Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
The other day, taking as my source the publisher of the MIT-centered satirical site The Babbling Beaver, I reported on the Beaver’s claim that MIT had become the first major university to ban diversity statements. Although the site is snarky and not every assertion it makes is true, the publisher affirmed that this one was.
But because of the site’s satirical overtone, several miscreants wrote me that there was no confirmation that the DEI claim was true (I did have some confirmation, but it was confidential). One such miscreant even started his email with “What are you doing with your blog, Jerry?”, a sentence that is both uncivil and inaccurate (this is of course not a “blog,” but a “website”).
But the important thing is that the Beaver’s claim is indeed true: MIT has banned diversity statements. It’s confirmed in the article below by John Sailer at Unherd (click headline to read):
From Sailer:
On Saturday, an MIT spokesperson confirmed in an email to me that “requests for a statement on diversity will no longer be part of applications for any faculty positions at MIT”, adding that the decision was made by embattled MIT President Sally Kornbluth “with the support of the Provost, Chancellor, and all six academic deans”.
. . .This is momentous. The pushback against diversity statements has succeeded almost exclusively at public universities in red states, encouraged or enacted by lawmakers. Conservative states such as Florida, Texas, and Utah have passed laws banning diversity statements at state universities. Some appointed state university leaders, such as the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, have also barred the practice.
The decision at MIT is different — reform from within, prompted by a university president alongside deans and provosts, at a private institution.
It’s very possible that more private universities, and state universities in blue states, will eventually follow MIT’s lead for one basic reason: a significant number of faculty from across the political spectrum simply cannot stand mandatory DEI statements. Last month, Harvard Law School’s Randall Kennedy — a self-described “scholar on the Left committed to struggles for social justice” — described the general sentiment: “It would be hard to overstate the degree to which many academics at Harvard and beyond feel intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise because of features that are perhaps most evident in the demand for DEI statements.”
I’d say a statement by “an MIT spokesperson” is evidence enough that the school has deep-sixed diversity statements. I’ve always opposed them because they constitute compelled speech (your statement has to be “progressive” or it won’t fly), and because if they’re used to show that you’re socially committed, well, there are other ways of doing stuff for society besides furthering DEI. For example, you could work at a soup kitchen for the poor, or tutor illiterate adults, both activities that I have done but wouldn’t give me DEI credits.
But MIT’s getting rid of such statements is, as Sailer said, “momentous.”
The College Fix reports it, too (click below to read), but all it does is repeat what it’s in Sailer’s article as well as in the Babbling Beaver article. Nothing new there.
Here are a few misconceptions about college protests being bandied about the internet (in bold) with my responses below them (all text is mine)
a.) If the protests are “peaceful”, then colleges shouldn’t do anything about them
The criterion for colleges to allow free speech, as construed by the courts for state universities, are that speech much be expressed in a “time, place, or manner” in which it doesn’t interfere with the functions or operations of a university (the speech, of course, is not regulated; this rule is ‘content neutral’). Thus state universities can restrict how, when, and where speech can be expressed given the limitations above. Private universities can do the same if “time, place, and manner” regulations are part of their own policy. Note that illegal demonstrations can be peaceful but still prohibited, as when there is loud shouting that disturbs classes or sit-ins that occupy university buildings. Many people who should know better, like AOC or Ilhan Omar, seem to think that peaceful protests on campus must be allowable protests.
AOC instantiates this view below, especially because the protestors were warned but refused to leave. Apparently she wants chaos on the campus. Columbia has already gone to all-hybrid classes, and I suspect that they will cancel graduation, an important time in the life of all students.
Calling in police enforcement on nonviolent demonstrations of young students on campus is an escalatory, reckless, and dangerous act.
It represents a heinous failure of leadership that puts people’s lives at risk. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.
This same kind of error is made by many faculty when they sign petitions defending illegal and disruptive demonstrations, like those at Columbia. Here they are prioritizing social justice over the function of their own university. As Jon Haidt would put it, they want to work at Social Justice University, not Truth University.
b.) If the protests are legal under the First Amendment, then colleges must allow them
Again, protests that are legal in public may still be illegal in government institutions like state universities if they interfere with university functions.
c.) Under no circumstances should cops or security people be called to remove protestors
If a disruptive protest is prohibited but protestors refuse to leave, they may and should be gently removed by security or police. Universities don’t like this, but what other way is there to break up an illegal protests that interferes with University function?
d.) Because protestors are practicing “civil disobedience,” they should neither be asked to leave nor be punished with suspensions or arrests
Civil disobedience, as discussed by David French in the article below, means deliberately violating a law that you consider immoral, doing so peacefully, and being willing to accept the punishment. The paradigm for such demonstrations are the civil rights marches and sit-ins of the Sixties. They worked because, by taking their punishment, be it jailing, water hoses, or police dogs, the protestors moved the U.S. morally, showing Americans graphically how segregation was illegal and its proponents immoral. It’s thus almost funny that one of the demands of current protestors, who say they’re engaged in civil disobedience, is that they not be punished for their behavior. Further, what “immoral” law are they violating? Only the “time, place, and manner” restrictions of colleges, though of course they are protesting what they see as Israel’s so-called genocide in Gaza. (And of course they’re protesting their college’s supposed investments in “genocide”.) But they are removed by police not for these things, which constitute free speech, but for illegal and obstructive disruption of a university. The same holds for deplatforming speakers, which is usually not a First-Amendment violation but can be so in government institutions, or for colleges that have a “free speech” policy and take it seriously.
All of these matters are discussed in a new op-ed by NYT writer David French. The NYT original is here, but if you click on the headline below, be able to read it.
French has had a varied career. He grew up in a small town in Kentucky but then went to Harvard Law school and became a lawyer, first a private litigator, then a constitutional lawyer, and finally serving as an Army lawyer. He adds this:
My most recent book, “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation,” outlined the dangers of polarization and the need to engage with people who have opposing viewpoints. I’m an evangelical conservative who believes strongly in a classical liberal, pluralistic vision of American democracy, in which people with deep religious, cultural, and moral differences can live and work together and enjoy equal legal protection and shared cultural tolerance. In both my personal and professional life I strive to live up to the high ideals of Micah 6:8 — to act justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before God.
We’ll leave aside the God bit as it’s not relevant here. What is relevant is his new piece, which should be sent to every college president, provost, and chancellor in America. If you subscribe you can read it here, but I’ve put an archived version as the link to the headline below, so click on that if you want to read it.
The upshot is that French thinks that universities must observe three principles during this time of protest.
a. Universities must protect free speech
b. Universities must respect peaceful civil disobedience, but
c. Universities must “uphold the rule of law by protecting the campus community from violence and chaos. Universities should not protect students from hurtful ideas, but they must protect their ability to peacefully live and learn in a community of scholars.”
You may notice a bit of conflict between principles b. and c. That means that breaking the rules may be permitted unless it leads to violence and chaos; I interpret “chaos” as the kind of disruption that’s going on at Columbia University. An example of peaceful civil disobedience on campus is the existence of a small encampment of a few tents at Vanderbilt University, the place where Chancellor Diermeier had students expelled and arrested for both sitting in in a campus building and also for injuring a worker as they stormed into the building. Clearly Diermeier (our former Provost) is respecting the right to protest, even though it violates campus regulations, by leaving the small encampment alone.
