A National Review article, How to Censor Speakers on College Campuses, is subtitled “Oberlin students trying to censor Christina Hoff Sommers conflate speech and violence.”1 The writer, Charles Cooke, is talking about a speech Christina Hoff Sommers gave at Oberlin, which some Oberlin students protested.
Cooke writes:
By way of example, take a look at this farcical missive from the Oberlin Review, in which around 150 students at the college claim repeatedly that Sommers was coming to campus to present not a viewpoint with which many of the students vehemently disagree but rather an actual threat to student safety. Sommers, the signatories contend, is not an academic sharing her work, but a participant “in violent movements” and an accessory to “threats of death and rape.” The decision to allow her to speak, they conclude, “has real life consequences on the well-being of people.”
Why did they claim this? Well, largely because they know that it works. As Ace of Spades noted acidly yesterday evening, the “game” is rather simple: “If you claim someone is making you feel ‘unsafe,’” Ace noted “that sets in motion Title IX protections,” and, in consequence, “administrators are under legal peril if they do not act.” He is correct. Indeed, as progressives across the world have come to realize, the most successful way of getting speech banned or condemned is to propose that there is something inherently different about it — something that is so sinister and so mysterious that it is likely to cause both psychic and physical harm. Or rather, as one trumped little agitator named Lydia Smith put it, Sommers’s views are “super f[***]ing oppressive,” and they need to be suppressed.
Comments:
1) This sort of pathetic bleating from conservatives who scream “censorship” any time a right-winger is protested or disagreed with is impossible to respect. (In comments, RonF posted a link to this funny YouTube video, making fun of Obies for whining pitiously when they encounter opposing opinions – but the criticism would be better applied to the National Review, if Cooke’s article is typical.)
2) Oberlin College – which I feel sure has more competent legal counsel than Charles Cooke or his friend “Ace of Spades” – gave no appearance of feeling itself to be “under legal peril.” At the very least, Oberlin administrators did nothing to prevent Sommers from speaking (Oberlin did distribute copies of their “general policies for dissent/protest,” but those policies – which seemed to have been followed by the protestors at CHS’s speech – protect Sommers’ speech, as well as the protestors’ speech). There’s no evidence that anyone at Oberlin did anything to prevent Sommers from speaking or being heard.
3) A lot of Cooke’s critique comes down to his magical mind-reading powers. According to Cooke, “they claim this” – that CHS is a rape apologist, that she contributes to a culture that has negative consequences, etc – because it serves progressives’ goal “of getting speech banned or condemned” and such claims are “the most successful way” of banning speech.
How does Cooke know the hidden evil motives of Oberlin progressives? Maybe they said what they said because they believe it to be true.
4) Let’s see what those students actually wrote in the Oberlin Review:
A rape denialist is someone who denies the prevalence of rape and denies known causes of it. Christina Hoff Sommers believes that rape occurs less often than statistics (those which actually leave out a plethora of unreported rapes) suggest. She also believes that false rape accusations are a rampant issue and that intoxication and coercion cannot rightly be considered barriers to consent. OCRL additionally failed to mention that she participates in violent movements such as GamerGate, a campaign that threatened feminists advocating against sexism in video games via threats of death and rape. […]
By denying rape culture, she’s creating exactly the cycle of victim/survivor blame, where victims are responsible for the violence that was forced upon them and the subsequent shame that occurs when survivors share their stories, whose existence she denies. This is how rape culture flourishes. By bringing her to a college campus laden with trauma and sexualized violence and full of victims/survivors, OCRL is choosing to reinforce this climate of denial/blame/shame that ultimately has real life consequences on the well-being of people who have experienced sexualized violence.
Cooke quoted out-of-context bits of that letter in a way that makes it seem like Oberlin students had actually accused CHS of being a violent threat to Oberlin students. But in context, the letter makes no such claim. For example, when they say that CHS’s speech has “real life consequences,” they are explicitly referring to a “climate of denial/blame/shame,” not to direct physical violence.
5) Cooke claims that Lydia Smith, who was also one of the signatories of the Oberlin Review letter, said that “Sommers’s views are ‘super f[***]ing oppressive,’ and they need to be suppressed.” This is a fucking2 lie. Here’s a fuller version of Smith’s quote, apparently speaking in character as a parody of CHS:
I have an opinion. My opinion is different from yours (read: ‘general Oberlin consensus’). PS my opinion is actually super fucking oppressive. My view silences people’s lived experiences. My view silences people’s realities. My view silences people’s trauma. But it’s different. In the name of free speech, you better give me the platform to speak.
Smith is making fun of the idea that CHS is owed a platform to speak. But Smith doesn’t advocate censoring CHS, or say that CHS’s views “need to be suppressed.” Cooke simply made that up.
6) The Oberlin protestors showed up; they posted signs outside the hall where CHS was speaking; they organized a counter-event; fifteen or so protestors sat in the front row with tape over their mouths; reports vary, but there may have been a few hecklers who shouted brief comments, but nothing that prevented Sommers from speaking or being heard.
None of that amounts to censorship. At all. In fact, that’s how free speech is supposed to work. Conservatives, contrary to what some of them apparently believe, do not have a free speech right to speak without opposition or criticism.
There’s a real problem – among lefties, among feminists, and among conservatives – of some people being so merciless and unforgiving of political disagreement that it creates a chilling effect on debate and free expression. But that doesn’t seem to have happened here. Oberlin college Republicans brought in Sommers to speak (presumably paying her $5000 fee out of their share of Oberlin’s student activity fund); she spoke; other students objected and held counter-events; according to Sommers, afterwards she went out for drinks with some Oberlin students, including some protestors, and had a spirited but civil disagreement.
