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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


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:53PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:53PM (#553227) Journal

    Then the university itself should have behavioral or conduct standards to address when the line between speech and harassment is crossed. All others can fuck off trying to regulate this.

    Not if it's a public university such as UNC. As an arm of the government they have to grant the rights of the Constitution, particular that of freedom of speech. So they can't have behavioral/conduct standards that can be used to deliberately exclude particular topics of speech by the decision makers.

    I can see both sides of this, though. I actually think that the idea someone else threw out in this thread is probably the best compromise. If a real student group wants to bring a speaker to campus, then poll the student body. If 10% respond in the affirmative, then it's on. Otherwise, not happening.

    Who gets to decide when this poll is triggered? And why should the student body get a say any more than anyone else? My view is that along those lines is that informal, small venues can be reserved by one signature (or even just occupied on the spot, if the venue happens to be empty) while more formal venues might require signatures proportional to the capacity of the venue, like a tenth. So a group can move into a small classroom after hours without having to consult with anyone. But it might take 3 signatures to reserve a small meeting room or 5,000 signatures to reserve the stadium. Further, if there are costs to the university associated with large speeches or conferences, that should be covered as well.