mutter additional insults under their breath, tell you not to try to show your disgusting ignorant face around here anymore or else, and pat themselves on the back for their righteousness while they walk away.
Sure, you should try to pause and understand someone's opinion. But equally important is not doing that ad infinitum. Some people are just wrong. Rejecting someone's arguments entirely should be done very sparingly, but sometimes it's a valid option.
Oh god ^this. There is a particularly broken specimen of human on a skeptical website who's username reflects his obsession, "Sfseaserpent". He believes that there is a sea serpent, essentially a biblical dragon, living in the San Francisco bay. There is no amount of debating or reasoning which can move him one iota, and the most you can achieve is to cause him to stop acknowledging your existence for a time.
I have had experience elsewhere with someone who trolls various forums in an effort to spread the "good word" about Jehova. Sometimes, "The only winning move is not to play." It's not always the case, and sure, that line can be used as an excuse by people in bad faith to avoid an argument; it's still the prudent course sometimes.
This sounds like the textbook definition of trolling. If you honestly believe the sea serpent guy I think you're probably the one being taken for a ride. You're right with the Wargames quote in any case though.
I've never engaged with him personally, but having seen him over literally many years, I doubt that he's anything other than a sincere maniac. He's not good at getting a rise out of people... he always ends up being the one to lose his temper and flame OUT. Same with the Jehovah's Witness.
Trolls are there, all over the place, but there are "True Believers" too, and they're even more immovable and pointless.
No matter how much a university in 2017 might laud free speech, that university is not going to invite a speaker who openly advocates for genocide.
When you accept this, you accept that "censorship" is unavoidable. Some ideas will not be given a platform because of that platform's perceived (correctly or not) distance from the mainstream. There is no society that has ever existed where this is not the case.
So the question is: which views should be denied a platform?
Obviously there's no perfect way to answer this question, but it seems to me that the solution to this problem isn't as difficult as this essay claims. I think that, quite clearly, the criteria that define acceptable speech on a college campus need to change. Specifically, those criteria must expand. Dissenting views need to be given a platform, even if they make some students uncomfortable.
The best way to deal with a speaker who openly advocates for genocide is to let them be heard and be rejected on the (lack of) merits of their argument.
Would decent people --intelligent students at a university-- truly buy into these arguments? I think not.
What's to fear, then?
The best approach is to actually invite them to make a presentation and thank them profusely for coming. I would start the presentation with a sustained five minute applause.
Imagine, then, the message that would be sent to, say, a white supremacist speaker who, after being received in this fashion watches the entire venue slowly and quietly empty without saying a word until they are speaking to a bunch of empty chairs.
A voluntarily empty hall, not by force, not by burning down the town, is the best vaccination against these people.
So, yes, this means opening the doors to what we might consider to be hateful. Unless we have a fundamental lack of faith in the quality and intelligence of the student body the best approach is to let these speakers in and let them experience talking in an empty room.
Maybe a few will want to listen to them. So what?
Intelligent, quiet and non-violent rejection, that's the way to do it.
As a prof, I just don't understand why people in this discussion think I should be spending part of the $4,000 allotted for a year's worth of travel funding for speakers on some genocide advocate. And then I gotta host 'em and take 'em out for dinner because that's the polite thing to do? No thanks. On the institution side, we invite people we want to do research with or who will talk to our classes about something useful. Fundamentally self- or student-serving, but not idealistic, because there are tenure and promotion packets to be written.
Say a student group invites the genocide advocate, because they've got time for that. Then another student group wants to protest, because they've got time for that. There are the student groups who will want to protest your way and the student groups who will want to yell so loud that the speaker can't be heard, and these groups won't agree. People will start complaining to the faculty advisors about X inviting Y and Z shouting down Y and W not standing up enough to Y and X, and it will get out on social media, and you'll read about the brouhaha a few days later when the event is cancelled because the admin just doesn't want to deal with the headache and the costs.
I tend to agree with you that the empty hall is the best vaccination. It just requires a coordination among the student body that would be remarkable, that would require real leadership from someone who saw this all coming. People are so mired in the day-to-day that this leadership is generally lacking. How to foster it, if that's what we want?
I realize the problem is complex, partly because it has been allowed to devolve into what it looks like today.
Silly idea: Each group gets to pick one speaker to invite. They all have to accept what other groups picked. If group A wants to boycott group B's choice then both speakers are eliminated and they both have to choose new speakers. Yes, it will be carnage at first, but very soon everyone is going to realize they have to play nice with each other or nobody gets a speaker, ever.
Then there's education. Each group has to publish a one page summary profiling the speaker and what he/she will discuss. This will serve to allow others to decide whether they want to go listen or not.
Finally, occupancy. If a speaker can't attract a certain audience size, say, 25% of available seats, the group's rating is reduced which means other groups have priority over them.
It's a complicated mish-mash of stuff. I know. And probably impossible to implement. The point is that there must be a way to game-ify this business of speakers on campus in order to avoid conflicts and operate under a set of well understood rules. Prohibit all demonstrations in the name of tolerance.
The idea is to support free speech while having some kind of a self-regulating system that does not require yelling and screaming at each other or worst. There's also a degree of forced tolerance, which, sad to say, is necessary. Universities have become almost the worst example of intolerance and bigotry in our society. They have to force themselves to peacefully allow other ideology to have a stage. This is important.
This doesn't mean endorsing anyone at all.