Nothing here justifies whining about censorship.
- It’s possible that someone else at the NR, rather than Cooke, was responsible for the title and subtitle of Cooke’s piece. But I think it’s in keeping with Cooke’s piece, and in any case, it’s evident that someone at The National Review – either Cooke himself or his editor – believes that what happened at Oberlin was attempted censorship. [↩]
- Or “f[***]ing” if Cooke prefers. [↩]
This article doesn’t tell the full story of what happened at Oberlin. The protestors didn’t just protest Christina Hoff Sommers. They put up signs with the names of the members of the group that had her speak and said “This person perpetuates rape culture.” http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/23/oberlin-activists-posted-creepy-messages#comment?NV:.8gxlto:jSs6
I remind you that rape is a felony. Thus, what those protestors did is tantamount to saying that those students who put on this event support felonious activities. I am not a lawyer, but this suggests to me that a serious case might get made that the protestors ended up libeling the students who put on the event. How in the world is saying that “this person supports rape” not a form of defamation of character, unless such can get proven?
It might also constitute retaliatory harassment under Oberlin’s policy. I suggested that here on a reddit as Spoonwood:
http://www.reddit.com/r/FeMRADebates/comments/33nrw0/do_you_consider_this_to_be_harassment_and/
At the very least, the thesis that these students were not trying to censor this speech does not seem to end up as very maintainable.
Spoonwood, “perpetuates rape culture,” “supports rape,” and “commits felonies” are three different claims. Making the first does not make the other two.
Do you know what ‘rape culture’ is?
If it’s libel, they should really bring suit. I look forward to the trial with great interest, and no small degree of giggling.
Do you know what constitutes libel?
No. Nothing you’ve said supports that.
Oh of course you’re from Reddit.
—Myca
It doesn’t seem to have reached the level of “censorship”, although it might under some wider definitions of the word.
Isn’t implying that CHS should be denied a platform to speak, advocating for censorship? I mean, it might be better to frame the issue that OCRL is owed a platform to hear CHS, rather than the other way around. I’m not sure that Smith is making fun of the fact that CHS feels owed a platform, rather seems to trying to make fun of someone daring to have an independent thought and wanting to engage in intellectual dialogue, because such ideas might hurt someone’s feelings.
There are a few other terms that seem more apt at describing the behaviour of the students. “Immature”, “anti-intellectual”, “harassment”, “bullying” and/or “intimidation” all seem to fit reasonably well.
Also, while we’re looking at “fucking lies”:
The Oberlin student’s reactions to CHS were far closer to “censorship” than GamerGate is to a “violent movement”.
Well, there were at least two swatting attempts linked to Gamergate. I think that qualifies as violence.
I’d say it would depend on the specific policy advocated for. If someone is saying that OCRL should not be allowed to host Hoff Sommers for a speech, then that would be advocating censorship. If someone criticizes OCRL’s choice to invite Hoff Sommers, however, that is not censorship at all.
That seems like a pretty substanceless list of adjectives, and ignores the obvious truth that Oberlin feminists are not the Borg.
It’s clear that many of the Oberlin students decided to just create an alternate event (that was the main thrust of the letter linked to in the post). So in your view, if feminists create an alternate event, is that bullying, immature, anti-intellectual, harassment, and intimidating? How about the students who had a drink with Hoff Sommers afterwards and disagreed with her amicably? Is disagreeing with an anti-feminist inherently bullying, immature, anti-intellectual, harassment, and intimidating, in your view?
The posters Spoonwood linked to are an awful way to conduct any debate – but despite the claim of an unnamed source, that looks to me more like the work of 2 people (judging by handwriting) than 10. (3 if the “you are part of the problem” writer was part of the group, but to me that looks more like a rebuttal comment that someone posted in response to the original posters). But even if it was ten, that would hardly represent all Oberlin students, or all Oberlin feminists, or even all of the feminists who publicly disagreed with CHS in some fashion.
If Linus says “Lucy is a puppy-kicker,” and Sally says “Linus called for censoring Lucy!,” Sally is lying. That Linus may (or may not) have been lying about the puppy-kicking is not material to the question of whether or not Sally’s allegation is true. For this reason, I don’t think your comment here is at all a rebuttal to what I wrote.
I’d like to ask people not to get into any further gamergate discussion in this thread, because gamergate tends to suck all the oxygen out of a discussion. But there’s always the open thread!
Eh. You use a very strict definition of “censorship,” here. Which isn’t bad on its own, but doesn’t really jibe if you want to use looser definitions of other words, whether “sexist” or “homophobic” or what have you.
Common parlance is that “calls for censorship” are “attempts to make someone stop speaking,” as opposed to “attempts to provide competing speech.”
Is that, technically, legal censorship by a government official which physically prevents the publication of words? No, not really. Then again, is opposition to gay marriage technically “fear of gays,” i.e. “homophobic?” No, not really.
Also, it may not be instantly obvious, but the protestors are adopting language which is drawn from other statutes and laws: “Harassment.” “Violence.” “Unsafe.” “Hate speech.”
Do you wonder why?
