My role was to observe and, if needed, de-escalate.... I stepped up to the podium to deploy the de-escalation techniques in which I have been trained, which include getting the parties to look past conflict and see each other as people.... To defuse the situation I acknowledged the protesters' concerns; I addressed the Federalist Society's purpose for inviting Judge Duncan and the law school's desire to uphold its right to do so; I reminded students that there would a Q&A session at which they could answer Judge Duncan's speech with their own speech, as long as they were following university rules; and I pointed out that while free speech isn't easy or comfortable, it's necessary for democracy, and I was glad it was happening at our law school....
Okay. I've said much the same thing myself, defending Steinbach, as you can see in my earlier posts tagged with her name. But I'm stunned to read her explanation of the metaphor she used:
At one point during the event, I asked Judge Duncan, "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" I was referring to the responsibility that comes with freedom of speech: to consider not only the benefit of our words but also the consequences. It isn't a rhetorical question. I believe that we would be better served by leaders who ask themselves, "Is the juice (what we are doing) worth the squeeze (the intended and unintended consequences and costs)?"
How did that go to print? Did no one think it through?! When you are squeezing juice, the squeezing is what you are doing and the juice is the result that you want. Or does she somehow believe that the squeezing is an end in itself? It still wouldn't make sense, because don't you want the juice?
Is free speech a means to an end or an end in itself? Is it the squeezing or is it the juice? Here are her last 2 sentences:
How we strike a balance between free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion is worthy of serious, thoughtful and civil discussion. Free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion are means to an end, and one that I think many people can actually agree on: to live in a country with liberty and justice for all its people.
She thinks we can agree on the end, but the end contains 2 elements, and they are actually the same 2 elements that she identifies as the means to that end: liberty/freedom and justice/equity. What I like about the metaphor is that it's concrete, which made it easy to see that she reversed the means and the end. When she's speaking literally and not figuratively, it's unclear.
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92 comments:
"We can't be diverse here if you say what you think is true."
Equity and Diversity, meet Motte and Bailey.
Don't miss Loury and McWhorter Glenn Show Clip on the claim of moral superiority of feelings. Whole show is now out on Glenn Show channel.
No matter how she tries to polish the turd, she's a fascistic thug, STRAIGHT UP.
"How we strike a balance between free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion is worthy of serious, thoughtful and civil discussion."
No, it's not worthy of discussion. Free speech is an absolute. DEI is political bullshit, and mostly exists as an opposite force to freedom of speech. DEI is not a value. It is a mechanism by which bad, incompetent or stupid people acquire power.
How we strike a balance between free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion is worthy of serious, thoughtful and civil discussion.
She is building a ratchet that turns only one way, and it isn't towards freedom.
Left completely unmentioned in this fallacious balancing act is "we": to whom is she referring? Since it clearly must include DIE-ists, she is clearly stating that DIE must have the power to decide for others what they may hear and say, because their freedom to do so for themselves is dependent upon DIE approval.
Why isn't that a prima facie case for not only firing DIE Dean Steinbach, but also eliminating DIE from Stanford?
Free speech for me, but none for thee, is what she means. In fact this whole incident smells Maoist to me.
What total nonsense. The Judge was heckled and attacked for 30 minutes before she decided to make her little speech. Freedom of speech is absolute (or should be). The fact that, steinbach, or the leftwing students, didn't think it results in "equality" or "diversity" is irrelevant.
Free speech is something that we value for itself. ITs like freedom of movement, or voting instead of obeying the word of an almighty King or dictator. if these result in things we don't like, we don't get rid of them!
Oh, its balancing act. No. Its not.
Anyway, this is all ABSTRACT. If Stanford doesn't believe in free discussion and freedom of thought, then stop being hypocrites and say so. Stop lying to everyone and pretending you are. They are a private university.
Of course, if we the people, decide they can have their totalitarian leftwing echo-chamber, but we won't give them federal or state $$, that's our right too.
All the patriarchal visuals (squeezing juice) makes me to think the Dean needs to go back for more DEI training. Unless the Dean was referencing to Snoop's Gin Juice.
Now, that, I got me some Seagram's gin
Everybody got they cups, but they ain't chipped in
Now this types of shit, happens all the time
You got to get yours but fool I gotta get mine
Everything is fine when you listenin' to the D O G
I got the cultivating music that be captivating he
Who listens, to the words that I speak
As I take me a drink to the middle of the street
How we strike a balance between free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion is worthy of serious, thoughtful and civil discussion.
