Free Speech Part II
The most trafficked post on this blog this past month was our recent debate on free speech -- on whether or not it was the right thing to do when some University of Connecticut students shouted down Ann Coulter.
Thanks to a couple of interesting reactions we’ve received from other bloggers, we’re going back for a second dip.
Nathan Newman, who I quoted in the original post as someone who basically agreed with me on this matter, wrote a clarification saying that, indeed, he did not. Please read all of Nathan’s piece, but here’s one of the key graphs:
Marc thinks students jeering Ann Coulter violates free speech. But "free speech" is not about those with power getting uncontested control of the podium. If the government forces the military to have the equivalent of a podium at law schools, it's free speech for those who oppose their presence to have a chance to make that opposition known, and not just in polite little signs or meek little questions…Frankly, if someone like Coulter gets jeered or even driven from one podium, that's hardly censorship.
Now, fellow lefty blogger Jeff Weintraub has weighed in with his own take – taking Nathan to task and arguing forcefully that free speech means exactly that-- free speech. Again, Weintraub’s post is lengthy and deserves a full reading. Here’s a taste:
It's one thing to heckle, jeer, criticize, demonstrate, and denounce--as part of open expressions of disagreement. It's quite another thing to shout down people, prevent them from talking, and disrupt the possibility of any real discussion. To put it even more simply, exercising "counter-speech" of your own is not the same thing as shutting down someone else's speech.
This may sound like a statement of the obvious, but Newman doesn't seem to grasp the distinction. If someone with views that appall Newman "gets jeered or even driven from one podium," then for him that's "real free speech." The reason is that "speech and counter-speech correct each other. And all kinds of speech count." Can Newman possibly believe that? "All kinds of speech" count the same? Sorry, but this overlooks the fact that different kinds of speech have very different effects and significance. Without wanting to get too fussy, pedantic, or excessively rationalist about it, the reality is that some kinds of "counter-speech" potentially contribute to understanding and some don't. Arguing, for example, is a kind of counter-speech that may occasionally "correct" what someone else said. Or, if you don't like their speech, you can give a speech of your own. Disrupting their speech doesn't "correct" it, but simply shuts it down.
Let’s see if we can take this discussion, calmly and civilly, through one more round. But no commenting without first having read both links in their entirety.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
For years, Ann Coulter has advocated denying civil liberties (including and particularly freedom of speech) to those whom she does not agree with. It never ceases to amaze me how her and her more stoned ideological cousin, Rush Limbaugh, plead for civil liberty protections in and out of court when they would advocate the denial of those same rights to people whom they don’t agree with. Listening to Rush Limbaugh call himself a victim of the drug war is as hilarious as Coulter and her apologists shedding crocodile tears over the denial of her right to spread more half truths and outright lies.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
David, I don’t know of any instances of Coulter advocating denying any of her critics of their civil liberties. Seeing those quotes would be illuminating.
As for the students which attended a speech simply to SHOUT the speaker down, they are out of line. They truly are denying her freedom of speech by harassing her and yelling over her. They are also denying other attendees their opportunity to hear her talk. On top of those two things, they are being immature and annoying.
Coulter has the right to “spread more half truths and outright lies” as thatis part of her right to express herself.
David, are you suggesting that it is OK to deny Coulter her civil liberties since she allegedly denies other people such rights?
Nathan seems to be suggesting some sort of anarchy as a solution to Coulter having a podium. As if people have a right to yell at her because she is talking. As if they have a right to make a scene even though no one is attending the lecture to hear THEM speak.
*”If the government forces the military to have the equivalent of a podium at law schools, it’s free speech for those who oppose their presence to have a chance to make that opposition known, and not just in polite little signs or meek little questions.”*
They SHOULD have a right, AND DO HAVE A RIGHT, to organize protests to argue against the presence of the recruiters in general or the anti-gay policy in specific. But they don’t have a right to show up and shout down, HARASS and INTIMIDATE, the recruiters.
By doing that they are denying interested students the right to meet with a recruiter unmolested.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:58 pm
Well I read Weintraub’s the links didn’t work on the others. Sure there is different free speech and not all are created equal. Jeering should not get so out of hand that order in the room is lost. But a quick round, just as with applause should be allowed in a public event. There’s a diffeence between that and a speech-ending bunkerbuster so I agree with Weintraub. Likewise I think the “little fascists” is a bit much just like “little Eiechmans.”
December 15th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Well, I’ll be utterly predictable here and say that I agree heartily with Weintraub (and he should be commended for such a thorough examination of the topic).
I don’t care if Ann is an intellectual toad. We have to give her the space to speak if we expect it for others or for ourselves. There would be some here who would be quite unhappy if the Young Republicans showed up to a Chomsky event and just bellowed until he gave up. We don’t get to pick and choose which things we like to hear and which we don’t.
Also, as Weintraub rightly points out, the argument that says the supression of rights based on an analysis of power inequality is one that almost always can be employed indiscriminately to supress rights in any situation. It is always better to guarantee rights. Supression has too many problems no matter how noble the goal.
And finally, it is not just (perhaps not even) a legal issue in this case, as I prattled on about ad nauseum in the last thread. Mill is useful on this point “But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
December 15th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Marc, and others, the Newman link has a stray %20 at the end. Strip it off and things will be fine.
December 15th, 2005 at 3:41 pm
In the case in question, it is really the reasonable expectation of being able to listen than was being denied. After all, Coulter could continue to speak through all of the heckling, but nobody would hear her.
When people shout down a speaker, it tells me that either they have no respect for the presentation and illumination of ideas (i.e. they are intellectual fascists) or they are afraid of the ideas and rude enough to override the desires and expectations of the speaker and listeners. Either way, they are toads, pure and simple.