I can answer: Those are triggers which are, themselves, designed to interact with the expanding sense of protectionism on college campuses. Rather than openly calling for censorship, they can achieve it through an end run. All it takes is folks who are willing to pretend that
They can focus on banning “harassment of survivors” and call Sommers “harassing,” and try to stop her from speaking. You don’t like censorship: Will you line us to protect people who are accused of harassment, and prevent anti-harassment laws from being passed?
They can focus on saying Sommers’ talk is “hate speech” and claim it’s exempt from protection, and try to stop her from speaking. You don’t like censorship: Will you line up to protect hate speech and prevent hate speech laws from being passed?
They can focus on saying that Sommers makes people feel “unsafe” and call for the college to make then feel safe. You don’t like censorship: Will you line up to tell people that words aren’t the same as violence? Will you make sure that Title 9 doesn’t get expanded to allow colleges to be sued for this?
Spending your time fighting about the use of “censorship” is odd.
ETA:
For example, here is a link where a student LITERALLY equates words to violence.
http://oberlinreview.org/8176/opinions/silencing-survivors-results-in-violence/
Assuming you join in the general “we should prevent violence” crowd, don’t you concede this is a call for censorship by another name?
Despite the best efforts of some college students, “hate speech” really IS free speech, worthy of full protection and exercise. And Sommers’ stuff isn’t even that.
Ampersand:
No, those are not my views. I (and as far as I can tell, most of the other people commenting) are not criticising those actions. I realise ‘Oberlin students’ is probably a bit vague, so to clarify the actions I am criticising include:
Other signs:
“Christina Hoff Sommers & OCRL support rapists”
“Christina Hoff Sommers denies our lived experiences of sexual assault”
“Freedom of speech does not mean hate speech” (implying CHS talk was hate speech and therefore ought to be censorable?)
etc.
I think what takes the cake though is this quote from the student’s response you linked from the Oberlin Review:
Yes, why bother engaging in intellectual debate with the substance of someone’s position on any number of significant issues? It’s not like the possibility of convincing someone of the merit of your point of view or, *gasp*, learning something yourself is something worth any effort. It’s much better to just throw a tantrum like a child over the fact that someone has opinions you don’t like. I mean, what do these people think Oberlin is, an educational institution for adults? </sarcasm>
edit: I’ve responded to Kate over in the open thread.
Daran’s comment moved to the open thread. Daran, I think you missed this that I wrote: “I’d like to ask people not to get into any further gamergate discussion in this thread, because gamergate tends to suck all the oxygen out of a discussion. But there’s always the open thread!”
These sorts of discussions usually end up splitting hairs over whether some particular action is censorship, silencing or simple rudeness. Maybe the real problem is why some activists go straight to variations on the “your words are violence-ing me!” argument.
The implied extreme fragility is part of a reinforcing bunker mentality. The originally therapeutic notion of a “safe space” and the expectations of behavior thereof has been expanded to a political imperative. That’s how the idea that you don’t question rape victims bled from support groups (where it makes sense) to the criminal justice and campus adjudication systems. This is how we got the “Jackie” outrage and the subsequent embarrassing climbdown.
Meanwhile, the left (especially the social justice left) is getting clobbered on all sides outside small academic enclaves. The issues that animate the campus left are completely off national and state level political radar. Real life contains too many scary violence-words to participate in, I suppose.
If you can’t listen to someone who disagrees with you on an issue of statistics and survey methodology that has risen to the level of shibboleth without feeling fearful for your safety, then what happens in a school board meeting? A state senate debate?
Christina Hoff Sommers came onto campus to speak. She was not prevented from speaking. Therefore, she was not censored.
There were certainly a great many people who were desirous of preventing her from speaking. Some I’m sure were simply among those who protested against what she had to say. Others showed up at her speech and interrupted and otherwise hindered her. Ms. Sommers was not censored, but I would say based on what I’ve read about this incident that Oberlin College is not particularly a healthy environment for exercising one’s free speech rights.
Additionally, I propose that Oberlin College is a heavily flawed educational institution. I should think that it is not a very good place to learn what “free speech” actually means, or to learn how the skills necessary for using your rights effectively; analysis, criticism, persuasion, logic, etc. Because the best way to do that is to use all those skills to oppose ideas you disagree with and to support ideas you DO agree with against people who disagree with them. Apparently there are people at Oberlin College dedicated to preventing either of those two things from happening through the use of ad hominem attacks, strawmen, appeals to emotion, hyperbole, etc., etc.
LTL FTC: How is the social justice left getting “clobbered” outside of academic enclaves, when the anti-racist-policing movement is thriving and making major strides, marriage equality has expanded rapidly, there’s more public awareness of and progress on trans issues than ever before, and some 30 politicians are joining with activists and union leaders in pledging to combat income inequality?
desipis: I’m willing to give you the “Freedom of speech does not mean hate speech” example as something that advocates censorship (while I think some of what CHS says is hateful, I also think hate speech is free speech). I’m not sure what’s censorship-advocating, though, about students quietly filing in with duct tape on their mouths, a “rape culture hall of fame” sign, other signs that harshly criticize her views, or (as long as they aren’t doing it to a point where CHS doesn’t actually get to speak/make her case/be heard) hecklers. With the possible exception of the “rape culture hall of fame” sign that called out individual other students rather than just calling out a public figure, I don’t think they’re intimidating, bullying, or anti-intellectual, either. They’re strong disagreement.
I presume the reason that Ampersand is focusing on the usage of “censorship” here is that people who oppose certain kinds of campus left activism are constantly invoking censorship and free speech.
