At first, [American Civil Liberties Union's Claire Gastañaga, a W & M alum] attempted to spin the demonstration as a welcome example of the kind of thing she had come to campus to discuss, commenting "Good, I like this," as they lined up and raised their signs. "I'm going to talk to you about knowing your rights, and protests and demonstrations, which this illustrates very well. Then I'm going to respond to questions from the moderators, and then questions from the audience."I wouldn't assume the "ideological position is obviously incoherent," but chanting is not an attempt to provide a coherent explanation. Why doesn't William and Mary stage a debate on the proposition "Liberalism is white supremacy" and have a speaker who will try to present the idea coherently? Or are debates and demands for ideological coherence the stuff of white supremacy?
It was the last remark she was able to make before protesters drowned her out with cries of, "ACLU, you protect Hitler, too." They also chanted, "the oppressed are not impressed," "shame, shame, shame, shame," (an ode to the Faith Militant's treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, though why anyone would want to be associated with the religious fanatics in that particular conflict is beyond me), "blood on your hands," "the revolution will not uphold the Constitution," and, uh, "liberalism is white supremacy."...
These students have clearly made up their minds about free speech: they don't want to share it with anyone else—especially Nazis, but also civil liberties lawyers who happen to be experts on the thing they are willfully misunderstanding: the First Amendment. Their ideological position is obviously incoherent—Liberalism is white supremacy? What?—and would not stand up to scrutiny, which is probably why they have decided to make open debate an impossibility on campus. They really shouldn't get away with this.
The liberals in my town did a tremendous amount of chanting during the anti-Scott-Walker protests of 2011. A favorite chant was "shame, shame, shame, shame," which Soave calls "an ode to the Faith Militant's treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones." That's not the association the "shame" chant has for me, and by the way, I am so sick of references to "Game of Thrones."
Anyway, chants have their place and can be very effective persuasion. I'm thinking of "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Did that have — did that need — ideological coherence?
I'd love to hear debate on these topics, but I know they'd probably just get shouted down. When you stage in-person events, you create opportunities, and some people will grab what they can. To say "They really shouldn't get away with this" is not to prescribe a remedy to this persistent phenomenon, which is part of living in a free society, as Claire Gastañaga seemed to be trying to say before she gave up on controlling the stage that was set up for her.
One might say the freedom of speech is obviously incoherent. But freedom is good, incoherent or not.
Posts
191 comments:
Why aren't students who shut down events expelled?
American Civil Liberties Union's Claire Gastañaga,
When I first read that name I saw "Gangsta."
Apparently not gangsta enough for that crowd.
I am so sick of references to "Game of Thrones."
Think of it as empathy for the rest of us having to suffer all those boring posts about Girls.
"some people will grab what they can." You mean, leftist thugs will grab any chance to violently violate other people's rights.
"To say "They really shouldn't get away with this" is not to prescribe a remedy to this persistent phenomenon," Correct. The remedy is to expel students, to arrest people for disturbing the peace, and so on. The culture war is a war. So far, only one side is fighting.
"which is part of living in a free society," Actually, no. Letting leftist thugs get away with their thuggishness undermines freedom.
You have the right to speak, not the right to be heard. No audience has to listen to you.
Of course, you don't the have the right to keep others from hearing a speaker but that's a matter for the events organizers.
Autophagy in action. I'm really starting to worry the Democrats won't be able to get their shit together and compete for those needed seats next year, much less field a nationally viable candidate in 2020. How nice.
The BLM movement is about Black people exerting power over White people...nothing more, nothing less.
If they really cared about Black lives, they'd be picketing Planned Parenthood, and organizing anti-gang activities in Chicago Baltimore and Detroit.
The Left no longer feels the need of the 1st Amendment - they have the microphone. So they're shutting it down. Typical Leftist behavior. CF: Communism.
Don't like it? Fight back. Complaining about "unfair" it is, will accomplish nothing. The Left knows what they're doing.
What a milquetoast response to another group shouting down a speaker at their own event. Seriously?
A debate? Most of those angry leftists would never honor the conventions of a civil debate, where one side speaks and other sides shuts-up and listens until it is there turn. Most of the positions are illogical, misinformed and incoherent and they refuse to recognize established facts or exhibit the ability to assess new information that conflicts with their position. Lastly there is their inability to stay on topic as they jump from issue to issue without ever resolving any one in the belief that their rapid-fire recitation of grievances is a winning tactic.
This is not FREEDOM. This is rule by mob.
Their ideological position is obviously incoherent—Liberalism is white supremacy? What?
It could be and has been argued that various policies that have been enacted by liberals have lead to black people becoming more dependent on the government. Although wealthy white liberals will of course insist that they're advocating such policies not from a supremist mindset but from empathy or human decency or whatever.
Why doesn't William and Mary stage a debate on the proposition "Liberalism is white supremacy" and have a speaker who will try to present the idea coherently?
White supremacy is sounding better and better.
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
― Thomas Paine
People who, in their self-righteousness, shout down others to prevent dialogue, use the tools that will be used against them.
"Why aren't students who shut down events expelled?"
I'm sure there are many reasons. Off the top of my head:
1. Protest is valuable and part of the campus environment that is wanted.
2. Expulsion is a very harsh punishment.
3. Students would assert rights against expulsion and it will be hard to figure out what those rights are, how much to respect them, and how to treat like cases alike.
4. You might be kicking out some of the students you especially want to keep, including minority students that you tried very hard to recruit.
5. It would chill the speech of all the students, who would worry about where the line is, and you might end up with a dull campus full of obedient nerds.
6. It might hurt future recruitment, especially minority students and politically active students.
7. You'll be accused of viewpoint discrimination and you actually risk doing viewpoint discrimination.
8. You actually believe that some of the speakers are invited so that they can aggravate students, and you think you're getting played if you retaliated against the students whose buttons are pushed.
I could go on, but that's something to chew on.
'Why doesn't William and Mary stage a debate on the proposition "Liberalism is white supremacy" and have a speaker who will try to present the idea coherently?'
Because they can now reasonably expect to have any such debate murdered aborning?
The left eats its' own.
Liberals who have read history should know that the radicals will target them also. But it appears few people read history, even on college campuses.
It's like political correctness. You can't say what you've noticed.
Ever notice that the lefties commentors avoid this kind of post like it had the clap?
But freedom is good, incoherent or not.
The Founders seldom spoke about freedom. They preferred liberty as a watchword. They read history. They could quote Cicero and Seneca as easy as breathing. They knew freedom to be a conditional good only. In a society of total freedom, only the most aggressive are free. How's that for incoherent?
...and some people will grab what they can.
When you're a minority, they let you do it.
Maybe it's really Black Ideas Matter, and they know that only way black ideas would be competitive is violence.
Speech is the enemy.
Freeman Hunt said...
Why aren't students who shut down events expelled?
They should be arrested - harassment, disturbing the peace, interfering with other peoples' constitutional rights.
chants have their place
In stirring up mindless mobs, sure. Not in reasoned, civil discourse, which I understand to some is white supremacy etc but whatever. I won't apologize for refusing to accept anything but.
1. Protest is valuable and part of the campus environment that is wanted.
Preventing others from speaking is not protest, it's censorship.
2. Expulsion is a very harsh punishment.
Tell that to all the men getting expelled because of the campus rape history.
3. Students would assert rights against expulsion and it will be hard to figure out what those rights are, how much to respect them, and how to treat like cases alike.