I’d quote the whole article if I could, but will limit myself to giving French’s take on the issues above. If you’re on a campus, be sure to send this articles to the Powers That Be. French’s quotes are indented. Here’s the gist of French’s “way out” of chaos on campus:
There is profound confusion on campus right now around the distinctions among free speech, civil disobedience and lawlessness. At the same time, some schools also seem confused about their fundamental academic mission. Does the university believe it should be neutral toward campus activism — protecting it as an exercise of the students’ constitutional rights and academic freedoms but not cooperating with student activists to advance shared goals — or does it incorporate activism as part of the educational process itself, including by coordinating with the protesters and encouraging their activism?
The simplest way of outlining the ideal university policy toward protest is to say that it should protect free speech, respect civil disobedience and uphold the rule of law. That means universities should protect the rights of students and faculty members on a viewpoint-neutral basis, and they should endeavor to make sure that every member of the campus community has the same access to campus facilities and resources.
That also means showing no favoritism among competing ideological groups in access to classrooms, in the imposition of campus penalties and in access to educational opportunities. All groups should have equal rights to engage in the full range of protected speech, including by engaging in rhetoric that’s hateful to express and painful to hear. Public chants like “Globalize the intifada” may be repugnant to many ears, but they’re clearly protected by the First Amendment at public universities and by policies protecting free speech and academic freedom at most private universities.
Note that repugnant chants must be tolerated, even if they’re anti-Semitic. I, for one, would not want to punish students for shouting “Gas the Jews,” something that the Columbia protestors come close to. That’s offensive but allowed by the First Amendment. Of course, if the repetition of such sentiments by many create a climate of harassment on campus, that’s a different matter, and a Title VI violation.
It’s a pity that the American public, and especially Representative Stefanik, doesn’t realize that calls for genocide can indeed constitute legal speech. The Presidents of MIT, Harvard, and Penn were accurate in saying that such calls were legal “if expressed in context,” but none of those schools have explicit First Amendment-based speech codes, and the three schools had been irregular and hypocritical in violating what speech codes they do have. This is why it’s essential for all schools to adopt the Chicago Principles of Free Expression—and over 100 of them have done so. (Remember, we’re a private university, too.)
French on time, place, and manner restrictions:
Still, reasonable time, place and manner restrictions are indispensable in this context. Time, place and manner restrictions are content-neutral legal rules that enable a diverse community to share the same space and enjoy equal rights.”
Noise limits can protect the ability of students to study and sleep. Restricting the amount of time any one group can demonstrate on the limited open spaces on campus permits other groups to use the same space. If one group is permitted to occupy a quad indefinitely, for example, then that action by necessity excludes other organizations from the same ground. In that sense, indefinitely occupying a university quad isn’t simply a form of expression; it also functions as a form of exclusion. Put most simply, student groups should be able to take turns using public spaces, for an equal amount of time and during a roughly similar portion of the day.
. . . But what we’re seeing on a number of campuses isn’t free expression, nor is it civil disobedience. It’s outright lawlessness. No matter the frustration of campus activists or their desire to be heard, true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others. Indefinitely occupying a quad violates the rights of other speakers to use the same space. Relentless, loud protest violates the rights of students to sleep or study in peace. And when protests become truly threatening or intimidating, they can violate the civilrights of other students, especially if those students are targeted on the basis of their race, sex, color or national origin.
French on the meaning of civil disobedience (his bolding below)
Civil disobedience is distinct from First Amendment-protected speech. It involves both breaking an unjust law and accepting the consequences. There is a long and honorable history of civil disobedience in the United States, but true civil disobedience ultimately honors and respects the rule of law. In a 1965 appearance on “Meet the Press,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the principle perfectly: “When one breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly — not uncivilly — and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty.”
. . . . There is a better way. When universities can actually recognize and enforce the distinctions among free speech, civil disobedience and lawlessness, they can protect both the right of students to protest and the rights of students to study and learn in peace.
In March a small band of pro-Palestinian students at Vanderbilt University in Nashville pushed past a security guard so aggressively that they injured him, walked into a university facility that was closed to protest and briefly occupied the building. The university had provided ample space for protest, and both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students had been speaking and protesting peacefully on campus since Oct. 7.
But these students weren’t engaged in free speech. Nor were they engaged in true civil disobedience. Civil disobedience does not include assault, and within hours the university shut them down. Three students were arrested in the assault on the security guard, and one was arrested on charges of vandalism. More than 20 students were subjected to university discipline, three were expelled, and one was suspended.
The students demanding amnesty are not practicing true civil disobedience. They want to express their principles but aren’t willing to take the penalty for expressing them in an illegal way. It doesn’t help them, either, that their claim of immorality—that Israel is practicing genocide—is not only wrong, but really does apply to the very entities they worship: terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. This blatant hypocrisy is called out all too rarely.
French on the importance of viewpoint neutrality:
The message was clear: Every student can protest, but protest has to be peaceful and lawful. In taking this action, Vanderbilt was empowered by its posture of institutional neutrality. It does not take sides in matters of public dispute. Its fundamental role is to maintain a forum for speech, not to set the terms of the debate and certainly not to permit one side to break reasonable rules that protect education and safety on campus.
Vanderbilt is not alone in its commitment to neutrality. The University of Chicago has long adhered to the Kalven principles, a statement of university neutrality articulated in 1967 by a committee led by one of the most respected legal scholars of the last century, Harry Kalven Jr. At their heart, the Kalven principles articulate the view that “the instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars.”
Contrast Vanderbilt’s precise response with the opposing extremes. In response to the chaos at Columbia, the school is finishing the semester with hybrid classes, pushing thousands of students online. The University of Southern California canceled its main stage commencement ceremony, claiming that the need for additional safety measures made the ceremony impractical. At both schools the inability to guarantee safety and order has diminished the educational experience of their students.
Only about four universities beside Chicago has adopted viewpoint neutrality (Vanderbilt and UNC Chapel Hill are among them), but this principle is just as important as our Principles of Free Expression in keeping open discourse alive at Chicago. Every university should adopt Kalven as well as our principles of free expression. Colleges where I have friends who tell me that their institution refuses to adopt institutional neutrality include Williams College and Appalachian State University. There are many more: for some reason, colleges wish to retain the ability to take political, ideological, and moral stands. Believe me, there is no upside in doing so, for it sets a very bad precedent as well as chilling speech.
Our own encampment by Students for Justice in Palestine is, says the grapevine, set for Wednesday. The plans apparently call not just for setting up tents, but also occupying buildings—acts that violate campus regulations. I hope to Ceiling Cat that our administration finally grows a spine and enforces those regulations, especially because they have arrantly refused to enforce illegal demonstrations in the past. Right now, our administration appears to be adhering to what French says is a losing strategy:
At this moment, one has the impression that university presidents at several universities are simply hanging on, hoping against hope that they can manage the crisis well enough to survive the school year and close the dorms and praying that passions cool over the summer.
That is a vain hope. There is no indication that the war in Gaza — or certainly the region — will be over by the fall. It’s quite possible that Israel will be engaged in full-scale war on its northern border against Hezbollah. And the United States will be in the midst of a presidential election that could be every bit as contentious as the 2020 contest.