There were similar protests when I was in college, when Phyllis Schlafly came to speak. I don’t recall that anyone outside campus noticed or cared, nor did we expect them to. There was no violence, no threats of violence, nobody escorted off campus, nothing that I can see that goes beyond stuff that I’ve seen a ton of times on various campuses. One group invites a speaker, another group objects to the speaker, the campus newspaper publishes a bunch of views, the speaker comes and speaks, the people who object stand outside with signs — I’ve seen this happen probably a dozen times over the 15+ years I’ve been attending and working at colleges. Why is this particular one getting all this attention?
Let’s see – 30 powerless minority party politicians and some folks in what remains of the labor movement signed a petition? Well then, now that we have Jose Serrano and Sheila Jackson Lee on our side, the battle is already won!
And trans awareness! Three cheers for liberal white women falling over each other to gush about how beautiful Laverne Cox is!
Look at reproductive rights. Look at anti-trans bathroom bills in state legislatures. Look at those state RFRAs, passing in AR and IN (even if Indiana got mildly shamed for a week and a half). Look at those bills policing what poor people can buy with aid money. Look at voter ID laws.
Oh, and the anti-racist-policing movement? They interrupted some traffic, barged in on brunch a couple of times and blast hashtags to one another day and night. No real legislative movement on sentencing, “law enforcement bill of rights” cop protections, civil forfeiture, etc. etc. etc.
Marriage equality, I’ll give you. While everything else goes down the toilet, we got that. Nice job. The inability of thousands of young activists to answer an argument with anything more substantive than a “Male Tears” .gif really paid off.
It would be great to get these solved in the first few months of a movement wave, but was it ever realistic? The anti-racist-policing movement has accomplished a lot more than what you’re claiming.
Do you think recent trans advancement is just white women liking Laverne Cox? How about the DSM revisions, LGBTQ-inclusive VAWA, changes in Social Security rules for gender marker changes, the executive order banning discrimination against trans people in federal jobs, Holder’s memo saying that Title VII protects trans people, or the victories in the last few years for trans prisoners trying to access gender-affirming care? And since you bring up horrible anti-trans bills, how about the fact that they were defeated in Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Kentucky, South Dakota and Minnesota?
Obviously, none of this means that things are perfect, or even particularly good. Work against racist policing and police brutality has a looooong way to go. Voter ID laws are still a thing. The backlash against rights and access to abortion continues – the landscape there isn’t uniformly bleak; some bad laws and decisions have been struck down, but it’s not good. But things aren’t as bleak as you make them out to be.
I’m politically active in a bunch of ways – I volunteer with LGBTQ impact litigation firm GLAD’s legal helpline, I do public education for my local rape crisis center, I’m on the board of an abortion fund, I volunteer on rape crisis and domestic violence hotlines, I’m a street medic at protests. I see a decent, if far from comprehensive, chunk of what activism is happening and what results are happening. There is way more diligent useful work happening and way more success than you claim.
LTL FTC, I don’t see much to your arguments other than over-the-top contempt for anyone who disagrees with you.
Maybe there’s significant substance there hidden under the tedious hand-waving, but I’m not seeing it, and in the end, it’s up to me to judge.
Please start treating people you disagree with, with respect, and responding with more substance, if you’d like to remain a comment-writer here on “Alas.”
In the meanwhile, I’m putting you on “moderated” status for a while. That means your comments will go to moderation, and only be approved by a moderator if the moderator thinks you’re making substantive points and treated disagreeing comment-writers with respect.
From what I can see conservatives tend to counter free speech they don’t like by exercising their own right to free speech to critique the ideas presented. The left is much more likely to counter free speech they don’t like by labeling it “hate speech” or “triggering” or though ad hominem attacks on the speaker and attempting to prevent it from being spoken in the first place. Criticism of speech is one thing. Heckling, interrupting or shouting down a speaker is another. The latter is NOT legitimate criticism.
I have seen numerous examples in the media (and have previously posted a few) of conservative speakers who have been invited to speak at a college or university campus by an on-campus conservative group only to have that invitation either a) rescinded due to pressure from other on-campus groups and individuals, b) permitted to be blocked via a heckler’s veto through threats of disruption or violence that leads the school to require the inviting group to come up with extra money for security that they don’t have or c) truncated or halted though physical interference with the speaker. If you see any examples of this regarding leftist speakers from conservative-leaning individuals or groups I invite you to post them.
Ron F:
I don’t have the narrow example you asked for – nor did I ever make such a claim. But I certainly have examples of conservatives “being so merciless and unforgiving of political disagreement that it creates a chilling effect on debate and free expression,” which is what I claimed.
How about 2000+ (presumably) conservative people signing a petition saying an anti-racist professor should be fired because they thought her anti-racist tweets weren’t polite enough?
Fury over Boston University professor’s tweets – CNN.com
Petition.
This is the second example in the past year I can think of, of conservatives clamoring to have a professor fired (or, in Salida’s case, unhired) because they object to the professor’s left-wing political tweets.
The anti-racist-policing movement hasn’t had much to say in Freddie Gray’s case given that of the 6 cops going on trial, 3 are black – including the only one who was charged with murder. Maybe this will get people to see that the primary issue here isn’t necessarily racism.
It is shocking how many people at Oberlin and elsewhere are seriously putting forth the propositions that there is something that can be legally defined as “hate speech”, that it is distinct from free speech, and that it does not enjoy First Amendment protections. That is of course true in many other countries, but not in the United States. We may not be as free a country as the Founders intended, but we are closer than most other countries. One wonders what kind of education people are receiving at Oberlin that they can say such things with a straight face. Are they lying, or simply ignorant?
