Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 11 2017, @11:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-in-my-safe-space dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

With Governor Roy Cooper (D) taking no action on the bill, the state of North Carolina has enacted the Restore Campus Free Speech Act, the first comprehensive campus free-speech legislation based on the Goldwater proposal. That proposal, which I [Stanley Kurtz (Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center)] co-authored along with Jim Manley and Jonathan Butcher of Arizona's Goldwater Institute, was released on January 31 and is now under consideration in several states. It's fitting that North Carolina should be the first state to enact a Goldwater-inspired law.

[...] The North Carolina Restore Campus Free Speech Act achieves most of what the Goldwater proposal sets out to do. It ensures that University of North Carolina policy will strongly affirm the importance of free expression. It prevents administrators from disinviting speakers whom members of the campus community wish to hear from. It establishes a system of disciplinary sanctions for students and anyone else who interferes with the free-speech rights of others, and ensures that students will be informed of those sanctions at freshman orientation. It reaffirms the principle that universities, at the official institutional level, ought to remain neutral on issues of public controversy to encourage the widest possible range of opinion and dialogue within the university itself. And it authorizes a special committee created by the Board of Regents to issue a yearly report to the public, the regents, the governor, and the legislature on the administrative handling of free-speech issues.

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450027/north-carolina-campus-free-speech-act-goldwater-proposal


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 11 2017, @03:09PM (3 children)

    Which is precisely why their views should be given a hearing. You can't know how wrong a position is unless you understand that position. Which you cannot do without first hearing that position.

    BTW: Getting students wound up to silence unpopular speech at universities was a very early Nazi tactic. Informing you of this just so you don't mistake which side are actually acting like Nazis.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Informative=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday August 11 2017, @06:06PM

    by edIII (791) on Friday August 11 2017, @06:06PM (#552468)

    Yep. It doesn't matter what the subjective or even objective quality of the speech is. Our founding principles were that it could be said without fear or repercussions, with very few exceptions. Where speech could cause great harm like yelling fire in a theater is one of the very few exceptions.

    It's really dumb for a university of all places to not let these undesirables to walk up to a podium and deliver their speech. How else are we supposed to counter their arguments and show them for the bigoted racist morons they are? There exists no intellectual, moral, or ethical superiority to your own positions when you simply oppress the positions of others and don't allow them to speak. How else are students supposed to be exposed to this, cause critical thinking and productive discussions, even among themselves?

    I don't know if it Bushido, or older, but there is a Japanese maxim I've always appreciated. Paraphrasing it, "If you cannot expose yourself to the beliefs of others, you have no beliefs of your own". I may have mangled it (most probably), but in it essence it means that these students cannot claim to be principled intellectuals, or that those principles are worthy, if they cannot at least expose themselves to the beliefs and principles of others.

    That's not the same as condoning it, or enabling it. Nothing says that afterwards you cannot have your say. Which, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole fucking point of debate club to DEBATE? When did it become impossible to have discourse in the very places in which it is the most important?

    I'm not down for preventing protests, but what happened at Berkley recently wasn't a protest. It was a violent shutdown of unpopular speech in ways and manners that reminded me of fascism in our recent past. I found it disturbing that our universities seemingly couldn't host Milo without the national guard being there. Which is strange, since as a student I would welcome him. How else can I make him look like the moron he is?

    It IS time that some rules of conduct and order were brought to universities, and that the true spirit of debate was brought back. Fuck, these people make the Left look like loony idiots.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Saturday August 12 2017, @12:16AM (1 child)

    by bob_super (1357) on Saturday August 12 2017, @12:16AM (#552656)

    The friendly people of Daesh recruiting gullible idiots via internet videos is a good example of why some speech is curtailed in Europe: In a room where you came to hear the opinion of someone you oppose, there will be someone who takes that hateful speech to heart. We see what happens when that speech reaches enough people to find vulnerable ears who are likely to act on the violence it conveys.

    Censorship is dangerous. But some ideas are dangerous too. It's not unreasonable, in a place where ideas are taught, that the people entrusted with the education of young gullible adults, be allowed to decide that some speech is not to be implicitly endorsed by welcoming it within the teaching walls.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:22AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:22AM (#553110) Journal

      In a room where you came to hear the opinion of someone you oppose, there will be someone who takes that hateful speech to heart.

      So what? It's the same problem with US liability law since the 70s and drone regulation [soylentnews.org] a few years back. We all lose when we regulate everyone as if they were the worst of idiots. If you're tightening regulations all the time because there are idiots, then you are doing it wrong. The idiots won't stop being idiots.