I can see why the remedial lecture on freedom of speech and the first amendment was required for ALL law students.
While they're there, a pop quiz on the second amendment might be a good idea.
There is no "balance" between free speech and "diversity, equity, and inclusion". Free speech trumps DIE, especially since "equity" is the trojan horse at the gates of free speech, waiting to be brought in so its enemies may destroy it.
She's trying to excuse her excusing of the mob.
Kelly : You wanna be president? Lemme tell you the first rule of politics; Always know if the juice is worth the squeeze. You know what that means? It means you don't steal my girl unless you're ready to accept the consequences.
Of course she believes the squeezing is an end in itself- that's the whole point of DIE.
I can't control the unintended consequences of what someone may think or infer about something I wrote or said. There are too many lunatics and uneducated people in the world. This happens all the time to me.
Here's a phrase that I wish our "leaders" would consider more often. I got this from former General and Secretary of State George Marshall: What if I am wrong?
These trans activists are in all favor of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgeries on minors. The parents (who have to sign off on this) need to consider that they should wait. If they are wrong, very bad consequences.
The progressives have construed or interpretated the NE trans law (LB 574) as being genocide. This is from a Jewish polisci professor at UNL and a NE state senator. The NE bill is not genocide.
The chants and signs say: Trans lives matter. No one disputes that trans live matter, but mutilating a child is not acceptable in a civilized society. Children must be protected. Protected from their crazy parents, Big Pharma ($7k per month) and greedy doctors at Nebraska Medicine. (This ain't happening at the Catholic hospital in Omaha.)
The problem here is two movies on one screen. The Left shouted down and employed the heckler's veto because they couldn't begin to understand Judge Duncan's written opinions. Did they even read them? They can't begin to understand that he is legally correct. The Left can't admit that it is ever wrong.
The NE Dems are on their mission to grind all business to a halt in the Unicam because they lost a vote. They can't accept defeat. They can't understand why this bill was proposed.
The Left and Right aren't in the same country anymore. That's why we can't talk. That's why the Left had to shout down the Judge. What the Dems are doing in NE is about the same as what the Left did to Judge Duncan.
This insanity is all the fault of the Left, but they will never admit error. They never have.
Ann and I disagree here. But I would bet good money that Steinbach couldn't begin to understand what I wrote but she can't conceive of the fact that she's wrong here. There's no excuse for the heckler's veto employed by those law students.
very chat gpbt like in total category error,
So now it's becoming obvious that her thinking is not clear. And that is no surprise to me. D & I types do not secure their juicy positions of authority-with-no-responsibility by excelling in critical or creative thinking. They are the modern Hall Monitors of thought and behavior. And I notice how closely aligned her thinking on free speech is to the kinds of displays we saw at the judge's lecture.
'Free Speech' carries a responsibility with it, she says - and strongly implied: She's just the one to be the enforcer. She's thinking that it's her role to arbitrate whether the ends justify the means, not whether Free Speech is Always Free - because that's how she frames the 'Free Speech' question. It's only OK to have Free Speech if the 'ends' are pure, otherwise Shut the Hell Up, Racist Patriarch!
So, yes, the juice is always worth the squeeze and the dean needs her sorry *ss fired, and the position abolished.
"My role ..."
You know who else talks about their roles: Actors.
People who have rehearsed beforehand.
They know what they are there to accomplish. Because they've rehearsed the entire play beforehand. They have a role to play in the scene. They know what their role is, and it is considered bad acting to do things outside what has been rehearsed beforehand ... outside your role.
A federal judge was invited to speak. Why would there need to be a DEI Dean at that speech, ready to carry out her "role" which is to "de-escalate" situations. How did they even know there would be a need to "de-escalate" anything?
All the world is a stage to the Democrats. And we are but mere audience members. Non-playing characters.
One would hope that the members of our Federal judiciary can spot the difference between this con artist and Maxine Waters ... which is that there isn't a difference. They are there to manipulate court outcomes by intimidation and fear. To obstruct justice. And the longer we let them do it, the bloodier it's going to become in the end.
Free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion are means to an end, and one that I think many people can actually agree on: to live in a country with liberty and justice for all its people.
Free speech is a right guaranteed in the first amendment where DEI is an idea with its basis in a theory developed by a disillusioned French communist in the mid 20th century. I don't follow how DEI is a means to 'liberty and justice for all'.
How we strike a balance between free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion is worthy of serious, thoughtful and civil discussion.