Ron, are you suggesting that this is an honest paraprhase of my post’s arguments?
I think that a professor should be able to express unpopular viewpoints about social issues, politics, etc. without fearing for their jobs. But in that particular BU professor’s case, I think the calls for her firing are in fact legitimate. Not because of her views per se – she’s got as much right to be racist as anyone else – but because I think it affects her professional competence. It seems to me that her racist viewpoints are so extreme and so strongly held as to make it very difficult for people of all races to be assured of getting unbiased treatment in her classes. I cannot imagine that anyone who would condemn the attitudes, actions, culture, etc. of any other race so strongly would be able to remain employed at a university as an instructor.
I would say “presumably anti-racist people”.
Lireal’s response to Desipis (comment #12) covers much of what I’d say in response, and I agree with it 100%. Lireal pretty much said what I wanted to say (but much more concisely than I’d be likely to say it). Thanks, Lireal! :-)
No, it’s my answer to the question “Was Christian Hoff Nolan censored?”
First, I did miss that you wrote that, and I apologise for my inattentiveness.
Second, does this mean that the claim that Hoff Sommers “participates in violent movements” is now off-limits for discussion here?
Third, I think the link I provided is relevent to the main topic of this thread. Even if there was no effort to censor Hoff Sommers at Oberlin, she clearly has been censored, by a bomb threat to a meeting she was a participant in.
No apology necessary. Honestly, that was my fault: I should have put it in bold or made it a separate post or something, rather than writing it as an afterthought on the bottom of a longer comment.
Here on this thread, yes, at least insofar as talking about it requires talking about GamerGate. But you can use an open thread.
In context, I thought you were talking about GamerGate, but that’s not a claim I’d prefer to litigate; I don’t think it’s important, and I didn’t mean to be making any accusation against you.
But sure, it’s true that whoever called in that bomb threat was attempting a form of censorship, and is also just generally a vile asshole. There are vile assholes in any movement, including the feminist and progressive movements, alas.
I don’t think your position in this case (that the professor should be fired) is compatible with this position.
As I wrote about the Angela McCaskill case:
What was true for McCaskill – a diversity administrator at her college – is even more true of a professor who needs academic freedom to do her work. Pre-emptively firing someone because she said things you disagree with politically and therefore you speculate she won’t treat white students fairly, seems like a rationalization. Instead, you should take a principled position in favor of free speech – no professor should be fired for their political freedoms.
If, in six months or a year, there’s substantial evidence that she’s actually (I dunno) flunking all white students regardless of the quality of their work or whatever, at that point she can be fired – not for what she said, but for not performing her job duties adequately. But firing someone for their political opinions on twitter is nothing but censorship, no matter how you try to dress it up as something else.
(P.S. I can think of rare exceptions, where someone’s politics are genuinely related to their job – for instance, a politician firing his campaign manager after it is leaked that the campaign manager has views that are repulsive to the politician’s base. Those exceptions are rare and far between, however.)
It hasn’t? The anti-racist-policing movement was how I heard about Freddie Gray’s case in the first place and how I continued to hear about new developments. Ferguson anti-racist-policing organizers went to Baltimore to help support the protests, many of which had an explicit anti-racist-policing/Black Lives Matter theme, and to provide free lunch to Baltimore kids, especially while the schools were shut down. When I went to Baltimore to be a street medic for three days, it was anti-racist-policing organizers (specifically, Operation Help or Hush, which has also done a lot of fundraising in support of the Baltimore protests) who arranged for my housing. Major anti-racist-policing movement writer Shaun King wrote about the Freddie Gray case. I’m not sure how you can say that the movement hasn’t had much to say.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding and you mean that the movement shouldn’t have much to say because some of the officers were black. As of my writing this comment, Ampersand has written a post addressing that argument.
Does it count as talking about Gamergate if I note that this happened to Anita Sarkeesian in Utah?
I’m confused.
If there’s no ifs, ands, or buts on free speech—no exceptions for hate speech or what have you—then what exactly did any of the students do that anyone could possibly object to?
Posters? Form of speech.
Chants? Form of speech.
Heckling? Form of speech.
Performance (e.g., the duct taped mouths)? Form of speech.
If we are going to be absolutists when it comes to the issue of free speech, we have to agree that someone can stand up and say, “I don’t care about free speech, I don’t think you should have the right to say this because reasons.” We can think they’re wrong. We can insist that free speech means that they’re wrong. We can think their reasons are utterly fabricated, and we can even think that whether their reasons make sense or not is irrelevant because free speech.
Even if you think free speech is so sacred that the one exception is when someone is using speech to advocate against free speech… well, then you have to parse it out. Because very few people will state their case so bluntly. The people putting up the posters didn’t say they were opposed to free speech. The people doing the chanting or heckling or whatever you want to call it didn’t say they were opposed to free speech.
Individual people are looking at these actions and parsing their speech as being at odds with free speech. But who makes that determination, and on what basis?
There’s no first strike rule in free speech. There no rule that says if I’m the first one to stand up and say, “Bananas are gross,” no one else can stand up and say that I’m wrong, bananas are awesome.
If you believe in free speech, you have to believe in the right of anyone and everyone to stand up and say that whatever you personally have professed to believe in is dangerous, wrong-headed, and/or will lead to serious consequences.
You don’t have to agree with them.
