As reported by Eugene Volokh at The Washington Post, a large coalition of groups that I list at the bottom has written a letter to Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, and Catherine Lhamon, Assistant Secretary at the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, to request more censorship on U.S. campuses (you can download the letter here). The letter addresses “harassment” on social media, and how it creates of a supposedly hostile environment for students when that media includes sex- and race-based comments.
As Volokh points out, some of what the groups are asking for is already prohibited by existing laws: making direct threats of rape and other forms of violence, or creating an unwelcome climate in the workplace via pervasive gender- or racial comments. But the letter goes beyond that, trying to ban criticism or speech that isn’t illegal, and is in fact protected by the Constitution. Here are some examples given by Volokh and taken from the letter:
- “[S]uccessive invidious comments targeting African-Americans, such as ‘Their entire culture just isn’t conducive to a life of success. It just isn’t. The outfits. The attitudes. The behavior.’”
- “Another comment” that said “Slavery was the worst thing to happen to this country, bringing them over here . . . ugh.”
- A statement that “I would be completely ok with Clemson being an all white school. Except for football.”
- A statement that “The only thing niggers are good for is making Clemson better at football.”
- A statement that “Jesus I hate black people.”
- A comment saying, “Guys stop with all this hate. Let’s just be thankful we arn’t black.”
- Statements “target[ing] Indian students and East Asians, referred to as ‘chinks,’ in addition to LGBT students, Mormons, and women.”
- ”[S]tudents post[ing] dozens of demeaning, crude, and sexually explicit comments and imagery about three female professors.”
Now of course these are invidious and deeply offensive statements, but they’re perfectly legal, and they’d likely blur into forms of “hate speech” that simply comprises views that other students wouldn’t like. One person’s criticism is, as we all know, another person’s harassment. And here’s what the coalition below is asking for:
And the coalition is calling for the OCR to pressure universities (over which it has power, given its ability to cut off funding to universities) to, among other things,
- “initiat[e] campus disciplinary proceedings against individuals engaging in online harassment” — including, apparently, for saying things such as “[African-Americans’] entire culture just isn’t conducive to a life of success”
- “geo-fenc[e] anonymous social media applications that are used to threaten, intimidate, or harass students”
- “bar[] the use of campus wi-fi to view or post to these applications.”
This is an attempt to intimidate students into following a “correct” ideology. Granted, there’s a lot of genuine “hate speech” out there, but it’s perfectly legal, and, as Volokh notes, the courts have ruled repeatedly that the same First Amendment Rights that apply off campus must also apply in public universities. Witness Healey v. James, a 1972 case in which a unanimous Supreme Court (mostly liberal but with Rehnquist), adjudicated the banning of a chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from Central Connecticut State College on the grounds that the SDS had “a philosophy of violence and disruption.” The Court’s ruling, allowing the chapter’s presence on campus, said this:
Yet the precedents of this Court leave no room for the view that, because of the acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large. Quite to the contrary, “[t]he vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.” Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 364 U. S. 487 (1960). The college classroom, with its surrounding environs, is peculiarly the “marketplace of ideas,'” and we break no new constitutional ground in reaffirming this Nation’s dedication to safeguarding academic freedom.
That paragraph should be read by everyone who wants to restrict protected speech on campuses, arguing somehow that the First Amendment is weaker in colleges than in the nation as a whole. And colleges should follow the admirable free-speech policy adopted by my own university.
Here are the groups that signed this letter. Again, I note that it also calls for enforcement of some provisions that are legal, and that should be in place to protect the rights of individuals. I have no truck with threatening individuals or making their workplaces unwelcome venues for sexual or ethnic harassment. But we can’t allow the Constitution to be enforced in different ways in different locations. After we’ve ensured that students are protected from threats, violence, and workplace harassment, who is to decide what constitutes hate speech, and who is to decide what speech is legal off campus but not on it?
This list does not include many local chapters of national organizations that also signed the letter.