With regards to the funding available to pay for travel for speakers, I think the regrettable reality is that if we are going to respect the concept of free speech we need to accept the idea that we have to listen to those we might consider to be repugnant. At least for a little bit.
Free speech does not guarantee an audience. If we invite and pay for a white supremacist to give a speech, applaud them at the start of the speech and just walk out without saying a word...well, these people need an audience. They'd catch on pretty quickly that you made complete fools out of them with this move.
The university might waste some money the first year this approach is taken. Very soon the crazies are going to come back and say "no thanks, not interested in giving a talk". In other words, invite them, house them, feed them, even embrace them and take a picture with them...and then give them an empty room to talk about anything they want to talk about.
Simple, peaceful and, I think, very powerful. The crazies would have no audiences but intelligent contrasting ideas would and that's exactly what you want.
You want students to not live in an echo chamber yet you want a degree of control of the quality of the material they are exposed to.
Also, another quick point: The empty hall treatment completely disarms the crazies. In sharp contrast to that, rioting in the streets, burning cars and vandalizing businesses generates huge media attention and elevates the crazies. In other words, the protest is actually great marketing for the nut-case whereas the empty hall treatment ridicules them and makes them irrelevant, nobody will be interested in covering them at all.
I think that, with modifications, this is a good strategy.
> Would decent people --intelligent students at a university-- truly buy into these arguments? I think not.
The origin of the term 'genocide' arose out of eugenics ('geno'). Eugenics was primarily 'educated' people making fancy sounding (though largely incorrect) arguments which started with justifying sterilization and ended up justifying euthanasia for the 'greater good'.
Critical thinking is not the default state of humans in any group and otherwise decent people have bought into dangerous ideas before.
> The origin of the term 'genocide' arose out of eugenics ('geno').
You've got the etymology confused. 'geno-' comes from Grk 'genos', which means race/tribe. Genocide refers to ethnic killings. Eugenics ('eu' good + 'gen-' race/tribe) refers to the goal of achieving 'better races' and methods to achieve them. Unfortunately those methods involve pruning perceived bad seeds.
They come from the same root word, but genocide isn't derived from eugenics.
Thanks - looks like I was wrong about the etymology. I'd read the term itself was created in response to what the nazis did, a lot of which started under the guise of eugenics.
I don't see any good reason for universities to use different standards than the courts have used for the first amendment -- open calls for violence can be censored (your genocide example), just about everything else is fair game.
Of course, the speakers with the most universally unpalatable views aren't going to get invited (by student groups) because they won't get enough attendees to fill an auditorium or be worth the hassle. But that's unrelated to whether the university should allow it.
Why are open calls to violence the standard? How marked does the call need to be? What does the violence need to look like? Is displacing people a violent act? Is yelling abuse at people a violent act - or are we so naive that only direct physical contact constitutes a violent act?
This is not an easy problem, and 'open calls to violence' are not a trivial solution.
I also fear universities which seek to over-represent minority points for the sake of balance, in the same way that news programs often do.
I think the line has to be physical violence, else we'd allow very few people to speak as any other interpretation kind of dismisses just about anything and everything:
Open calls to genocide are legitimate speech protected by the first amendment. Only speech likely to produce imminent lawless action is banned---so there has to be a target and a plausibly exhorted actor right there.
Taking this as a given, lets accept and openly acknowledge that universities are not seekers of truth, but rather political and social actors seeking to serve their own interests. Any claims they make otherwise are just propaganda.
Of course with this in mind, it's significantly harder to oppose Trump's proposal to defund Berkeley (or whichever college). Why is taxpayer support for a political advocacy group somehow sacrosanct?
No universities are seekers of truth and knowledge, even a cursory glance at the progress of knowledge and understanding will demonstrate this to be true. I mean, seriously, where would technology be without universities? Don't let your political ideology blind you to the actual world that we live in.
The issue is the unwillingness of those attending to take advantage of the full diversity of views and life experiences that university life has to offer.
It's unreasonable to claim to be seekers of truth and knowledge when asking for money (as you are) and then immediately eschew those ideals when Milo comes to speak (as tps5 is doing).
Except Milo is a professional troll interested in self-promotion, not knowledge and truth.
Most importantly though you are taking a simplistic all or nothing approach where any (perceived) transgression disqualifies the entire history of knowledge seeking and sharing of ideas.
I'm saying that if universities want to ask for money based on claims that they are about knowledge and the sharing of ideas, then they should be held responsible when they fail to uphold those ideals. In much the same way, I want to very strictly ensure that the police uphold the law. The police hold a privileged position and they should be held to stricter standards.
Socrates was also a professional troll. Should he (if he were not mortal) be barred from universities?
As for Milo, I've never watched him until yesterday. I saw a bunch of journalists claiming he supported pedophilia, yet refusing to quote him or even link to the video. So I figured I was being mislead (I was!) and watched the actual video.
While he is full of hyperbole, flamboyance and ridiculousness, he's also making valid points mixed in with it. For example, one of his major points is that the left wing identity politics is just a rhetorical weapon, not a real principle - that's why a "flaming queer" like him isn't allowed to hide behind it.
No, you're trying to claim that they are not upholding those ideals by citing the actions against an individual whose occupation is not guided by these ideals, and in the process you want to discredit Universities ENTIRELY as a result. It's absurd.