But you have to believe that they can say it.
On the other hand, if you believe that there are exceptions… then you believe there are exceptions. You might differ with people on ~*The Left*~ about exactly where they lie, on what the line is between “legitimate criticism” and… “illegitimate criticism?”… but you could at least admit that you see that there are limitations so then we can have an honest discussion about what those limits should be.
AE- that doesn’t actually make any sense. Hypocrisy would be calling for people advocating for censorship to be censored. Calling them wannabe censors and treating then as moral lepers is not hypocrisy.
Sure, and I agree, but you’re skipping a step. Most of the people we’re discussing didn’t call for censorship. They criticized her in very strong (even unfair) terms, and people are arguing that that’s equivalent to calling for her censorship.
And in doing so they’re criticizing the protesters in very strong (and I’d argue unfair) terms. But that’s not censorship because … handwaive handwaive mumble mumble preferredfirstspeakerdoctrine.
—Myca
Most of them didn’t. Some of them did.
Well there are exceptions: “true threats”, for example, are not protected by the First Amendment. What exactly constitutes a “true threat” is a matter of law, not what you or I might think the words mean.
But in general, it’s true that much of what we call hate speech is constitutionally protected.
desipis refered to a sign that said “Freedom of speech does not mean hate speech”, which is open to multiple interpretations. The specific interpretation placed upon it was “Hate speech is not (or should not be) constitutionally protected”, which, assuming that this is what the sign-writer meant, is legally illiterate.
I haven’t seen anyone claiming that the forms of speech you list are not (or should not be) free speech. Nor has anyone argued that there is anything wrong with objecting to hate speech. Indeed it’s only objectionable (to some) speech that gives rise to free speech issues. Unobjectionable speech needs no protection.
Alexandra @ 29:
Showing up at a speech with your mouth taped over does not interfere with someone else’s speech. Stand out in front of the event venue (while not interfering with people entering or leaving the building) and chant? No problem. Slap up posters decrying the speaker and their views? Go for it. But if a group organizes an event expressly to provide someone with a forum to speak and you show up inside the venue and start heckling the speaker or leading chants while they are trying to speak, then you are in fact suppressing their speech by keeping people from hearing them. You may not SAY that you oppose free speech – but you are acting like it.
True. But if someone organizes a “Bananas suck” lecture and you show up with 20 of your buddies and continuously chant “Bananas are awesome!” such that people cannot hear the speaker, you are suppressing free speech. What your free speech rights permit you to do is to organize your own “Bananas are great” lecture and invite the world.
I’ve responded to Ampersand’s comment #25 here.
Ampersand:
I suspect that it’s not so much they weren’t polite enough, but rather that her ‘anti-racist’ tweets were straight up racist themselves.
That said, I don’t consider expressing racist ideas something that warrants censorship and those tweets certainly aren’t enough to justify firing a professor.
Who did, precisely? We’ve been discussing the sign that said “Freedom of speech does not mean hate speech”, which desipis interpretted as advocating that “CHS talk … ought to be censorable”. But that’s not the only possible interpretation. You could just as well interpret it as saying “just because it’s free speech, doesn’t mean that we have to listen to hate speech”.
Lirael:
Can you explain which things, said by CHS, you consider hateful?
I don’t think “disagreement” describes it. I think it’s something more along the lines of “denouncement”. The signs, tape and heckling are a form of free speech. However, they weren’t about engaging in the contents of CHS talk, rather they were simplistic ad-hominems, hence “anti-intellectual”. The form of the students’ reactions weren’t structured in a way merely to communicate their disagreement, but were structured in a way to create a sense that the local community was hostile to the mere presence of CHS. Once you add the fact that some of the signs were out right lies (CHS doesn’t support rapists, ffs) and others named members of OCRL, I think it’s reasonable to use the terms “intimidations” and “bullying”.
I think a much better response would have been to organise someone else to come to Oberlin at a later date to rebut the actual positions put forward by CHS. Or even better, organise a debate between the OCRL and the protesters that covers the contents of CHS’s talk.
desipis:
She claims that the US is in the midst of a “rape panic” analogous to the Satanic ritual daycare panic (while people argue about the number of rapes, I should think most people agree that it’s a whole lot more than zero, which was the number of Satanic ritual abusers running preschools AFAIK), and has quoted people comparing it to the Salem Witch Trials (again, the number of witches in Salem was zero). Furthermore, she claims that this “rape panic” is being driven by a “false accusation culture” on college campuses, thereby attempting to render any college student who comes forward about a rape as suspect and comparable to Satanic daycare panickers and witchhunters.
I volunteer as a rape crisis counselor. I find this commentary very hateful indeed.
Criticism isn’t censorship. But criticism designed to lead to censorship is a problem.
Do you agree with me that the people who want to classify this as “hate speech” are also heavily overlapped with the people who argue that “hate speech” should not be protected, and/or that it should actively be deterred?
Because it seems like folks aren’t considering that overlap.
I don’t disagree with you that “Sommers is promoting hate speech” looks like criticism, not censorship. That’s true.
But Oberlin’s administration is unusually sensitive to hate speech. Previously, it has involved the police to investigate hate speech incidents. It has also restated positions like “While Oberlin College takes great pride in its historic and ongoing commitment to diversity, inclusion, and respectful discussion of ideas, we draw the line at threats and harassment of any kind.
We will not tolerate acts of hatred and threats of violence regardless of motivation.”