American Association of University Women
Association of Reproductive Health Professionals
Black Women’s Blueprint
Black Women’s Health Imperative
Center for Partnership Studies
Center for Women Policy Studies
Champion Women
Clearinghouse on Women’s Issues
Digital Sisters/Sistas
End Rape on Campus
GLSEN
Hollaback!
Human Rights Campaign
Institute for Science and Human Values
Jewish Women International
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Legal Momentum
Media Equity Collaborative
Muslim Advocates
National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity
National Black Justice Coalition
National Center for Lesbian Rights
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
National Council of Jewish Women
National Council of Women’s Organizations
National Disability Rights Network
National Domestic Violence Hotline
National LGBTQ Taskforce
National Organization for Women
National Women’s Law Center
SPARK Movement
SurvJustice
The Andrew Goodman Foundation
Turning Anger into Change
UltraViolet
WMC Speech Project
Women’s Media Center
YWCA USA
h/t: Gregory
I don’t regard expressing your opinion, however odious, to be harassment.
I can’t say what exactly harassment is, but I know it when I see it. 😉
Since I’m one of those people who can’t imagine how any woman doesn’t consider herself a feminist, I cannot begin to describe how horrific it is to see all the women’s groups who signed on to this.
“I cannot begin to describe how horrific it is to see all the women’s groups who signed on to this.”
Not surprising at all if you are aware of Anita Sarkeesian, and other feminists recent testimony at the UN, and there call for social networking sites to silence, or ban “harassers”(critics).
Sadly, I know and agree that it’s not surprising. That just makes it even more horrific to me.
So can you imagine how any reasonable rational women would not consider themselves feminist (at least without massive qualification)now.
There are a ton of reasons.
Depends on your definition of ‘feminist’, which is notoriously variable. Just like ‘liberal’, ‘democratic’, etc etc.
cr
In the 1970s, lots of feminist groups were in favor of censoring pornography, but that has now changed. (One of many factors is when they realized that Canada was classifying material on birth-control as porn, but the history of this shift in feminist sensibilities is a long and complex one.)
Unfortunately, there are still those in the radical feminist community banging the drum for such censorship. (See, e.g., here.) Some of these neo-Puritans even look to the Seventies crowd you refer to — Andrea Dworkin, Catharine McKinnon, et al., the ones who lent their misbegotten arguments and juked stats to the efforts of Reagan’s AG, Ed Meese, to censor sexually explicit materials — as patron saints.
Missing link here
But that depends largely on which brand of feminism to which one subscribes, doesn’t it?
One can find a feminist writer advocating for the welfare of sex workers by demanding the abolition of prostitution laws and then, just as easily, find a feminist author advocating for pretty much the exact opposite. I don’t think of feminism as a unified school of thought. There are nearly as many interpretations of feminism as there are feminists.
Some of it (Sarkeesian, et al) has become antagonistic to free speech and due process and some of it has given way to naked misadnry. I’ve been the victim of withering on-line harassment (I’ve been told to go die in a fire and to fellate myself to death among other things, I’ve had people contact my employer in a vain attempt to get me fired) and every time I’ve been harassed, it has been by a self identified feminist for committing the crime of refuting factually incorrect statements made by said feminists in a public forum.
Let me be clear. I’m not making the point that the entire enterprise of feminism is bankrupt. I identified as a feminist for over 20 years. I’ve twice been escorted out of the Florida Capitol building protesting for a woman’s right to choose and my convictions have not changed. What has changed, IMO, is that the militant, often unscientific or even anti-scientific post-modernism that is cannibalizing the political left has grown deep, deep roots in third wave feminism. Vast tracts of that movement have been subsumed by the toxic ideology that blames cartoonists for their own murders.