No it isn't. And if it were, the Left are incapable of engaging in it, which is precisely why they refuse to allow dissent.
If you can't even get the metaphor you're trying to make attain some sort of coherent meaning in alignment with what you're trying to express...? That might, just might be a marker for "your thinking is incoherent. And, bad..."
You are certainly squeezing the hell out of this story...
"thoughtful and civil discussion", says the leader of the mob.
---easy to see that she reversed the means and the end
The dean is not a deep thinker. She recited that rote lefty stuff and thought it would carry the day, as though no one else but her primary constituents were involved.
She prevented Diversity by telling the judge his different viewpoint was too evil to the students to be worth the squeeze. She destroyed Equity by treating him as a hostage to her mob. And she canceled Inclusion because of course a Trump appointee could not possibly merit inclusion in the world of self-righteous fascists.
So she did not execute her job. She did the exact opposite of her title. All she did was cater to the very worst of the students and she colluded or cooperated with them to ruin the event that was supposed to have occurred.
DEI, the food of totalitarians.
She has been put on suspension.
https://edsource.org/updates/stanford-law-suspends-associate-dean-in-flap-over-federal-judges-speech
What Steinbach says might be familiar and reasonable (though Steinbach and Prof. Althouse are apparently the only people who think so), but her bosses, the dean of the school and the president of the university, have said that she has violated school and university policy. And it appears that she is continuing her unrepentant insubordination. She should be fired.
Now we see why she should be fired. Even more clearly.
"Is the juice worth the squeeze?" Ask Led Zeppelin.
"Is the juice worth the squeeze?" Ask Led Zeppelin.
The point is that the detractors weren’t civil. So when she says we should have a civil discussion about what she thinks is an important topic she’s a hypocrite.
Why shouldn’t we shout her down? Punch her in the face? Being civil is Stuff White People Do. Why should we Act White?
And the cliche metaphor she doesn’t understand questions whether the amount of effort it takes to squeeze out all the juice from the fruit exceeds the value of the juice.
Speaking to an audience is only hard when assholes disrupt. So it’s not worth it to try and speak to an audience when assholes will disrupt. Just as this moron will keep her mouth shut once someone punches her in the face. The Juice ain’t worth the Punch
Stanford was an elite institution when it was not a Matriarchal Institution. Now it’s a haven for hysterics.
"... saying things that feel familiar and reasonable to me:".
Yes, and I'm guessing they feel reasonable, at least, to her. So that's two of you right there! Hey, and it looks like you're both retired, too!
When you are squeezing juice, the squeezing is what you are doing and the juice is the result that you want. Or does she somehow believe that the squeezing is an end in itself? It still wouldn't make sense, because don't you want the juice?
Might i suggest.. Is the Juice worth the Pulp?
Or, better yet... Just NOT using stupid metaphors?
diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry, political congruence)
Diversity is a superset of class-disordered ideologies (e.g. racism, sexism, ageism) under an ethical religion.
DIEversity (diversity, inequity, exclusion) breeds adversity. The DIE dean needs to lose her religion.
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one.
Glenn Reynolds had a really good substack acouple of days related to wokeness and related issues. Reynolds
It is one of the best things I have read in the last year and I highly recommend it.
Since when did we decide that it was necessary to balance the freedom of speech -- a constitutional right -- with diversity, equity, and inclusion ("DEI")?
DEI is not a right. There is no clear definition of what exactly DEI is . . . Which I expect operates as a feature, rather than a bug for its advocates -- allowing for DEI to be redefined to be more and more expansive over time.
I think many of us would agree that diversity, properly understood, can improve decision-making at times. Can it help to have experts in different fields when engaging a complicated problem? Sure. But the advocates of diversity believe it exists when people with different skin pigmentation are "represented". Defining people according to the color of their skin tells us nothing about an individual's aptitude, ability, work-ethic, and a thousand other qualities that can be described as "merit".
Diversity as defined by DEI advocates is not a social "good" at all. As for balancing the freedom of speech with DEI, no thank you
Sorry, Steinbach is not rated to handle metaphors. The occasional tentative simile, maybe (and under adult supervision) but not metaphors.
She throws around words like “liberty, freedom, diversity, inclusion, equity, justice,” etc etc etc, as if she had a clue to what they mean, and how they affect each other in theory and practice. Nope.
This was a big own goal for the professor. My sympathy.
She did not mis-speak. She thinks backwards. It is a problem with leftists.