But the summer does give space for a reboot. It allows universities to declare unequivocally that they will protect free speech, respect peaceful civil disobedience and uphold the rule of law by protecting the campus community from violence and chaos. Universities should not protect students from hurtful ideas, but they must protect their ability to peacefully live and learn in a community of scholars. There is no other viable alternative.
**************
Just for fun, here’s one example of how allowing chaos on campus, and demanding that universities take ideological stands, destroy their academic mission. I don’t want our university to wind up full of faculty like this USC gender-studies professor, whose tweets are now protected (h/t Anna Krylov, who’s at USC). Kessler is using the demonstrations to destroy her mission of educating by canceling their final project and promising that she’ll give all her students a good grade. She’s doing this clearly because she’s pro-Palestinian, as well as a chowderhead (see more here).
Oh, and USC has canceled graduation.
Finally, some advice to Columbia University:
a. If the protestors return, as they have, continue to arrest and suspend them. Your actions have been inconsistent, and that prolongs the demonstrations.
Well, you can write off yet another organization dedicated to promoting free expression. First the ACLU went down the tubes, followed by the SPLC, and now PEN America, a group of American writers dedicated to promoting free expression, has canceled a ceremony because the writers want PEN to take a stand on an ideological issue: Israel, say many of its members, is committing genocide, and they are demanding that PEN America take that position. And PEN America crumpled, canceling an upcoming event.
No matter that the issue is debatable, and no matter that the real committers of genocide, those absolutely dedicated to destroying a people, are Hamas, which has sworn to kill all Jews and eliminate Israel. Now that is genocide. But PEN members don’t care what Hamas is doing. The claim of Israeli genocide is not a “truth”, and many of us (including me) disagree, as do many PEN members. But a vocal group of these “free expression” writers insist that their organization call for a cease fire and accuse Israel of genocide. Doesn’t that count as something that chills free expression, and associates an organization for such expression with a specific ideology?
You may recall that a similar dubious position was taken by some PEN members in 2015, when six members refused to attend a banquet—and 145 writers signed a protest letter—all because PEN America was going to give a “freedom of expression award” to Charlie Hebdo after many of the magazine’s writers and artists were killed. That’s even more of a no-brainer, because, yes, Charlie Hebdo, in the face of threats, continued to mock everything, including all religions. But it was their liberal satire of Islam that did them in, with 12 Charlie Hebdo employees shot by Muslim terrorists. Protesting a “courage” award for Charlie Hebdo is ridiculous. But such is PEN America.
Here’s the group’s mission as stated on their “about us” page:
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
Are they protecting free expression by canceling a ceremony because of a misguided assertion about Israel? And what they say is laughable (read below):
Click the headline to read, or find it archived here:
A few excerpts:
The free expression group PEN America has canceled its 2024 literary awards ceremony following months of escalating protests over the organization’s response to the war in Gaza, which has been criticized as overly sympathetic to Israel and led nearly half of the prize nominees to withdraw.
The event was set to take place on April 29 at Town Hall in Manhattan. But in a news release on Monday, the group announced that although the prizes would still be conferred, the ceremony would not take place.
“We greatly respect that writers have followed their consciences, whether they chose to remain as nominees in their respective categories or not,” the group’s chief officer for literary programming, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, said in the release.
“We regret that this unprecedented situation has taken away the spotlight from the extraordinary work selected by esteemed, insightful and hard-working judges across all categories. As an organization dedicated to freedom of expression and writers, our commitment to recognizing and honoring outstanding authors and the literary community is steadfast.”
In recent months, PEN America has faced intensifying public criticism of its response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, which killed roughly 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and Israel’s military response in Gaza, which has left about 34,000 people dead, according to health officials there.
In a series of open letters, writers have demanded that PEN America support an immediate cease-fire, as its global parent organization, PEN International, and other nationalchapters have done.
In other words, the writers have demanded (using Hamas statistics, of course) that PEN America take a political position. They are demanding that a group dedicated to free expression take an “official” position that would tend to chill expression and associate PEN with an ideological stand. And if PEN doesn’t, then the writers are going to take their ball and go home. They are demanding, in other words, that the group broach any kind of institutional neutrality that it may have—and it should have some since it’s dedicated to free expression.
More:
In March, a group of prominent writers, including Naomi Klein, Lorrie Moore, Michelle Alexander and Hisham Matar, announced that they were pulling out of next month’s World Voices Festival, one of PEN America’s signature events. And over the past several weeks, growing numbers of nominees for the literary awards, including Camonghne Felix, Christina Sharpe and Esther Allen, announced that they were withdrawing their books from consideration.
In a letter that PEN America leadership received last week, 30 of the 87 nominated writers and translators (including nine of the 10 nominees for one prize) criticized the group’s “disgraceful inaction” on the situation in Gaza, accusing it of “clinging to a disingenuous facade of neutrality while parroting” what the letter characterized as Israeli government propaganda. The letter also called for the resignation of the group’s longtime chief executive, Suzanne Nossel, and its president, the novelist Jennifer Finney Boylan, along with that of the group’s executive committee.
And here’s the dumbest statement of all:
“PEN America states that ‘the core’ of its mission is to ‘support the right to disagree,’” the nominees stated. “But among writers of conscience, there is no disagreement. There is fact and fiction. The fact is that Israel is leading a genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Well that’s just wrong. I bet I could find many “writers of conscience” who do disagree on the “fact” that “Israel is leading a genocide of the Palestinian people”. If Israel was, all Gazans would have been dead for a long time, but the population of Gaza has grown like gangbusters. And we know that Israel doesn’t just go into Gaza for no reason and kill civilians. It responds only when it’s attacked, and tries to limit damage to Hamas terrorists or their military assets. It’s clear that the IDF wants to eliminate not Palestinians, but members of Hamas. Has any other country sent truckloads of humanitarian assistance, like food and medicine, to an enemy state? Or warned people where and when it was going to attack? Those are real “facts”! But they don’t matter, for these PEN morons claim that they already know the truth.
The reader who sent me this article added the following:
I chortled to myself. It would be funny that fiction writers so self-confidently assert a fiction to be a “fact” if it wasn’t sad that they’re likely driven by anti-Israel animus to do so. Anyway, while PEN tried to push back in its own statement upholding free expression, their awards ceremony has now been derailed by self-righteous nominees who want free expression shut down in service of propagating grotesque lies.
And yes, PEN America did push back, but it still truckled to the ideologues. From the NYT:
That letter [from the 30 nominees] drew a brief but forceful response last week in which the organization described the war in Gaza as “horrific” but challenged what it said was the letter’s “alarming language and characterizations.”
“The perspective that ‘there is no disagreement’ and that there are among us final arbiters of ‘fact and fiction’ reads to us as a demand to foreclose dialogue in the name of intellectual conformity, and one at odds with the PEN Charter and what we stand for as an organization,” the organization said in a statement.
The second paragraph is spot on, and admirable. So why did PEN cancel the ceremony? Maybe some of the nominees won’t show up, but either they can get their award in absentia or they can be dropped because they don’t favor free expression. I really don’t care. What I do care about is that yet another one of America’s bastions of free expression has turned cowardly, violating its own charter in the face of loud and misguided ideological demands from writers.