LOL @ Socrates being a professional troll. I feel like I'm being trolled when I read stuff like this...
So you were citing the treatment of someone whom "who had never watched until yesterday" in support of your claim about Universities and open acceptance of ideas. That's a pretty good summation of how ideologically driven your arguments are.
It sure didn't stop him from trying to hide behind "being a child abuse victim" to excuse his behavior. But that just makes him a hypocrite, what makes him a troll is that whatever "valid points" he has serves the interest of provocation, not discussion.
My first comment was discrediting universities entirely conditional on tps5's claim that they are merely political actors, same as anyone else.
I favor free speech, free thought and open inquiry even for ideas that I feel are harmful or dishonest. I want universities to be bastions of these values.
For example, although feminists are far more dishonest than Milo and far more hostile to open inquiry and free thought, I still favor allowing them to speak at universities. They should even have the right to criticize specific individuals (like Milo was going to) and argue against the very freedom that allows them to speak.
My knowledge of a specific speaker is completely irrelevant, because the argument I'm making has nothing whatsoever to do with who the speaker is or the content of his talk.
Universities are educational institutions, and invited speakers are invited by little committees made up of professors, students, administrators, and board members. The chemistry dept has some speaker series and they figure hey we gotta please the physical chemists and the polymer chemists and give a spot to the organic chem folks, and oh our students are getting hired by a lot of pharma companies recently so let's have some industry speaker from pharma, and we ought to have some alumni & some networking thing. Some activist group will have a committee and will decide to focus on (whatever). The student activities board will have something and will have some pro-Trump kid advocating for inviting Milo and some first-generation immigrant kid advocating for someone else and some other kid advocating for Natalie Portman.
I've been on a bunch of these little committees. It's a combo of who has a bee in their bonnet, what speakers fit the schedule, and who will talk for free or for cheap if we can't get funding for high-profile speakers. We've managed to get Nobel Prize winners because they were in town for another speaking engagement at the right time and we could broker a deal. You seem to imply that there's a big institution-wide agreement to serve some institution-wide set of interests. On a mundane level, this simply isn't true. You're seeing the outside of a bunch of misfit cats scrapping for meager amounts of cash and drawing some pretty grand conclusions. Patterns emerge out of this system but they're not, in general, intentional or under the control of any single entity.
When you accept this, you accept that "censorship" is unavoidable.
Your scare quotes indicate that when you say "censorship" you mean "the right to choose which points of view I/we will legitimize," I guess? Or "not censorship at all as it turns out?"
Dissenting views need to be given a platform, even if they make some students uncomfortable.
Should newspapers be forced to print my letters to the editor, even if they are a bunch of fevered ravings, because my incoherent hate-screeds need to be given a platform?
If you want to promote unpopular points of view, you may have to build your own platform. And 2017 is actually the best time in history for this very thing, and people who do no-kidding advocate genocide seem to have no trouble banding together and making their arguments available to anyone who's interested.
I don't understand how you got this out of my post. I clearly said that some speech will be denied a platform, and that's an unavoidable feature of communities of people living together.
All I said is that we need to step back and reassess what is being denied a platform, today, and whether we're denying too much speech a platform and dismissing too much speech as "fevered ravings."
I clearly said that some speech will be denied a platform...
What does it mean to you when you say that something has been "denied a platform?" It seems to me that the very notion depends on the assumption that ideas have some sort of natural right to an audience and outside support.
But your unpopular ideas do not entitle you to special outside help. You may have to build a platform for your unpopular idea, as was the case for so many once-unpopular ideas in history. That's what it means to be unpopular. It might be a lot of work. Nobody owes your idea a donation of that work.
The notion that some ideas are "denied a platform" today is both inaccurate and incoherent. No one has the right, the authority, or the power to "deny a platform" to a particular idea in general.
While I don't disagree with the substance of this essay -- I think this point needs to be made, and this discussion needs to be had -- it's very difficult to offer "open forums for contentious debate" when certain speakers have built showmanship out of their propensity to offend. This fits most definitions of deliberate trolling, and isn't a productive recipe for reasoned debate, protests and boycotts by the populace drive home the point that the speaker's views are already well-known, and not welcome at all.
Similarly, some brave institutions may decide to host speakers that are near-universally condemned for views that society has decided to be abhorrent. By giving such speakers a forum, they're endorsing that such views are worthy of being heard or debated, whether they are enthused by those ramifications or not. Such behavior requires calculated risk, risk that may pay off if attitudes change in the future.
Yeah, he has a point in the abstract, but this would have been better timed before Steve Bannon took over the executive branch and basically broke the Overton window.
It's intellectually lazy to dismiss views via ad-hominem attacks, but it's also intellectually lazy to consider all views morally equivalent. White supremacy has entered the political discourse and it does not deserve equal time.
The problem as I see it, is that suppressing certain points of view because of they are abhorrent, using ad hominems, or social or economic pressures - looks identical to suppressing more legitimate points of view for malicious reasons.
The only way to really reliably tell the difference is to look at the actual substance of the points of view - which is the thing very thing attacks push to the side.
Once you have a moral compass that is not even open to debate, it is a short step to suppressing all debate and even persecution of the "filthy scum" that dare question your morals.
That's quite a grab bag. Should we throw in radical veganism, Zionism, and libertarianism too? How are you going to measure the "moral equivalency" or non-equivalency of these positions?