She is doing the same thing celebrated by James Taranto years ago as "The Butterfield Effect", writing in the WSJ's "Best of the Web." Fox Butterfield famously, if incomprehensibly, wrote that crime rates kept falling "despite" prison populations increasing due to tougher sentencing laws.
Leftists claim that if they feel offended by the ideas or speech of others, that alone is a valid argument against the ideas, and a valid reason to quash the speech rights of those supposedly causing the offense. This has the relationship between speaker and audience backwards, claiming a heckler's veto and a mob authority over other's rights.
DEI advocates think this way, too. If perfect racial diversity is not present in any activity, this alone is evidence of systemic racism. Complain that diversity of race is immaterial to an activity, and that is evidence of systemic racism, too. Explain that other factors such as ideological diversity or socioeconomic factors are more important than racial diversity and you are a damnable racist in their eyes deserving of punishment. They have it backwards, too, of course. And yet it is an impossibly strong argument to make, because those advocating it cannot grasp that they are illogical.
rhhardin said...
Don't miss Loury and McWhorter Glenn Show Clip on the claim of moral superiority of feelings. Whole show is now out on Glenn Show channel.
I loved the part where Glenn called Henry Rogers (Ibriham X...) a mother fucker.
Characterizing free speech as a means to some ill-defined end is very clearly a statement that you don't actually believe in free speech.
What I find helpful is her express acknowledgement that what she's selling as "diversity" is in tension with free speech. That's obviously true and we're better off if both sides agree on that point.
And fwiw actual diversity (of views, beliefs, and skin color) is 100% compatible with free speech. Marxism, not so much.
Wrong question. She should have asked "Is conspiring with the mob to suppress a speaker's right to speak to an audience worth the punishment I will receive? Such punishment including a firing for cause and a lawsuit." The punishment she deserves is a flogging.
Nothing that mentions equity is worthy of a 'serious, thoughtful and civil discussion.' It's just not.
Read the piece. Unmitigated pap.
I pointed out that while free speech isn't easy or comfortable, it's necessary for democracy, and I was glad it was happening at our law school.
Fifty years from now when you look up civility bullshit in a dictionary it will feature this quote. Sadly, we’ll all be dead.
"But I'm stunned to read her explanation of the metaphor she used"
Stunned a DEI flunky is actually clueless?
"How we strike a balance between free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion"
Why balance? One is a natural, constitutionally protected right, essential to a free society. The other is a prog invention, intended and used to stifle dissent and undermine merit for prog purposes.
How can you figure out "if the juice is worth the squeeze" when someone constantly knocks the glass out of your hand before you've had a sip?
There are thousands of incoherent, inarticulate drones like Steinbach across the land, in virtually every institution, getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to spit out this incomprehensible, juvenile rubbish. They push their crap with impunity on productive people, and they know they are (usually) untouchable. I would give 10 to 1 odds that Steinbach will soon be back at her post, hectoring and pouring out more crap, with no punishment.
Steinbach is a loser affirmative action hire getting paid mucho dinero to assuage white people's guilty, nothing more. She is a plague on society. And, you, Althouse, defended her.
Cling to your delusions, Professor. That's about all you've got.
While Ms. Steinbach was put in a tricky situation, she's paid good money to solve it right. Still it was a tricky thing to solve - and she deserves a decent spot to explain her response, which did seem odd to me. So, I'm willing to listen to her story. That said Althouse, even before I got to your evaluation of her analogy. (I'd only gotten up the the bolded quote), my thought it was that it was messy right away. She was turning juice into a verb, when it's noun, and squeeze into a noun, when it's a verb. Hmmm? Not a good start to a rationalization.
On a separate linguistic topic; as a finance guy, the word equity means ownership - as in debt + equity = all assets. Equity done not equal equality - which is its own separate thing. Not sure why these two words get interchanged when there's not a good reason to do that and it just confuses people.
And, as I type this Miami is up by quite bit over Houston.
"The punishment she deserves is a flogging."
Or perhaps, she needs to be squeezed? On the other hand, that could be what she's angling for...
She offered the trite 'juice/squeeze' metaphor and then later on messed up the explanation because she simply isn't as bright as her title/position would suggest. She thinks, talks and writes more like an undergrad than an administrator. This is the awful state of our intellectual'elite.'
No one should be under any illusions about what happened at Stanford. Student activists heckled an invited speaker into silence. Dean Steinbach's ineffectual witterings embarrassed Stanford and gave cover to the miscreants. Her metaphor seems clear to me. Is the benefit of open inquiry worth the hassle of the activists' antics? Most people would say yes.
