Why Universities are getting it so wrong on free speech

[Bill Glasheen]

There was an editorial published yesterday in the Wall Street journal which deals with the topic of free speech vs. censorship of hurtful or "hate" speech. It's gone so far that books are being banned from academic classes, and speech is effectively censored via punitive actions by the community and/or via University rules. Once upon a time Universities were fertile ground for free speech and free expression. Now it seems many (not all) institutions are effectively behaving no differently than The Third Reich, which destroyed what it deemed to be degenerate art.

I'm going to post part of the Opinion piece, and comment later. This has everything to do with self-defense, and functioning in a "normal" (non-university) environment.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

OPINION

Liberals Are Killing the Liberal Arts
This is how bad censorship is getting: Discussions of what can’t be said come with a ‘trigger warning.’

By HARVEY SILVERGLATE
Nov. 9, 2014 5:59 p.m. ET

820 COMMENTS [as of 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 10]

On campuses across the country, hostility toward unpopular ideas has become so irrational that many students, and some faculty members, now openly oppose freedom of speech. The hypersensitive consider the mere discussion of the topic of censorship to be potentially traumatic. Those who try to protect academic freedom and the ability of the academy to discuss the world as it is are swimming against the current. In such an atmosphere, liberal-arts education can’t survive.

Consider what happened after Smith College held a panel for alumnae titled “Challenging the Ideological Echo Chamber: Free Speech, Civil Discourse and the Liberal Arts.” Moderated by Smith President Kathleen McCartney in late September, the panel was an apparent effort to address the intolerance of diverse opinions that prevails on many campuses.

One panelist was Smith alumna Wendy Kaminer—an author, lawyer, social critic, feminist, First Amendment near-absolutist and former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union. She delivered precisely the spirited challenge to the echo chamber that the panel’s title seemed to invite. But Ms. Kaminer emerged from the discussion of free speech labeled a racist—for defending free speech.

The panel started innocuously enough with Ms. Kaminer criticizing the proliferation of campus speech codes that restrict supposedly offensive language. She urged the audience to defend the free exchange of ideas over parochial notions of “civility.” In response to a question about teaching materials that contain “hate speech,” she raised the example of Mark Twain ’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” arguing that students should take it as a whole. The student member of the panel, Jaime Estrada, resisted that notion, saying, “But it has the n-word, and some people are sensitive to that.”

Ms. Kaminer responded: “Well let’s talk about n-words. Let’s talk about the growing lexicon of words that can only be known by their initials. I mean, when I say, ‘n-word’ or when Jaime says ‘n-word,’ what word do you all hear in your head? You hear the word . . . ”

And then Ms. Kaminer crossed the Rubicon of political correctness and uttered the forbidden word, observing that having uttered it, “nothing horrible happened.” She then compared the trend of replacing potentially offensive words with an initial to being “characters in a Harry Potter book who are afraid to say the word ‘Voldemort.’ ” There’s an important difference, she pointed out, between hurling an epithet and uttering a forbidden word during an academic discussion of our attitudes toward language and law.

The event—and Ms. Kaminer’s words—prompted blowback from Smith undergraduates, recent alumnae and some faculty members. One member of the audience posted an audio recording and transcript of the discussion, preceded by what has come to be known in the academic world as a “trigger warning”:

“Trigger/Content Warnings: Racism/racial slurs, abelist slurs, anti-Semitic language, anti-Muslim/Islamophobic language, anti-immigrant language, sexist/misogynistic slurs, references to race-based violence.”

One has to have imbibed this culture of hyper-victimization in order even to understand the lingo. “Ableism,” for example, is described at ableism.org as “the practices and dominant attitudes in society that devalue and limit the potential of persons with disabilities” and that “assign inferior value (worth) to persons who have developmental, emotional, physical or psychiatric disabilities.”

The contretemps prompted articles in the newspapers of Smith College and neighboring Mount Holyoke College, condemning Ms. Kaminer’s remarks as examples of institutionalized racism. Smith president Ms. McCartney was criticized for not immediately denouncing Ms. Kaminer. In a Sept. 29 letter responding to the Smith community, she apologized to students and faculty who were “hurt” and made to feel “unsafe” by Ms. Kaminer’s comments in defense of free speech.

A rare academic counter-current to the vast censorial wave came from professor of politics Christopher Pyle at Mount Holyoke. He wrote in the Mount Holyoke News that readers of the paper were misled by a report that “a Smith alumna made racist remarks when speaking at an alumnae panel.” He criticized the condemnation of Ms. Kaminer for her willingness to challenge the tyranny of “sanitary euphemisms.”