So, to get started, these are all objects in some category, but I'm not sure what the defining features of this category are. They all have beliefs about groups of people, sort of (libertarianism going for "all individuals" often, veganism involving animals on par with people with respect to certain rights). Several involve thoughts on government (black nationalism, Zionism, libertarianism) and others don't (white supremacy, feminism, veganism) so that can't quite be it. Some explicitly put down other groups ("supremacy" is a giveaway) and others don't (feminism doesn't, black nationalism often doesn't, depends on the flavor of veganism and Zionism).
Even if you leave out my additions, what makes feminism, black nationalism, and white supremacy comparable? Why did you put them together? One's racist, one's separatist, and one is about equality; they don't have the same relationships to governance; going back to category theory how are you going to construct morphisms between these to compare them?
Which is what I was trying to get at - I don't think that identity politics are useful anymore in the modern age we live in.
What's inconsistent to me is if one accepts the moral superiority of one type of identity politics over another. Either you accept them all or you categorically deny them all.
> Either you accept them all or you categorically deny them all.
"Identity politics" is not about what people say, it's about how they organize. It neither validates nor invalidates one's arguments. I reject your assertion.
That's an opinion. I've seen quite a few feminists committed to blanket assumptions of what's wrong with men, or that feminism requires women be chosen over men, as opposed to having equal opportunity. It is entirely possible to see certain feminists in much the same vein as I'd evaluate a white supremacist.
Bear in mind, there's a "feminist" out there who's advocated for reducing the male population of the earth by 90%. Obviously a radical example, but my point is, you can treat these widespread viewpoints as cut and dry as you've placed them.
What kind of question is that? Only the most ridiculous strawman of feminism could compare to __ supremacy. (I won't address "black nationalism" because the term is too unspecific.)
> By giving such speakers a forum, they're endorsing that such views are worthy of being heard or debated
No, they're not. In almost all cases speakers at a University are invited by a group of individuals, be it a student group or some other association. They are the ones who are saying the speaker has ideas worthy of discussion. If a University has any respect for diversity of opinion, it will refrain from suppressing any significant subgroup within its walls.
But university students should be exposed to 'deliberate trolling'. They are supposed to be developing critical thinking skills so they should be able to realize on their own that they are being trolled and leave the speech/room/whatever.
The current environment in universities is such that students are protected from ever dealing with uncomfortable topics, which leaves them inadequately prepared to intellectually engage them in the real world.
I work at a university and don't find that my students are protected from dealing with uncomfortable topics. I do find that they're more willing to talk about uncomfortable topics than in the past -- people say they don't like x or y and do like z or w rather than simply remaining politely silent as they have in other times.
There seems to be an idea that you have to listen silently with socially-appropriate nodding to speakers about uncomfortable topics in order to have "dealt with them", and instead a lot of students argue back these days. Which is better, lie back & listen or have a discussion? While it's occasionally uncomfortable to have students argue with me, it's much less a waste of my time than talking to a room of cell-phone-illuminated slack expressions.
>a lot of students argue back these days. Which is better, lie back & listen or have a discussion?
Arguing back is great! What's not is petitioning to have you banned from the campus or punished in a title 9 inquisition[1] because the topics you taught made them uncomfortable.
If you read the petition, it doesn't say anything about being banned from campus [1].
The title IX investigation was ridiculously mishandled, agreed, and the two grad student complainants also allege it was mishandled [2]. The whole thing involves at least 4 title IX investigations and four+ lawsuits if you're going to count the original sexual harassment lawsuits Kipnis wrote about in her Chronicle article (which is where she made the initial factual errors that led to some of the subsequent title IX complaints). I have to say, none of this was about anything she taught: it was about her commentary in a national publication on specific ongoing harassment lawsuits and countersuits.
"By giving such speakers a forum, they're endorsing that such views are worthy of being heard or debated"
Exactly. Free and open debate of controversial ideas, however heinous, say in a classroom setting is very different from actively providing hate-mongers a prominent forum from which to spread their hate. Former is academic freedom, the latter is a political decision.
A couple of days ago, I was reading a status update from my Chinese friend (who is quite intelligent) about Chinese students protesting Dalai Lama's graduation speech at UC San Diego [1] under the name of inclusion and diversity. For anyone who isn't familiar with the affairs, Dalai Lama is exiled from Tibet which is considered part of China in many Chinese people's point of view.
One of his arguments was that people have blocked anti-LGBT rights and anti-BLM people because it hurts the feelings of the students in respective groups. Then, why is it not reasonable to block the Dalai Lama because it hurts the feelings of many Chinese students on campus?
After reading that, I sighed really loudly and went on with my day.
I mostly buy this and see the problem. I wonder though if the "marketplace of ideas" will become a naive notion. If the memetic success of an idea becomes totally uncoupled from its truth or virtue, then evolution will not select memes that benefit us. We are exposed to way more high fitness memes than ever before, and I'm not sure we are capable of effectively resisting them. We are becoming unwitting hosts.
In a world of weaponized memes, the battlegrounds may be entirely in controlling their exposure and thus their R0.
The success of ideas having real-world impact, are never uncoupled from reality. Memes, as Genes, impact the real world, so Reality and Reason can determine fitness.
Maybe, but I worry that we are now exposed to more memes than lived experiences, so their power to overcome reality is increased. People have extremely strong opinions about things they have no first hand exposure to. I worry that the increase in polarization is simply people having opinions about more things. If that's the cause, I don't see a way back.