I don’t like it anymore than anyone else and I’m sure there will be lots of other readers who will vehemently disagree with me on this point. All I ask is that one take a truly critical look at what is being trafficked under the banner of feminism in 2015 and I think one will be shocked at how much of it is based on dubious, scare tactic statistics, how little of it has to do with equal opportunity and how willing so much of it is to reduce men to mindless predators with no redeeming value.
I know how this must sound coming from a man, all, I ask is that arguments be judged on their merits and that the ability to criticize is a vital part of discourse.
Please don’t kill the messenger.
“There are nearly as many interpretations of feminism as there are feminists.”
Sounds reasonable to me.
I am pretty much exactly the same. It’s awful what it has become.
The dishonesty and hypocrisy, the vitriol and the abuse.
Yet I just had a big argument in two places, one at Rebecca Watson’s site, defending women’s reproductive rights.
A very sad trend I see happening in this country, one instigated by my (liberal) tribe.
I grew up in a time when it was conservatives trying to silence we liberals on campuses, the SDS case mentioned above for example. I never thought we’d engage in similar tactics.
And don’t be fooled into thinking that this trend is entirely motivated by noble intentions. Some of the allies, and beneficiary’s of policies like these are intent on silencing legitimate criticism.
This current (mis)alignment by no means makes the American right the champion of free speech. It has its own ignominious history of suppressing free expression, from the first and second Red Scares, to the Anthony Comstock’s Society for the Suppression of Vice, and much more.
With its authoritarian roots, the right is viscerally repelled by unfettered expression. Sad to see the same malady infecting segments of the left.
I wasn’t at all suggesting the right had become the “champion of free speech”, but rather that liberals are now not much better.
“With its authoritarian roots, the right is viscerally repelled by unfettered expression.”
It’s not clear to me that the right is any more authoritarian than the left. I believe that it’s a different axis from left/right.
“It’s not clear to me that the right is any more authoritarian than the left. I believe that it’s a different axis from left/right.”
Yeah at it’s extremes you have Stalin on one end, and Hitler on the other.
By the use of govt force to decide what is speech and what isn’t is a dangerous slope slippery with blood. Because sooner or later it will be turned against those who instigated it in the first place. Better to have other remedies like suing in court rather than censorship.
There will always be extremists who find that shutting it all down is the easiest way to get what they want even if it also includes them.
Sadly, I agree.
That flip paraphrase hides an important truth, which is that harassment can largely (though maybe not entirely) be defined without reference to content. So yes, every single one of those phrases these groups object to could be harassment. But every single one of those phrases can also not be harassment – it depends on the context. Heck, pretty much anything, including nonsense syllables, can be harassing given some context.
If those comments are made to a specific individual in order to hurt them, that person says ‘stop,’ and the speaker continues to bombard them with those and like comments, that’s harassment. OTOH if I’m talking to Alice about Bob and Bob simply overhears and takes offense, then no, I have not harassed Bob. (Obviously there will be some gray areas – did Alice and I set the situation up intentionally so that Bob would overhear? What if we had general knowledge that Bob often walks by this spot at this time? The existence of such gray areas doesn’t prevent us from using the general framework.) Given that most of the examples appear to be pulled from blog discussions about third parties, aren’t directed at the people impugned, and seem to be more ‘internal exchange of opinion’ rather than ‘external attempt to harm a reader’, they’re probably not harassment. Odious and racist, yes, but not harassment.
Is this really that hard? Harassment is when you repeatedly annoy someone on purpose. Accidentally annoying someone when you didn’t mean to or annoying them once and then stopping when requested is not harassment.
“Heck, pretty much anything, including nonsense syllables, can be harassing given some context.”
Sorry for the silly little aside, but I was reminded of a line in a book I read recently where a guy says he’s God because he can command the sun to rise, if he times it right.
I should amend my comment by saying that we have a different word for the act of annoying someone by accident/when you don’t mean to. We call that “talking.” 🙂
Why don’t they just vote for Ben Carson – he wants to re-purpose the Department of Education to do just this.