Again..tell that to the male victims of the campus rape hysteria.
4. You might be kicking out some of the students you especially want to keep, including minority students that you tried very hard to recruit.
If they are unwilling to allow others to speak, they don't belong on a collge campus.
5. It would chill the speech of all the students, who would worry about where the line is, and you might end up with a dull campus full of obedient nerds.
But shouting down speakers and preventing people from speaking doesn't chill speech? I would think kicking out some of these idiots would actually promote speech.
6. It might hurt future recruitment, especially minority students and politically active students.
Tell that to Mizzou.
7. You'll be accused of viewpoint discrimination and you actually risk doing viewpoint discrimination.
Earth to Althouse...they are already engaging in viewpoint discrimination...name a Lefty that has been prevented from speaking.
8. You actually believe that some of the speakers are invited so that they can aggravate students, and you think you're getting played if you retaliated against the students whose buttons are pushed.
So? That's a valid reason to allow thugs to prevent people from speaking?
petulant bunch............
2. Expulsion is a very harsh punishment.
Tell that to Title IX administrators.
""Black Lives Matter Students Shut Down the ACLU's Campus Free Speech Event Because 'Liberalism Is White Supremacy.'"
I believe the appropriate response to this is: HEH.
Ann Althous said...I wouldn't assume the "ideological position is obviously incoherent," but chanting is not an attempt to provide a coherent explanation. Why doesn't William and Mary stage a debate on the proposition "Liberalism is white supremacy" and have a speaker who will try to present the idea coherently? Or are debates and demands for ideological coherence the stuff of white supremacy?
Answered your own question, there--very efficient.
But freedom is good, incoherent or not.
Yeah, that's just what you would say as a privileged white woman, isn't it?
Look: the concept that freedom, free speech, debate, and rationality itself are all little more than tools of oppression is embraced by a substantial portion of the Left today. By a large proportion of the academic Left, certainly. Your Leftist campus friends helped get us her, Professor A. I've mentioned it before but look at the praise some national debate teams (teams of minority students) got for subverting the rules and format of debate competitions by turning them into free-form expressions of their own Left-approved political ideas. They sang, they rapped, they insulted other people while never addressing the topic--and in many cases they won! Oh the frisson, oh the daring, how revolutionary!
Well: when you've agreed that the method of rational civil debate and discussion is invalid you're left with...this.
When that is coupled with a legitimization of the use of violence for political ends--towards which we're shamefully moving now--you've got a recipe for disaster.
But, you know, I'm a white guy, so clearly my opinion is invalid. Ugly, even.
I like to think that at least some students screaming Heh Heh LBJ. . followed by "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win" were paid plants from the Nixon campaign, and I like to think the Koch brothers are (and if they are not, they should be) helping to fund BLM and Antifa. This is almost as much fun as watching ESPN and the NFL self-destruct. Pass the popcorn.
I was mentally formulating a response, then Sebastian covered every base I planned to touch.
"Ever notice that the lefties commentors avoid this kind of post like it had the clap?"
The dishonest ones do, anyway. Robert Cook's comment at 9:32 unambiguously rejected BLM's actions at William & Mary.
If you are a member of an oppressed minority group, why would you approve of rule by the majority? In the case of Black Nationalists (and BLM is a Black Nationalist group), you believe that the "white race" is a construct created solely for the purpose of oppressing you. Everything that is not BLM, including "liberalism", is the enemy of BLM.
I'm sure there are many reasons. Off the top of my head:
Please tell me you are putting on your 'lets see how fast my students can take down a bunch of absurd arguments' teacher hat with this silliness.
That, although mildly annoying, is far preferable to the alternative, which is that the university community which you recently departed might actually believe this nonsense.
Reason magazine just wants Libertarians in charge of the nanny state. Their propagandists love telling people what they should and shouldn't do or say.
There is currently no cost to the protesters at this time, so the virtue signaling will continue.
Mizzou's decline in enrollment was seen as an exception it seems...
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
― Thomas Paine
This is a pro-2nd Amendment argument.
I've mentioned it before but look at the praise some national debate teams (teams of minority students) got for subverting the rules and format of debate competitions by turning them into free-form expressions of their own Left-approved political ideas. They sang, they rapped, they insulted other people while never addressing the topic--and in many cases they won!
As a former varsity high school debater, who cherishes above all the disciplined and ordered thinking that strict debate format taught me, this breaks my heart.
I don't see their end game. Who will they convince with such tactics?.....On the plus side, no late nite comedian will make fun of their idiocy and someone from BLM will undoubtedly address the Democratic Convention in 2020.
"I was mentally formulating a response, then Sebastian covered every base I planned to touch" You are welcome :).
@AA: "4. You might be kicking out some of the students you especially want to keep, including minority students that you tried very hard to recruit." Yes, the campus left cares more about minorities and diversity than about liberty and speech.
Of course, impact on recruitment cuts different ways.
I'm sure there are many reasons. Off the top of my head...
Listing 'em is much easier than defending 'em.
Other than expulsion, what effective disciplinary sanction does an institution have these days? There was a time when an elite college was wont to punish such behavior at the drop of a hat. Nevertheless... Aha! Very clever. That's why you left us to chew over Diogenes yesterday.
Why doesn't William and Mary stage a debate on the proposition "Liberalism is white supremacy" and have a speaker who will try to present the idea coherently? Or are debates and demands for ideological coherence the stuff of white supremacy?
You answer your own question.
They also chanted ... "shame, shame, shame, shame," (an ode to the Faith Militant's treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones...
Until one of them eats a raw horse heart, I'm not listening.
"Second, it seems probable that this group [black students] will seek personal satisfaction and public recognition by aggressive conduct, which, although ostensibly directed at external injustices and problems, will in fact be primarily motivated by the psychological needs of the members of the group to overcome feelings of inferiority caused by lack of success in their studies."
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/12/the-amazing-1969-prophecy/
Order, civility, protection of person and property, and leaving no one behind, were and are always the reasons given to justify taking away freedom and liberty. Getting it right will never be a purely procedural issue. Judgment of what actually constitutes social harm and and what is a necessity for society, will always involve reference to a moral baseline that doesn't and can't come from the law itself. (Such would be circular.)
Therefore, we should pay careful attention to the origins of our moral underpinnings.
If we choose to inculcate, for example, Christ's teachings, we'll probably end up with a great society of justice and mercy.
If we choose to inculcate the Game of Thrones or other Hollywood written dramatic themes and memes as our moral underpinnings, we're going to in for a very rough patch as a society, with little justice or mercy.
People who, in their self-righteousness, shout down others to prevent dialogue, use the tools that will be used against them.
Robert ~ you receive a lot of derision here and the only reason I point that out is to establish before I ask my question that I do not share it. I respect your views and your intellectual consistency even when I don't share them. This is not an attempt at a gotcha and I am genuinely asking.
I agree entirely with your statement that I quoted and I believe with everything I am in the value of intellectual and social tolerance, the free market of ideas, and freedom of speech and of expression. But I see, and I am VERY worried about, this rise in particularly the left (although sometimes you see it on the right as well) of a critique of those concepts that seems new on the American scene. You cannot argue anything that appeals to a value of freedom of expression being an agreed upon good when suddenly (it seems) that is not agreed upon anymore. So my question to you is this: what on earth do we do about this?
"The Founders seldom spoke about freedom. They preferred liberty as a watchword...."