In "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" one of the most important habits (my opinion) is:
"Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood"
This is incredibly important and it can only be achieved through dialogue. Regrettably our universities have become some of the most intolerant and bigoted mono-culture environments around. What kids are exposed to is nothing less than indoctrination with caustic effects. These kids don't arrive at university with such ideologies but the ideas are pounded into their heads by often-militant professors who, due to their twisted, intolerant and one-sided ideology should, in reality, be kept as far away from kids as humanly possible.
Yet, as the article states, universities have, over time, become echo chambers for a single world view that is violently intolerant of anything that does not align with their ideology. This is wrong and it will eventually have consequences, again, as explained in the article.
I think it's rather odd to take a stand for "everyone's right to speak" when many speakers openly hate liberal institutions and really don't seem to have any regard for facts or knowledge. Platforms to speech is what gives these people power, and if teachers and students say they don't want to condone those views, tied with racism and sexism, I think that should be respected. What happens when we give these people (alt right, bigots, etc) platforms is they get followers.
Look at the British National Party, they were piratically nothing until the BBC decided to massively increase their coverage. Was the BBC's coverage fair and impartial? Probably, but just giving them the attention causes people to look into their platform and realize blaming everyone else is a pretty comforting thing to do rather than take responsibility.
The deep question is who should be the gatekeepers, and I guess John Etchemendy is saying it shouldn't be universities. Perhaps he's right in a way, the board shouldn't be making those decisions. I do think the faculty and students do have a right and duty to though as giving platforms for hate speech empowers it.
> What happens when we give these people (alt right, bigots, etc) platforms is they get followers.
Who are you to draw that line? This argument hinges on the belief that people attending these universities are not capable of critical and rational thought and should therefore be treated like children via a curated and censored list of speakers.
If you do believe that, then I hope you see that censorship does nothing but perpetuate a cycle of intellectual infantilism.
Have some faith in the truth. If it is true, then it will stand on its own, and if it is false it will eventually be exposed. For that to happen there must be debate.
I took his article as a statement against university protests against speakers, Milo most recently comes to mind.
Many faculty and students were against him speaking and protested. While my opinion on it certainly does not matter, I think those staff and students do have a say and should matter.
We cannot and should not say voices of protest should be ignored so hateful speakers get a platform. You may have faith in "rationality" winning out but I really don't. People really fall victim easily to blaming outside groups and get stirred up by hate speech.
That sounds like even more of a reason for universities to take the lead in protest and standing up against bigots, other wise that anger and desire for change can get eaten up by bigots.
>Platforms to speech is what gives these people power
This just isn't true: these people already have power. When bad ideas already have a following, attempting to silence them isn't denying them power but reenforcing it as silencing becomes a rallying cry.
Bad ideas fall to reasoned debate. Bad ideas thrive when they inherently have a subconscious or emotional appeal and are allowed to spread in isolated communities and are never challenged in open forums. Denying them platforms isn't going to stop the spread of these ideas (the internet is still a thing). It just passes up on another opportunity to challenge those ideas head on and gives the charlatans another instance of suppression to use as a rallying cry.
Perhaps what students should insist on is instead of giving them an open platform to speak, invite them to a debate. Force them to defend their ideas under harsh scrutiny.
No, they don't. For that to work, this requires the proponents of bad ideas to respond to logic, and for the acolytes of reprehensible ideas to be ashamed of what they are doing.
The skinhead shouting "Hitler did nothing wrong" isn't going to back down when you call him out for what he is, and he isn't going to be convinced by logic, facts, or rationality.
If he were, the second world war would have been called "World Rational Debate Competition, Part II."
Likewise, the religious fundamentalist isn't going to back down, or stop preaching hate, just because you point out the absurdities and inconsistencies in his holy book, or the hypocrisy in his prattle.
For some reason, though, liberals are falling head-over-heels to defend the right of the former to amplify his message.
Freedom of political discourse is not fundamentally incompatible with zero tolerance of fascism - just like freedom of religion is not fundamentally incompatible with zero tolerance of violent fanaticism.
What is fundamentally incompatible in a tolerant society, is toleration of intolerance.
>No, they don't. For that to work, this requires the proponents of bad ideas to respond to logic
You're missing what's at stake here. It is emphatically not to convince the speaker he is wrong. Often times they have ulterior motives at play that prevent them from recognizing or acknowledging that they were wrong. The point is to convince those who are on the fence or otherwise could be persuaded by the bad ideas. Seeing someone like Milo get pummeled in a debate does incredible damage to his brand and his ideas. It may do absolutely nothing to convince Milo he's wrong, but the ideas he's espousing now have resistance in the minds of potential followers.
Give potential followers the mental tools to resist the appeal of these messages, and the ideas die out with the hardliners.
> Seeing someone like Milo get pummeled in a debate
Milo doesn't host events so that he can be debated. He hosts these events so he can preach to the choir.
It's not like he showed up to a meeting of the debate club - he's holding what is, essentially, a political rally.
I repeat - they are not debates. They are lectures, speeches, whatever the hell you want to call them - but no part of them leave open the possibility that Milo will be proven wrong.
You can't openly engage with someone who is not willing to listen to reason - or someone who is not willing to listen, at all. He doesn't care to stand up to public scrutiny, or discourse - only to have a megaphone.
