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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: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday August 11 2017, @03:42PM (10 children)
Why should people who want to speak be allowed to take up space on campus? The right to free speech doesn't guarantee you the right to a podium. Universities are supposed to be places for research and learning, not for any random nutcase to spout a bunch of BS and be able to reserve a lecture hall or auditorium for the purpose; there's no shortage of wackos who'd love to give "speeches" about some crap. Universities should have every right to be extremely selective about who they invite to talk, and really shouldn't be wasting time and space on random lunatics, trolls, and pundits who only speak to drum up controversy and sell their shitty books. And no, just because some group of idiot students wants to invite someone doesn't mean they should be able to do that. Every university has lots of student groups, and some of these are full of extremists and morons; if you let every little group of extremists have the power to take up space on campus and get attention, that's just going to make things worse. I guess what I'm saying is that universities should have rigorous requirements before extending an invitation to a speaker, to make sure they aren't just inviting some troll. Perhaps there should be a "speaker review committee" to make sure that some weird little department or student group doesn't cause a PR disaster by inviting some neo-Nazi or something.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 11 2017, @04:05PM
You mean like a group that takes a page out of history and, precisely like the Nazis did, silences speech on campus they disagree with?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @04:41PM
And besides, that's the faculty's job!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:59PM (1 child)
At a public university, it should simply be first-come-first-serve.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @12:11AM
A public university is not youtube, it is not 4chan, it is not even reddit, and god gnows it is not SoylentNews!
Universities exist to make idiots and religious types feel stupid, but that is only because they are, and the Dunning-Kruger effect is so strong that they will never realize it, even if we let them speak on campus and subject them to ridicule and derision and mockery. Universities are wicked good at mockery. So instead, Universities do them a favor by banning them from the Learned Pulpit, and thus they can take great umbrage at the "liberal professoriate" that is so prejudiced against them. This is why The Mighty Busshard has never given a lecture at a University. So unfair!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @07:06PM (5 children)
I'm having trouble understanding how you can internally reconcile this. You are trying to discuss the ideal ethical goals of institutes of higher education while basing what seems to be the entirety of your entire comment on ad hominem. Try to rephrase your argument while omitting ad hominem and I think you'll find you've said basically nothing other than 'Universities should not enable views, or speakers of such, that I don't agree with.'
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday August 11 2017, @08:01PM (4 children)
Where's the ad hominem? I'm not insulting anyone in this discussion in that post, though I make some references to vague anonymous groups of people in my argument (idiot students, troll speakers, etc.), none of which represent any of the SNers in this thread.
you've said basically nothing other than 'Universities should not enable views, or speakers of such, that I don't agree with.'
That's totally wrong. I guess it's not clear, but what I'm basically saying is that "Universities should not enable views, or speakers of such, that the University does not agree with and doesn't think will promote worthwhile academic discourse."
So that means I think it's a waste of time for a liberal university like Berkeley to invite Ann Coulter to speak, and I don't think that Liberty University has any obligation to invite any liberals to speak, and I certainly don't think that any decent university has any obligation to invite Andrew Wakefield or Jenny McCarthy to speak, or Ken Ham for that matter. Now if Liberty U. wants to invite Ken Ham, that's their right and it would make sense considering the bias that school has. Call it "echo chambering" all you like, but most people IMO don't want to waste their time listening to crap they don't agree with at all and have already long-since decided is total garbage, so for a university to invite someone to speak whose views are completely antithetical to the leanings of almost everyone on campus (e.g., inviting Iranian ex-pres Ahmandinejad to speak at a Jewish university) isn't "enabling discourse", it's just giving someone a podium to speak who will only succeed in angering everyone there. No one's mind is going to be changed (certainly not the Jewish students in this contrived example, and not Ahmadinejad's either), so what exactly is the point? Most people will be angry and not attend, and those who do will probably be disruptive. Nothing positive is going to come of it. To outsiders, it makes it look like the University thinks the speaker actually has something worthwhile to say.
Would it make any sense to invite some random lunatic to speak about the hallucinations he has and believes are real? I've got a paranoid schizophrenic relative who has lots of stories about seeing aliens, how the government has examined his brain, etc.; do you think we have an obligation to listen to him and try to point out the holes in his stories? (Luckily, he's not too bad when he's taking his meds properly.) No, it's a waste of time.
This isn't to say that people with differing views should *never* be invited to speak. It's quite possible a University might think someone isn't too antithetical to their views, and that useful discourse could occur by inviting them. But there's limits here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @09:53PM (1 child)
The wonderful thing about Universities is that the students are ostensibly adults, and thus are allowed to attend OR NOT whichever things they'd like. I have never heard of a mandatory assembly at a university.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:12AM
I have never heard of a mandatory assembly at a university.
Liberty University has such things. IIRC, they had a mandatory assembly during the Presidential election last year where students were required to hear Ted Cruz speak.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 12 2017, @12:18AM
Evidently, the objector in this case,
is not intelligent enough to grasp the point the Great Grish has made. And does not comprehend the argumentum ad hominem fallacy. Vide:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:23AM
Your entire view is based around denigrating those you disagree with and using that denigrating as a basis for further 'logic' and in particular a suppression of their expression. Your entire argument is built entirely on ad hominem. And once again university's don't invite people to speak - students at the university do by reserving a public speaking venue and organizing said event. Repeating 'university's inviting people' is just bizarre and is intentionally missing the point.