The proper analogy is juice:squeeze::freedom of speech:chokeholds used to remove disrupters of said freedom. Trained bouncers can be hired to achieve this end. I suspect some linemen from Stanford’s football team moonlight as bouncers in the offseason; they might volunteer to do it for free.
“I reminded students that there would a Q&A session at which they could answer Judge Duncan's speech with their own speech, as long as they were following university rules...”
If she seriously believed there was any chance of that actually happening, or that the Judge would hang around to listen to those ignorant yahoos, she’s even stupider than we all think.
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman were not available for comment.
I am dumbfounded, I admit, to see this continue here.
Steinbach is utterly untruthful about what happened in that meeting and what her part in that was (untruthful that is in all the things Ann agrees with and quotes her saying first.) Steinbach then choses that metaphor not to clarify anything but to obfuscate. She showed up at that Federalist Society meeting to manage the suppression of speech not to facilitate it. It's no wonder she tangled herself up in a garbled metaphor. Garbling meaning that way is exactly what DEI does every single time it addresses itself to ordinary American citizens who are not already of its anointed elect.
Dave Begley, what is the significance of the UNL polisci professor's ethnic heritage? Most of us here will agree that a big problem with wokeness is that it divides people by race, sexual preference, gender, and other characteristics that are not determinative to normal people. Your mentioning that the professor is Jewish is clearly meant to accomplish the same thing. It causes me to dismiss everything else you say.
Free speech, as others have pointed out, is emphatically not a “means to an end”. It is an end itself, one of those unalienable rights that the great Thomas Jefferson wrote about so eloquently. Steinbach may or may not believe her attempted sleight-of-hand (pen?), but that’s what it transparently is. (And I have tried but I cannot grok Ann’s position on l’affaire Steinbach…)
As I submit this post, it’s 248 years and one day since Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech - a good time to remember the sacrifices made “to secure these rights”, and how tyrants - no matter how softly and reasonably spoken - will always attempt to destroy our unalienable rights; “you will know them by their fruits” (I’m an atheist but that Jesus dude had a way with words sometimes).
Communism is Soviet Russia always required a political kommissar be present, even in the military. Someone had to be present to be certain that only comments acceptable to the regime be allowed. The left has it's DIE spokespeople to serve the equivalent role. What part of this is hard to understand? DIE can't allow free speech.
Her de-escalation "technique" is a perversion of what one should actually do. She claimed there would be a Q&A session afterward where they could make speeches? WTF? Speeches? A Q&A session is to ask relevant questions and let speaker respond.
The dean was a disgrace.
On a separate linguistic topic; as a finance guy, the word equity means ownership - as in debt + equity = all assets. Equity done not equal equality - which is its own separate thing. Not sure why these two words get interchanged when there's not a good reason to do that and it just confuses people.
It's easy. Equality means equal opportunity. Equity means equal outcomes.
"She was turning juice into a verb, when it's noun, and squeeze into a noun, when it's a verb."
Thanks for bringing that up. It's something I considered putting in the post but rejected.
Here's why I considered it a sidetrack. In the sentence "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" both "juice" and "squeeze" are nouns. You can tell by the "the." You could keep the "the"s and switch to gerunds — "Is the juicing worth the squeezing?" — and both would still be nouns, but they'd be nouns made from verbs, and it shows that both "juice" and "squeeze" could be verbs. But both words are subject to the same journey from noun to verb, and in the sentence "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" the 2 words are on the same level: Is X worth Y? It's asking if one thing is equal to another. But what are the 2 things? One, she says, is the action, the doing, and the other is the product of the action, the substance obtained. In that light, "juice" must be the product, because "squeeze" must be the action.
Now, I can see how you could argue — if your legal case depended on it — that "squeeze" could be the... juice. Maybe something like the way "pour" could be used to refer to the coffee. And there is, in the recent history of slang, the use of "squeeze" to refer to a girlfriend or boyfriend, as in "She's my main squeeze." I would understand your joke if you pointed to your glass of orange juice and called it your "main squeeze." I would consider that very corny, but I would get it.
But who can believe that in the sentence "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" the word "squeeze" is supposed to be understood to refer to that which has been squeezed while "juice" means the action of squeezing?
If I said, referring to making free-squeezed orange juice, that I'm not going to do it because I don't like "the juice," would you think I mean it took too much effort to pull down the lever in the machine? And if I did and you were confused, wouldn't it be weird if I added — to clarify that I did in fact like that stuff that we drink — "Don't get me wrong, I love the squeeze."