"Seeing someone like Milo get pummeled in a debate does incredible damage to his brand and his ideas."
Internet trolls are not visiting universities to engage in vigorous intellectual debate in good faith. They're on campus to raise their profile and gain a patina of respectability. They are entitled to their free speech. They are not entitled to get access to large platforms to spread their message of hate.
> For some reason, though, liberals are falling head-over-heels to defend the right of the former to amplify his message.
I think this has to be the most galling thing to see among so many of my liberal (of course white) friends and family: coming out strongly to support Milo's right to speak at a college campus.
A lot of them were pretty quiet too during BLM protests but they felt it was their civic duty to say everyone should have a right to speak their view. I know those people too, and they view themselves as very progressive, but when you decide to most vociferously defend the free speech of Nazi's over minority voices, what the hell have you become?
"What is fundamentally incompatible in a tolerant society, is toleration of intolerance."
This. My love of free speech and a free exchange of ideas is entirely compatible with my refusal to allow my platform to amplify messages of hatred that I find repugnant.
I'm of course not literally calling it "my" platform. I'm pointing out that the student body and faculty of the university (or the TV show host, or the convention organizer or what have you), they are the owners of the respective platforms. And they get to choose who to allow and who not to allow to attach themselves with their brand name.
In case there are any illusions, the hate-mongering trolls are not there to engage in intellectually vigorous debate. They are there to buy themselves a patina of respectability by attaching themselves to these respectable brand names. These institutions would be fools to allow themselves to be used that way.
I disagree. I think it is in the benefit of the platforms themselves (e.g. Twitter) to promote equality, tolerance (to different points of view) and freedom of speech, especially to those they disagree with (e.g. Milo). IME it's the "tolerant liberals" that don't even try to engage in intellectually vigorous debate (they'd rather protest, ban, shout, fire their oponents, or call them "hate-mongering trolls").
History has taught "tolerant liberals" to be vigilant of the fascists when they try to take advantage of machinery of a liberal democracy to further their intolerant agendas. We've decided not to fall for it one more time, no matter how much the would-be fascist supporters try to harangue us with that "tolerant liberal" line.
Surprisingly, though, history hasn't taught "liberals" that supression of the freedom of speech and thought control are predominantly fascist (well, totalitarian really - communists used them as well) tactics.
History also hasn't taught "liberals" that words loose meaning if you overuse them. If every man is a "rapist", every comedian is a "racist" and everyone who oposes illegal immigration is a "fascist", those words lose all meaning.
Clearly not. Haven't we learnt anything from the recent victory of bad, horrible hateful ideas on the platform of media manipulation and louder-than-thou debating techniques?
But what's the mechanism that allows bad ideas to spread? It's not that they're winning the debate, it's that they're avoiding the debate altogether. The mediums that spread these bad ideas tend to be bad at debate but good at spreading ideas with an inherently viral quality.
Exactly. They're not on campus (or a CPAC meeting, or a TV show or whatever) for "reasoned debate". They're there to raise their profile and signal to others like them that these ideas are now acceptable to air in respectable forums. It's foolish for any of these organizations to be used in this manner.
"We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve."
What a bigot right?
Let's not forget Erika Christakis who was bullied into not teaching at Yale after she suggested that colleges be about free speech and debate rather than censorship.
Perhaps the focus on university is somewhat a good thing, as oftentimes that's where some change can originate from. A lot people's views are often formed in their university years.
I really want you to convince me of this right now :)
I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, but there's a lot of evidence this forms earlier, via peer group, media, and parenting.
Unfortunately universities are capitalist organizations with all the accompanying weaknesses. We'll only see action from them if the probable return of action is positive.
> Unfortunately universities are capitalist organizations
Most traditional universities are either state institutions or private charity nonprofits, neither of which are "capitalist organizations" in any normal sense of the word.
While this letter appears to be sincere, it is willfully ignorant of the decades long shift of some academic departments from a stance of "ivory tower" objectivity to the deliberate choice to use their prestige and power as political activists. It isn't like they are hypocritically pretending to be objective, they actively sneer at people who make the attempt.
"But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth."
That's the problem, where's the worthy opponent? I'm sure they exist, but I rarely see or hear of them. I see a lot of demagogues, and those are not worthy by definition and should not be brought into the conversation especially in a University.
Bring us worthy opponents and I'm sure there won't be protests from students.
I watch in fascination two twitter lists I've created - labeled for better or worse, "left" and "right". I routinely see both braindead namecalling and extremely well constructed arguments on both lists. And yet, the most fascinating aspect is that the authors almost invariably choose to ignore a well constructed argument against their point of view and choose to respond vocally and loudly to namecalling.
Perhaps it's not that there aren't worthy opponents, but that we deliberately choose to ignore them, because it's much easier to portray yourself as a paragon of virtue fighting against uncivilized, uncouth barbarians.
That's pretty much what I see on both sides these days. The idea that someone could hold differing views is no longer seen as disagreement but being actively evil or, at best, stupid.
...which is ok. I mean, you're perfectly entitled to see me as or call me evil or stupid. But when you ignore a 2-page rebuttal of your opinion, and only respond to someone who called you names as an "example" of the abuse being thrown about by the opposition, that's just hypocrisy.