I don't know what meaning you see in the distinction, but the First Amendment says "freedom of speech."
Maybe "free" was a touchy word, when some were specifically not free and the only appearance of "free" in the original Constitution is: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
"Liberty" appears once, in the Preamble: "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," an idea that is also expressed in Washington's letter of transmittal to Congress in the form of a wish to "to secure [the Country's] freedom and happiness."
"They really shouldn't get away with this."
Oh my goodness gracious, Mabel. The young jackanapes are really getting out of hand, aren't they?
AA: Why doesn't William and Mary stage a debate on the proposition "Liberalism is white supremacy" and have a speaker who will try to present the idea coherently? Or are debates and demands for ideological coherence the stuff of white supremacy? [emph added]
Lol. Remarkable how slow on the uptake educated, intelligent people can be sometimes.
One might say the freedom of speech is obviously incoherent.
One might say that, if one were trying very hard to avoid thinking about the incompatibility between freedom on the one side, and "equality" and "non-discrimination" on the other.
They are right Free Speech is a white supremacy rule. It opposes the Kings and Empires so loved by Czars and the Ruling Party everywhere.
The Left believes in Free Speech, with the exception of "Hate Speech," which they broadly and subjectively define as "anything we don't like to hear."
Reason No. 368 to vote for and support, President Trump (despite his missteps).
As individuals it's not uncommon for black Americans to not only succeed, but excel in any area of American life they choose. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, and so on. However as a collective they perceive themselves to be no better now than they were nearly 60 years ago at the beginning of the war on poverty. They are in fact very angry, and will continue to be angry because none of the possible explanations on the menu placed before them can ever explain/resolve the internal conflicts they experience in everyday life. Rejecting the words of the left which believes itself to be their savior may in fact be a way for them to dig themselves out of the hole in which they believe they reside. Unless there's a paradigm shift in menu of possible reasons that conditions remain unchanged, there will be no change.
One of the new menu items for consideration needs to be black culture itself. I'm not saying it is the problem, rather that it must at least be on the menu.
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
― Thomas Paine
"This is a pro-2nd Amendment argument."
It is an argument for protecting the freedoms of and right to due process of law for people and ideas you deplore, as, if one does not, or if you participate in infringing those freedoms and right to due process of law, you help establish the norm that will inevitably be used to infringe one's own freedoms and right to due process of law.
If you want to apply it to support the 2nd Amendment, you may, and it is apt, but it is not specifically about that. It does not erase the inevitable disagreements about what the 2nd Amendment specifically means.
Why do they do it? Because they can. I can imagine non-progressives getting drunk with power, too, if they dominated the culture.
and by the way, I am so sick of references to "Game of Thrones
Amen. I tried watching it the first year it was on, because everyone was raving about it. After about five minutes my wife and I looked at each other with that "you have got to be kidding me" look. And I like fantasy.
I don't know why anyone is surprised. The name of the group is Black Lives Matter. When people tried to join them with the statement All Lives Matter, they were shouted down.
So if only Black Lives Matter, why should white people have rights at all?
Shut up is just the first demand.
This is all about how "woke" these college kids want their peers to think they are. It doesn't matter who is speaking. Colleges and universities have no one to blame but themselves for this behavior since they have coddled these kids from the get go...
Why aren't students who shut down events expelled?
Tuition money?
Self-government is required for freedom, and we've been neglecting that for decades at home. Chickens left home to roost.
Ann Althouse said...
"Why aren't students who shut down events expelled?"
I'm sure there are many reasons. Off the top of my head:
1. Protest is valuable and part of the campus environment that is wanted.
Left wing protests are wanted anyway. And note this is an admission the inevitable administration denial of support is a lie.
5. It would chill the speech of all the students, who would worry about where the line is, and you might end up with a dull campus full of obedient nerds.
Those critical of left wing protesters or policies are treated terribly (accused of racism, harassment, pursued by "bias committees" and Title IX witch hunts) by administrators, faculty, and other students. Why it's almost like chilling speech is only a problem when the accusation serves the left's interests.
7. You'll be accused of viewpoint discrimination and you actually risk doing viewpoint discrimination.
An amusing concern given the above.
As a former varsity high school debater, who cherishes above all the disciplined and ordered thinking that strict debate format taught me, this breaks my heart.
You have to see the video to believe it. It's worse than described.
Again, those ultimately culpable are the organizers who enabled the mockery of debating. Throw in another medal for Most Cowardly to the media that covered it, and cheered it with tortured prose they themselves did not believe.
Seems quite common that when right-wing people want to protest something (e.g., abortion), cities or campuses will establish a dedicated zone for doing so, one that essentially lets the objects of the protest proceed in peace.
Can't for the life of me figure out why they don't do the same thing for left-wing protesters. What could the difference possibly be?
They are in fact very angry
Some thought a messiah was elected in 2008 but the K of H didn't arrive and the oceans continued to rise.
A Modest Proposal:
Charges of "white supremacy" and "white privilege" should be treated as racism, which, by modern rules, is what they are.
Let's see how that alters the conversation.
"Liberalism is White Supremacy." QED by BLM.
They're free to pay to run the school.
College/university concept was founded by the Italians, English and Germans?
Democracy the Greeks....Romans refined, English put their foot down and told the King you do not have absolute power to come take my stuff. The Founding Fathers refined, expanded and broadened the ideals.
No more cultural appropriation.
But it appears few people read history, even on college campuses.
On college campuses its discouraged. Eurocentric, don't ya know.
"Their ideological position is obviously incoherent—Liberalism is white supremacy? What?"
It is as if they believe that whites (which includes asians, apparently) are intellectually superior to other groups, from which it follows that freedom of expression leads to oppression.
Now that I spell that out (trying to understand what might lie behind the proposition these folks are shouting) it occurs to me that they really might believe this -- which is not to say that they will admit it to themselves.
So many choices. Ah well, let's try this one.
".... It would chill the speech of all the students, who would worry about where the line..."
Because, of course, college administrators are incapable of writing a policy where the "line" is reasonably clear (and far from the current shout 'em down/threaten with violence non-line we currently seem to have) and the punishments* spelled out.
And, of course, the students of these elite universities are incapable of understanding what the administration writes.
* Yeah expulsion is harsh (as noted above that doesn't seem to bother the Title IX folk, nor being branded as a rapist). But harsh punishments can be remarkably effective after an application or two.
What if colleges stopped admitting troublemakers? I remember UC Santa Cruz admitting a local kid who had plagued the school with protests and "activism." He continued on as a student and caused all kinds of trouble.
And what if colleges stopped letting outsiders on campus when protests and potential violence was being instigated?
Ann has a very nice list of reasons why these people might not be expelled.
For all the reasons she notes, there should be a clearly-stated code of student conduct which students should cross at their peril. That way it's not about any single issue or group, but a set of group norms to which we agree to abide when we join the student body.
When people ignore this like ESPN did with Jamele Hill, because of the "circumstances" surrounding the issue, they tell everyone that the codes of conduct are malleable based on your level of victimhood.
Next up, laws are malleable. Next up, your behavior is malleable. And finally, society is over.
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...As a former varsity high school debater, who cherishes above all the disciplined and ordered thinking that strict debate format taught me, this breaks my heart.
Since it's not really off topic I'll give you a link. I haven't followed things lately but I recall that there was a pretty sharp split and some of the people who opposed this "style" made, or tried to make, their own alternate competitions...for which they were roundly condemned as racists, naturally.
Here's a mostly-laudatory Atlantic article (from 2014) on the topic: TheAtlantic: Hacking Traditional College Debate's White Privilege Problem
On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities. In the final round, Ruffin and Johnson squared off against Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, two highly accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis. Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “nigga authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “Fuck the time!” he yelled
"3. Students would assert rights against expulsion and it will be hard to figure out what those rights are, how much to respect them, and how to treat like cases alike."
Not a problem. Just use the Title IX rape rules against them. There's an approximate 50% chance you engaged in censorship. What? No, you don't get to argue your case. We want our campus to free of such things, so you're out. Pack your bags.
Pants: But I see, and I am VERY worried about, this rise in particularly the left (although sometimes you see it on the right as well) of a critique of those concepts that seems new on the American scene.
It's not new. It's the logical and predictable consequence of every faddish -ism that's been abroad and on the move in academics, politics, and law for the last half-century, at least.
So my question to you is this: what on earth do we do about this?
"We" probably shouldn't have spent decades ignoring the obvious signs, or telling all the buzz-kill Cassandras who saw this coming to piss off.
This is awful in several ways,. In particular, the black students who get away with this sort of behavior are being poorly trained in how to cope with the real world outside the university.
In any event, I haven't heard of any more invasions of libraries or other public venues on college campuses by BLM activists to berate, insult, and intimidate students who are actually using their time to study. Most likely because even the dim-witted administrators currently running so many of the institutions of "higher learning" in the United States could comprehend that few people would voluntarily offer up their money to attend such an institution. And that would impact the bottom line. So, a few words with the organizers of the local BLM chapter and the activists limit their harassment to the few people willing to publicly declare themselves as Republicans.
Why aren't students who shut down events expelled?
Black privilege.
Althouse said..."But freedom is good,"
Apparently, BLM would disagree with you.
It's beyond me what these people would replace it with. The only other option is raw power. I don't think they'd win.
Althouse, every single point in your 9:33 comment points to the same conclusion:
It's time to burn academia down; it has completely outlived its usefulness.
These people will be stopped.
It will go easy or it will go hard.
Surprised to see Althouse support the heckler's veto. Though it brings to mind what I occasionally think, depending on the subject--you can take Althouse out of Madison, but you can't take the Madison out of Althouse.
Anyway my point is that Althouse should hang her head in shame for supporting such thuggery. The goal of these groups isn't to unfurl a banner, shout for awhile, make a point and then retire--it's to completely shut down any dissenting voice. As increasing numbers of students come to see this as the new normal, they are infiltrating society at large and demanding the same thing off campus. I won't play the whole thing out since the path is familiar, but violence is inevitable. Of course to some degree we've already seen this with organized violence against Trump supporters, often led by radical elders who until recently were regarded as beyond the pale by most leaning left.
Meanwhile Althouse can share disinterested observations in the marketplace of ideas because she is allowed to speak here. She can speak, and anyone who's interested can hear, so it's all good.
Blogger William said...
I don't see their end game. Who will they convince with such tactics?.....On the plus side, no late nite comedian will make fun of their idiocy and someone from BLM will undoubtedly address the Democratic Convention in 2020.
10/5/17, 9:52 AM
You need to look where the interests of BLM and the liberal establishment coincide. They want to use existing civil rights legislation to empower the administrative state over the individual. The argument for empowering the administrative state is over a century old. Individuals are products of their environment, and are characterized by neuroses, biases, and self-interest. Only the state, whose interest is the proper governance of the people, can be trusted to govern the people.
Blogger Kevin said...
"Ann has a very nice list of reasons why these people might not be expelled."
It was a terrible list. She was in a hurry and would probably admit as such. With almost no effort she could shoot almost all the points she made down. It was made to prompt discussion.
She will always be a teacher.
Blogger Christopher said...
"Surprised to see Althouse support the heckler's veto."
Devils advocate. Nothing more.
There are only a small number of international socialist tools. They get play because the political class uses them to sow division and take freedom away from their political opponents. Brown shirts are nothing new. There are always a number of people who like to use violence and intimidation in place of political discourse.
I don't think most Americans will complain much when we wipe them out.
I mean, you're sitting in the library, most likely because its too loud to study in the dorm because of all the partying, trying to learn biology because you want to be a doctor, or physics because you want to be an engineer, or symbolic logic, which you will never need in real life, but is a weeding out class for Comp Sci, and suddenly you are confronted by a group of people who are yelling at you, calling you a racist and white supremacist. Who accuse you of being the cause of all the problems facing the black community. Who make you stand up and get in your face so that they can demonstrate their power over you.
I'm sure you can see how that experience would galvanize those kids to support the movement. Especially since the activists experienced no negative effects whatsoever for making you feel powerless and afraid.
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I'm a '96 W&M grad, so this touches close to home. I was in one of those STEM departments, which at least partially explains why political nonsense like this was not much on my radar while I was there. I think it was present, at least in embryonic form, as I remember naively making a comment that our multicultural fashion show sure seemed to underrepresent some cultures, and then being told by an enthusiastic colleague that I needed to be beaten. That was, in retrospect, one of the first steps in my journey away from the left-leaning views that I then held.
Not sure that I have more to say about the current BLM kerfuffle. It's sad. W&M is a great school. I hate to see them tolerating this crud.
BLM v. ACLU
Has someone already made the obligatory Iran v. Iraq War quip -- why can't they both lose?
At least the ACLU does some good things, but they need to step it up and start vigorously suing colleges and groups that suppress free speech.
Or you have studied the precepts of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. Read the great speeches of history. Know the Lincoln/Douglas debates by heart. Have worked hard to master facts and even understand the counter arguments that your opponents will make so that you can refute them.
No matter. Rap trumps it all.
Another convert to the cause of BLM.
The ACLU should sue BLM and that bullshit university. That'll show em.
Blogger William said...
"I don't see their end game. Who will they convince with such tactics?.....On the plus side, no late nite comedian will make fun of their idiocy and someone from BLM will undoubtedly address the Democratic Convention in 2020."
Read some history. This tactic is batting around .900. It almost always works.
The United States is unique in history. It is not surprising that international socialists go to this page in the playbook. It works everywhere else.
This is the only reason I believe in foreign intervention. I think it would save us a lot of money if we took the people who push this garbage on the world and execute one of them a week. Start with the richest ones and work down.
"7. You'll be accused of viewpoint discrimination and you actually risk doing viewpoint discrimination. "
Freedom of speech is more than a "viewpoint".
White left has it coming.
Universities are entirely corrupted, because they became the gatekeepers of the cursus honorum. There is no debate possible because the process and even the subjects of debates are irrelevant to power politics.
The BLM kids are ahead of the curve vis a vis the ACLU lady, in spite of their (likely) idiocy. Everything is about who rules. There is no fixing this.
If a group had the event at a non-school venue, privately or publicly owned, would they have more--or less--legal authority to expel protesters?
"We" probably shouldn't have spent decades ignoring the obvious signs, or telling all the buzz-kill Cassandras who saw this coming to piss off.
Agree, and I certainly was not a part of creating this, but I have to be a part of the future, and so do my kids. So, what's the plan? How do we fix? How do we reanimate freedom of expression as a cherished value, and how do we delegitimize those who are actively working to undermine it and their enablers (hi college administrations!) who really ought to know better but have been and are abject cowards?
"There is no fixing this."
I dunno. The tree of liberty is awful thirsty.
When the truth about vegas comes out things may get interesting.
Let me Whitesplain your rights to you.
Liberalism is White Supremacy
So now it's OK to "bash the fasc" of the ACLU and Democrats.
This is awful in several ways,. In particular, the black students who get away with this sort of behavior are being poorly trained in how to cope with the real world outside the university.
I see this asserted all the time and it's simply not the case. Where do these students go after college? They get jobs and continue this behavior. And everyone they work with either A. celebrates it or B. tolerates it because they are terrified of being called racist.
Mr. Pants' marketing consultancy lost a contract to a huge company you would all recognize last year because they could not possibly meet the business objectives while simultaneously guaranteeing Company X's staffing demands for the project re women (50%) and people of color (50%). Whoever came up with that ludicrosity was in college five years ago learning how to be an activist, and someone at that time was saying "Oh that bullshit will never fly in the real world; they'll see."
Y'all need to stop deluding yourselves.
More gifts from the Obama years.
No one should be talking to me as if I don't care about the process given to those accused of sexual assault. If you yourself care, being sarcastic about it is unbecoming.
No one should be talking to me as if I don't care about the process given to those accused of sexual assault. If you yourself care, being sarcastic about it is unbecoming.
Seems understandable to me that people brought it up when you did not acknowledge the giant elephant over there when you mentioned the harshness of expulsion.
4. You might be kicking out some of the students you especially want to keep, including minority students that you tried very hard to recruit.
Some of whom are only there because of quotas. They won't graduate with a useful degree.
6. It might hurt future recruitment, especially minority students and politically active students.
Qualified minority students will find opportunities. The students shutting down speech are politically active to the detriment of the college, other students, and the future of the republic. They are not supporting political activity to improve anything; they are making political statements merely to stop things. Colleges should encourage or support that?
Khmer Rouge, anyone?
This tactic is batting around .900.
Higher than that.
@Freeman, your question in comment #1 on this thread is a good one. If Evergreen State can only muster wrist slaps after their students run around campus with baseball bats looking for anyone who is not a far extreme leftist to beat to death, then behavior such as this is scarcely discouraged.
@Althouse, I find most of your responses to Freeman to be specious. If universities can throw out recruited minority athletes on flimsy "he said-she said" grounds then they can expel minority students who not only abridge the free speech rights of others but brag about it. Surely you are aware of the fate of Mizzou? Columbia, MO is only six and a half hours southwest of Madison. They have a multimillion budget shortfall and have had to shutter seven dorms from the falloff in applications and acceptances after doing the old wink-wink nudge-nudge to their disruptive students.
What I find particularly appalling about your eight reasons is the notion that one would have a hard time drawing the line between peaceful protests and respect for other students' rights. May I remind you, former Con Law professor, that the First Amendment only guarantees the right peaceably to assemble?
I'm not an expert in Marx but I have read a fair amount of liberation theology. From a broadly liberationist perspective, I think the BLM is correct. The ACLU is trying to fit the BLM movement into its own paradigm.
For a good Marxist, the ACLU is simply another form of false consciousness in the service of the hegemony of the intellectual bourgeoisie who for their own aims to undermine the class aspirations represented by BLM.
The irony here is that both the BLM and ACLU cultural Marxism and so locked in a power struggling.
Mr. Pants' marketing consultancy lost a contract to a huge company you would all recognize last year because they could not possibly meet the business objectives while simultaneously guaranteeing Company X's staffing demands for the project re women (50%) and people of color (50%). Whoever came up with that ludicrosity was in college five years ago learning how to be an activist, and someone at that time was saying "Oh that bullshit will never fly in the real world; they'll see."
That's not sustainable in the long run. Reality is going to reassert itself. The process is going to be very painful and a lot of people will get hurt. And I don't know how long the madness will last. But eventually the gods of the copybook headings will reassert themselves.
I agree with Freeman -- why aren't these students expelled?
Your list, Althouse, is an attempt to justify the presence of thugs -- free speech-wise. If W & M is actually a proponent of the free exchange of ideas, then this is a great way to show that: by expelling people who don't allow it to happen.
Imagine this happening if Ta-Neisi Coates were the speaker being shouted down. What would W & M do then?
No one should be talking to me as if I don't care about the process given to those accused of sexual assault. If you yourself care, being sarcastic about it is unbecoming.
Supporting the campus rape hysteria in unbecoming.
I've asked repeatedly if you believe that twenty percent of women attending the university of Madison-Wisconsin will be raped. You refuse to answer.
That's unbecoming.
What to do.
How about a "Dear Colleague" letter from the Dept of Ed. saying any school not protecting basic constitutional rights (free speech, due proces) of their students and in danger of losing federal funds.
How about state legislatures get in the act and threaten to pull funding.
One might as well wonder why the toddler won't stop crying even though it is incoherent.
how do we delegitimize those who are actively working to undermine it and their enablers (hi college administrations!) who really ought to know better but have been and are abject cowards?
Stop subsidizing colleges with student loans. Loans that are putting many kids into penury and lifelong debt. College has become a racket in many ways anyway.
Enforce the immigration laws and acknowledge that most people are not suited for college education anyway, and not necessarily because they can't hack it academically, but because instead of sitting in a classroom studying subjects that you are not interested in you would rather be out making money and starting a family.
Pressure your state legislature to reduce funding for any and all grievance studies in state schools and reassert authority over those schools. When the administrators start yelling about academic freedom ignore them.
Did that have — did that need — ideological coherence?
1) No.
2) No, because it was just an expression of anger about a war and the draft (and partially supported by Soviet agency).
But 3) It was ineffective. It did nothing. The war continued until 1973, when the US pulled out, having defeated the Viet Cong entirely and driven the NVA back to North Vietnam.
The war was only lost after the US left and stopped supporting the South; otherwise we'd have a pair of Vietnams now like we have a pair of Koreas, or perhaps more likely a reunited one like Germany, with no Communists.
The Protest Era has lots of lessons, but the big one is "incoherent protests with hippies don't do anything".
Why doesn't William and Mary stage a debate on the proposition "Liberalism is white supremacy" and have a speaker who will try to present the idea coherently? Or are debates and demands for ideological coherence the stuff of white supremacy?
Yes, yes they are -- at least under this theory. I mean, isn't everything "White Supremacy" these days? I don't know exactly what the crazed activists' theoretical commitments are, but at least amongst modern Leftist theorists, isn't the dialectical method exemplified by that sort of debate a Western discursive mode? When they are imputing racial markedness (Whiteness) to Western philosophical and discursive infrastructure, and then deliberately rejecting Whiteness and the Western intellectual tradition, that's not supposed to be just a pat module that's sitting comfortably on top of that same Western intellectual structure. It's supposed to be a rejection of that structure itself.
That's the whole point -- isn't it? -- of the modern drift towards the "argument from identity," in which people who identify with putatively "marginalized" groups can respond to structured argument by saying "I refute it thus!" except instead of kicking a rock they beat their breast about how oppressed they are. It is an outright, even forthright, rejection of the possibility of arriving at a single "truth" through structured "logical" argument.
Everything is about who rules. There is no fixing this.
And this is of course, correct. Might as well wrap your head around that. BLM are there to make people shut up so that reasoned debate is impossible because reasoned debate is not wanted.
If your tactics and rhetoric are the same as every other totalitarian in history, then why would your desired end state be any different?
the big one is "incoherent protests with hippies don't do anything".
Of course they do something, they help the protestors feel less guilty and like they're doing something about something. It's about a kind of religious absolution, not about whatever issue is highlighted. The protestors actually need there to be examples to be outraged about. They don't want to solve the problems, as then they'd be left with their own selves, and whatever personal issue they're trying to ignore.
But it appears few people read history, even on college campuses.
There is no point in reading history for leftists since they rewrite it everyday.
There are some notable exceptions, including our own Robert Cook.
Huzzah for Robert Cook, whom I give infinite grief yet remains a lefty with whom discussion is often worthwhile.
1. Protest is valuable and part of the campus environment that is wanted.
Preventing someone from speaking is not protest, it is depriving someone of their civil rights. Depriving someone of their civil rights is not wanted in the campus environment.
2. Expulsion is a very harsh punishment.
That's not a bug, that's a feature. Depriving someone of their civil rights deserves a harsh punishment.
3. Students would assert rights against expulsion and it will be hard to figure out what those rights are, how much to respect them, and how to treat like cases alike.
There is no right to prevent someone from speaking during an event established to provide that person a place and time to speak. That is not at all hard to define.
4. You might be kicking out some of the students you especially want to keep, including minority students that you tried very hard to recruit.
You do not want to keep students who think they have a right to deprive someone of their civil rights. You do not want to recruit students who cannot understand that distinction.
5. It would chill the speech of all the students, who would worry about where the line is, and you might end up with a dull campus full of obedient nerds.
Again - it's not a hard line to draw. It was certainly easy to draw when I was a student. Henry Kissinger came to speak at my campus back in the day. His presence was protested quite vigorously, but no one entered Kresge Auditorium and tried to drown him out.
6. It might hurt future recruitment, especially minority students and politically active students.
See point 4. Recruiting students who do not understand how the First Amendment works and are not willing to learn is undesirable regardless of their racial or ethnic makeup and their level of political activity. And I'm not sure why you want to emphasize recruiting politically active students in any case. Tell me - will the admissions department recruit students who are politically active in conservative causes with the same vigor they recruit students who are politically active in liberal ones?
7. You'll be accused of viewpoint discrimination and you actually risk doing viewpoint discrimination.
That's easy to refute - just tell people that you'll expel students who attempt to drown out left-wing speakers as well. Watch it never happen.
8. You actually believe that some of the speakers are invited so that they can aggravate students, and you think you're getting played if you retaliated against the students whose buttons are pushed.
So what? Aggravating speech is a civil right. Let it be an object lesson to the student body on how civil rights work.
"We" probably shouldn't have spent decades ignoring the obvious signs, or telling all the buzz-kill Cassandras who saw this coming to piss off.
"The Closing of the American Mind"-type folks have been warning about this inevitable slide for decades.
Imagine this happening if Ta-Neisi Coates were the speaker being shouted down. What would W & M do then?
Call it evidence white supremacy is taking over the country, triple the budget for "diversity", and require everyone to take two grievance studies classes so they can justify doubling the number of activists posing as faculty.
They wouldn't expel the disruptors though. The activist administrators and faculty would encourage the students to harass them until they quit. The administration would not worry for a second this is "viewpoint discrimination".
I'm sure the list springs from years of Althouse being among the good folks who inhabit the People's Republic of Madison. It's a start for discourse. And maybe, too, that artistic side of Althouse might want people to do whatever it is they want to do exactly the way they want to do it. In other words, this is a play, we will see it on a screen from cell videos as visualized from the start by the actor/playwrights. OK, the play is ?University discourse vs. screaming/shaming as done by the Chinese Red Guard students of the Sixties? So we need a lecture on the BLM as the new Red Guards?
If we showed free speech by Chinese professors being shouted down by the Red Guards,
- then the universities closing and Chinese university students being sent out to the country to work by the Red Guards
- then the Chinese famine resulting from disruption brought on by the Red Guards, a famine in which 20,000,000 people died;
- then intended to end with videos showing people bursting in on American university professors, shoving them, saying universities are useless, denouncing free speech;
- but at the end BLM burst in on the speech about the Red Guards, screamed at the professor, "USELESS";
- and then a message came that the legislature agreed with BLM and had, in consequence, shut down the university's history, literature and journalism departments;
and then ...
well, then the cell videos of the events would go viral. Everybody concerned would be showboating; everyone would have fun. And no more school for the people in the humanities who hated it.
and then the students would go back to wherever, including to Chicago where, ironically, several would be accidentally shot by blacks who think my black life matter, be quick.
Another scenario.
Somebody has to explain in way that can be understood by the people who need to hear it: The way to make it on the street is not the way to make it off the street. If you don't realize the campus, then you are going back to the street. Use it or lose it.
Charles Murray wrote a superb book titled Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. One of the book's chapters provided many examples comparing passages from high-school and college textbooks. The comparison demonstrated vividly that college textbooks are significantly harder to read.
Nevertheless, universities are enrolling far too many new students who cannot and will not read at the university level. The textbooks might as well be written in Greek.
These students have not become serious readers by the time they begin their university classes. They never will become serious readers.
Rather, they are talkers, who think that university classes are about their spouting off their opinions orally in class -- which is all they ever did in high school. They did not read their textbooks in high school either.
Inevitably, they fail academically. The university's diversity experts coach them to blame the university for being racist and hostile to "marginalized students".
That is the reason why the universities try to prevent any outside, critical speakers from appearing on the campuses. Such speakers add fuel to the inflamed accusations that non-reading students are failing only because they are made to feel unwelcome.
It's going to be racism accusations all the time at universities as far as the eye can see.
Huzzah for Robert Cook, whom I give infinite grief yet remains a lefty with whom discussion is often worthwhile.
I 2nd this sentiment.
These students are losers, of course, and at a basic level they understand that despite the fact of being admitted to a fine school to which they did not have the credentials to attend they are on a course to fail. In school and in life. They are baffled and angry. Can't say as I blame them. They likely got straight As in their high schools, were leaders in their classes and suddenly are at W&M getting Ds and Fs. Totally understandable that they would be furious with the system and lay the blame on whites. But, alas, they are gnats and their little tantrums will not be remembered when they are working in the DMV, their fabulous opportunity behind them, wasted.
Bill, Republic of Texas said...
How about a "Dear Colleague" letter from the Dept of Ed. saying any school not protecting basic constitutional rights (free speech, due proces) of their students and in danger of losing federal funds.
They should also issue a Dear Colleague saying the hiring of any current or former Title IX administrator requires a show-cause hearing. At that hearing they will be required to prove the administrator did not violate anyone's rights during their Title IX work. Failure will result in the loss of eligibility for federal funds.
That's not sustainable in the long run.
It's going to get a lot worse in the near term as federal and state governments near bankruptcy. Everyone will fight over the spoils, private and public, in ways we wouldn't tolerate now.
To be clear, BLM is just a symptom, or perhaps a more or less deniable, unassailable (racial guilt) public face for an extra aggressive front.
There are interesting articles about the Kellogg and Ford foundations financing BLM through several cutouts. This would make for an interesting investigation.
But the real problem of intellectual corruption starts with the professors, especially those at the top of the hierarchy, including their influence over K-12.
And these movements like BLM are disposable. If that were to disappear tomorrow there would be something else the next day.
I am so sick of references to "Game of Thrones."
Brace yourself. More are coming.
Liberalism is divergent.
That said, it's over. Just go along to get along, right?
BLM = Baby Lives Matter.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
But, damn, that's just so tiring. Some times, especially if you're on the front lines every day, you just want to put Bob, the old acoustic Bob, on the stereo and surrender the field to the louder voices. It's easier that way.
But Althouse is a fighter. She'll bounce back.
including minority students that you tried very hard to recruit
We have made great progress to normalize color diversity (i.e. judge people by the "color of their skin").
Individual dignity matters. Baby Lives Matter (BLM).
1. Protest is valuable and part of the campus environment that is wanted.
Protest is a way to demonstrate the breadth and intensity of a particular viewpoint. It is therefore useful as a political tactic, but it has very little, if anything, to contribute to intellectual inquiry. It must be tolerated as an exercise in speech if and only if it doesn't impede freedom of thought and expression by all.
the real problem of intellectual corruption starts with the professors
Perhaps. The progress of class diversity, including color diversity, has been a politically, socially, and financially profitable racket for diverse individuals and groups, domestic and foreign, private and sovereign.
The issue is deeper than speakers going uninterrupted. It is whether a PAX Americana that replaced the PAX BRITANICA of world trade enforced by the British Navy for 200 years shall long endure. Or will the EU/German Empire destroy it by demoralizing us with ascendant Muslim power the Junkers think they can control.
All we need to do is win this World War too.
Schadenfreude. Again. :-)
Your paradigm with which you see this and all related things, most of you, is a leftover of different times. It is obsolete.
There is no intellectual argument possible, there are no honest differences of opinion, there are no temples of the intellect.
It is obvious, to this reader and others who have posted, that Ann's eight reasons were certainly "off the top of (her) head" as they didn't seem to originate from her brain.
Brace yourself. More are coming.
So is winter......
"The liberals in my town did a tremendous amount of chanting during the anti-Scott-Walker protests of 2011."
There you go, intentionally misusing the term liberal again.
buwaya @12:26: You're criticizing explicitly normative propositions for being incorrect as statements of fact.
There is no intellectual argument possible, there are no honest differences of opinion
There is only the twilight fringe (a.k.a. penumbra), the global 1%, and the supporting cast of special and peculiar interests.
"buwaya @12:26: You're criticizing explicitly normative propositions for being incorrect as statements of fact."
I don't think so.
I am denying their (present) utility as normative propositions.
I don't know how the utility of a normative proposition is increased by abandoning it because of its low current utility.
A normative proposition with low utility
ex.
- We must aspire to go back in time and change the past.
It is not a valuable normative proposition because of its infeasibility.
It would be good persuasion to start calling BLM protesters the Black Lives Militant.
It's got that annoying Game of Thrones reference. Plus, BLM would probably think it's a cool name while it makes everyone else more nervous.
There you go, intentionally misusing the term liberal again.
No, not really. Liberalism is merely a divergent ideology, hence the perception of tolerance. But, more important is the MAD principle. Specifically of brand, whether progressive, liberal, conservative, or libertarian. Principles matter.
It's got that annoying Game of Thrones reference. Plus, BLM would probably think it's a cool name while it makes everyone else more nervous.
Plus, they think they serve the old gods (MLK) and the new (Ta-Nehisi Coates), but actually only play lip service to the old.
We must aspire to go back in time and change the past.
No. We must aspire to persuade more universities to emulate the present-day University of Chicago.
These campus events have all the believability of a Generals-Globetrotters game.
Westeros is disturbingly white. It's all bout white people.
"No. We must aspire to persuade more universities to emulate the present-day University of Chicago."
Useless last gasp of an expiring culture. No, really, they are so enormously outnumbered by the remainder of US academia, and so ill-supported by the upcoming class, that they (that last assembly, within an established institution, of the open-minded) are irrelevant and not long for this world.
No universities are going to be "persuaded". They will prefer to be abandoned.
Anyway, I was giving "changing the past" as an example of an impossible normative proposition.
And I showed you that "changing the past" is an incorrect description of what is required. You're obviously more comfortable with despair than action so I'll leave you to that, while endorsing SMay's comment @11:31
Our woodshop teacher in high school, made us all make billy clubs on the lathe as an exercise.
You start by gluing several pieces of hardwood together, and then after a couple of days, you put it on the lathe and match it to your hand. You make it nice and long, but not longer than your hip to knee distance.
Then you bore a hole down the center, and pour in molten lead. Then you drill the lead back a bit, and insert a wooden plug, and then varnish the whole deal.
I still have that billy club, and it has served me well.
I remember when we were on shore patrol duty, the billy clubs they gave us were crap. You had to hit the guy three times just to get their attention.
With my billy club, you are going down and drooling after only one blow.
Ann Althouse said...
"Why aren't students who shut down events expelled?"
I'm sure there are many reasons. Off the top of my head:
(reasons)
I could go on, but that's something to chew on.
10/5/17, 9:33 AM
If one takes the time to remember that the purpose of higher education is education then most of your reasons are negated as the activity in question adversely affects the ability of the majority of the students to learn. Take away the "learning" and all you have left is a high priced resort. If that is what you want, find but what about everyone else that wants to learn? Who is looking out for their rights and the money they are spending for an education they are not getting?
Sorry but disruptive students should be suspended or expelled, no refunds. Do that after the next couple of incidents and you will see a quick return to civility on campus.
"With my billy club, you are going down and drooling after only one blow."
I imagine that a blow with your lead-loaded weapon is very likely to be fatal or permanently crippling.
This may not be the intended purpose of more normal billy clubs.
“Seems understandable to me that people brought it up when you did not acknowledge the giant elephant over there when you mentioned the harshness of expulsion. ”
They brought it up the wrong way.
I intended to put the subject in issue as I wrote my short list and made a general statement about expulsion.
People who care should say they care, not attack me as if I had been dismissive of this in the past or as if they think turnabout is fair play.
intended purpose of more normal billy clubs
Judging billy clubs is transphobic.
Not Sure,
I don't think there is any hope of reforming these institutions.
They are too corrupt, there is a too large and well-funded culture attached to them, they are loaded with "iron rice bowls", and they are intimately attached to the structures of power. Reform of giant bureaucratic structures is nearly impossible.
The only ways to "fix" them, historically, are:
- To defeat, conquer, and enslave them to the conquerors purposes. Even then there remains a risk of them corrupting their conquerors.
The Maoist Cultural Revolution, in part, was due to a perception that its communist ideal was being corrupted by the academic/technocratic state bureaucracy.
- To conquer, exterminate and raze them.
- To make them obsolete.
“So what? Aggravating speech is a civil right. Let it be an object lesson to the student body on how civil rights work.”
The protesters are doing aggravating speech too, so you should uphold their incredibly irritating behavior or why are you saying so what.
The women of Game of Thrones are aspirational or, at the very least, ambitious. The miserable women of Girls deserve Trump.
"The protesters are doing aggravating speech too"
They are being permitted to be aggravating but their opponents are not permitted to be similarly aggravating. Or certainly wouldn't be, should they ever dare.
The problem with this is not that these particular students are aggravating, but that they are powerful. They have incredible pull with the powers that be. They cannot be argued with, not openly, at risk of formal and informal sanctions.
I'm sorry, but they are behaving like children, and they should be treated as such. Talk about the bigotry of low expectations.
1. Most of the male protesters were wearing shorts.
2. The Asian girl with the ponytail and yoga pants was kinda hot.
3. Compromise by expelling the Asian. No one will complain, problem solved.
"I'm sorry, but they are behaving like children, and they should be treated as such."
Children, when used as tools by their elders as these are, can be effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards
The three minute introduction listing all of the ACLU Lady's positions and honors followed by her coming onstage and bitching about the lights is steering me in the direction of favoring the protesters.
That and my Yellow Fever.
Ann Althouse said...
The protesters are doing aggravating speech too,
You are generalizing away from the relevant facts so you can group unlike things. None of the BLM opposition is stopping BLM from setting up their own speech opportunities. BLM is being criticized not for speech but for stopping others' speech. +
This is Buckley's example of pushing someone into the path of an oncoming car or pushing them out of the car's path. Those who claim both are equally guilty of pushing people are not accurately assessing reality, whether the words written can be defended as accurate is irrelevant.
"Or are debates and demands for ideological coherence the stuff of white supremacy?"
Are you perhaps starting to realize that as far as these people are concerned, you are a white supremacist?
Jupiter said...
"Or are debates and demands for ideological coherence the stuff of white supremacy?"
People like to think this is new but I ran into this in the 80s. I remember people calling logic racist back in the 80s. They do it because there's no response within logic which is not refuted in the mind of someone who literally rejects it. It's so much easier than learning logic or giving up refuted but cherished beliefs. We would just laugh and mock such people.
But now we see 30 years later those people won. The smarter people left to build careers and families and now our kids are ready to go back only to find the idiots are in charge and encourage their lunacy in the next generation, and protect those who engage in it.
Blogger Luke Lea said...
"I'm sorry, but they are behaving like children, and they should be treated as such. Talk about the bigotry of low expectations."
No. They are red guards. They should get one chance to repent. After that...
I like the idea of colosseums and hungry lions.
Eat your own, leftists.
More, please.
I intended to put the subject in issue as I wrote my short list and made a general statement about expulsion.
People who care should say they care, not attack me as if I had been dismissive of this in the past.
Maybe I missed all of your attacks on campus rape hysteria and the harshness of expulsion for those accused.
The ACLU is at least as much a white-progressive organization as a civil-liberties organization.
And, for the last half-century or so, the tacit agreement between white progressives and black radicals has been that the white progressives are never, ever to criticize anything their black-radical "allies" do, but the black radicals always reserve the right to denounce the white progressives.
Viewed through this frame, it's hardly surprising that BLM activists felt they had every right (and perhaps a moral duty) to shout down these ACLU progressives.
Progressives refer to this sort of exchange as "dialogue". It's about who has a right to speak and who has a duty to listen. Which is determined by one's group identity and not by abstract, objectively neutral concepts such as "free speech."
" I remember people calling logic racist back in the 80s. They do it because there's no response within logic which is not refuted in the mind of someone who literally rejects it."
There's a YouTube vid of a doughy campus SJW (think of a malovolent Velma from Scooby Doo) confronting conservative male students. She stands there and chants "I don't care what you say. I don't want to debate you. STFU. You're ugly."
The conservative kept trying to debate but, as you note, there is no reaching someone like that.
She stands there and chants "I don't care what you say. I don't want to debate you. STFU. You're ugly."
There goes the next chief of police.
"She stands there and chants "I don't care what you say. I don't want to debate you. STFU. You're ugly."
Power/dominance move. The intended audience are not the conservatives, but her own lot and third parties. The message is "fear me/us". This is as noted above not intellectual debate.
The correct counter, usually, is tit-for-tat. However such a thing would not be tolerated by the uni administration, and there are social, possibly career sanctions behind that.
Oh no!
Won't somebody please think of the poor ACLU?
The monster always kills Dr. Frankenstein. Always.
I agree with BLM on this; freedom of speech is a white thang they wouldn't understand. What African country respects rights and freedoms the way the USA does, or even like the EU? What black person ever set forth any idea of democracy, rights, or freedom that they didn't get from the ancient Greeks, Locke, and Jefferson, among other dead white guys? Blacks are only against BEING slaves, not against slavery, against BEING OPPRESSED, not against oppression. It's their turn to be the masters, or so they think.
buwaya said...
"She stands there and chants "I don't care what you say. I don't want to debate you. STFU. You're ugly."
Power/dominance move. The intended audience are not the conservatives, but her own lot and third parties. The message is "fear me/us". This is as noted above not intellectual debate.
The correct counter, usually, is tit-for-tat. However such a thing would not be tolerated by the uni administration, and there are social, possibly career sanctions behind that.
I have a long list of second best counters.
One counter is we should train a bunch of monkeys to follow us around and when idiots yell stupid shit like these progressives they fling feces at them. That would also be Tit-for-Tat.
You're being obtuse as only an academic can be, AA.
The social justice adventurists stepped in it this time.
BLM? Baby Lives Matter? Really?! Deplorable!
Shouting down an invited speaker is the opposite of free speech. Apparently it is only "free" if you are a SJW.
The views of the Left are incoherent and thus not up for debate. When interviewed on the street they make fools of themselves (like simply asking what are they protesting, and they can't answer). How incoherent? How about claiming that capitalism must be overthrown, claiming science is oppressive, claiming wood paneling is disempowering, demanding that the police be outlawed (BLM demand),demanding that grades be eliminated, needing safe spaces with coloring books, shouting "racist" at every white person, even those with a black spouse and child, even those who are black. So of course they don't want debate or speech--they can't debate their way out of a paper bag and don't even know what their group believes except that whites are oppressing them somehow (don't ask how, they'll just say "systemic" as if that is an answer).
'Way back in the day, I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU. The local officials were mostly Communists. Literally.
Blogger donald said...
The ACLU should sue BLM and that bullshit university. That'll show em.
Black judge says - "Black Lives Matter is a social movement, can't be sued"
Does anyone keep a list online of schools that respect students and civil rights? In other words, a school that doesn't cower before its students or have some ongoing rape hysteria?
What happens when they say 'free speech is racist!'
I see it's heading that way with liberals and their weird friends.
Laaaaame! They couldn't memorize a half dozen call-and-response lyrics? They're reading from the back of their dumb posters. Higher ed, huh?
What a sadly-empty auditorium, too.
But hey, W&M has made it clear and (I think) Prof. Althouse agrees: taking over events and exercising a heckler's veto is just "more speech" and won't be prevented nor punished. Get to it, everyone.
Funny: if I said white Western culture is the only one that prizes modern individual rights like free speech (and is therefore superior to others) the nice smart people would denounce that as ugly and get me fired.
These diverse dipshits proudly chant the same thing, though...and they're held up as examples of winning wokeness.
Why are all these leftists running around college campuses violently assaulting people on college campuses?
They are gun free zones...
Oh.
"chants have their place and can be very effective persuasion" - My two favorites were "Ho Ho Ho Chi Min/NLF is gonna win" and "Two four six eight/Organize to smash the state." They were both very persuasive.
"But, alas, they are gnats and their little tantrums will not be remembered when they are working in the DMV, their fabulous opportunity behind them, wasted."
Yes of course you and all the millions of your educated superbly ilk will be remembered, FOREVER!, unlike these gnats that will be losers with 9 to 5 jobs.
We all remember every utterance of every Ivy League grad of course.
WE ARE IMPORTANT AND WILL NOT BE LEFT BEHIND OR FORGOTTEN, PRAISE UPON UNIVERSITY.
Liberalism is Jim Crow in disguise. They pick out a few tolerable negroes and affirmatively embrace them while the others are relegated to substandard schools and crime riddled neighborhoods. Its multigenerational now and insolvable.
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