"Free speech, as others have pointed out, is emphatically not a “means to an end”. "
The standard presentation in a constitutional law casebook has a list of maybe 5 reasons for valuing freedom of speech and conceiving of it as a right.
One of the reasons is that freedom is an end in itself. It may be the weightiest reason, in your view and in the view of some but not all others, but the other reasons have it as a means to an end.
The most famous other reason is the "marketplace of ideas" concept — that getting all the ideas out in the open and letting people shop for what they like is the best way to find what is true. Then truth is the end and freedom is the means.
I would say it's BOTH a means and an end and an end in itself.
That's the most accurate way to summarize our tradition and to defend it going forward. Freedom in the abstract is good, but freedoms collide, even in just this one Stanford incident. Many of you think the judge's freedom to speak unheckled is what matters, but how did you figure that out when the heckling students were also exercising freedom. How did you put one form of freedom above another? Were you using a means-to-an-end approach or the idea that freedom is the end?
This is the inevitable crab-back that accompanies the slap-down of any leftist but especially a DIE apparatchik. It's good to see that Dean Jenny Martinez is holding firm with an expansive defense of her apology to Judge Duncan and condemnation of the student's actions (and putting Steinbach on leave).
Those of us who disagreed with your take immediately recognized that the juice:squeeze metaphor as used by Steinbach was an analogy to viewpoint based prior restraint. A Trump judge has nothing worth the effort to say to the enlightened students and faculty of Stanford, unless it's to make an abject apology for the views he holds. He certainly has no right to assume that Stanford would make the effort to give him a platform to present them. It's no surprise to us that Steinbach is now mangling the metaphor in an effort to obfusticate the plain meaning of her question to Judge Duncan.
My Freedom Of Speech is not up for your "balance".
Hubert:
A Jewish guy wrote that the intention murder of over 6,000,000 people was similar to a bill that would stop about 500 teenagers in Nebraska from using medicine to alter their gender.
That’s insane. Totally and completely.
And totally disrespectful to the memory and lives of the 6m. The alleged Catholic M. Cavanaugh said the same thing, but way more Jews than Catholics died in the Holocaust. Anyone who makes that statement is a lunatic; regardless of religion.
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Is the result worth the process?
Is the outcome worth the work?
Is the reward worth the effort?
It's not that hard to understand and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills seeing so many have such a difficult time with it.
I agree with Althouse that Steinbach's misspoken explanation proves the power of the metaphor over the concrete.
I wish we could move past this into a clearer discussion of what the value of the juice was in this context vs. the downside of the squeeze.
Respect for Scheduling Act (RFSA), perhaps.
Here's to our progress to a liberal and low trust society.
We need a Keep Clinics Freedom Act (KCFA) to allow people to protest the wicked solution in order to mitigate social progress from Weimar Forward!
Many of you think the judge's freedom to speak unheckled is what matters, but how did you figure that out when the heckling students were also exercising freedom.
If there is a right to prevent someone else from speaking I would respond thusly:
Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
It is incoherent to claim you’re an advocate of free speech while actively blocking others from speaking at all.
How do we reconcile a problem like human rights and human rites.
How do we reconcile a problem like psychiatric dysphoria and gender dysphoria.
How do we reconcile a problem like diversity (of colors, classes, and politically congruent constructs) and equal rights.
How do the right to speak, and the right to prevent someone from speaking co-exist equally?
How do I assert my right to prevent the hecklers from speaking?
Is she de-escalating the situation by addressing the speaker and not the disrupters? Is she making things better by using a non-sensical metaphor to express a deep thought in an already chaotic situation. I'm trying to figure out how this person that deserves empathy for being helpful was being helpful. I do understand she was paid a good deal of money by Stanford for whatever she was doing.
A Jewish guy wrote that the intention murder of over 6,000,000 people was similar to a bill that would stop about 500 teenagers in Nebraska from using medicine to alter their gender.
Levine's dreams of herr Mengele.
Just so Stanford makes sure to name and shame hecklers in the future.
Speech should never be suppressed, but should carry consequences.
They need to withdraw the "Respect for Marriage Act" and pass the "Civil Unions for All Consenting Adults Act". The progress of politically congruent ("=") constructs is a hate crime targeting all people arbitrarily judged, labeled, and excluded under diversity (e.g. racist, sexist, ageist, class-based bigoted) philosophy. Oh, and temper the exhibition of albinophobic symbols and rhetoric.
