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from the when-the-First-Amendment-isn't-clear-enough dept.
On college campuses, outrage over provocative speakers sometimes turns violent.
It's becoming a pattern on campuses around the country. A speaker is invited, often by a conservative student group. Other students oppose the speaker, and maybe they protest. If the speech happens, the speaker is heckled. Sometimes there's violence.
In other cases — as with conservative commentator Ann Coulter at the University of California, Berkeley last week — the event is called off.
Now, a handful of states, including Illinois, Tennessee, Colorado and Arizona, have passed or introduced legislation designed to prevent these incidents from happening. The bills differ from state to state, but they're generally based on a model written by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Arizona.
The model bill would require public universities to remain neutral on political issues, prevent them from disinviting speakers, and impose penalties for students and others who interfere with these speakers.
The author of the model bill argues that the neutrality stipulation is necessary for public institutions funded by tax dollars, "who shouldn't be forced to subsidize speech that they disagree with." In response to the legislation, a Democratic North Carolina legislator criticized the bill as an unnecessary "regulation of a constitutional right." The story also mentions that "Critics say this kind of legislation could hinder a university's ability to regulate hate speech on campus," but the bill author responds that hate speech is "not well-defined in the law."
Although the proposed legislation varies by state, the model bill linked above recommends a number of initiatives, from clear campus policies on protecting free speech to severe disciplinary actions for students who interfere with that right. Perhaps the strongest section of the model bill would require that "Any student who has twice been found responsible for infringing the expressive rights of others will be suspended for a minimum of one year, or expelled" (Section 1.9).
In other free speech news, USA Today reports that the FCC is launching an investigation into an "obscene" joke by Stephen Colbert concerning Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which caused a Twitter firestorm and led to a trending #FireColbert hashtag. While the joke was sexually explicit, the offensive word was bleeped in broadcast. CNN has argued that the FCC is merely doing its job in investigating "a number" of complaints, but Slate notes the high legal threshold that would be necessary for a fine in this case, given the late hour of the broadcast and the three-pronged test for obscenity.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:00PM (3 children)
How far should free speech go? It's impractical to outlaw lying. Instead, the idea is to educate, to train people to think critically, so that it is impossible to get away with lying, as everyone will know better.
Two big targets of liars and propagandists are education and communication. If they can wreck education, their lies will not be challenged as much. If they can control all communication, they can make sure people hear only them. When known propagandists come calling with "free" speech initiatives, be wary.
But they are right about one thing. Violence is not the answer to lies. But did they put agents provocateurs in the crowd to incite violence, and if not for that, there wouldn't have been any?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 08 2017, @01:09PM (2 children)
But they are right about one thing. Violence is not the answer to lies. But did they put agents provocateurs in the crowd to incite violence, and if not for that, there wouldn't have been any?
Someone did. The question is whose agents provocateurs? Sorry, I don't buy that there's some right-wing conspiracy to frame the loony fringe of college campuses by false flag operations. They aren't needed when all one needs to do is pull in Coulter or Milo to get a predictable, violent response.
How far should free speech go? It's impractical to outlaw lying. Instead, the idea is to educate, to train people to think critically, so that it is impossible to get away with lying, as everyone will know better.
How well have the protests served that purpose? Shouting down unpopular speech doesn't sound like a good approach to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @03:27PM (1 child)
How well have the protests served that purpose? Shouting down unpopular speech doesn't sound like a good approach to me.
The only proper response to speech you don't like is more speech. If these speakers were truly wanted then there would be counter protests to counter the protesters speech. These laws are a direct result in the fact that there is no one really to to come out and counter the protesters. The lawmakers dont like that the speech they like is being shouted down and they are demanding (in direct violation to the first amendment might I say) that their speech gets heard.
How would you like it if the other side took away your ability to counter speech.
This is an illegal silencing of protected political speech. Defending it shows that you are no defender of the constitution, you just want it to be warped in your favor.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:36AM
If these speakers were truly wanted then there would be counter protests to counter the protesters speech.
Let us note, there frequently are such counter protests. I googled both Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos to find that counter protests had been organized in such situations.
This is an illegal silencing of protected political speech. Defending it shows that you are no defender of the constitution, you just want it to be warped in your favor.
I'm not defending this law. I think it's a bad idea for the same reasons. But I don't approve of some of the relatively legal games that are used to squelch unpopular speech either. Part of the reason we hear so much about this is because these particular people exploit the protests for publicity and such. Not everyone does that. Googling around, I see conference cancellations due to protests for "workfare" (welfare tied to finding work), presence of Israelis, and animal testing.
The problem here is that it is easy for a small group of protestors, particularly in collusion with bureaucrats in the right places, to suppress or disrupt speech. I don't believe it is a good idea to require someone to come up with a bunch of counter protestors merely to able to speak.