If the PEN Charter really does stand for institutional neutrality, then the organization should conform to it. Writers are of course welcome to express their own views, but the organization itself should not be the arbiter or promoter of those views.
Jonathan Turley is a prominent attorney and professor of law at George Washington University Law School. He also writes a popular legal blog that often deals with free speech. His latest piece, with the headline below, deals with a question that’s occupied us quite a bit: what limitations, if any, should colleges put on freedom of speech?
I’ve been a hard-liner on this issue, insisting that colleges and universities should hew strictly to the First Amendment as interpreted by the courts, which of course means that you can pretty much say what you want unless it constitutes defamation, instigates immediate and predictable violent harm, creates harassment in the workplace, and so on.
But I have found another exception to the First Amendment for speech emitted on campus. And that is an exception widely adopted by universities, including the University of Chicago: the “time, place, and manner” exception, which, in fact, seems to be a legally recognized restriction of the First Amendment. Wikipedia characterizes it like this:
. . . . “The crucial question is whether the manner of expression is basically incompatible with the normal activity of a particular place at a particular time. . . “The [F]irst [A]mendment does not guarantee the right to communicate one’s views at all times and places or in any manner that may be desired. A state may therefore impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place or manner of constitutionally protected speech occurring in a public forum.”
At the University of Chicago we have time and place restrictions (students can’t protest in an academic building or if it disturbs classes), and there are supposed to be restrictions on manner, too. The most notable of those is the prohibition against hecklers shouting down or deplatforming speakers. This in fact is the violation we talked about Tuesday, when I reported that members of Students for Justice in Palestine had been tapped (not even slapped) on the wrist by a disciplinary committee for deplatorming (shouting down with megaphones) a demonstration by Jewish students last October. While such behavior may be legal in public parks and other such places, universities are allowed to prohibit this kind of “heckler’s veto.” After all, the purpose of a university is to teach and learn, and you don’t learn anything from a speaker if their speech cannot be heard because of hecklers. (I believe Mill mentions this in “On Liberty”.)
This brings us to Turley’s column (click headline below to read it), which recounts an incident of heckling at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
It so happens that a speaker was lecturing at Tulane in “an event to foster diversity of ideas and entrepreneurship for New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week.” It also happens that that speaker was interrupted by—you guessed it—a speaker shouting pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli slogans (wrong time, wrong place, irrelevant speech). And it so happens that, sitting in the audience, was a Tulane professor of national repute, Walter Isaacson, former President of CNN, and then of the Aspen Institute, and of course author of several best-sellers, including biographies of Steve Jobs and Leonardo (the latter my favorite of his works). Isaacson (a secular Jew, I think, though that doesn’t matter) decided to remove the heckler from the room by pushing them (it’s a transgender student using that pronoun) out the door. You can see it the video by clicking on the picture below, which takes you to an Instagram post. The second link in that Instagram post shows the video.
Turley gives the rest of the tale:
Isaacson, who is the Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values in the history department, can be shown gently moving MacDonald out of the seats. However, at the door, there appeared more of a brief scuffle at the last moment before the two went out of the frame for a split second. Isaacson is then shown returning immediately. There does not appear to be more than shoving on the video to move MacDonald out of the event.
In its Instagram post, SDS claimed that MacDonald (who identifies as a “them” as a transgender student) was injured: “Isaacson, an audience member, grabbed Rory and cursed at them, battering them and leaving them with bruises on their arms and scratches on their back.”
On local media, MacDonald is shown displaying slight scratch marks.
The student shows the damage, which is light but still actionable, I think:
More from Turley:
Technically, shoving can be assault under both criminal and tort law. Certainly leaving scratch marks can qualify as evidence of assault. However, the situation is more complex than some faculty member spontaneously assaulting a student. Any removal of a disruptive protester will involve some firm handling or shoving. Indeed, when a subject resists, this can become a matter of self-defense for security as force is increased. As a subject resists, security is allowed to protect itself with a commensurate level of force.
If security can physically remove a protester (including shoving an individual from a room), the question is whether an audience member can do so. A professor has no special legal status to conduct security or exclude individuals from a public event. What is clear is that this is a function best left to university security. The problem is that security often does not enforce rules against disruptive behavior.
MacDonald was disrupting the event and Isaacson was seeking to remove him. In moving to the door, there does not appear to be anything more than firmly shoving MacDonald. In the final second, there appears to be a more forceful push in the hallway as Isaacson goes back inside. Isaacson can claim that he was protecting himself by shoving away MacDonald at that last minute. He is seen speaking to the student before firmly leading him to the door. Again, the university is investigating. There is no report of a criminal complaint.
If the university is investigating this matter, it should also address why a faculty member felt compelled to perform security at the event. We have seen universities routinely fail to expel protesters interrupting classes and events.
Universities can turn these protests into a type of “heckler’s veto” where speeches are cancelled in advance or terminated suddenly due to the disruption of protesters. The issue is not engaging in protest against such speakers, but to enter events for the purpose of preventing others from hearing such speakers. Universities create forums for the discussion of a diversity of opinions. Entering a classroom or event to prevent others from speaking is barring free speech.
There are two questions here: did Isaacson commit assault, causing actual physical harm beyond just a threat? And, of course, where was security? Turley raises both questions, the first above and the second here:
Tulane clearly failed to protect this event and that led to this “self help” action by Isaacson. If he went too far off camera, there is also a question of why he had to act at all rather than campus security removing such disruptive protesters. This will continue until university administrators have the courage to suspend or expel students denying others the right to listen and speak at events.
But for my own school, this fracas raises a third question: what are schools going to do about this heckling, which clearly violates any free-speech regulations on campus?
Absent enforcement of school rules on such disruptions, there is little hope for the open exchange of ideas and a diversity of opinions on campus. It can unleash a type of tit-for-tat pattern of retaliation as speakers are prevented from speaking on controversial subjects. Our campuses then become little more than screaming matches. The rules of most schools properly draw the line between protests and disruptions. Everyone is allowed to be heard. However, if you enter to disrupt it, you are disrupting free speech.
In such cases, security must be either on the spot or be readily available to remove hecklers, allowing the speaker to be heard. This is exactly NOT what the University of Chicago did when SJP disrupted the Jewish speakers, who had permission to give speeches on the quad. The deans on call simply stood by and did nothing, and when asked to do something, they said they were powerless. The University cops also stood by, and said they could do nothing without the permission of the deans. (This is the same answer the cops gave me when I watched SJP and UCUP illegally blockade the administration building last fall. “We need permission from the administration to take action.” Of course no action was taken, and when I tried to call the administration, nobody answered.) This is an embarrassment to the University, and I trust they’ll inform security and the deans on call to stop deplatforming and heckling. And I hope the administrators in charge of the deans on call don’t sit on their hands when a violation occurs..
As for Isaacson, who looked royally ticked off, I think they could file battery charges against him that would stick. Even if he acted as “mock security,” it seems to me that what he did was illegal. Whether he actually gets charged is another matter. But morally he was in the right, and I applaud him.
I presume you want the good news first. Sadly, it comes not from the University of Chicago but from Vanderbilt, now headed (as Chancellor) by our ex-provost Daniel Diermeier. As reported by the Nashville Tenneseean, last week more than two dozen students decided to hold a sit-in in Vandy’s administration building protesting—what else?—the University’s so-called complicity with Israel in its war with Hamas.