Ann tells us: "Many of you think the judge's freedom to speak unheckled is what matters, but how did you figure that out when the heckling students were also exercising freedom. How did you put one form of freedom above another?"
I have no idea why the word "freedom" is supposed to be the controlling one here. "Freedom" is vapid as used here, a total abstraction without any social context or content. In that sense, I have freedom to go out in the street and kill people. The question is not freedom, it is "rights." The judge had a right to speak and the students who invited the judge had a clear right under our system of laws and customs to hear him speak. ALL those present had a right to speak also, under ordered conditions that would allow them all to do so in a typical Q & A time period. The mob in fact deprived EVERYONE (including its own members) of any right to speak at all. Ann evades this by using distortions such as "heckling" for what the mob did. It in fact did not speak in any real way at all, even simply to heckle a speaker who otherwise would still be able to exercise his right to speak. Instead, it used its sound (not speech) as a form of raw physical power to drown out the speaker and anyone else who tried to speak. Except Steinbach, who did get to speak, but only because the mob used its power to allow that. So, she was "free" to speak, but she did not have the "right" to speak any more than the judge did. She was given permission to speak by a mob exercising power without rights.
Freedom of speech and freedom to restrain that same speech are essentially contradictory.
Is this too simple?
"Many of you think the judge's freedom to speak unheckled is what matters, but how did you figure that out when the heckling students were also exercising freedom. How did you put one form of freedom above another?"
Stanford apparently has a conduct code that students are supposed to follow (I was going to say "expected to follow", but that has proven not to be the case) which would seem to prohibit heckling. Or is it okay to ignore rules one agreed to observe when it becomes inconvenient?
Thank you, Jon Burack.
@ Jon Burack
You’re relying on a tautology. You’re simply asserting that the freedom you want to be the right is the right and that the freedom you want not to be a right is not a right.
There is a right to freedom of speech. The right protects freedom, but to identify that something is a matter of freedom is not to define the scope of the right. You must proceed to find a way to define the right.
I get that you want more order but your preference doesn’t make that a right. You are arguing for muzzling the audience and claiming that as a constitutional entitlement. Prove it.
“ Stanford apparently has a conduct code that students are supposed to follow (I was going to say "expected to follow", but that has proven not to be the case) which would seem to prohibit heckling. Or is it okay to ignore rules one agreed to observe when it becomes inconvenient?”
The Constitution, which binds Stanford under state statutory law, is higher law than university policy.
“ Stanford apparently has a conduct code that students are supposed to follow (I was going to say "expected to follow", but that has proven not to be the case) which would seem to prohibit heckling. Or is it okay to ignore rules one agreed to observe when it becomes inconvenient?”
The Constitution, which binds Stanford under state statutory law, is higher law than university policy.
Wouldn't Tinker and similar cases at least suggest that Stanford has the right to regulate student behavior in the interests of providing an education? After all, the whole point of Tinker was that the armbands weren't disruptive. Doesn't it explicitly state that speech that is potentially disruptive is not protected?
Don't both Fraser and Hazelwood say that a “substantial disruption” or infringing on the rights of other students was reason enough to restrict student freedom of speech or expression?
While Ms. Steinbach was put in a tricky situation
Disagree. She put herself into this situation. Intentionally and needlessly.
"Many of you think the judge's freedom to speak unheckled is what matters, but how did you figure that out when the heckling students were also exercising freedom. How did you put one form of freedom above another?"
The fact you think a screaming mob has the same free speech rights as an invited guest speaker means we should not take your opinion on this subject seriously.
Your take on this - from the start - is bizarre. To say the least.
"Wouldn't Tinker and similar cases at least suggest that Stanford has the right to regulate student behavior in the interests of providing an education? After all, the whole point of Tinker was that the armbands weren't disruptive. Doesn't it explicitly state that speech that is potentially disruptive is not protected?"
Tinker is about school children. There are many many cases to compare and contrast. I'm not arguing for a particular outcome here, just laying out the work to be done and taking you to task if you try to short circuit it.
"Is the juice worth the squeeze" sounds like faux folk woke speak. If you don't think of squeeze/juice as action/result, but as bad thing/good thing, the phrase may make better sense.