So in THAT context, it seems to me that calling something “hate speech” takes on a bit of a different meaning. It can be criticism… and also a cal for censorship. If you want to make it “just criticism” in light of that context, you could easily do so by specifically disavowing any censorship intent.
Lirael:
I think you are quote-mining every bit as egregiously as Cooke did in the piece that is the subject of the post.
First you imply that her comparison with the Satanic Abuse scandle amounts to outright denial of any sexual assault in college, but in the piece where she made this comparison, she says “Sexual assault on campus is a genuine problem”.
Next you imply she endorses other people’s comparsion’s with the Salem witch trials, but what she actually said was “We are not facing anything as extreme as the Salem Witch Trials”
The phrase “false accusation culture” as far as I can see, only appeared in a tweet she made linking to that Time article. It does not appear in the article itself. As has often been pointed out, Twitter is a poor medium for articulating complex ideas. It seems to me likely that she used the phrase ironically – i.e., to rubbish the idea of “rape culture” rather than to seriously advance the notion that we live in a false accusation culture analogous to the feminist theory.
If she did mean it seriously, then how is “false accusation culture” any more hateful than “rape culture”?
Wikipedia says
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture
Almost every other definition on the web has something about “normalizing” rape, or the much clearer term “validate”
http://upsettingrapeculture.com/rapeculture.php
If some person A claims that person B is validating rape, they are claiming that person B is supporting it.
What does it mean for something to be normalized?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_%28sociology%29
The catch lies in that if something is normal, it is good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normality_%28behavior%29
If some person A claims that some other person B is perpetuating rape culture, then it follows that person A is claiming that person B is supporting the normalization of rape. So, person A is implying that person B is supporting the idea that rape become (or remain) a good thing at a cultural level. And, as I would think clear enough, if someone is indicating that something is a good thing, then that someone is voicing support for it. Therefore, if person A claims that person B is perpetuating rape culture, then person A is claiming that the other person supports rape. And not just one rape mind you, *all* the rapes that happen in that culture.
I never claimed anything which indicates anything about committing felonies. I said
Given the notion of collective responsibility as valid (I don’t know if it’s a valid legal concept), I will point out that some feminists do believe in the idea of collective responsibility
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-moralpsych/#ColRes
it follows that the other feminists at this protest were responsible for those who put up the signs saying “X supports rape culture”.
Somewhat relevant (another example of a prominent conservative – this time in the Wall Street Journal – not seeming to understand the difference between criticism and suppressing speech):
The Blog Post That Destroyed Free Speech in America – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Why are we quibbling about whether the students “engaged with” or “denounced” Sommers? Those are both valid uses of free speech, aren’t they?
And as for whether or not anyone is calling for the students to be censored… meh. When you come to a post that’s saying “criticism isn’t censorship” to argue, “Yes, it is.” and you’re also arguing that censorship shouldn’t be allowed (at least, I think that’s what people are arguing? If anyone wants to clarify that they’re in favor of censorship, I’ll take that on board), then I’ll draw my own inference, thank you.
I’m not a big believer in taking people’s professions of what they believe in at pure face value. Take twenty people at random from both sides of this fracas and at least 19 of them will say they believe in free speech. They also all believe in ethics, honesty, life, and liberty.
I mean, we all believe in good things and we all oppose bad things, right?
Drilling down a bit,
desipis at #38 has this to say: “but [the comments] were structured in a way to create a sense that the local community was hostile to the mere presence of CHS. ”
It’s funny, the left talks about speech that makes a community hostile to the presence of certain people all the time, and we usually get told… toughen up. Grow a thicker skin. That’s not real racism, real sexism, real hostility… not a real problem. That’s just free speech.
Isn’t “This community doesn’t want CHS to speak here?” a valid opinion that can be expressed freely? You can tell me all the reasons you think it’s wrong, but that’s not what I’m asking.
You go on to say “Once you add the fact that some of the signs were out right lies (CHS doesn’t support rapists, ffs)”… well, this is where I have a hard time granting you the status of champion of free speech.
The people who have labeled her statements as giving support to rapists have made their case for how this operates. You can disagree with the framework they’re using. You can disagree that the mechanisms they’re outlining are plausible. You can disagree with the conclusions they’re drawing. You can even think they’re basically right about what’s happening but think that her motives (I trust she’s personally against rape, just like most everybody, and in favor of good things, just like most everybody) outweigh the outcomes they’re describing. In short, you can think they’re straight up wrong, and you can say so.
But this habit of reflexively calling people liars because they come to a different conclusion than you would? That serves one purpose and one purpose only: to shut people up.
Because when you refuse to acknowledge people’s opinions as opinions and just paint anyone who disagrees with you past a certain degree as a liar, you’re creating a circle of opinions it’s not acceptable to speak.
Again, you might profess to support the right of even liars to lie, but see above, in re: we’re all in favor of free speech. What I care about is actions. Calling someone a liar instead of merely stating that they are wrong is an action, and it has significance.
Most of the time when someone makes that leap, their material goal is to stop the “lies”, thus clearing the board of any opinion they don’t believe can be honestly held, which incidentally is any opinion too sharply at odds with their own.
RonF:
Here’s the petition asking ABC not to make a TV show based on the life of gay activist/advice columnist gay Dan Savage. The petition, which the right-wing CNSNews is running, is at 15,000 signatures after just five days.
I don’t think that’s censorship – they have a right to tell ABC what they do or don’t think of ABC’s programming choices, including asking ABC to cancel shows. But I believe you’d object strongly if a bunch of lefties gathered signatures to oppose a show because it had a positive depiction of a heterosexual family.
To be fair, the petition claims they’re targeting Savage because he’s allegedly an anti-Christian bigot. But lots of (asaik) straight celebrities have been openly and even harshly critical of conservative Christianity – Bill Mahar and Louie CK come to mind – yet the organized activism from the right seems more likely to target openly gay celebs like Savage and Ellen. In Ellen’s case, they didn’t even claim that the issue was over anything but her being an open lesbian.
(More up my alley, the same “million moms” group also called for boycotting DC comics because DC included a gay superhero in their lineup of approximately a zillion billion seemingly straight superheroes. I’m not sure if it was Green Lantern or Batwoman they objected to.)
BTW, Alexandra, I really liked your comment (“Why are we quibbling…”) but don’t have any response to it. :-)
Actually, I disagree on one very minor point – I think that painting people who are fairly obviously being sincere as “liars” isn’t necessarily about shutting them up. I think what it’s about is dismissing those opinions without having to acknowledge that this is something good faith people can even disagree on. Which is, I think, relevant to what you were saying about the “SJW” term in the other thread.
I don’t often do “yes, this” comments, but: Yes, this. Thanks, Lireal.
I’m not sure if I’d use the word “hateful,” but strong case can be made for either “hateful” or “rape denialist.” In any case, the idea that these are criticisms that can never be considered seriously – not even someone who has literally built her entire career on arguing that rape hardly ever happens and the responses to it are overblown – seems dubious.
Under Oberlin’s rules (which I posted a link to in the OP), “Responding vocally to the speaker, spontaneously and temporarily, is generally acceptable. Chanting, engaging in extended call and response, coughing, or making other sustained or repeated noise in a manner which substantially interferes with the speaker’s communication is not permitted, whether inside or outside the meeting.” I think Oberlin, as the owner of a private hall, would have the right to make a “no one but the speaker may ever utter a word” rule; but the rules they’ve used instead seem more reasonable and balanced to me.
Reading the news accounts, it’s clear that Sommers was, in fact, able to get through her speech and be heard by the audience. (I assume that Sommers’ account is exaggerated, and even she doesn’t claim that she couldn’t be heard or didn’t get a substantive chance to speak.) Assuming the protestors stayed within Oberlin’s rules – and they seem to have – I don’t think that’s censorship, or attempted censorship. She has no free speech right, nor a right within Oberlin’s rules, to speak without anyone commenting or responding.
Free speech includes both Sommers’ right to speak, but it also includes (within reasonable limits) the audience’s right of response. Balancing these two rights (as Oblerin’s rules do) is reasonable.
Lirael,
First, the point Daran made above is important as I think you’re characterising what CHS has said.
Secondly, I think you’re working off a different meaning of ‘hate’ to the one I’m familiar with. I don’t think anything CHS has said implies she has an ‘intense dislike’ of people who report allegations of rape. She disagrees with the questionable statistics about the prevalence of rape, the hyperbolic language used to describe it and some of the policy responses that are supported as a result of those statistics and language. I haven’t heard or read anything from CHS that suggests she is working from a dislike of rape victims or their advocates, just merely disagrees with some of the way advocates are describing the overall situation. I think calling that position ‘hateful’ is inaccurate.
Alexandra Erin:
Based on the quote of “denounced”, I’m going to assume you’re responding to what I said. So firstly, I think I need to point out that I agreed that it wasn’t censorship.
Secondly, I’m of the view that the free-speech/censorship argument isn’t the best way to frame the dispute. Rather I see it as an intellectual-debate vs provocative-partisanship issue, and expect that college and university should be focused on the former rather than the later.
I used the word “lie” because I see the sign as clearly implying that CHS directly and intentionally supported rapists. I consider this a false allegation. I consider that the sign makers were aware of the false implication and wrote the sign as is anyway in order to maximise its provocative effect. Hence, why I used the word “lie”. Now, it’s possible that the sign makers were morons and not aware of the common interpretation of the words they used, but I figured I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.
If the sign had read something along the lines of “CHS’s policies support rapists”, that is something that expresses the concept that the support is indirect or unintentional, then I wouldn’t have used the word “lie”. I have no problem with the students expressing their views, I just have a problem with the manner in which they are doing so.
So putting up a sign saying someone “supports rapists” in the same location they are giving a talk is just expressing an opinion and free speech, but using the word “lie” in an internet comment is a “significant action”? o_O
Unfortunately her racionation for disagreeing with the statistics is typically* poor. As best I can tell, the statistics are as good as any others in the social sciences field, including the ones we cite in support of our own positions. If you know of any good arguments as to why we should discredit these statistics, I’m all ears. But please read the above post, and this one, so that you don’t just send me yet another rehash of the same tired arguments that have been rebutted by me and others time and time again.
*compared with other critics of those statistics, such as Gilbert and Roiphe. I haven’t looked in detail at enough of CHS’s arguments on other matters to form a view about whether poor racionation is typical for her.
I agree with you remarks about hyperbolic language and policy responses.
Daran,
To clarify, I don’t agree with everything CHS says. I was just pointing out that being sceptical, or even cynical, towards social science statistics (or political language or social policies) is not even remotely close to the same thing as being hateful towards a particular set of people.
Perhaps people are inferring a motive for being sceptical or cynical towards social science statistics, much as you and your fellow travelers are inferring a motive for Oberlin students using the sort of language they use.