The students began protesting Tuesday morning after an amendment to the Vanderbilt Student Government Constitution, which would prevent student government funds from going to certain businesses that support Israel, was removed by administration officials from a student ballot in late March.
. . . .More than two dozen students entered Kirkland Hall, an administration building which houses Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier’s office, to hold a sit-in around 9 a.m. Tuesday, along with over 30 more students who sat on the steps outside.
Students at the protest — both inside and out — shouted chants asking for Diermeier to allow students to vote on the amendment that was removed from the ballot by administration.
Students entered the administration building around 9 a.m., and a second, larger group gathered in front of the building.
Those inside the building stayed for around 22 hours before being escorted out by Vanderbilt University Police.
The students outside protested for hours, with numbers fluctuating as students rotated in and out of class. A number of students stayed outside protesting until the students inside the building emerged.
After letting the students stay in the building for all of 22 hours (a generous dispensation!), Vanderbilt began removing them, taking names and arresting some while giving others suspensions.
Three students who sat in the chancellor’s office were arrested for assault and bodily injury to another, according to a statement from Vanderbilt University, though online jail records do not currently list any charges.
A fourth student was charged with vandalism after breaking a window on Kirkland Hall Tuesday night.
All four students have been released.
In addition to arrests, students confirmed that interim suspensions were issued to all demonstrators who entered the building.
Below is a video of the three students who were arrested for assault and causing bodily injury, pushing and shoving the poor guy who was opening the door and then trying to close it before The Entitled rushed in en masse. From the campus to the administration office, Vandy will be free!
Seriously, this kind of assault is unconscionable. Of course verbal protest that doesn’t violate university rules or block buildings, much less injure an employee, is fine. That’s freedom of speech, and as you’ll see below, Chancellor Diermeier took the Chicago Principles of Free Expression (and also the Kalven Principles of Institutional Neutrality) south with him when he migrated.
This was not a kneejerk reaction by the administration, which tried to persuade the demonstrators to leave for nearly an entire day. But, unlike the timorous administration of my school, there will be serious consequences for the students, including suspension (which will go on their records), and the arrested students will likely not have their charges dropped.
Below, after the first tweet in which the Entitled Students lecture a black Vanderbilt cop on why he should be on their side, you’ll see a tweet showing the letters Diermeier wrote to the parents of Vandy students as well as to the University community itself (there are three pages total). They are tempered letters but also strong and principled ones, asserting that free speech does not allow disruption of speech. That’s something that many colleges don’t seem to have learned.
I think Chancellor Deimeier, who frequently has stated a university’s role is to “foster debate, not end it,” handled this well. Far better than other universities have done in similar circumstances.
An excerpt from Diermeier’s letter to the Vandy community:
Now the best news: Chancellor Diermeier wrote an eloquent defense of Vandy’s principles, and an explanation of the University’s actions, for the Wall Street Journal. It hasn’t been archived as far as I can see, so try clicking on the screenshot below.
Because it’s not archived, I’ll give a longish excerpt:
Vanderbilt has worked hard to nurture a culture of free expression built on three pillars. The first is a determination to provide an open forum: opportunities for dialogue and debate. The second is the practice of institutional neutrality, by which university leaders refrain from publicly taking political positions to avoid indirectly stifling free thought and expression among students and faculty. Last and most distinctive is a commitment to civil discourse, the practice of respectful argument rooted in facts, which our undergraduates agree to uphold when they sign a student-authored community creed before taking their first classes.
These commitments were tested for about 24 hours starting March 26. Vanderbilt, like many universities, is home to a group of students who support the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The BDS effort encourages economic and political pressure aimed at ending Israel’s current policies toward Palestinians, which organizers say are oppressive, immoral and in some cases illegal. The movement calls for economic and cultural boycotts, financial divestment and government sanctions.
. . .Some students supporting BDS declared their opposition to Vanderbilt’s institutional neutrality, calling it a cop-out, or worse. They advocated for a reversal of course on a campus referendum that would have required student government funds to follow BDS restrictions, which the university had disallowed because following those restrictions would put Vanderbilt in violation of Tennessee law. The student government isn’t legally separate from the university, and student-government funds are university funds. The law requires the university to certify each year that it isn’t involved in any boycotts of Israel, which the state defines broadly. Failing to make the certification, or acting contrary to it, would put large state contracts for the university at risk. Implementing the BDS restrictions with university funds also potentially conflicts with federal laws governing boycotts of countries friendly to the U.S.
Like all Vanderbilt students, those supporting BDS are free to speak out and demonstrate on our campus—subject, like all student groups and as at all universities, to reasonable limits on the time, place and manner of their protests.
On Tuesday, 27 students transgressed those limits when they forced their way into a closed administrative building, injuring a community-service officer in the process. Students pushed staff members and screamed profanities. Our staff took a graduated approach to de-escalating the situation, including several attempts to discuss the issues with the student group and encourage them to take a different course of action. Over 20 hours, the students were consistently informed that they were violating university policies and warned that they were subject to suspension for doing so.
Early the next morning, the Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County Magistrate’s Office charged three students with assault. One student protesting outside the building was charged with vandalism after cracking a window. The remaining 25 students left the building voluntarily. The administration suspended all of those students on an interim basis and will all go through a rigorous accountability process to determine further disciplinary action.
Critics have claimed that Vanderbilt has abandoned its long-held commitment to free expression. They are wrong. Vanderbilt supports, teaches and defends free expression—but to do so, we must safeguard the environment for it. Students can advocate BDS. That is freedom of expression. But they can’t disrupt university operations during classes, in libraries or on construction sites. The university won’t adopt BDS principles. That’s institutional neutrality. As a community, we should always remember to treat each other with respect and rely on the force of the better argument. That’s civil discourse.
Teaching students the importance of upholding rules for free expression doesn’t squelch their right to voice their opinion—it protects it.
In these difficult times, each university will be tested. And each university will follow its own path. Our approach is clear: We clearly state the principles and rules that support our mission as a university. Then we enforce them.
That last paragraph is magnificent. And yes, the University of Chicago was tested, too, and also had—or so I thought—a clear approach, one identical to Vanderbilt’s. The difference is in the last sentence. Vanderbilt enforces their principles; we don’t. (See my post from yesterday.)
I’m not sure whether Diermeier is Jewish, but he certainly fits the criteria for being a mensch.
**************
Now the bad news: In the meantime, the administration of the elite Smith College are acting very un-Deiermeierish, allowing the students to occupy College Hall, the administration building, for over a week. The administration, according to this Inside Higher Ed piece by Johanna Alonso, is sitting with its thumb up its fundament trying to figure out what to do with the Occupiers.
The protestors, are, of course, asking Smith to divest from Israel. (Sitter-inners are always big fans of Palestine.) They appear to be largely (surprise!) members of Students for Justice in Palestine.
The administration has already said that divestment will “not likely be considered unless ‘materially different information is brought forward’,”, so they’ve evinced some moxie, but they need to boot those protestors back onto campus.
Click to read.
