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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
(Score: 4, Informative) by ilsa on Friday August 11 2017, @03:39PM (4 children)
While on the surface what you say makes sense, but there still needs to be some kind of balance. There are people who insist on peddling nonsense and demand their right to speak, no matter how completely and repeatedly wrong they are proven. And as everyone knows, it takes orders of magnitude more effort to dispute bullshit than to invent it in the first place.
I'm concerned that this will make a mockery of intelligent thought. It will force universities to permit outlandish discussions such as creationism being a valid scientific theory, or anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, white supremacy, etc.
While it sounds like the whole safe zone thing has gotten out of hand, pushing the pendulum deeply to the other side isn't going to be very good for anyone either.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 11 2017, @04:00PM (3 children)
There is no "too far the other way" when it comes to free speech. Foolish positions often debunk themselves and nobody is obligated to listen to the speakers. Not even the ones who invited them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ilsa on Friday August 11 2017, @05:30PM (2 children)
Except for when those positions *don't* debunk themselves. Or at least, when they are listened to by people who do not have the knowledge and critical thinking skill to properly evaluate the arguments. Never mind the maxim of "If you tell a lie often enough, people begin to think it's true."
Look at the anti-vax crowd as a perfect example. The original "scientist" was discredited, the research has been debunked beyond a shadow of a doubt. And yet a shockingly large number of people insist that vaccinations are bad. If this sort of thing only hurt the people that believed it, then I wouldn't really care. They can do whatever they want. But their decisions, based on gross misinformation, hurts other people as well.
I'm very glad that the university was able to at least push back on allowing any public area to be usable as a public forum. Otherwise there would have been sidewalk preachers every 10 feet.
The Westboro Baptist Church is going to have a field day with this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @09:31PM
Yes humans can be suckered in with bad information, but it is vastly more preferable to a thought-police tyranny.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:24AM
It's a college. If the people there don't have the knowledge and critical thinking skills to properly evaluate bullshit, then shut the place down.