For Steinbach, I would have thought that the "juice" was whatever the school gained from Duncan's appearance, and the "squeeze" would be the emotional harm it caused students who couldn't bear him speaking there. For Duncan the "juice" would be the wisdom he could impart to the students and whatever satisfaction he received from that, and the "squeeze" would be the chaos, pressure, and abuse he was subjected to -- the "squeeze" the protestors put him through. Perhaps in retrospect, the "juice" was the satisfaction Steinbach and the protestors got from the event, and the squeeze was the bad publicity and disgrace she got afterwards.
Steinbach's focus on the "harm" that free speech creates says a lot about what the ACLU has become (she was a higher up in the Northern California CLU). Would John Stuart Mill have asked if the juice was worth the squeeze? Not the Mill of 1859. Church and state, private property and social hierarchy were so firmly established that dissenters could be tolerated and eccentrics in encouraged. Experimentation was to be promoted in order to sweep away the old order. If Mill were alive today and saw his dreams being fulfilled, would he still tolerate dissidents, non-conformists, and those who stood in the way of the radiant future?
I think the lesson Ann is trying to give us is going over my head. Yes, everybody has the right to speak. But, when you "speak" to deny another the right to speak then what you are doing is censorship. The dean planned this censorship event - and she thinks, as her words after the event shows, that the censorship was appropriate.
Then too, I was under the impression that some forms of speech aimed at a person and in their presence is considered to be a form of assault. I'd offer that at least some of those students crossed that line. The fact that the dean allowed and condoned that behavior speaks volumes about her character.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Freedom of speech, on campuses and elsewhere, is rendered meaningless if speakers can be shouted down by those who disagree. The law is well established that the government can act to prevent a heckler’s veto -- to prevent the reaction of the audience from silencing the speaker. There is simply no 1st Amendment right to go into an auditorium and prevent a speaker from being heard, no matter who the speaker is or how strongly one disagrees with his or her message. (bold added)
Michigan State University professor of political science William B. Allen has used the phrase "verbal terrorism" to refer to the same phenomenon, defining it as "calculated assault characterized by loud side-conversations, shouted interruptions, jabbered false facts, threats and personal insults"
Eugene Volokh:
And institutions, public and private—such as universities—may well set up their own rules, forbidding this second kind of heckler's veto. If imposed and enforced in a neutral way, those rules don't violate the First Amendment or, I think, academic freedom principles. There is no right to interrupt a speaker who has been invited to give a speech in a way that keeps him from being heard, just as partisans of that speaker have no right to interrupt a speaker from the opposite side.
There are three separate legal analyses that all agree that there is no freedom of speech right to prevent the speech of others, and that colleges and universities may impose and enforce rules and codes against it.
There is a right to freedom of speech. The right protects freedom, but to identify that something is a matter of freedom is not to define the scope of the right. You must proceed to find a way to define the right.
...
I get that you want more order but your preference doesn’t make that a right. You are arguing for muzzling the audience and claiming that as a constitutional entitlement. Prove it.
Reason from basic principles, which are these: Enlightenment era natural philosophy asserts, axiomatically, that because we are all equal in our creation, we are therefore equally entitled to possess our own minds (and meaningful self defense, and possession of our own property, etc.). These are rights which cannot be alienated, because they are fundamental to human existence. Tyranny can trample upon those rights, but they continue to exist, nonetheless.
Government exists to provide for the mutual exercise of our inherent individual inherent rights.
I am just as entitled as you, or anyone else, to say, hear, or read, what we each decide to say, hear, or read.
The limiting principle is that no one's decisions may inhibit anyone else's decisions.
This is where you are going off the rails (or Socratically pretending to). The DIE Maoists decided for others what they would be permitted to hear. They were acting tyrannically, by explicitly eliminating mutual enjoyment of an inherent right.
Judge Duncan's right to speak was abrogated, just as the audience's right to hear, by people who took it upon themselves to become arbiters of who may enjoy the inherent rights we equally possess.
The DIE Maoists could have used Q&A to critique Judge Duncan's views (although I'd bet heavily that none of those tyrants-in-training could have articulated what he actually has said or written). They could have mounted a silent protest. They could have had a competing presentation elsewhere. All of those actions would have preserved everyone's inherent right to make up their own minds regarding what they see, hear, say, and read.
But that isn't what they did, is it?
Granted, the assertion that we are all equally entitled to possess our own minds is axiomatic. There is no way to prove it, just as there is no way to prove that the shortest distance between two points in a plane is a straight line. But assuming the axiom — and if you don't wish to, who do you appoint to possess your mind? — then "muzzling the audience" stops the audience that needs muzzling from elevating their minds over yours.
Thereby directly contradicting the basic, axiomatic, principle.
QED.
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