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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 07 2017, @07:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-the-First-Amendment-isn't-clear-enough dept.

NPR reports:

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @01:15AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @01:15AM (#506103)

    anybody who says "hate speech" is a fucking douche bag who deserves a proper beating.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday May 08 2017, @02:56AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Monday May 08 2017, @02:56AM (#506152) Journal

    Anyone who says that about hate speech is in fact engaging in hate speech, and thus not capable of rational debate, or even civilized conversation, and probably not being out in public. Beating? From such a pathetic specimen as yourself? Please! Just because it is hate speech does not mean I am afraid, it just means that you have authorized the use of violence, legal or in self-defense, against your sorry excuse for an existence. I usually start by subtly increasing the victim's body weight. I then remove hair from the scalp, one at a time. Finally, I increase blood pressure by exposure to right-wing outrage media, and blocking nut-jobs from speaking on College campuses. And then, you will die. May take a while, but once you engage in hate speech, it is certain you will die. Kind of like the famous Martial Arts move, the "Dim Mak", The "Death Touch" from The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009). Sorry, AC, you touched it!