I'll propose that there is a reason for this. The tactics of the Social Justice movement is to demonize people who disagree with you and attempt to get them fired or ostracized from society. The tactic is to find the most extreme version of that opinion and try to make that the model for the whole group, even though the center of it might be more moderate. For example, there are a lot of people that have been concerned about the amount of immigration to the US for years and any attempt to restrict immigration was called racists. It's easy to do since there will be extreme racists that also support restricting immigration. You just need to interview one of the clear racists and make them the poster child for the whole group. I saw tons of the meme with Pepe the frog from the alt-right and never saw a single one that was racists. When it went mainstream, someone found out that racists were using it too, so they attached the racist label to the whole thing and tried to get any discussion from the alt-right tied directly to racism and Nazism. There are racists in the group for sure, but I heard a lot of other parts of it as well.
This is the same reason I was so opposed to the witch hunt of punishing everyone associated with Peter Thiel. Trying to get someone fired for their political beliefs sends the middle people underground. They are fearful, and their whole lives are not centered around their political identity, so they just stop talking about it.
The result is that the only people willing to talk about these things are the extremes, or the weird or the people who really take "I don't care what you think of me" to the extreme. This is why Milo Yiannopoulos is the spokesman for these ideas to people. He is the only one willing to talk publicly. He is an extreme, and deeply flawed person, but he is willing to say things no one else is, so he has a following. Trump is also a version of this. Lots of his supporters are more reasonable than him, but they got shouted out of the public discourse and were call racists anyway, so that only left the extremes left to represent the center.
I think there are lots "worthy opponents" out there, but if they said they support less immigration, they would be called racists and everything they ever said would be quote-mined until something unacceptable was found and they would be run out of the public space.
I'm in total agreement with this reply. Regarding the silence of the centrists it is due to fear of being labeled with a pejorative that will be difficult to shake, even if it's within a small community and not widely publicized. That kind of ostracization, even if only in your neighborhood/town/city/workplace, can have a significant negative effect on your life, and the lives of your loved ones. For example, if you vocalize even mild support of some sort of immigration restrictions you are branded a racist, regardless of whether your reasoning for your support is logically sound or whether your implementation approach is measured or thoughtful.
The result is that the extremism rampant today has a chilling effect on the voices of what I believe is the vast majority of people. Where that may lead is something that could be quite scary.
There's some good arguments in here, but I'm not sure I see something that proves the chicken and egg problem. Though I admit, even when I look I can't seem to find centrists in the USA. It appears the center works like interlaced video, every 4 or 8 years, we alternate between far left and right, and over 100 years it centers itself on average. But I'd much rather just be close to the center at all times, just like full resolution video is better then interlaced.
> NUS president Megan Dunn distanced herself and the union from the group, saying: “Hope Not Hate is not on NUS’s no-platform list. I would happily share a platform with anyone from Hope Not Hate tomorrow.”
I would posit that Trump is not a worthy opponent. He does not use facts and reason for his arguments. He uses bullying and lies, that makes him "unworthy" in my eyes.
But in terms of political discourse, that's about as "worthy" as it gets. People have been trained by different (mainstream) politicians over the years that lies are the new normal, facts don't matter, promises are empty, etc. It's no wonder that eventually an extremist would succeed with a much more blatant version if those basic strategies.
If you get flagged for deliberate trolling, that's not proving the point of the article. Trump refuses facts. It doesn't matter whether you think he got to the right or wrong viewpoint, he is objectively not a worthy debater. He does not explain why you should think something, back it up with true statements, and meaningfully respond to counterpoints and criticism.
I don't care what you voted, but you have not named a 'worthy opponent' for didibus.
At the very least, you can't be a demagogue, that is someone who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power. This goes for all sides btw.
Ideally too, especially if you're to speak at a well respected university, I'd like you to have some credentials, a book, research, a strong presence in existing circles related to the problems you'll address, etc. Something that indicates you've spent a good amount of time (like above the 90th percentile) thinking this through by yourself first, and by a few others.
Only a racist and an Islamaphobe would want limited immigration and a strong stance against Islamic terrorism. Did you know that more people die every year of heart attacks than terrorist attacks, so we should just not do anything to stop terrorism.
Also, did you know that every single person in Mexico is actually an American! Yup, they are all 100% Americans who just haven't illegally crossed the boarder yet. As soon as they do, refusing to give them citizenship is betraying our American values as a Nation Of Immigrants (TM).
Please stop posting inflammatory political rants to HN. It's very much not what this site is for.
You've been using HN primarily for political arguments. That's an abuse of the site—it's destructive of the thoughtful, varied discussion we're hoping for. We ban accounts that do this, so please stop doing this.
PC culture has been in the headlines a lot recently, so instead of addressing the progressive thought police, I was hoping that the author might say something about the other ways in which the universities are eating themselves alive.
What of the transition from full-time tenured faculty to adjuncts with little income, less job security, and who are terrified of students' reviews? Should universities continue to shift away from employing instructors and researchers, and towards supporting increasingly byzantine hierarchies of administrators?
What of the publish-or-perish imperative that emphasizes quantity over quality, and shiny new results over testing results obtained elsewhere?
What of dramatic inflation in tuition costs and resulting student debt?
It seems to me that these factors are all slowly undoing the universities. It'd be really interesting to hear a high-ranking administrator discuss these issues seriously instead of carefully confessing his preference for free speech over highly charged identity politics (which is a totally safe and uncontroversial thing to do).
He's right that ad hominem is intellectually lazy. People should be ashamed of themselves, especially if they consider themselves to be academics, if that's the only argument they want to use in a debate.