The examples of statements provided are revolting. Given that this is a university, I’d like to see the consequence of making such statements be the requirement to defend them in public debate, or public essay reading. A weekly debate/reading evening would be popular and interesting.
Some of the people saying this stuff probably believe it – making them research the facts might be a good lesson in itself.
But remember, these are comments made on social media. Do you still think that those who make them should be required to debate them publicly?
You’re right – I’d forgotten about the social media bit, and after I put my comment, I realized I was mostly wrong anyway, but it was too late to delete, so wrote some other stuff. And you wrote while I was writing.
We know the Bill of Rights have no power over private property and action so on those boards being used you have to find out if they have limits on what you can say. Some do not. I would recommend those who get harassed to close out their part in it. They can’t reach you they can’t harass you. What I find incredible is how people can be driven to suicide by such harassment over the internet.
There are no support groups, there is no way to disconnect from it? Suicide over that should not be able to happen.
That’s depending on context of course. As eric describes above, oftentimes having to debate or something would be getting a bit carried away. Sometimes it’s better just to ignore it too, or just to point out how the comments affect others.
I don’t see how *forcing* people to defend their statements is much different from trying them for their statements.
As I said to Jerry, I got it wrong because I forgot about the context. On-line chatter should not be treated the way these groups want it treated. Freedom of speech is paramount.
If it had been genuine harassment, bullying etc, I thought my way of dealing with it might be more helpful in a university situation. Although thinking it through, I can think of plenty of times when it would be entirely inappropriate too.
As mountaineers are wont to discover, sometimes climbing down is the hard part, huh? 🙂
I don’t mind admitting when I’m wrong actually. I’m arrogant enough that I don’t worry that anyone is going to start thinking I’m stupid. 🙂
I’ve thus turned my arrogance into a quality and see people’s failure to admit it when they’re wrong as either a weakness or a sign they’re not as clever as they think they are. 🙂
+1
I am always surprised that these groups never look more than one step ahead. how can a person even be educated when everybody is wearing a (virtual) gag? ffs, teachers are quitting because their job satisfaction is disappearing. they know that the students cannot be challenged or engaged with in this Orwellian construct.
They want education, but one that only offers their approved narrative – kind of like Christian fundamentalists.
What has become feminism in many areas is NOT equal rights for women. It is, instead, a bizarre group of ideologies (some downright unscientific including biological, evolutionary, and anthropological nonesense) that have lost touch with reality.
One of the examples of ‘harassment’ I saw referenced elsewhere is any criticism of the wild (and not substantiated, in fact not even possible) rape ‘statistics’ being bandied by some of the groups. Just challenging their numbers is ‘hate’. If you redefine ‘rape’ however to include anything a particular woman might not like, you can get some crazy numbers. Of course hate speech directed at men is ok.
To some degree, this is an extension of the world that gave us the acronym NSFW which touches all sorts of things, things that rose nowhere near the threshold of harassment still got classed in the same general category. The argument, I suppose, is if you can’t say it in the office, you can’t say it on (or off) campus.
“Just challenging their numbers is ‘hate’.”
Well obviously if you question the numbers you’re a rape apologist. And of course insults like “you need to get laid” are rape threats, just like “eat shit, and die”, or “I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire” are death threats right? I mean intent doesn’t matter all that matters is how you perceive it.
It would all be silly if people who espouse these things were laughed at, but they actually have power, and are taken seriously.
Well, technically, the last one (“I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire”) is more an accessory-after-the-fact to arson. 🙂
Not a great comparison, as NSFW is a warning to someone that they might want to view some content in private. These groups are not suggesting that people not use library computers to participate in such bigoted discussion for fear someone might read over their shoulder; they want the example statements not stated at all and the authors punished for stating them.
err…not view… But hey, at least I remembered my WordPress stuff this time…
Bullying and death threats are not speech, they are criminal actions. We at least need to differentiate what is what or you get nihilist statements about “it means anything to anyone” and your communication is destroyed.