December 15th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
If Ann Coulter is considered simply to be a ‘political buffoon’ as Marc termed it in his original post, then she must be allowed to speak. I guess a serving of light non-showstopping heckling would be in order (though it seems difficult to calibrate heckling as finely as Weintraub rqeuires).
Noam Chomsky is not a good analogy to Coulter. His views may be equally extreme (to the extent that Coulter has actual views) but he’s willing to debate, to be engaged on that level, so there’s an alternative available in confronting him. I suspect Coulter is entirely unwilling to engage in anything resembling debate. Did her answers in Q and A session consist of anything more than verbal hand grenades? Was there any actual give and take? Even Rush Limbaugh, to a limited extent, can be debated, though he may define the outer limit of debatability. There may be avatars of the left, who like Coulter are interested in nothing more than grabbing attention, demonizing and causing havoc (I suppose Marc’s ANSWER folks may qualify). But such folks don’t have the megaphone that Coulter and a couple of others like her now have.
Which brings me to my point– what if, at some point in the future, Coulter acquires enough clout and the social fabric has been sufficiently degraded so that she can no longer be considered merely buffoonish (or simply crude, vile and repellent)? What if she actually becomes dangerous and the calls for assassination and bombing could conceivably be heeded?
She’s a good test case now because she’s moving in that direction, but clearly isn’t there yet. What if she gets there (and we get there)?
At what point does political speech become the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater?
Isn’t there some point (not so far from where she is now) at which restrained and sophisticated heckling is not enough.
December 15th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
evets,
Most interesting that you would, without any evidence, “suspect” than Coulter is unwilling to debate.
December 15th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
It is most interesting, but having reading her stuff and having observed her in action, I suspect my suspicions are right.
December 15th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
evets: Don’t shift the terms of the debate. 1) This group was neither restrained nor sophisticated. 2) Taking questions is not germane. The speaker was not allowed to finish, which is the nut of the complaint. There is nothing to discuss if there are a couple of cat calls. 3) Why is Chomsky not a good example? I deliberately chose a polarizing figure on the left. No matter that Coulter will never be in the same league, and no matter that Chomsky seems to have better manners–shouting either down ought to be equally offensive, even if not equally damaging to what might have been gained.
December 15th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
This issue is a fascinating one to me, because it takes many shapes in many contexts. “Free speech” in one social context is not necessarily free speech in another (i.e., does not have the same rules by which speakers and listeners should/must conform, or allow the same categories of discussion topic, method of discussion, etc.). But even in limiting this discussion to one specific environment–i.e., a semi-public taxpayer-funded (in part) university–I still see some cloudy areas. Take this seemingly straightforward comment by Weintraub:
“I would add that universities–as institutions and as intellectual communities–have a special responsibility to defend and promote the principles of free expression and the open exchange of ideas in public discourse”
If that is indeed the case, then what constraints are there on the behavior of the speaker? A public speaker might indeed make death threats–an example Weintraub uses in a different argument. One could make the argument that clamoring for executions or physical intimidation of groups of people could classify as a death threat, or threat of violence. In a private arena, a response would be easy: the proprietor could expulse the culprit. In public, however, it’s quite a different matter. Are there rules established for the particular venue? In a public university setting, this might be the case, though they may be different for different events. And, again, a speaker, by yelling out, “I think Jews should be exterminated†may very well be either A) breaking previously established rules for that speaking forum; or B) be participating in a comedy act (cf., Sarah Silverman and her rape “accusation†in The Aristocrats) and therefore inviting jeering from the crowd; or perhaps C) be speaking on a public street corner, and perhaps more effectively ignored. The third example, though, gets interesting when you have an “audience†approach the slur-spouting speaker and start drowning him out with their own speech. I don’t think the law (not the 1st Amendment, anyway) has anything to say about this public arena—if speakers are making too much noise (public disturbance), loitering, etc., they may be forced to curtail their behavior, but not on the grounds of protecting the speech of the original speaker.
Finally, an important potential difference between a Chomsky and a Coulter: if both are coming to speak within a certain format (with its requisite and hopefully clearly-defined public speaking rules for both audience and speaker), then yes, they are exactly the same, and should be given the same treatment under said rules, but if Chomsky or Coulter instead were to start calling for the death of certain groups of people in a certain tone, then the speaking situation might be redefined. I remember reading about an act by Michael Savage (the radio guy), when he was touring, where he did a lot of audience-baiting, which served the purpose of getting the audience to yell at him and spice up his act. Except on at least one occasion people seemed a bit bored by the schtick, presumably to his dismay. The point is this: unless a speaking situation is air-tightly defined (and even then, a speaker may have different intentions and change it mid-stream), how an audience responds is going to be cued by the speaker. Maybe Coulter doesn’t want a Michael Savage event, and really truly wants to be listened to and then engaged in a Q&A with her audience members. That’s all fine and well, but then the sending of Savage-cues (“hey audience, you suck! I saaaaa-aiiid, yoooou SUCK! C’mon, you suck!â€) will invite WWF-arena, Savage-responses. If that’s a speaker’s ultimate intention then they have succeeded in their goal; if not, then they should re-evaluate their performance, and excise cues, prompts, and baits which contradict their goal.
December 15th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Coulter has proven she can’t debate. Just listen to a tit fot tat on a cable show for proof of that. She counter ad hominems followed by ad populum rants. Soon, the question is forgotten and not answered. That’s no accident. She’s cashing in a political theatre made popular on FOX Hannity & Colmes. Shouting down is the debating order of the day there. I’ve seen Chomsky with Dershowitz. He’ll answer the questions. They’re not afraid of her ideas. They know she has none, but repeating them in public is the best evidence of merit or lack thereof.
December 15th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
link to newman is fixed
December 15th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
I’m speechless. No, actually, I’m rebelling. I’m commenting without having read either link! Hahahahaaaaaaa! My free speech lets me do that.
Someone should arrest Ann Coulter. That’ll keep her too busy to speak. In fact, she wants that. http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/anncoulter/2005/12/15/179169.html
now i’m typing like steve and i’m mentioning the word spit–like spit on soldiers, and marc will let this stay up because he’s so nice–and, it’s free speech.
Now, I’m typing let reg…f##%$(* you!
I wonder if the people in Iraq know that their free speech actually comes at a price paid by others–as it does in this country.
This free speech thing is great. After the cold medicine gets out of my system, I may actually read the links that Marc insisted that we read. Then, I’m coming back to my comment and see if it seems as brilliant when I’m off the drugs as it does when I’m on them–or, if I can tell any difference. Is this how drunks feel?
December 15th, 2005 at 7:23 pm
Hey. I read them…sort of. I agree with the last guy. In fact, the speech protestors at UConn just caused the college to not get something that it paid for, a speaker, and the agitators should reimburse the school for that. If I didn’t like the way the landscaper cut the grass at UConn and I kept him from doing his work, the school would have me dragged off. Isn’t allowing the discussion of issues more important than whether or not the quadrangle in front of the library looks as cool as the Met’s infield? It’s that simple.
December 15th, 2005 at 7:42 pm
Wow, both Woody and I find ourselves essentially agreeing with Mark Yorks FIRST comment.
The so called “speech ending blockbuster” is as fascistic as one can get. Don’t like Coulter’s arguments? Fine, don’t listen to them. Think her arguments are nuts? Fine, come up with more rational counter arguments. The same applys to Chomski or anyone else.
Those who shout down others, not out of disagreement, but in the belief that the other doesn’t have a right to say what they want to say are fascists. Plain and simple!
December 15th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
What struck me about Coulter’s protestors is that they showed even less brains than she. One was quoted in an AP story as saying they shouted her down because she was intolerant.
I can see shouting down a speaker as a legitimate form of protest when that speaker is a person in political power with whom it is impossible to enter debate and whose counter-reaction could be revealing of his true political character, like a top member of the current U.S. regime. It would certainly be an action of courage and not cowardice considering the consequences.
But ultimately, one must come down on the side of discussion and debate, finding the example of the late Marla Ruzicka who turned from shouting at the pols to talking to them and accomplished far more in the process. Screaming at and heckling a speaker ultimately confirms her power and your own powerlessness as an individual.
December 15th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
It may not be “censorship,” but note how quickly the Ann Coulter’s hecklers will cry “censorship” when someone shuts *them* down. You can bet your last dollar that if they had been ejected from her speech, “CENSORSHIP” would have been splashed all over the next day’s headlines.
December 15th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
Great comments so far. My only addition would be to note that the best interests of people who oppose “those with power” would lie in supporting free speech, or at least not shutting down speech. Why? Because if a contest develops as to who can shut down the speech of their opponents, “those with power” would have a much easier time of shutting down the speech of their opponents than vice versa.
December 15th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
Dan O -
I’m agreeing that she shouldn’t have been shouted down.
I’m just wondering what the appropriate response would be if her brand of political theater were turned up a couple of notches? I guess one more notch and she’d be Michael Savage.
Re: the comparison to Chomsky. On the original thread someone mentioned that no-one would have thought to shout down Krauthammer or Kristol (I may have the wrong names). Chomsky falls into that category, as would any number of polarizing but serious figures.
Coulter falls into the Michael Savage category. Mark Levin also belongs there. They seem to be animated primarily by hate (though with Coulter it may be partly an act). They’re more than just bufoonish and not far from warranting the kinfd of boorish response the UConn kids gave.
December 15th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
Now let me set you all straight: What makes shouting Coulter down so wrong is that she was speaking in a closed room to a grup that had invited her. Certainly the public was welcome.. but walking through that door was voluntary. So what you really had was a group of students who went and broke up a meeting that people who think differently were having. That is an ugly, ugly, and very dangerous precedent. I don’t care if Coulter was literally talking shit through her scrawny ass. If you don’t want to be offended by her, then DON’T WALK THROUGH THE DOOR. To go in and disrupt here, puts you in the same repoachable category as the Bible Thumpers who want to tell me what I can watch and not watch on TV or in the movies. Fuck them and the UConn students too.
Now if, on the other hand, there was at least some sort of SEMI-obligation to hear an objectionable speaker.. say that the University invited COulter to speak at a commencement ceremony, well then things shift at least a bit. If you are obligated to listen to her in order to get your diploma, I can certainly understand wanting to proest such a bone-headed move by the authorities. Even though I would argue against shouting her down– if for no other reason the moment you do that you cede the moral high ground. Turning your back, holding up a banner, walking out, sitting down, mooning her etc etc all sound like fun. But once you block someone else from hearing what they want to hear — no matter how hateful– then you have opened the door for someone to deny you. How simpler could it be?
That is my ruling. Thank you. No appeals.
December 15th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
When I was attending Cal, there was a controversy concerning a similar incident with Jeane Kirkpatrick. I remember thinking at the time that though there was a certain futility in showing up to a college lecture hall just to shout someone down, the First Amendment exists precisely to protect the hecklers, not just the lecturer, no matter how bad they might appear to outsiders. “Free speech” shouldn’t just be a privilege reserved for the person with loudest megaphone, or the blondest hair.
December 15th, 2005 at 11:40 pm
Steve, I don’t see a 1st Amendment issue here. There was no government agency or action here, just interactions between private individuals.
December 15th, 2005 at 11:52 pm
Let’s put this debate in the context of Academe, which many present undoubtedly view as an Opression Free Zone. I did my undergrad 1979-1983 and did 5 years of PHD work, 1992-1997.
I entered my undergraduate years as a democratic socialist and left as a diffident, unclassifiable Democrat. I entered my post-grad studies as a free agent and exited as an avowed enemy of the Left.
Leftists who complain about a structural imbalance of power (they have manifold arguments, there) need to get serious about having principles.
In all of my life, I have never met a Republican or
an avowed conservative who advocated stopping anyone from talking on American soil, ever. (Note to Left-wing enthusiasists: produce evidence that Anne Coulter advocates stopping anyone from speaking on American soil, ever, as opposed to insulting them after the fact, as traitorous, treasonous, etc.)
By contrast, I can’t begin to count the number of left-wing nut-jobs who spin fantastic webs of causistry to explain why stopping any particular (non-left-wing) individual from talking is this week’s most important faux-appointment on the barricades. My Proof: this post and the one that engendered it, in which about roughly half of the posters are interested in anything but the right of a public speaker to speak.
The Left owns Academe and the Media and yet, the Left continues to lose.
Why? Because even such a primitive as George W. Bush has never advocated stopping anyone from speaking. Academe (Read the Hard Left, for they are one and the same) and its defenders are their own worst enemies.
Are you for free speech or are you against it? Make up your minds. I have, based upon my years of experience in Academe.
Academe is all about stopping people (talk to Larry Summers) from speaking. Where else, in America, do you read about people getting shouted down, or punished,
for speaking?
December 16th, 2005 at 1:49 am
I am currently in graduate school and have left wing views. But I have found myself wanting to be a conservative, at least long enough to know how it feels to have your opinions reduced and marginalized all semester long. I have witnessed massive abuses in the classroom by professors who should know better. Professors who talk about pluralism but more or less shutter any dissenting opinions. I was in a class where the teacher spent about 30% of the class time talking about Bush and how evil he was. Students that agreed could chime in at any time. What about those who disagreed? What about the actual material?
I have to place the blame on the academic left. The institutionalization of the left in Universities after the sixties has created this mess. It is an ignominy and they are ruining leftist politics.
These UConn students will go from denouncing Coulter to denouncing “liberals” in a few years. Give them some time working on Wall Street and they quickly be converted.
This is all very cynical and I blame the sixties.
December 16th, 2005 at 4:32 am
What I have found most amusing in these two threads, and most enjoyable to watch, is the hysteria generated among lefties and righties both who wish to draw from an Ann Coulter event some deep and far-reaching ramifications for the 1st Amendment. If you’ve ever watched Jerry Springer, or listened to talk radio, you’ll see very different tolerance levels for interruptions and shouting. The fact that a Coulter event could be confusable with this “fewer-holds-barred” speaking arena is the only fact here that matters, since it would therefore constitute a categorically different speaking event. So if confusion ensues, then someone can get on a loudspeaker and announce (or remind) the audience of the rules of the event, and ultimately escort out those who fail to observe them. Free speech intact! Of course, if there is ambiguity or lack of clarity in the rules of interaction, ambiguous or unexpected interactions might result, which in some cases is itself a desirable thing for the perfomer and perhaps the audience as well (e.g., an Andy Kaufman or Ali G event, on the slightly bizarre side).
Oh, and Josh, man, it might be time to move on. If you’re actually fantasizing about how it would feel to have your opinions reduced and marginalized, you’ve been coddled in academia far too long. A wild and wooly and brutish world awaits.
December 16th, 2005 at 6:15 am
It seems to me she carried on just fine. Expect cat calls it’s part of the public persona she cultivated. Keep order in the room. Those are the rules of the building on the lawn out front.
December 16th, 2005 at 10:05 am
Dear Samuel Stott,
Your contention that the “left owns academe and the media” is a myth. During the last two decades increasing numbers of faculty are part-time or non-tenure track–contigent labor who lack benefits, get half what their full-time colleagues makes, and can be dismissed easily. Right now over 50% of U.S. faculty is non-tenure track.
The left has a weak presence at a minority of colleges in this country but has no presence at many. If the left had any power, it would at least try to get faculty more full-time jobs and benefit–but at this it has failed miserably. The idea that the left dominates academia is one of the great myths. People take a few bad experiences (I can sympathize with such bad experiences) and then generalize to all college faculty.
Also, non-tenure track are particulary vulnerable to assaults of their free speech because they don’t have tenure to back them up. If you want to speak up for free speech, you can start with now defending free speech for non-tenure track faculty.
Right now there is a concerted right-wing attempt to instigate a new McCarthyism in American colleges. So far individual professors like Paul Mirecki at the University of Kansas have been attacked, but Pennsylvania has said it will have state hearings of the socalled “bias” in higher education in that state. As a result of the Mirecki case, legislators in Kansas are also asking for hearings.
H.U.A.C (anti-communist) house committee of the late 1950s also invesitgated socalled subversion in higher education. In 1959 HUAC said it planned to go to San Francisco to investigate subversion in higher education and released to the press the names of California public schoolteachers it had subpoenaed. California Congressman James Roosevelt on the floor of the House on April 16, 1960, denounced HUAC saying that as a result of HUAC’s action four teachers had been fired and “more than 100 teachers have been in emtoional turmoil for 10 months … [Most were] on probationary status … These may be quietly eased out of the teaching profession by the simple expedient of not renewing their contract.”These teachers lost their jobs even though they never even testified but only had their names in the newspaper.
Thus if Pennyslvania legislature hearings likewise subpoenas faculty names, non-tenure track faculty can easily be gotten rid of by not having their contract renewed even though they never even testified, had never been accused of anyting etc.
Since you are concerned with free-seech, I would hope you would never act to defend the free speech of all faculty including left-wing faculty non-tenure track who are at risk at the moment.
December 16th, 2005 at 10:35 am
Josh,
Thanks for honesty even when it might appear tio hurt “your side.” You are saying what many conservative have been complaining about for a very long time – the left wing bias of academia. And you are right that in the long term it damages the left, as many college students (like Samuel Stott) leave the academia strongly opposed to the left – just like people who lived under communism in eastern Europe are often the strongest critics of the left. Both escaped leftist oppression. In both cases, it is frequently the most independent thinkers (and hence likely the most creative) who are the most affected.
Fortunately, not all professors bring their politics to class (the math professor I cited in another thread, while prohibiting attendance by ROTC students, uttered never a political word in the classroom.
The left wing bias is common enough that conservative students wanting to enter an academic career in humanities fields are frequently (and quietly) told that they shouldn’t do so – that they will be lucky to get a PhD and that they will never get tenure. This is one reason there are so many well educated conservative intellectuals in “think tanks” – they can’t get jobs in academia, and a reason that academia continues to lean farther and farther left – and become less and less connected to the surrounding (and funding) society.
I find the left’s domination of Universities (and the concomitant poor behavior of leftist students) to be far more alarming than the attempts to occasionally interject Intelligent Design, even though I strongly oppose ID being put forth as any form of science.
This same left wing autocracy in universities is why left wing students and faculty so frequently get away with things like shouting down conservative speakers, stealing distributions of right wing campus papers, and other fascist acts. If the same tactics (or much less) were to be tried against left wing favorite causes, the perpetrators would be forced to subject themselves to Orwellian measures – “sensitization” classes [re-education camps?] and Stalin-style recantations.
It is interesting that Savage was mentioned here. He seems to be a true right wing moonbat, from what little of him I have been able to stand.
December 16th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Julia, what have you been smoking??? You bring up the long dead HUAC as if they still have influence. You mention the case of one Kansas professor who got in trouble on the ID issue in the one state (sadly, my home state and my alma mater) where ID has become a political issue. But you don’t mention the many history professors who are writing and teaching wildly erroneous (but happily multicultural and leftist) myths, the departments where conservatives will never get tenure unless they stay in the closet, and the strong attempts to indoctrinate students in self-hatred and America-hatred in the name of multiculturalims.
In other words, you ain’t got a clue.
What tenure track has to do with your assertions escapes me. The main political issue related to tenure is that you don’t get it if you are conservative. The important non-political fact related to tenure is that the baby boomer demographic bulge has filled up all the tenure positions so that others can’t get in.
December 16th, 2005 at 11:50 am
I think the discussion divides over whether you consider freedom of speech to be a worthy principle in and of itself, or whether you treat it as one tool among others to be used in seeking your political goals. Supporters of the latter view treat free speech as something to be defended at one time and discarded another, as opportunism requires. They think of themselves as heroic fighters for progress; I think of them as little dictators.
Yes, we have a problem with language, because the closest historical analogies — Naziism and Stalinism — are hot-button words. Suffice it to say that the UConn mob made the same “argument by necessity” that dictators make, even if college students generally don’t raise armies and attack neighboring countries. One of the posts you link to makes a related argument, implying that it is just as important to prevent right-wing speech as it is to offer counterarguments. The implicit argument, that UConn students lacked any alternative venue to make their points, is absurd. The fact that the students knew about the Coulter talk and showed up in substantial numbers is proof enough that channels of communication exist for them, and that protest messages are received.
All the rest is just quaint rationalizing — it requires a real stretch to describe what happened as anything other than censorship by a self-appointed minority, and it requires a really remarkable stretch to view Coulter’s invitation as an emergency so great as to justify violating the free speech principle.
This is nothing new. Back in the late 1960s, a high ranking Johnson administration official spoke at MIT and was greeted by shouts of “murderer” and other epithets. I found myself trying to suggest to one of my classmates that there was, indeed, a reason to have freedom of speech, and that this included my right to listen to an invited lecture and figure out my own response. He was not convinced. One can try to be understanding, and forgive a little bit of antiwar excess carried out by the generation that was ordered (not invited, as in the volunteer army) to fight and die. Still, the idea that abandoning the one best opportunity to win over the public — the ability to engage in public discussion — struck me as dumb, even as the violation of principle disgusted me. I see the intellectual progeny of this approach in the UConn mob scene.
December 16th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
Rich – Your post makes no real sense at all. What does Ali G have to do with anything?
Nobody is claiming that the Coulter event has major ramifications. But the way students are being taught to listen is indeed a problem.
This is not even really a Left wing bias necessarily. If it exists, it has NO real influence given the fact that the Republican Party has been winning elections for 30 years.
It is more than anything an abuse of power. The average 20 year tenured Prof is not very dedicated to anything other than making sure they do not lose tenure and their corner of the world is secure. It is about arrogance and narcissism. Most of these teachers are so obsessed with themselves; they simply abuse the captive audience because they are obsessed with their own perceived wisdom. It is about a LACK of dedication to principals (to educate students) and not really about ideology. They just happen to have vague left wing ideals and are dedicated to them in the classroom only. After class they go home to a nice upper middle class life and are not plotting the revolution. They could easily be on the right.
The academy is these peoples little corner in the world. The Humanities and Social Sciences basically do not matter in the modern world, and they know that. They just want to protect their interests by keeping the squad pure. No dissent, no threat to job.
These kids shouting about Coulter today will be shouting about the regulation of corporations tomorrow. The right has real political power and the abuses of that side lead to things like torture and unjust wars.
In the end it just creates bad habbits in young people.
December 16th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
As the instigator of these threads, let me endorse something that Josh just said. Obviously, the speech and the shouting down of Ann Coulter don’t amount to a hill of beans on the cosmic scale. But it is indicative of attitudes and behaviors that have ramifications far beyond the moment.
We indeed do live in a society in which, say, political events and campaign get conflated with some chair-throwing on Jerry Springer (who I might add with some disdain in a now a drive time host on Air America radio). I, for one, dont like this trend. Nor do I enjoy the thought that college students — especially those who are the supposed progressives– demonstrate such intolerant and offensive beahvior. Bad for us. And Bad for them.
As to whether the Left controls the universities? Well, those sort od sweeping generalizations are off base– just as off base as writing off all media as “corporate media.” But only at one’s peril do you ignore the intersection of tenure with dogma.
In that regard… I am grateful that my daughter was already a union organizer, that her mother was a Chilean exile and her father a grumpy leftist when she entered UCLA as a history junior this fall. if those elements had not been in place, she would have undoubtedly been converted into a Republican. But by right wing prosletyzing.. but rather into the shower of foolish PC rigidity she was subjected to during the semester.
Fortunately, she’s smart enough to see thru it and retain some progressive principles. But holy christ… one of her California History essay questions on this week’s final was: Describe the course of Manifest Destiny in California from 1900 thru to the rise of the Orange County conservative movement? Can u fucking imagine that? A tenured professor trying to pass off the Goldwater and Reagan revolutions as something with a throughline to Manifest Destiny? My daughter, who is on the left, was outraged and quite disillusioned by such intellectual fakery. Uggh.
December 16th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
I don’t see this as an issue of free speech, but a failure of crowd control. Cooper’s rules are silly — Coulter makes her living as a provacteur. The jeering is part of the show. If I am shouted down at the dinner table, I don’t call a lawyer and sue my family. This is a non-symptom of a non-issue — hence, perfect talk radio fare.
Really, if you invite Coulter and make it a public meeting, then the inviters ought to be prepared by having some type of plan for intervening to quiet a jeering crowd. If Michael Moore was invited to George Mason University, he’d probably be jeered at — given the political slant of the University — but sensible meeting rules would allow him to make his speech. The glow of martyrdom is, of course, not a bad moneymaker for Coulter, but no constitutional crisis is happening in Connecticut. Or rather, at UConn — from what I have read about the law that makes it impossible to challenge incumbents like Lieberman in party primaries, there, there we have a free speech crisis.
December 16th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Josh, first of all, you might want to consider that when you don’t understand a point, the reason could be just that: you don’t understand it–not that it “makes no sense”. I’ve explained my position three times now, and you’re welcome to actively engage it. Perhaps your ultra-liberal education isn’t providing you with that skill, in which case I would suggest you overcome your liberal guilt by finding something you might be better suited for–say, a job.
The Ali G reference is this: the performer puts on a performance that challenges his audience through playful contrivances and charades, particularly to the point of fooling his guests. Kaufman did the same, but fooled his audience directly. The effects were unpredictable, sometimes causing commotion.
And here’s the rub: this isn’t about some disturbing student trends inspired by corrupting universities. Marc, you echo my Springer example: in a Springer-style event, the audience will behave Springer-style. That is my sole point. 99.9% of the time the style of event is clear from the outset: every heated debate I’ve ever attended as an undergrad, grad student, and postgrad has, despite all sorts of tensions, nevertheless proceeded to a successful conclusion because the rules were CLEAR from the outset. The .1% of the time when they did not were in cases when the type of event (i.e. relationship between speaker and audience) was ill-defined. Is it a radio talk show format? Is it one speaker speaks followed by Q&A? Is it call-and-response? But, the interpretation that students are being systemically taught to jeer I find silly and extreme. Let me put it like this: i can say with all honesty that had I gone into a Coulter event without foreknowledge of the UConn news item, I wouldn’t have known if shouting back and forth wasn’t part of the Coulter schtick (again, given my limited knowledge of performers like her, who I–perhaps unfairly, out of ignorance–lump in a Savage/Springer classification). Of course, I probably would have put it together after a couple of minutes of the crowds’ uninterrupted jeering that this was not planned. Then I and others would have learned that the event was not progressing as Coulter had planned/desired (though are we sure of this…? Another question.). Point being, this is an exceptional case–I mean, Jeebus Cristo, it’s Ann Coulter! How the hell would I know that it was just a normal talk and not a media event?
I’m probably repeating myself a lot, likely talking in circles or ellipses (thereby invoking semi-justifiable jeering from my patience-losing audience…) so I’ll just conclude by saying, “what Roger said.”
December 16th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
John Moore I interviewed many history professors as a student journalist and asked them about those very questions. They do not teach historical myths where I went to school although they have some leftist Chicano studies profs. Frankly, you just keep proving who has the myths going and who doesn’t. History has short-shrifted the stories of the other ethnic cultures we have here, which is a 19th Century bias. Including more stories doesn’t mean throw out the accurate master narrative as you suggest.
December 16th, 2005 at 4:14 pm
Dear John Moore,
The so-called “left-wing-bias” of academia is a myth. Certain right-wing ideologues funded by right-wing think tanks have been busily going around the country for some years now promoting that myth in state legislature hearings and on such broadcast media as Fox. They use three kinds of evidence to show “left-wing bias” all of which are inaccurate.
First, you mention people like yourself and Samuel Stott having bad experiences with left-wing faculty to prove that there is left-wing bias. I went to UC Berkeley and was told that UC Berkeley didn’t hire women at the time. The sociology professor who was the most famous named Seymour Martin Lipset wrote in a book that owing TV sets is a mark of civilization–but my family hadn’t owned a TV set for years. Can I concluded from my experience that UC faculty were sexist at the time. No. Can I conclude that sociology faculty agree with Lipset. No. I can’t argue from my 1 or 2 bad experiences to the larger faculty because I would be making hasty generalization.
Also, I am can sympathize with you and Stott, but I think neither you nor Stott nor anybody else can take a few bad experiences and then generalize back to all faculty at X college or all faculty in the U.S. Not logical.
Second, you argue that conservative grad students are told not to get a Ph.D. and have a hard time getting a full-time job. Well, liberal and left-wing grad students are told exactly the same thing. Mr. Moore, in your 2nd post you ask what tenure has to do with it. Jobs on tenure track are full-time, higher pay, with benefits. There are less and less such jobs, so getting a tenure-track job has everyting to do with it. I know somene who worked over 20 years part-time before he was finally (!) hired full-time, and he was the only 1 hired in his departent. If conservative grad students want more tenured fullt-time jjobs, I suggest they work with liberals & leftists to increase the number of such jobs. 0 full-time jobs means 0 jobs for everybody. During the 1960s there were about 5% or less part-time teaching jobs in acedmia but 2005 there are over 50% non-tenure track jobs. If someone isn’t telling you about the declining number of full-time jobs teaching in academica, they are manipulating the evidence.
Third, certain right-wing idelogues “prove” left bias in academic by saying they did surveys of faculty voting records and found many more Democrats than Republicans. Well, if you look at all their surveys, they went and surveyed only Humanities, and only Women’s Studies, but never did random samples of the whole faculty. If you went and surveyed only the business department or only the engineering department, you’d probably find a lot more Republican faculty, but still that’s a biased samples. Thus the samples used to prove left-wing bias are inaccurate and don’t represent the larger faculty. Thus the surveys prove absolutely nothing. By the way, a long time ago I used to teach statistics. One can lie very easily with statistics.
By the way, I didn’t say in my previous post that HUAC has influence. I said HUAC got public school teachers fired by broadcasting their names in the newspaper. I said that since HUAC was abandoned about 40 years ago, we now have for the first time in Pennyslvania state legislators wanting to hold hearings on so-called “left-wing bias” in higher education in that state. So since Pennyslvania legislators want to revive investigations into socalled left-wing bias, it’s entirely appropriate to look at how HUAC disasterously effected American education.
Sincerely,
Julia Stein
December 16th, 2005 at 6:20 pm
Look. You cannot deny it. Even people on the left, like Richard Rorty and Terry Eagelton acknowledge the existence of a “cultural left” in university Humanities and Social Science departments. The same cannot be said for Business, Science, and Engineering, but for SS and Humanities, it does exist.
The Sokal Hoax revealed that a cultural left did exist and that it had become very insulated and reflexisively reactionary. Any criticism of the reigning theoretical dogma is met with accusations of “anti-intellectualism” and “conservative capitulation.” They have abstruse theoretical constructions that only feed into the problem (Stanley Fish, Thomas Kuhn, and the rest of that loosely defined postmodernism). They also have a fetish for language (a post structuralism thing) and actually many DO NOT believe in the idea of free speech (Stanley Fish wrote a book horrifyingly called “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too”).
I actually do not think the “left wing bias” is actually really left wing. It is a mangled form of New Leftism and a whole lot of libertarian ideas. Mark Lilla calls this the politics of fusion (see his essay in Left Hooks, Right Crosses). They focus almost exclusively on subversive interpretations of cultural products and a whole lot of time theorizing. The fetish with theory is self gratification and the focus on cultural products is actually in line with good old fashioned capitalism. My point is, the leftness of these people is vague at best. It is a pose. Pure rhetorical.. No real substance. As Rorty has noted, they are not proposing any sort of piecemeal reform, rather they are playing radical to appeal to the students. It is leftism for show.
Stanford teaches classes on hip hop studies. As Rorty noted, very few school teach classes on Working Poor Studies, or Trailer Park Studies, etc… And as Rorty noted the average tenured professors spends more time flying around the country attending conferences than doing ethnographic or quantitative work on lives of the working poor.
The protest of Tookies execution had a contingent of Bay Area students. I listened to the broadcast on the radio. The speeches were pretty horrifying. Students thanking Tookie for his “Good works.” Some students said that Tookie saved a “150,000 lives.” This is what the cultural left is producing. Not thoughtful students who will fight for fairness in regards to migrant workers, but kids who where Che shirts and read Chomsky while shouting down hate speech. It is Weatherman leftism. These kids just want to shout and fuck shit up.
These kids will not stay on the left after graduation. They will quickly adapt the style they learned in college to Limbaugh style politics. It is a match made in heaven. But the working poor will still be invisible and the tenured radicals will still have high paying jobs. Notice none of the tenured radicals are fighting to reform the sorry state of academic labor!!!
I could talk about left wing attacks on science for another couple of pages…
The HUAC line is straight bullshit. By the sixites all was forgotten.
December 16th, 2005 at 6:59 pm
You think that is bad Marc? I had to write a semester long research paper last semester without the privilege of a thesis. Yup, thesis driven work is too conservative. So I had to ask myself a “cultural question” and go from there. But NO argument. NO conclusion. NO point. Just observation. And how will this change anything?
One of my fellow students did a wonderful presentation on homeless women. She did interviews, etc… It was really great. She got a B+. That is an F in grad school. The student who followed did hers on Trauma in the Freddie Kruger Movies and got an A+. No bullshit.
This semester the same girl did a presentation on how the media reports on Homelessness and Poverty. Given Katrina, she had a lot of material. She got beheaded by her follow students for “generalizing interpretations.” The professor called her “arrogant” and “naive.” The next student did her presentation on ‘Women in ZZ Top Videos.” Again no bullshit. She got an A and praise from the Prof and fellow students.
Now, all of these people claim to be progressive, liberal, anti-bush, etc… The student association T shirt says “Rage Against The Machine is Not Just A Band.” They are radicals by interpreting cultural products I guess.
My fellow comrade was so bewildered by the hostility towards her for dealing with real issues that she dropped out of the program 2 weeks before the end of the semester and is moving on to USC’s social work school instead. She was bullied out of the program by professors and pet students who do not want to live in the material world.
December 16th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
Quick Rob, you ask me for quotes from Coulter in which she has advocated denial of free speech from certain people. The quotes would be too numerous to mention. A week or two ago I read a column of hers in which she chuckled and boo hoo-ed a movie starring George Clooney which made very tame criticisms of McCarthy’s attacks of free speech over fifty years ago. Her whole column consisted of a stroke-job of McCarthy; extolling the virtues of ruining innocent people’s lives.
As for the person who compared Coulter to Noam Chomsky? I don’t seem to remember Chomsky advocating the bombing of the New York Times (as Coulter suggested, because she disagreed with their coverage of the war…pooey, the NYT has sucked up enough to the president on this war; what more does the lady want out of them)
December 16th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
BTW, Quick Rob (and Marc Cooper).
No, I would not deny Ann Coulter the right to freedom of speech. If your reread my original post, I was just expressing my amazement that she and her supporters are so quick to cry foul when they advocate the same censorship of people Ann Coulter doesn’t agree with.
I guess my biggest question question of all is, why are news outlets and blogs like this making such an issue of this? People far more respectful of the first amendment have their free speech rights violated everyday (ever notice how Chomsky doesn’t get on the radio or tv a tenth as much as David Horowitz, even though Chomsky’s books have outsold his exponentially?)
December 16th, 2005 at 9:15 pm
This is something that I have had a problem with since I have been in college. The shouting down of people that have a difference of opinion than the institutional “leftys” on the college campuses. If people think that the opinions of certain people are wrong then why don’t you debate them in the spirit of intellectual discussion instead of shouting, yelling, and screaming. It becomes less an exercise of the mind and more an exercise of emotion.
December 16th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
These are the rules—under a dictatorship, speech is NOT FREE; if the government doesn’t like what you say, you might not be around for another day. In a democracy, where there is free speech, Ann Coulter, can make her inflammatory statements, but she must be prepared to endure harassment from dissenters. That’s why it is called FREE SPEECH.
December 18th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
This article below is from the Philadelphia Daily News concerns faculty at Tempe University’s fear
of new McCarthyism with Pennylvania state
legislature committee set up to investigate
so-called left-wing bias in acdemia.
Julia
Posted on Sat, Nov. 12, 2005
Profs get warned of freedoms
By MENSAH M. DEAN
deanm@phillynews.com
Words such as “McCarthyism” and “chill” buzzed through a group of Temple University professors and students who gathered on campus yesterday to discuss a state legislative committee’s investigation of political diversity at state-run colleges.
The “teach-in,” sponsored by the Temple Association of University Professionals, drew an audience overwhelmingly convinced that the committee’s very existence is a threat to academic freedom.
“I think that there is a concern that people are going to start coming in and say, ‘You can do this, but you can’t do this.’ If we are teaching about the Holocaust, do we also have to give the same amount of time to Holocaust denier?” art history Professor Jane Evans asked during an interview.
“That’s the logical conclusion,” she added.
The Republican-backed state House of Representatives committee is probing, among other things, complaints by conservative students that they are routinely mistreated and unfairly graded by liberal college professors.
The resolution that created the investigative committee reads, in part: “Students and faculty should be protected from the imposition of ideological orthodoxy, and faculty members have the responsibility to not take advantage of their authority position to introduce inappropriate or irrelevant subject matter outside their field of study.” The committee held its first hearing Wednesday at the University of Pittsburgh.
According to Rep. Lawrence H. Curry, a committee member who addressed last night’s group, the committee discussed whether to allow lawmakers to monitor courses that advocate rather than educate.
Curry, a Democrat whose District includes parts of Montgomery County and Philadelphia, said the committee also discussed the creation of a means for bringing political balance to faculties.
“You better take that seriously. Administrations had better take that seriously,” Curry told the Temple group. He and every Democrat voted against the creation of the committee.
“Certainly, the growing campaign against the academic community is… a cause for concern,” Ellen Schrecker, Yeshiva University history professor, told the Temple group.
Just as in the 1950s, right-wing forces are threatening to impose political tests for the nation’s faculties, she said.
“The threat is more serious this time because unlike the McCarthy era, when professors came under fire for their extracurricular political activists, today it’s the core academic functions, their teaching and research that is at issue,” she said.
December 19th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
Someone said earlier something about not being able to make claims about professors from their essay questions? That’s right, it sounds like a David Horowitz kind of tactic actually. I don’t know why Cooper engages in such tactics really…
And why the claim Robert Brenner is an ‘ideologue’? I think he’s an outstanding and serious historian.
December 21st, 2005 at 7:39 am
The 1st Amendment is about restricting government from censoring speech. It is not about preventing heckler’s from shouting down somebody who’s talking or to keep people from yelling at each other, or any other such thing.
Common heckler’s can not violate anybody’s free speech rights. They are engaging in free speech themselves, even if doing so is rude or makes someone else choose to stop talking because of the noise.
On the contrary, having the government silence the hecklers would be a violation of their free speech rights.
Sometimes the speech of hecklers is silenced by government, but the only person’s free speech rights that may have been violated here are the free speech rights of the _hecklers_, not the person they were heckling.
The laws used to silence extreme heckling are “disorderly conduct”, and they have nothing to do with free speech or the 1st amendment, or any individual’s right to free speech.
They have to do with real or perceived rights to _order_ and decorum, and sometimes free speech rights are suppressed, or traded, for the sake of _order_.
So those who are suggesting that these students somehow violated Coulter’s free speech rights are seriously misguided.
What they are doing is making a _law and order_ argument, but confusing it with free speech. Others are just confusing their sense of etiquette and good manners with speech rights.
They in fact want free speech suppressed in favor of order. Maybe that’s a good or bad argument. Sometimes there needs to be a balance between freedom and order, but it’s purely Orwellian to claim that speech must be suppressed to defend free speech.
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