There are a few diamonds in the rough of academia who are still promoting free speech. Look to recipients of the Alexander Meiklejohn Award for Academic Freedom for examples:
I think this is phenomenon is itself a byproduct of the education system, more specifically that liberal values and ideals are seen as more intellectually correct. In fact I think liberals are as guilty of this occurring as the conservatives. Part of the solution should be in consciously emphasizing the need for empathetic listening and respect (though not necessarily agreement) for the opinions of others even if they conflict with our own "intellectually superior" liberal values. Once that becomes embedded in the educational culture we can begin to see a turnaround.
"liberal values and ideals are seen as more intellectually correct"
The irony here is of course is that those complaining about not being heard on campuses today are actually the most privileged members of western society who support restrictions on media and suppression of freedoms for marginalized groups. Tolerance as a value can't survive if the tolerant are required to provide a platform to the intolerant.
I agree with this article 100%. If universities are worried about "ignorant" people spreading misinformation (if they give a podium to people who they think are un-intellectual), what the university could do is have a framework on how such ideas or all ideas are communicated. With some rules and fact checking guidelines in place, it is possible to hear the opposing (or what is viewed as un-intellectual view point ) with proper analysis.
Not sure why I got down voted. What I am saying here is - from the university point of view, if universities are worried that the platform is used for spreading fears via nonintellectual arguments, they can create a framework to mitigate such problems... I dont know why I got downvoted, please attempt to understand the point I am making here before down voting me.
I dont think universities should shut down the other side, but they can create a framework for communicating ideas .... one way OXFORD does it is via debating (which you can find on youtube).
I agree with most of the article about academic environments being open to vigorous debate among opposing ideas. But I find this phrase: "diversity of thought" problematic.
Not because I don't actually value diversity in philosophies or modes of thinking, but because the phrase itself has been used recently as a weasel phrase by reactionary forces acting to scale back decades of work to improve actual diversity of backgrounds including race, national origin, genders, sexualities etc. in the workplace and positions of power. I'm not accusing him of using it deliberately in that sense but I think it's important to keep that connotation of this phrase in mind while discussing his talk.
If I say something controversial, I don't automatically undo decades of change. The impact of a statement grows as more people react to it. If you disagree with a statement, the best response is to debate and illuminate the foundations of the statement.
This isn't directed at you per se, but in general I hope people come to understand the Streisand effect is an observable phenomenon. I'd even go as far as saying it was a major contributor in getting Trump elected.
Any idea that can't be tested or challenged at any point of time, I am worried about such an idea. No idea is fundamentally true or absolutely right in all contexts.
I am a liberal and a progressive, but there are many progressive ideas that have failed and thanks to that.
We need a system that encourages students to discuss topics based on "facts", no who screams or bullies that other party.
Certainly there are subjects which are indeed subjective. But there are many that are not. And in the process of uncovering these facts as the basis for an argument, one may learn...
No mention of the ridiculous amount of wealth a university education costs, the lack of economic education in the formal track and how the academic class (of which the author is a member) is rendered mostly immune from forces most of their students will have to face (investment for retirement, time value of money, etc). But yeah, free speech to yell at homosexuals and feminists and minorities and all that. Most important thing in my fucking life.
The point is being made that free speech is being suppressed by the very people who should wholeheartedly support and debate it, being that college is the appropriate place to do such things. The author is also pointing out that it has far greater negative implications on the world at present than any other current issue facing college campuses.
"it has far greater negative implications on the world at present than any other current issue facing college campuses."
I call bullshit. The price of college, the elevation of it's utility in our society, and the economic illiteracy of most of it's professors and attendant lack of preparation of it's students all present far more danger to society in the long term than blocking a speech from Milo or some other overblown vacuous controversy surrounding "free speech".
I think the growing threat from within has much more to do with the ballooning costs of higher education, and the way that higher education no longer means a better life, and sometimes a worse one, with crushing student loan debt ruining credit ratings.
Selective outrage over free speech is biased. If you take a stand for free speech you do it both inside and outside the institution. Where is his outrage over lies and hate speech from the President? Words can be weapons and quelling one side only is arming the other.
I disagree with almost everything Etchemendy states here. Having been a student at a private institution, public university and community college, his (rather liberal) arguments simply aren't grounded in reality.
Perhaps he should go and live in the dorms, where scam after scam after scam is apparent. From dining/meal plans to textbooks and all of the additional fees we're charged, while the college builds millions of dollars of new buildings, facilities and infrastructure.
Education is no longer about education (not that it ever was, but in a time long past---perhaps when he was getting _his_ education---it was a closer ratio), it's about money. And all I feel I'm going to get from them for my money in the end is a piece of paper. Everything I learn while I'm there is on me.
In short, I think we should tax the hell out of them if it's for the benefit of the American taxpayers.
When Universities, creditors and banks see numbers double [1], all they do is build twice as fast, hire twice as many adjuncts and raise tuition.
>I disagree with almost everything Etchemendy states here.
Do you?
The central point is:
>I have watched a growing intolerance . . . a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.
You may want to reread the article because it appears you're missing the point.
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." -- Justice Brandeis, 1927.
I'd never read the whole opinion until just now. It's great and the paragraph that quote comes from is stirring. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/357#pg_377
edit\addendum: ACLU has a FAQ on this issue that directly addresses the universities: https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus