As I reported earlier, an invitation to Bill Maher to give the commencement address at the University of California at Berkeley recently came under fire as a group of students, apparently largely Muslim, objected on the grounds that he was a racist and a bigot who promulgated “hate speech.” They circulated a petition to withdraw Maher’s invitation.
According to a new article at Inside Higher Education, the organization that invited Maher appears to have been a student group called the “Californians.” And, apparently under pressure from the students, the “Californians” changed their mind, voting on Tuesday to withdraw the invitation.
But the University’s administration overturned that decision, so that Maher’s invitation stands. In a remarkably lucid defense of free speech, the Berkeley chancellor, speaking through the university’s Office of Public affairs, said this:
“. . . last night the “Californians” reconvened without administration participation and came to a decision that the invitation should be rescinded.
The UC Berkeley administration cannot and will not accept this decision, which appears to have been based solely on Mr. Maher’s opinions and beliefs, which he conveyed through constitutionally protected speech. For that reason Chancellor Dirks has decided that the invitation will stand, and he looks forward to welcoming Mr. Maher to the Berkeley campus. It should be noted that this decision does not constitute an endorsement of any of Mr. Maher’s prior statements: indeed, the administration’s position on Mr. Maher’s opinions and perspectives is irrelevant in this context, since we fully respect and support his right to express them. More broadly, this university has not in the past and will not in the future shy away from hosting speakers who some deem provocative.
Apparently the administration, realizing what could happen in the future if the student p.c. faction gains control, is looking into other ways to choose speakers. (Perhaps eliminating student participation, as we do here in Chicago?):
Finally, the unfortunate events surrounding the selection of this year’s winter commencement speaker demonstrate the need to develop a new policy for managing commencement ceremonies. The new process will ensure that these events are handled in a manner commensurate with our values and enduring commitment to free speech. We will be announcing the new policy as soon as it is ready.”
But of course the easily-offended continue to object, whining that having Maher as speaker constitutes (contra Chancellor Nicholas Dirks’s pronouncement) an endorsement of Maher’s views. One student made this comment on the “withdraw-Maher” petition:
“The administration claims to be upholding free speech by letting Bill Maher speak at the commencement. What the administration fails to realize is that it has turned its back on MANY other values that it is supposed to uphold such as equality and anti-discrimination. Also, having a speaker who has said offensive and ignorant things about certain members of society is not just about free speech. It is, in some way and to some extent, endorsing his beliefs since he is allowed to address the graduating class.”
In other words, only speakers having approved “values”should be allowed to speak. As for Maher’s “offensive and ignorant things about certain members of society,” I assume that refers to his comments about Islam. And that is about free speech: the right to criticize anyone’s views. Who is the arbiter of what is “ignorant” and “offensive”? Is it okay to criticize politics in a commencement speech but not religion?
Things have come full circle at Berkeley. In the 1960s the students were demanding, against the administration’s will, that the University give them the right to speak freely on campus about politics. Now it is the administration who has to enforce peoples’ right to speak freely about politics (and religion), and it is the students who try to censor those whose views they find repugnant.
Those students are immature crybabies. Some day they’ll have to live in the real world away from Sproul Plaza, and there they’ll hear plenty of things they don’t like. They’d better get used to it.
h/t: Mark
“More broadly, this university has not in the past and will not in the future shy away from hosting speakers who some deem provocative.”
Thery should run their press releases past the English department.
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Yes, there was a typo in my snarky comment. 🙂
Muphrys rides again.
There is a rule of grammar that probably dates back in some form to Homer (Iliad, not Simpson) to the effect that any complaint about someone else’s grammar will itself contain some typographical or grammatical error. (Says I, having corrected three ^H^H^H^H^H fpour ^H^H^H^H^H^H FIVE typos in his own message!)
&x1F63c;
Six typos.
😼
Muphrys. I learned that funny term here from Ben.
Are you sure? The statement seems fine to me (it is perfectly grammatical, and isn’t even a garden path).
“Who” is the object of “deem”. It should be “whom”.
Bah! I call for the abolishment of “whom”. It’s an anachronism. Few people use it because it seems unnatural in a language that rarely uses cases.
English nouns don’t change with case, but pronouns, and especially personal pronouns, most certainly do, although the usage is loose in everyday speech; e.g., “Who’s there? It’s me.” Sometimes the switch is reversed, as in “Just between you and I, …”. It seems like people sometimes substitute the nominative for the objective first person pronoun to sound more cultured.
I’m not a grammar nazi, but I expect better from a major university.
Were we to eliminate cases altogether you’d be saying things like “Give I the ball!”
Well, it’s why I said “rarely” instead of “never” wrt to case use. The use of cases with pronouns is not unnatural to English speakers but for nouns it is. English long ago dumped that from our grammar so we don’t need an archaic “whom” sitting around when most of us don’t use it naturally and need to stop and think if it makes sense. I actually refuse to use it.
Well, I think we should bring back the dative, and we could use a few more tenses and moods, and, before I forget, illogical, arbitrary, even contradictory genders for every noun. 🙂
Pfft, light weight! Introduce the ablative!
Costello: Well then first is occupied by whom?
Abbot: Yes.
Costello: I mean the fellow’s name.
Abbot: You refer to whom.
Costello: The guy on first.
See, it’s terrible! Down with whom! Don’t you mean who? No whom? What?
Exactly to who are you directing your criticism?
Exactly who are you directing your criticism to <—there, now it's better.
Perhaps to “they”? 😉 Seems that if “whom” is archaic, then “them” is also, both of them ending in “m” as them both does.
I didn’t say to remove all objects we use. I said to stop using whom because most people have to stop and think if they are creating a sentence “correctly” in English where whom is concerned. If you have to do that, it’s archaic as language is natural and easy and it shouldn’t take a native speaker stopping that pondering sentence structure to use it.
From an early Bill Cosby routine, parodying a Brylcream (sp.?) commercial involving a football player and a football player wannabe kid:
“Throw it to me, the ball. Pick it up first.”
Nah, I agree with Stephen and his “whom” in this case.
Me too. 😉
Whom deemed Whom to be preferable to Who?
The distinction between “who” and “whom” is all but lost in modern English, and the use of “who” in relative clauses (as in this case) is now explicitly described as grammatical in most texts on grammar. See, for example, this post by Geoff Pullum, where he points out that many “prescriptive authorities” actually go to the extent of calling out “whom” (and not “who”) as wrong in similar cases (the relevant paragraph is the one beginning “in cases where a….”). He also points out that they do so even though actual usage is divided between the two alternatives.
I wonder if the day will come when “That” is used in place of “Who” as the subject of a sentence. (Also “that” instead of “them” as the object.)
I guess it’s the latent conspiracy theorist in me; I perceive the increased objectification and commodification of human beings, as reflected by such changes in general language usage during the last 15-20 years or more. Newspaper columnists and other writers call us “human resources” and “human capital” and “social capital,” whereas yesteryear they would have used “persons,” “people,” and “human beings.”
(We have yet to have sufficient chutzpah to refer to kindergartners, for example, as “resources” or “capital,” though no doubt that’s how The Masters of the Universe view them.)
I’ve always hated the use of “that” and “which” in reference to people.
I do it all the time. I can’t decide if it’s a subconscious expression of my inner misanthropy or placement of empathy on things.
Alex Karas (sp.?) in “Blazing Saddles,” gazing out into infinity for the benefit of the camera: “Mongo only pawn in Great Game of Life.”
Me, too. Sometimes Brits seems to speak of individual children as “it”, which I find strange.
I had a British Ancient Greek professor who used to do that because he said infants weren’t quite human yet. I remember finding that amusing while others were appalled. I think he was playing it up a bit but who knows. He had weird views on things.
Well, “it” does get around the pronoun problem!
Yeah, but I’d rather see him/her, or even just him rather than it.
I’d take him/her, but bristle at just him…
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“Those students are immature crybabies.” Indeed.
I’d add “entitled” to the list as well.
Of course, offering peaceful protests or engaging in intelligent debate regarding Maher’s views is beyond the ken of these ridiculous students.
Perhaps the Berkley students should visit the old building that houses the Chancellor’s office – Then they could take a look at the door absent handles – the handles removed to prevent protesting students from chaining themselves to the door. Protests, that among other things, involved exercise of free speech.
This is what comes out of the tendency to group ‘religion’ in with identity (race, nationality, sex, lifestyle, personal preference) — as opposed to treating it like a set of factual claims and hypotheses. Ideas are not equal and we need to discriminate between them. That’s not bigotry; that’s rational.
In that same vein, this:
“… who has said offensive and ignorant things about certain members of society…”
shows that they’re still conflating criticism of religion with criticism of religious individuals.
I don’t think the PC crowd appreciates the ease with which their arguments can be co-opted by right wing interests. I’ve spent decades listening to Mormon defenders argue that Mormonism is “an ethnicity” and that to criticize “the Church”, its teachings, its social positions or its political activities amounts to “hate speech” and “bigotry”. In Utah, where this religion holds a majority, these arguments are extremely convenient for advancing the Mormon Church’s interests and suppressing minority dissent. If Muslims can disqualify criticism of Islam using these strategies, so can all the other religions.
One can’t attack peoples immortality ideologies.
So, Just tell the protesting students that Bill Maher will not affect their relationship or future and hoped for audience with Allah – ‘the Univseristy does not believe, Bill is that powerful’, nor does it have any evidence that he has such a reach.’
And that if they ponder on this, they will be fine.
Unless they want to diminish free speech. hmmm; and Allah would not want that to be?
I’ll be curious to see whether Maher sticks to light, canned-standard commencement-style commentary, or whether he incorporates this whole incident into his planned comments. Whenever you heckle a comedian, you run the risk of them dishing back more than they’ve received.
I’m betting he will directly address the situation. I hope his talk is recorded. I’d love to hear it.
I’m thinking so, too. He’s no stranger to vocal minorities, and one way to get the crowds behind you is to make a few pointed jabs at their stupidities.
I’m hoping more than a few jabs. I’m thinking Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Yale. I want fireworks!
Rick: I think he’s going to address it on his show tonight. At least that’s what a commenter on Hemant’s site said. So if you’re interested in that, make sure to tune in.
Thanks eric. Good news.
The students (in their view) being so manifestly correct in the rectitude of their opinions and intentions, perhaps Maher should simply give them a quitclaim deed to his life. Yea, verily, perhaps we all should, and throw in some prostrations and genuflections for good measure.
These kids have really thin skin. At least the administration took the correct action. Religious people can always find ways to manufacture outrage, just like the republican party.
I’m sure the majority of students are thrilled to have Maher speak, and I hope Maher gives a sincere and thoughtful speech, whether he offends some students or not. Comedians should be provocative, that comes with the territory.
Do these students have a “right” to indulge in “the heckler’s veto,” so as to keep Maher from speaking?
If you recall, Chancellor Dirks ran afoul of real “free speech” advocates (such as Ken White of Popehat) in early September, when he sent out an e-mail, with a call for civility, that suggested there were limits on free speech. He was rightly rebuked for the e-mail by a number of people, and issued a new message which Ken describes as clarifying ” that civility is a value and sometimes in tension with free speech, but not a limit on free speech. It also shows how educators can urge the benefits of civility to productive discussion without making civility sound like a vague and arbitrary speech code.”
http://www.popehat.com/2014/09/12/follow-up-u-c-berkeley-chancellor-nicholas-dirks-gets-free-speech-right-this-time/
Having got free speech right the second time, it’s heartening to note that Chancellor Dirks is holding firmly to that line and not disinviting Maher.
I’d rather have John Oliver than Bill Maher anytime, but good for the Chancellor!
+1
I didn’t read Dirk’s clarification to his September email which was outrageous coming from a spokesman for Berkeley. He sure got this post right so I’m pleased and glad the critics straightened him out.
The important issue in all of this is that a group of offended people should not be able to prevent any speaker from such an event. It is systematic of today’s thinking in America. One group tunes in to Fox and another group tunes in to MSNBC to get their opinions reinforced. It is lazy and pathetic at the same time.
In this case, Fox News has come out in support of Bill Maher and free speech.
For all its faults, you can usually rely on Fox to stand with the Free Speech side. Their judgment of free speech sometimes gets screwy in the hands of some of their commentators when Christianity is involved though.
Unfortunately, Fox News & many conservatives supporting Bill’s position is what strengthens the positions of liberals who feel that criticizing Islam makes you a bigot.
Yep. Although by “strengthens the positions” I assume you mean “contributes to the cloudy thinking”?
By some warping of logic, these liberal students equate the Fox-like “let’s bomb all those terrorists!” with the Maher/Harris position of “let’s discuss the problematic aspects of Islamic doctrine.” How they bridge that chasm is beyond me.
i wouldn’t want a rabidly anti-gay activist who compares homosexuality to bestiality to speak at my graduation. (ben carson withdrew/was withdrawn as speaker at johns hopkins.)
Me neither.
But if such a person were the choice of the university community, I could stay away or protest rather than attend.
And if the university community was the kind that would choose such a person, I would wonder whether I should be part of that community.
Where do you propose the line should be drawn?
Yeah, this is true, it is a commencement speech and as such the chosen speaker should represent the goals and aspirations of an educational institution. If Maher had actually made racist comments, such as denigrating the personal characteristics of all muslims (something that Ann Coulter has done), then he should be disinvited. But he didn’t do that. He has made verifiable observations about Islam and its influence on cultures that follow it.
There’s approximately 6,000 undergrads in Berkeley’s 2014 graduating class. I don’t think it’s going to be possible to choose a person who “represents the goals and aspirations” of the whole class (to say nothing of the entire institution), because no such person exists. There’s too much variation in the class and at the university for there to be any single shared aspriation. Realistically, you’ve got two choice.
(1) Pick someone who is going to say interesting stuff…but who will be offensive to somebody, or
(2) Pick someone who is going to say mindless, incredibly boring, pap.
I hate pap. I’d protest pap. Where do I sign the petition against pap.
Then, would having Ann Coulter speak be okay with you? Obviously, there isn’t any rule book on choosing commencement speakers, and the affairs are usually feel-good and self-congratulatory, but you’d probably want to avoid actual racists and denigrators of humanity, wouldn’t you?
And somewhere Mario Savio gets his angel wings…
That student’s comment could be deemed as offensive to the administration. He/she should not be allowed to comment. He/she is offending the administration with that comment.
Please go to the counter-petition site and sign even though the current admin decision has made it rather moot.
I couldn’t find a place to sign. Help.
OK, I guess just clicking the link did it. Thanks.
The Authoritarian Left is just as bad as the Authoritarian Right. I can’t help but think that a big part of the problem with these students is that they did not experience the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain/Eastern Bloc in their lifetimes. They seem determined to try to repeat history because they are so absolutely certain that they know what’s best for society.
We’ve had a somewhat similar case in the UK with the Edinburgh University Feminist Society trying to ban the Socialist Workers Party from campus.
Now the SWP are an utterly loathesome bunch who have campaigned against free speech themselves; and they genuinely do seem to have a rape problem so support has been somewhat muted.
But the principle is the same: students attempted to ban a speaker on the pretext of making the campus a ‘safe space’ for students.
When I was a student the security guards were afraid to leave their room at night because local racists would attack the campus; somebody fired a shotgun through our common room window and one of the guard dog to death.
We managed to survive.
Sorry, the guard dog was kicked to death.
I can’t speak to the situation with the Socialist Worker’s Party in Great Britain but my experience with them as an undergraduate at U. C. Berkeley was that they were Trotskyites who were among the most severe critics of the former Soviet Union.
It’s ironic because Maher actually does deserve to be uninvited because he actually does hold dangerous views, but they are not related to Islam. Maher supports the dangerous idiocy of anti-vax, and this alone should be of highest concern by far, not whatever he said about Islam. Moreover, California is ground zero for the dangerous idiocy of anti-vax. Dangerous idiots don’t need encouragement, even implicitly.
Actually, your post is ironic in light of the topic under discussion.
That would be funny. If he delivered a speech ignoring Islam and only espousing his anti-vax views. Free speech, and all…
I thought we had determined on this site that Maher is not really an anti-vax nut.
We did? I guess I missed that.
Didn’t he just say something about flu shots, but not encourage people to avoid vaccinating their kids?? I could be mistaken.
Berkeley up here
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Jenny McCarthy 400 miles this way
Well I can’t really condemn them much. Suppose that during the time where Andrew Breitbart was still alive, the university invited him to speak, I would have a big problem with it and would myself try to petition against the invitation. I admit that it is quite hypocrtical of me that in this case I would want to have Bill to speak just because I like him and he has not rubbed me in the wrong way. I can only be happy that he gets to stay as speaker and can’t judge others too much because I have my own bias.
I don’t personally see anything wrong with petitioning the administration that a speaker is not worthy of the university for whatever reason. What *is* wrong is necessarily expecting that your view on the matter will be heeded.
“What *is* wrong is necessarily expecting that your view on the matter will be heeded.”
I don’t even where you were going with this, because it doesn’t sound right or relevant.
When people complain about something, it’s natural for them to expect it to be resolved or their opinions be heard and regarded – otherwise, what’s the point of petitioning and complaining? There is nothing *wrong* about this very humanistic desire and expectation.
In reality, whether their views are valued or not is a different story, for others might have different views. But this reality should not be used as a measure on how they should *necessarily* expect or how *right* or *wrong* it would be.
Exactly. Complaints are one thing. The reason for the complaint is another.
Think of all of us who will one day have to work with people who are this sensitive. They don’t last long in places I work because we encourage conflict (in the positive way) as a means to identifying & solving problems.
How exactly do these kids propose we determine which values we might want to uphold, or even what those values might be, without a free marketplace of ideas?
It’s also disappointing that, although he asserts “MANY” values that should apparently take priority over free speech, he can only name one, since equality and “anti-discrimination” are the same thing.
Perhaps asserting “MANY, MANY” OR “MANY, MANY, MANY” values would have made his position more legitimate. (sarcasm)
Once again, Islam complains about people speaking against their religion, while their religion advocates death for apostasy, heresy, adultery and homosexuality. If the people who started this petition care so much about free speech, they should be working to reform their own religion. People in glass houses …
I wonder what these naysayers thing about the ISIL?
This is the same problem here as with the separation of church and state: It is all nice and well if one’s own faction gets to define “offensive and ignorant” and the “right” faith, but what about what others consider offensive and the correct faith, respectively? If every faction got the same treatment, it would result in (1) no speaker being allowed to speak and (2) all religions being promoted by government.
Now one could be tempted to say that it is strange how the offended and the dominionists don’t appear to think this through, but really the solution is to realise that they aren’t on board with the “if every faction got the same treatment” part of the equation…
Maher can be a bit of an idiot, but the complaints were asinine!
Hell, all the complaints about that episode of his show were asinine. I don’t agree with him (or Harris) on various things but… erh, I give up.
Let’s compare Berkeley’s current crop of students to those involved in the 1964 Free Speech Movement:
The leader of the FSM was Mario Savio — a leader not by virtue of some student-body posting, but because he carpe-ed the diem by hopping up on a cop car hauling away a fellow student-pamphleteer and delivered an impromptu speech that galvanized bien-pensants there and everywhere. Savio, who had spent that summer registering black voters in Dixie with the Freedom Riders, and the one before laying sewers in a Mexican barrio, was present soliciting donations for CORE and “snick.” He urged his fellow students that, if they could not redirect the forces-that-be (which he reified as “the machine”)toward doing some good, they should put their bodies on the machine’s gears and wheels and levers to at least keep it from doing any more harm.
Today’s Golden Bears? The cause un-célèbre</i)of our current student-government apparatchiks is to ensure that no one in the graduating class experiences diminished enjoyment of the commencement ceremony by dint of being exposed to potentially un-PC remarks.
To paraphrase W.F. Buckley Jr.’s infamous crack about the Harvard faculty, UC Berkeley would be better off enrolling the first 2,000 kids heading to an Occupy protest than the bouquet of hot-house flowers it has mincing around campus now.
Brave new world, indeed.
” . . . the bouquet of hot-house flowers it has mincing around campus now.”
They need a few worldly experiences like:
– working in a hayfield or lumber yard or feed mill, or steam-cleaning carpet.
– working as a teacher assistant with, and getting cussed out by, oppositionally defiant, “troubled” middle-/high-school students.
– working as a nursing assistant in a hospital dealing with certain patients who bring their sense of entitlement with them, or assisting those helplessly bed-ridden (perhaps with Alzheimer’s) in nursing (or private) homes with their personal hygiene and at the same time striving to preserve their dignity.
– working as a U.S. Navy machinist mate sailor in the bowels of the ship’s engine room at 2:30 a.m., on a “Port & Starboard” (6 hr on, 6 hr off)basis in the North Arabian Sea on a six-month deployment, at sea for a minimum 30-days straight.
Jerry – I agree with your post, but am disappointed to see you lump all Berkeley students together. The Californians do not speak for the whole student body, and maybe not even a large majority in this case. There is a raging debate here on this issue, and the spirit of the free speech movement lives in the face of what can admittedly be outbursts of PC.
Come on, KD33. Do you really think Jerry All Berkeley students are alike? Srsly?
The best thing about Godwin’s Law is that violating it is almost always the quickest way to make a valid point. Consider:
“Those Nazis in Germany want to kill all the Jews.”
“Those people are nuts and should be stopped.”
Your analogous response to those two statements would be this:
“I’m disappointed to see you lump all Germans together.”
Does that help you to understand how utterly ridiculous your response is?
Well if things get out of hand when Maher speaks at least they can call in the UC Berkeley SWAT Team to restore order. That’s right, the University has its own SWAT Team (separate from the City of Berkeley SWAT Team). It seems an unfortunate commentary on our society that places of higher learning should need a tactical strike force on call.
And if Maher himself decides to go crazy around town we’ve got that covered, too. The Urban Shield training expo took place recently and one of their role-play scenarios was a “militant atheist group” holding hostages in a church. So don’t get any funny ideas, Bill.
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I recall an incident from 1986 when Harvard invited then-President Ronald Reagan to speak at its 350th anniversary commencement. The invitation ignited a huge furor among students, faculty, and alumni, on the grounds that Reagan was an evolution-denying reactionary whose policies were directly antithetical to science, education, and the free exchange of ideas. Awarding an honorary Harvard doctorate to such an ignoramus, it was felt, would make a mockery of the whole proceeding and would be a slap in the face to the graduates who’d worked hard to earn their degrees.
After much protest, the University modified its offer. Reagan could speak, but there’d be no degree for him.
Reagan responded by declining the invitation.
I wonder if the university was “offended” by Reagan’s declining the invitation.
Am reminded of Nixon attending a Billy Graham crusade at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, football stadium spring of 1970. Faculty and student protestors disrupted the proceedings. Had Nixon declined Graham’s invitation, I wonder if it would have “offended” Nixon’s political base and Graham.
Kudos to the Berkeley administration on this one and boos to those students who would sacrifice the ideals of free speech on the alter of political correctness. Heaven forbid that somebody might be offended by the choice of a commencement speaker.
Oops, I do believe I mean “altar”, or do I?
You needed to alter your altar.
What if Maher spoke on immediately-adjacent non-Berkeley private property? Would the students’ delicate sensibilities remain as strongly offended? If so, what if Maher instead spoke across the bay at S.F. State U.? Would that be far enough away? If not, how far away? Why ought they not impose their proprietary claims on California, or west of the Mississippi, or the N. American continent, or the whole planet for that matter?
Cheer for Berkeley’s administration! We must hold our stand! 🙂