“Of course hate speech directed at men is ok.”
Indeed. I see women on social media putting up sexist jokes (on men) all the time. They would raise holy hell if I did the same about women.
I’m always VERY tempted to just invert the joke and post it in the comments, just to stir the pot; but I resist the temptation. I supposed I’m self-censoring.
When in doubt, repeat after Matthew 6:13, “… lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil …”
So, they agree with Ben Carson that wrong ideas should be muzzled. Isn’t that nice. I have already seen conservatives clamoring for a piece of this very same playbook.
If Carson were president he would shut down all labs with injections lasers (hooo, even injection sounds too provocative).
https://www.rp-photonics.com/injection_locking.html
There are no such propositions worth uttering that can contain the word slaves, only purple butterflies, rainbows, and children’s laughter.
The 1972 Supreme Court wasn’t all that liberal. In addition to Rehnquist, it included Chief Justice Warren Berger (who had replaced Earl Warren a couple years earlier, part of Richard Nixon’s effort to turn the Court to the right) and two other then-recent Nixon appointees, Lewis Powell (a former tobacco lawyer who had authored the infamous Chamber of Commerce memo that launched a thousand rightwing think tanks) and Harry Blackmun (then known as Burger’s “Minnesota twin”). Both Powell and Blackmun drifted left over the years — Powell to the center, Blackmun to the left of Powell — but in ’72 both were staunchly conservative.
Other conservative members of the 1972 Court were Potter Stewart (a traditionalist Ohio Republican appointed by Ike) and Byron White (appointed by JFK, but nobody’s beau ideal of a liberal). The other four Justices were the Court’s only true liberals — Black, Douglas, Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall.
Guide to a politically correct halloween:
https://www.rt.com/usa/320183-halloween-costumes-colleges-consultants/
Not much is getting through those filters. I’m not sure what’s sadder; the university’s desire to control costume choice, or the fact that there would undoubtedly be students using blackface and hitler costumes if they didn’t.
Wonder if one can wear a sweater vest? Mebbe not. Might offend Bill Maher. 😉
I wonder if college students know who ‘us’ really is:
“White man came across the sea
He brought us pain and misery”
Everybody has lost shit: families, homes, friends, and apparently football games too, which are more important than all of those other things to college students.
I would never hire someone who wrote stuff like that, but then on the other hand I never look at people’s social media content (FB, T**ter).
I would have thought social media is simultaneously self ostracizing auto grouping. If my ‘friends’ started saying things like that they would cease being my friends.
All right, here’s the challenge: Before you get all bent out of shape regarding “censorship,” demonstrate that you have taken positive action to ensure that those statements aren’t part of acceptable discourse in your environment.
Counterspeech isn’t censorship.
If they get what they are requesting, then it is censorship. That’s what they are asking for.
The just want to be in charge of deciding. Well, because they are 100% correct, obviously!
Just wait until Ben Carson (or whoever) is in charge and the shoe is on the other foot. These people have completely forgotten the road their compatriots have walked up to now.
“Counterspeech isn’t censorship.” No, but it can be a real pain in the ass in the hands of a zealot.
“…your environment” is often other people’s environment as well. It’s always prudent to check with them before taking on the role of official speech monitor for the space in which you find yourself.
If the list posted above was representative of the only kind of speech that various groups are trying to regulate, there might be a (very poor) argument for causing a fuss. In the real world, however, the self-appointed language and idea police cast a far wider net than those examples. I have no interest at all being hectored by the sorts of jackasses that, in my experience, have a tendency to miss cultural and literary allusions, non-trendy vernacular, and any form of irony or sarcasm.
As mentioned in the original post, there are already laws covering conveying a threat through electronic media. Unless the person posting non-illegal comments is doing it on a university sponsored website (especially if the poster is representing the university), I don’t see how any policy could be drawn up based on the examples above that would pass constitutional muster based on a student’s private social media.