An excerpt:
In the latest face-off between students and administrators over the war in Gaza, students at Smith College have been occupying the main administrative building on campus for almost a week, demanding the institution divest from weapons manufacturers that supply military machinery to Israel. The protesters say they will not leave College Hall until the institution commits to divestment, according to statements on the social media pages of the college’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter, which is spearheading the demonstration.
Approximately 50 students are participating in the protest, SJP members said on social media; photos show that students have brought pillows, air mattresses, large amounts of food and other items into the building. A photo showed a Palestinian flag bearing the words “Smith divest now” flying above College Hall, where the American flag is typically displayed.
No arrests or student conduct charges have been made, although students “are allegedly in violation of several elements of the Student Code of Conduct including unauthorized entry or use of a building, abuse of property, and disruption of college activities,” Carolyn McDaniel, Smith’s director of media relations, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.
This is how sit-ins disrupt the functioning of a college:
According to McDaniel, the protest has had an impact on students’ abilities to access certain offices located inside College Hall, including Student Financial Services, the Office of Disability Services and the Title IX office.
The occupation, she wrote, has made it difficult for “those with pressing needs to get the help they deserve. We are aware, for example, of a family who drove a considerable distance to discuss FAFSA assistance from financial services and they weren’t sure how to proceed upon learning that the office was inaccessible. We were able to help them in other ways, but it caused this family needless concern.”
Now there’s a dilemma for progressives: Title IX and disability services versus SJP. (SJP is winning.)
The articles notes that there are a lot of Smithereens who agree with the protest, but not everyone:
However, others have expressed dismay over the occupation. According to one anonymous email purportedly from a Smith student to Inside Higher Ed, the institution “has become a terrifying place with absolutely no consequence for breaking the law.”
“The college refuses to do anything to hold them accountable, and now the front doorstep of what’s supposed to be a brilliant college for smart women looks like a tent city of anti-Semitic drum circlers,” the author wrote.
Well, someone has a sense of humor! But it appears that a climate of antisemitism is infecting Smith, as it is some other schools.
The sit-in also comes after several antisemitic incidents occurred at Smith earlier in March. Swastikas were found on crosswalks and in two cases mezuzahs, religious symbols that some Jewish people affix to their doorframes, were ripped down near campus, the Boston Globe reported last month.
I would advise Smith’s president, Sarah Willie-Le Breton, to follow Diermeier’s lead—if she has the moxie.
Scotland has passed a new hate crime act, formally called the Hate Crime and Public Order Act 2021, which takes effect, appropriately, on April Fool’s Day (April 1). It was passed in 2021, though, which accounts for its name.
The whole law is here, and part 3 is the most contentious part, including this (click to enlarge).
Note that it is a crime to make statements about age, disability, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or “variation in sex characteristics”, stuff that a “reasonable person” would find “threatening”, “abusive”, and even “insulting”. You don’t even have to have the intent of stirring up hatred.
Further, look at (2)aii above. You are committing a crime even if you “communicate to another person material that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive”. So, for example, if you email a friend that a guy you don’t like “must have a small dick” (a common insult for males, but also abusive because it makes fun of “variation in a sex characteristic”), or say to someone “Jack is a dotty old codger”, which insults someone on the grounds of age, then those might be offenses.
Also, as one reader said, “Part of the reason why people are so worried is that the guidance that Police Scotland have issued seems to be somewhat different from what the law itself says. It’s a download document 29 pages long.” Looking at it briefly, I find two things extra worrying.
First, even if what you do doesn’t amount to a “crime,” it’s supposed to be reported and the coppers will investigate it, probably putting your name on the record (bolding below is mine):
While it is accepted that not every hate report will amount to criminality, officers are required to take preventative and protective measures even when a non-criminal offence is apparent. Seemingly low level or minor events may in fact have a significant impact on the victim. Crime type alone does not necessarily dictate impact or consequences of the action. Repeated targeting of a person, whether by the same perpetrator or not, can lead to what is known as the ‘drip drip’ effect i.e. although seemingly minor incidents, the repeated nature could affect the person’s ability to cope. Each individual will be affected differently.
Further, as implied above, intent doesn’t matter; it’s the effect that does. And that, of course, leaves the act open to all kinds of “I’m insulted” complaints:
For recording purposes, the perception of the victim or any other person is the defining factor in determining whether an incident is a hate incident or in recognising the malice element of a crime. The perception of the victim should always be explored, however they do not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief and police officers or staff members should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of malice and ill-will is not required for a hate crime or hate incident to be recorded and thereafter investigated as a hate crime or hate incident by police.
If you want an example of something that creates a slippery slope of crime, the bit above is it. For what is seen as “threatening”, “abusive”, and especially “insulting”, will depend on the “victim’s” perception.. Especially ridiculous is the (2)aii provision that restricts your freedom to insult a person to someone else, without insulting the “victim” directly. This is going to create a mess, and I hope it’s tested in the courts soon after it goes into effect.
I’m hoping this ludicrous law won’t be enforced as written, or really enforced at all, for in America this law would violate the First Amendment, except insofar as you harass someone repeatedly, defame them, create an atmosphere bigotry in the workplace, or say something publicly that incited “imminent and lawless action.”
Another reader said this, though I haven’t checked on the assertion:
“In the meantime, Police Scotland have published a list of third-party locations where people will be able to report hate crimes – it includes a sex shop in Glasgow, a mushroom farm, and the address of a council office block that was demolished a few years ago… What could possibly go wrong?”
The police, trying to explain to a befuddled public how the law will work, have confected an example that involves, of all people, J. K. Rowling, who has committed NO hate crimes. Read the Torygraph report by clicking the headline below (probably paywalled), or find the piece archived here:
Excerpts from the Torygraph are indented. The picture above was part of the article and was surely not part of the police example, and I’m not certain about the decorative part on the left. But, based on the story below, I take the text on the left to be accurate.
Police officers who invented a trans-hating “parody” of JK Rowling [above] must be stripped of any role in enforcing new hate crime laws, more than 200 women have said.
In an open letter, female signatories expressed “disgust” that a fictional character called “Jo”, alleged to be modelled on the Harry Potter writer who called for trans people to be sent to gas chambers, had been created by serving Police Scotland officers.
Of course Rowling hasn’t come close to posting videos urging putting LGBT people in gas chambers, much less asserting that they all have “mental health conditions.” This example comes close, in my view, to defaming Rowling. But let’s read on:
They said the revelation had left their confidence in police to fairly enforce hate crime legislation at “rock bottom” and claimed the narrative created reinforced offensive “tropes” that gender critical women were comparable to Nazis.
At an official police “youth engagement” hate crime event last month, attendees were presented with a “scenario” in which Jo, an “online influencer” with a large social media following, is “passionate” about her beliefs such as there being only two genders.
“Jo” is what Rowlings friends call her, but is also the derisive name that her haters use.
The story escalates with “Jo” stating that trans people “all belong in the gas chambers”. Attendees were then asked to consider whether “Jo” had committed a hate crime.
The letter, signed by high-profile political figures, academics and gender-critical campaigners, said the story reinforced offensive claims about women who believe biological sex should take precedence over self-declared gender identity.
Such women are often compared by trans rights activists to racists while they also regularly face unfounded accusations of having links to the far-Right.
In a letter, the women said the “Jo” character had clearly been “a thinly veiled parody of the author JK Rowling, who in recent years has championed the sex-based rights of women and girls”.
