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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: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @07:44AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @07:44AM (#506233)

    Duterte is old, but he's not dead

    Oh, and you think I did not know that? Was not the misspelling of the name enough to tip you off? Are you so fucking stupid that you think that Ann Coulter has anything to say to a University audience? Seriously, these people can read! And think for their selves! And they would know that Duterte is not dead (although, if his policies were generalized, he would be), that Jefferson Davis is dead, that Andrew Jackson would not have had "lunch" with Milo Youcominmeandiinyou. Still out on the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, who missed the Trump's In-auguration:: augur: a large drill, a helix, a way to screw the American people: No wonder Frederick missed it, as did so many other Americans. So many. In fact, it was the so many-est missed inauguration of all history! Tiny hands. Tiny minds. Inability to detect sarcasm. a-z, you are an imbecile.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 08 2017, @12:58PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 08 2017, @12:58PM (#506325) Journal

    Oh, and you think I did not know that?

    Sounds more like that now than before your reply. At least any ignorance of yours on that particular matter has now been dissipated. And is this free associating whining a stand up comedy thing these days? Starting to wonder if there's a fad and where it might have come from.