Smith is not the epicenter of hostility to free speech. On university campuses nationwide we are witnessing an increasing tide of trigger warnings.

{snip}

[Bill Glasheen]

I tried looking up the topic "Profanity as a prequel to violence", and got nothing. Instead I got page after page after page of how profanity in video games causes violent behavior, how it's psychological abuse in relationships and with children watching TV, etc., etc.

What I didn't get was the harm caused by living in a verbally sterile environment before going out in the world and potentially being exposed to violence. Imagine a Uechi practitioner not doing kotekitae, ashikitae, and karadakitae. How do you think a practitioner of "the big three" would do on the street if you never galvanized their bodies with contact work, and immunized them against the psychological effects of contact? I'm guessing not so well.

But this is what we get if we never get exposed to offensive speech and ideas that make us uncomfortable. Have you ever thought about how sociopaths use profanity to emotionally hijack a potential victim? It works several different ways. I grew up in a neighborhood that went almost completely black. When I was young, a fight could start just by saying "Your mama!" in an insulting way. On the other hand many - especially women - can be turned to deer in the headlamps by a male engaged in profane and/or manipulative speech. If a male is emotionally hijacked by a racial epithet, what's the likelihood that he'll maintain all of his complex motor coordination? How will a woman engage in the most basic verbal self-defense if she's completely intimidated by a few "hurtful" words?

We've all seen the "Cool Hand Luke" types who don't get flustered in difficult situations, and are able to maintain all their faculties. Some of you probably know some women as well who are never checkmated in a discussion. Some can take Mr. Wolf and verbally let the air out of his ego with just the right words.

Have you ever wondered why some ethnic groups - particularly blacks - use self-deprecating slurs in their music? Part of the reason is that it takes the power out of those words when you regularly use them. It's self-immunization against being a victim. Is it wise and is it socially responsible? I don't know. On the other hand is it wise to go around in life always playing the victim card, putting yourself in the position to be manipulated like a puppet by the sociopath around the corner?

Food and words for thought.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

...... Amusing scene from Grand Torino.

[Bill Glasheen]

..... Water buffalo incident

[Glenn]

I have seen this as well. Particularly having been a college student in the 1980s, taking a break to work in the real-world for a while, and then becoming a college student again in the 2010s...the atmosphere is definitely different now compared to then. Since I am trying to make a career out of higher education I follow the Chronicle of Higher Education and there is frequently news, commentary, and discussion about the nature of free speech in higher ed, and I would say the majority argue against these changes.

To an extent the changes are driven top-down by administration, partly because of liability concerns which prompts administrators to try to squelch anything that could lead to a lawsuit, and partly because of the corporatization of colleges/universities in recent decades which prompts administrators to squelch anything that could put the college/university in a negative light and thus potentially affect enrollment and the bottom line. Here are some other recent high-profile cases that highlight how this has become a minefield for faculty, particularly in this era of social media:
College Admits Error for Disciplining Professor for ‘Game of Thrones’ Photo

Denial of Job to Harsh Critic of Israel Divides Advocates of Academic Freedom

Pleas for Civility Meet Cynicism

There are several different issues covered by these, not all of which are directly related to your point Bill, but both the incidents and the debates/controversies they sparked speak to the difficulty of navigating what level of free speech, as well as the different but related concept of academic freedom, is currently allowed in academia.

But to an extent these changes are also driven by the students. Interestingly one aspect of free speech has recently expanded. Starting in the 1960s colleges/universities tried to spatially limit where some forms of free speech such as protests and controversial speeches could occur by designating specific parts of campuses as "free-speech areas". A few years ago the legitimacy of these was struck down by the courts through a series of successful lawsuits, opening up more of the campus as free-speech areas. Yet students seem apathetic as fewer engage in this kind of activity compared to when I was an undergrad in the 1980s. And if students do not agree with what is said in a class as free speech, they will not hesitate to disparage it on social media, which gets back to potential economic impacts.

Higher Ed is a whole new world now compared to past decades, and free speech has definitely been caught up in the swell of change.

[Bill Glasheen]

..... George Carlin - Euphemisms

[Bill Glasheen]

I have seen this as well.

Nice post, Glenn.

I think you're spot on with this comment.

liability concerns which prompts administrators to try to squelch anything that could lead to a lawsuit

Bingo!

"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers!"

- Bill