“We write to you to express our disgust that public servants, not least those charged with enforcing the new offences created by the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, were responsible for this material,” the women’s letter, to Jo Farrell, the chief constable, stated.
“It plays into long-standing, offensive tropes that women who are concerned about the erosion of their sex-based rights are akin to Nazis.”
The row comes just days before Scotland’s new hate crimes laws are enforced.
Trans, non-binary and cross-dressing people, though not biological women, will receive new protections under the legislation which critics claim will be “weaponised” against gender critical women such as Rowling and erode freedom of speech.
The 235 signatories, who include Johann Lamont, the ex-Scottish Labour leader, former Labour MSP Elaine Smith and Sarah Pedersen, a professor at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, called on Ms Farrell to launch an investigation into the creation of “Jo”.
. . . . The Time for Inclusive Education campaign group, which jointly ran the hate crime event, last week revealed that Police Scotland officers have invented the “Jo” scenario “based on their expertise”.
Police Scotland has declined multiple opportunities to deny that the “Jo” character was based on Rowling, whose first name is Joanne and is called Jo by her friends.
Meanwhile, the organisation has so far refused to release training materials for officers charged with enforcing its hate crime law.
The article further reports that the cops won’t let anybody view the training materials until April 9, more than a week after the law takes effect, and further claims that the slow police response violates the UK’s Freedom of Information Act.
Knowing Rowling, she’ll take action against being defamed in this way. After all, the training materials above may constitute a hate crime itself; abusing Rowling because of her statements about sex and gender. If you think the name “Jo”—as well as the beliefs used to attack the “online influencer with a large following”—doesn’t refer to Rowling, I have some land in Florida to sell you.
Pamela Paul’s new column in the NYT (click on screenshot below or find the piece archived here) is about “mission creep” in American universities: the drift away from teaching, learning, and doing research to
promulgating social justice. As we’ve discussed so often, there are dangers inherent in this transformation, and some of them are occurring now, including Republican attempts to control universities as well as a decline in public respect for universities among Republicans, Democrats and folks among all ages and socioeconomic groups.
The biggest problem, of course, is the ideological slant that universities are taking, nearly all tilting left with some having more than 80% of the faculty describing themselves as liberal (e.g., Harvard). That in itself is a problem as students don’t get exposed to a panoply of views, but it’s worse because those on the Left—particularly the so-called progressive Left—can’t restrain themselves from making “official” university pronouncements on political, ideological, and moral issues, issues that themselves are academically debatable and whose imprimatur by the university as “official views” chills speech. If a University issues an official statement that there should be a ceasefire in Gaza, what untenured faculty member or student dares buck this position?
To keep free speech going without this kind of “chill”, the University of Chicago was the first to adopt and implement a policy of institutional neutrality, so that no University official or department can make such pronouncements. This principle, which went into effect in 1967, is called the Kalven Report, and you can read it here.
Kalven has worked pretty well here. Departments that couldn’t restrain themselves from taking stands on issues from war to abortion to shootings have had their statements taken down, and the University has issued virtually nothing about the Hamas/Israel war (see here for our anodyne acknowledgment, which basically says “there’s a war on and here’s where to go for help”). The only exceptions we have are for issues, like DACA, which can affect the University’s mission directly.
But so far only a handful of schools, like Vanderbilt and UNC Chapel Hill, have adopted institutional neutrality, though others like Williams and Harvard are contemplating it. But since institutional neutrality is essential in propping up a free speech policy, this reluctance to adopt Kalven is distressing, especially given that the Chicago Principles of Free Expression—the First-Amendment-like policy of free speech—have been adopted by over 100 schools. My conclusion: it’s easy to pass policies on free speech (which, as we see from Harvard’s case, have been implemented haphazardly), but it’s hard to make academics stop proclaiming the views they like as the “values of our school.” (Of course Kalven and all of us think academics have the right to say whatever they want as private citizens.)
And so to the piece; again, click to read.
Here’s Paul’s bit on why universities should shut up about taking official stands on issue that don’t bear on their mission. Sadly, she doesn’t mention the Kalven Report, which I think reflects a lack of historical perspective. But the rest is fine:
Right now, the university’s message is often the opposite. Well before the tumultuous summer of 2020, a focus on social justice permeated campuses in everything from residential housing to college reading lists.
“All of this activity would be fine — indeed, it would be fantastic — if it built in multiple perspectives,” noted Jonathan Zimmerman, author of “Whose America: Culture Wars in the Public Schools,” in a 2019 essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “For the most part, though, it doesn’t.”
Instead, many universities have aligned themselves politically with their most activist students. “Top universities depend on billions of dollars of public funding, in the form of research grants and loan assistance,” The Economist editorialized last week. “The steady leftward drift of their administrations has imperiled this.”
One of the starkest examples of this politicization is the raft of position statements coming from university leadership. These public statements, and the fiery battles and protests behind them, take sides on what are broadly considered to be the nation’s most sensitive and polarized subjects, whether it’s the Dobbs ruling or DACA for young immigrants, the Israel-Hamas war or Black Lives Matter.
At last month’s conference [a meeting at Stanford on civil discourse], Diego Zambrano, a professor at Stanford Law School, made the downsides of such statements clear. What, he asked, are the benefits of a university taking a position? If it’s to make the students feel good, he said, those feelings are fleeting, and perhaps not even the university’s job. If it’s to change the outcome of political events, even the most self-regarding institutions don’t imagine they will have any impact on a war halfway across the planet. The benefits, he argued, were nonexistent.
Indeed! Such statements are purely attempts to flaunt virtue and have no effect on social policy. Do you think that any statement by a university or school on the war in Gaza will have the slightest effect on the war itself? Yet such statements are being made everywhere, including from city councils and secondary school boards. Even the city of Chicago issued a call for a cease-fire. I’m sure Israel and Hamas are paying attention!
Paul continues:
As for the cons, Zambrano continued, issuing statements tends to fuel the most intemperate speech while chilling moderate and dissenting voices. In a world constantly riled up over politics, the task of formally opining on issues would be endless. Moreover, such statements force a university to simplify complex issues. They ask university administrators, who are not hired for their moral compasses, to address in a single email thorny subjects that scholars at their own institutions spend years studying. (Some university presidents, such as Michael Schill of Northwestern, have rightly balked.) Inevitably, staking any position weakens the public’s perception of the university as independent.
The temptation for universities to take a moral stand, especially in response to overheated campus sentiment, is understandable. But it’s a trap. When universities make it their mission to do the “right” thing politically, they’re effectively telling large parts of their communities — and the polarized country they’re in partnership with — they’re wrong.
When universities become overtly political, and tilt too far toward one end of the spectrum, they’re denying students and faculty the kind of open-ended inquiry and knowledge-seeking that has long been the basis of American higher education’s success. They’re putting its future at risk.
If you want schools to be Truth Universities and not Social Justice Universities (do see Jon Haidt’s excellent lecture on this bifurcation), then the cons far outweigh the pros when it comes to taking stands. Paul’s last three paragraphs are succinct, clear, and correct. To universities and departments who are itching to take political stands that don’t affect their school’s mission, PLEASE SHUT UP. Members of university communities have plenty of venues, like “X”, Facebook, or websites like this, to express their own private opinions.