Although, I find all of the above examples odious, I still believe that you don’t kill an idea with a bullet – in this case censorship – you kill it with a better idea.
I’m against censorship but one thing struck me with these quoted phrases.
Without the context of some of these comments, it’s possible some could have been made in a comic or ironic sense. The one about “Guys stop with all this hate. Let’s just be thankful we arn’t black.” could have been saying “other people have it worse” or “look how shitty it is to be black because of racism”.
I still remember when Sarah Silverman did a hilarious bit about racism and used the word “chink” to show how the person was racist. She got skewered – everyone saying SHE was the racist….clearly they didn’t get the point or the joke.
So, if one hears such phrases uttered under any circumstance, can one assume there will be negative retribution regardless of context?
Well, I’m thankful I’m not black. Just statistically, I’m probably much better off financially because I’m of ‘white’ descent.
Given the choice of who I was in the world, a ‘black’ American would certainly not be on my shortlist.
Right now I’m trying to help a Polynesian cousin find an affordable flat to rent, and I’m uncomfortably aware – or I suspect with near-100% certainty – that her poor English and her low socio-economic status are likely to count, quite unjustly, against her. Which does annoy me.
So I quite follow Diana’s point.
cr
You”re correct. In the US the biggest problem is people who deny the fact that racism exists, and is a problem. That comment is an indictment of society, and reconizes that racism is a problem. It nicely illustrates why this is a bad idea. The very people who are endorsing censorship can’t even come up with example that clearly illustrate what they’re against.
I still remember when Sarah Silverman did a hilarious bit about racism and used the word “chink” to show how the person was racist. She got skewered – everyone saying SHE was the racist….clearly they didn’t get the point or the joke.
A common tactic by Reich Wingers is to call the person reporting on racism to BE racist for doing so! Very annoying.
I’ve no problem with everyone making that decision for herself; it’s when legal consequences enforced by the government turn on that determination that First Amendment concerns arise.
You don’t like the content of speech? Go ahead label it “hate speech,” convince others that this is an appropriate designation, get it shunned from the forum by widespread opprobrium (or by silent disdain). That’s how the marketplace functions best.
(Lest there be confusion, the “marketplace” here is metaphorical; this isn’t some libertarian rant. There is, of course, an actual commercial marketplace for speech — books and magazines, movies and the theater, tv and the internet, etc. — and that marketplace has its own free-expression implications. But that isn’t the nub of the free-speech issue. In the metaphorical marketplace, goods and services aren’t being bought and consumed; ideas are being heard in an effort to have themselves accepted.)
One doesn’t have to Libertarian to talk about the market place.
I like Eugene Volokh. He’s a strong proponent of the 2nd amendment as an individual right. Whenever I debate gun grabbing liberals, I always read up on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. I think the gun grabbers here should, too.
How many “gun grabbings” have happened and what were they?
Most Liberals have no problem with guns and gun ownership.
Not entirely off topic and very important:
‘A highly regarded federal scientist filed a whistleblower complaint Wednesday against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), charging that he was punished for publicizing research showing a link between pesticides and the decline in bees and other pollinators.
‘Jonathan Lundgren, a USDA entomologist in Brookings, S.D., said in civil service documents that while the agency did not stop publication of the research, supervisors harassed him, tried to stop him from speaking out, and interfered with new projects.
‘His complaint caps months of speculation among beekeepers and other scientists who have been following his case. It was filed within the federal civil service system with support by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national nonprofit that defends government scientists on controversial environmental issues.
‘“We think the USDA is reflecting complaints from corporate stakeholders,” said Jeff Ruch, the group’s executive director. “This research is drawing consternation, which flows down the USDA chain of command to the researchers doing the work.”
‘Officials from the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA branch where Lundgren works, declined to answer questions about the case. In a prepared statement, spokesman Christopher Bentley said the agency is committed to scientific integrity.’