After I saw that Paul had left out the Kalven Principles, I posted a comment after her piece—the first time I’ve ever commented in the NYT. Here it is, with one comma that shouldn’t be there:
As people continue to fight an uphill battle for free speech in the U.S.—at least on college campuses—various Anglophone countries are busy confecting new hate speech laws. These include but are not limited to blasphemy laws, a subset of restrictions that prohibits dissing religion. Wikipedia gives useful worldwide surveys of blasphemy laws as well as hate speech laws, divided up by country. You’d be surprised at how many Western countries have both kinds of laws, though often they’re not enforced. But the new ones might well be, and I’m especially concerned about Britain, which seems to be on a binge of arresting or threatening people for speech that would be legal in America.
In a new article at The Free Press (click below to read), Rupa Subramanya summarizes new hate speech legislation in Britain, Canada, and Ireland, and has a few words about the Biden administration’s attempt to cub certain forms of speech that adhere to the First Amendment.
I’ll summarize what Subramanya says by country. Her text is indented, and anything flush left is mine.
CANADA
Take Canada. Civil liberties groups north of the border are warning a new bill put forward by Justin Trudeau’s government will introduce “draconian penalties” that risk chilling free speech. How draconian? The law would allow authorities to place a Canadian citizen under house arrest if that person is suspected to commit a future hate crime—even if they have not already done so. The legislation also increases the maximum penalty for advocating genocide from five years to life.
These punishments depend on a hazy definition of hate that Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, executive director and general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, has warned could blur the line between “political activism, passionate debate, and offensive speech.”
A life sentence for advocating genocide?! (Note that the CBC below says that a life sentence in Canada is actually 25 years.) But advocating genocide is not even illegal in the U.S., so long as your speech is not inciting imminent and predictable violence. I could stand in downtown Chicago and cry “Gas the Jews” without violating any laws. Or give a speech on it, though of course nobody would invite me to do that save perhaps the SJP. And that’s okay, because so long as you’re not intending to incite violence, your arguments could help opponents sharpen theirs, and at the least “out” you as a hateful bigot. Remember, free speech frees you from the legal consequences of your speech but not the social consequences. And of course you can be fired from some jobs for such expressions.
The first link above, from the CBC, verifies this, and says that “regular” hate crimes could carry a sentence of up to five years. It also shows how nebulous the proposed definition of “hate” and “hate speech” are these:
The bill proposes increasing the maximum punishment for advocating genocide to life imprisonment, and allowing sentences of up to five years in prison for other hate propaganda offences.
. . .[Hatred] will be newly defined as “the emotion that involves detestation or vilification” that is “stronger than disdain or dislike.”
The bill also says that a statement that “discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends” would not meet the bar to be considered promoting or inciting hatred.
The second bit—about what hate speech is not—is okay as it covers nearly all debatable issues, but basing true hate speech on interpreting an emotion is problematic.
Again from the CBC:
Jewish advocacy groups have welcomed the proposed changes, citing a sharp rise in antisemitism since the Israel-Hamas war began last fall.
In unveiling the potential life sentence for advocating genocide, [Justice Minister] Virani said he heard through consultation with stakeholders that the penalty should be increased.
Well, I’m a (secular) Jew, and I don’t welcome those changes. All they do is drive people who favor genocide underground, so though the proposed law may deter the expression of those sentiments, it won’t quash the sentiments themselves. Again, unless those calls actually lead to a genocide, or to immediate, intended, and predictable violence, both of which are unlikely, they should be legal.
IRELAND
In Ireland, the government is pressing ahead with controversial new restrictions of online speech that, if passed, would be among the most stringent in the Western world.
The proposed legislation would criminalize the act of “inciting hatred” against individuals or groups based on specified “protected characteristics” like race, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation. The definition of incitement is so broad as to include “recklessly encouraging” other people to hate or cause harm “because of your views” or opinions. In other words, intent doesn’t matter. Nor would it matter if you actually posted the “reckless” content. Merely being in possession of that content—say, in a text message, or in a meme stored on your iPhone—could land you a fine of as much as €5,000 ($5,422) or up to 12 months in prison, or both.
As with Canada’s proposed law, the Irish legislation rests on a murky definition of hate. But Ireland’s Justice Minister Helen McEntee sees this lack of clarity as a strength. “On the strong advice of the Office of the Attorney General, we have not sought to limit the definition of the widely understood concept of ‘hatred’ beyond its ordinary and everyday meaning,” she explained. “I am advised that defining it further at this juncture could risk prosecutions collapsing and victims being denied justice.”
The law (see the link) also says you can go to jail for condoning, denying, or trivializing genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. You don’t even have to promulgate this stuff: just denying it or trivializing it can send you to the slammer.
A murky definition of hate is a bug, not a feature, and is intolerable, for ite depends on “the everyday meaning of hate”, which varies among people. Further, “recklessly encouraging other people to hate” is ridiculous; an infringement on even talking to people without any clear consequences. What’s worse is that if you have “hate speech” stored somewhere but not shared, you can still go to jail.
BRITAIN
In Britain, existing online harm legislation means that tweeting “transwomen are men” can lead to a knock on the door from the cops. Now the governing Conservative Party is under pressure to adopt a broad definition of Islamophobia as a “type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
Other parties have adopted this definition, and free-speech advocates in Britain worry that it is only a matter of time until a Labour-run government codifies the definition into legislation. To do so, they argue, would mean the introduction of a de facto blasphemy law in Britain.
There’s already a widely-used definition of “antisemitism” that can lead to punishment if it’s expressed in universities, and it’s this one:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
While such expressions are legal in the U.S., and in schools that adhere to the First Amendment, note that it refers to hatred of Jews, not of Judaism. The British government’s definition of Islamophobia refers to criticism of “Muslimness or perceived Muslimness,” which could be construed as a blasphemy law criticizing Islam. In other words, the Charlie Hebdo or Jyllands-Posten cartoons could violate the law. But neither the expression of antisemitism nor either construal of Islamophobia (hatred of Islam or of Muslims) should be illegal. They are legal in America, and I don’t believe our speech laws are a whit more divisive than they are in Britain, which seems to be undergoing a paroxysm of division.
As for the statement “transwomen are men” being illegal, that’s palpably ridiculous. It is in fact biologically accurate, and you shouldn’t be penalized for saying something that’s scientifically correct. The regulation is meant to buttress a gender-activist ideology to force society to give full rights to trans people as members of their assumed rather than their natal and defined sex. While nearly all rights for trans people should certainly be the same as for non-trans people, there are some exceptions—exceptions involve rape counseling, sports participation, and incarceration.
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I won’t go into the details about America and the Biden Administration’s failed attempt to get speech restrictions about matters affecting homeland security, but this sentence distressed me:
A worrying number of Americans appear to be sympathetic to [MSNBC legal analyst Barbara] McQuade’s argument. A 2023 Pew survey found that just 42 percent of voters agreed that “freedom of information should be protected, even if it means false information can be published.”
Well of course publication of some false information is already prohibited under the First Amendment, including false advertising and stuff that’s defamatory, but a lot depends here on what the public perceives as “publishable false information”. I think the American courts have already settled this pretty well, so I’m curious how many people even know the already-existing rules.
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