April 9, 2023

"It was a very valuable experience to me, and a lesson that ideas, no matter how vile, should be argued, defended, and defeated in public."

Writes Vesuviano in the most-liked comment at the NYT on the article "At Stanford Law School, the Dean Takes a Stand for Free Speech. Will It Work?" 

The article is the subject of my first post of the day, but I wanted to give this fantastic comment its own post:
"In 1969 I was a student at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland. Members of the American Nazi Party were allowed to visit the school and present their point of view that the Holocaust had not happened. The event was held after school in the cafeteria, and expectations for students who chose to attend were made absolutely clear to us by the principal. We were to be respectful at all times; we were not to interrupt the speakers; anything we had to say could be said in the Q & A afterwards. Those of us who attended prepared ourselves extremely well and did as we had been directed. During the presentation we took notes, sat on our hands, kept our mouths shut, and did not interrupt the speakers in any way. Then afterwards in the Q & A we absolutely shredded them. When they left, they knew they had been soundly trounced by a bunch of high school history geeks. It was a very valuable experience to me, and a lesson that ideas, no matter how vile, should be argued, defended, and defeated in public."

Today, there's this notion that the young people would be injured by having to hear bad speech, but these kids had an energizing, uplifting, sublimely memorable experience. 

78 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Can that be inscribed on an important American monument somewhere?

Nihimon said...

"... expectations for students who chose to attend were made absolutely clear to us by the principal... Those of us who attended prepared ourselves extremely well and did as we had been directed."

Why shouldn't we believe today's students aren't also doing as they have been directed? Isn't that obvious?

rcocean said...

I agree with free speech. And college should be where we have intelligent discussion of ALL Ideas. I repeat the word ALL. But we have the exact oppposite. And we also have the problem of shouting down speakers and harrassment. Its censorship by other means.

If the Stanford Law students diagreed with Judge Kelly, they could have engaged in a debate. And asked questions, no matter how pointed, and listened to the answers.

But that's not where the liberal/left is at today. They are in power and don't need "free speech". So, why let others speak and disagree?. Or as Susan Sontag once put it: "They don't need free speech in the Soviet Union, they have socialism". BTW, she's the same person who said "White people are the cancer of the human race".

Looks like Sontag was a leading indicator.

Lurker21 said...

The event was held after school in the cafeteria, and expectations for students who chose to attend were made absolutely clear to us by the principal. We were to be respectful at all times; we were not to interrupt the speakers; anything we had to say could be said in the Q & A afterwards.

Easier to do then than now. Easier to do with high schoolers than with law students. It ought to be easier to arrange a respectful reception for Republicans than for Nazis, but actual Nazis are harder to find now and aren't being invited to speak anywhere.

Still, it's striking that such an event went over so placidly when the country was tearing itself apart over Vietnam. Apparently we are much more divided, or have much worse manners, now than back then.

chickelit said...

The Karens are not going to like that otherwise excellent comment. The precious little ones must be protected. The moms back in 1969 may not have even known about visit by the Nazis.

Jupiter said...

Yeah, well. Except, it didn't happen.

Amadeus 48 said...

Lots of wisdom there.

A lot of thinking today is heavily influenced by the direct action movement on the left nicely summed up in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Hillary Clinton famously studied at Alinsky's knee as a college student. That high school in Bethsda was playing by the John Stuart Mill playbook--he who knows only his own side of the matter knows little of it. Compare the behavior in 1969 of a bunch of high school nerds with the actions of the Stanford Law students or the three state legislators in Tennessee last week. Who was more persuasive? But Rules for Radicals is not about persuasion--it is about getting what you want through disruption and annoyance.

bobby said...

Anything that anyone believes that I find abhorrent and evil, I want them to shout out loudly.

I want to know that they believe such things. I want to have foreknowledge before they act on such beliefs.

If we shut everyone up from saying "bad" things, we won't know about them until they act on their beliefs.

That, to me, is the most important part of free speech.

Randomizer said...

"Today, there's this notion that the young people would be injured by having to hear bad speech,..."

Alternatively, one could say that:

Today, university administrators, deans and some professors endorse this notion that young people would be injured by having to hear bad speech,...

Narayanan said...

Is it a question of
Are students ready for different viewpoints
[vs]
Are teachers ready for and willing and able to present them?

I have known teacher refusing

n.n said...

The commenter is correct about etiquette, and presents an interesting analogy. Disinformation, but material nonetheless. Nazis then, DIEversitists now.

Yancey Ward said...

I will take "Things That Never Happened" for 1000, Alex.

Narayanan said...

Is it not a question of
Are students ready for different viewpoints
[vs]
Are teachers ready for and willing and able to present them?

in late 1960's I have known teacher fearfully refusing to discuss this

my request was private : discussion would have been in class

Humperdink said...

That's exactly how free speech/ freedom of expression should be handled. It's amusing what has become of the party of tolerance". Suppressing speakers is clearly from one political party. It also clear they would be shredded just like the Nazis in an open forum.

I am scratching my head as to where this began.

Dave Begley said...

“ Those of us who attended prepared ourselves extremely well and did as we had been directed.”

Law school teaches you to prepare for a hearing, trial or whatever. But the Stanford law students couldn’t be bothered. Lazy and stupid notwithstanding their LSAT scores.

robother said...

I'm sure that a Critical Race Theory type would proclaim that expecting students to argue, defend and defeat ideas in public is itself White Privilege. Identity politics, starting with feminism, is the source of the notion that (an ever-widening category of) speech is "hate speech" the mere exposure to which is violence.

The rise of CRT in colleges is of course a function of Affirmative Action, which increasingly populates campuses with students who know themselves to incapable of defeating rational argument in a public setting. Thus CRT validates the anger and frustration of such students and the thug tactics of shutting down expression of opposing views by screaming and threats of physical violence.

William said...

It's childishly simple to refute an argument that the Holocaust never happened. You can expose most kids to arguments like that and no harm done. Other ideas are more subversive. If, for example, you propound the absurd idea that it's wrong for children to cut off their penis or breasts, there's a good chance that some children might believe it. Such ideas need to be ruthlessly suppressed before another generation of children are led astray.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Well, I hoped you learned something from this experience, professor Althouse.

Breezy said...

This comment epitomizes exactly what we all were arguing for wrt the Stanford case…. Let him speak, listen intently, then ask challenging and obnoxious, if need be, questions in the Q&A! Let everyone have their turn.

Where does this notion of injury by having to hear bad speech come from, anyway? The very schools that allow students their safe spaces, trigger warnings, etc.

Smilin' Jack said...

“When they left, they knew they had been soundly trounced by a bunch of high school history geeks.”

I sincerely doubt the Nazis learned anything. What the kids should learn is that life is short, and time spent pointlessly arguing with wackos is time that could be spent In stimulating conversations, or smoking dope.

Ironclad said...

Ah, typical NYT snide comments masked as “reasonable” dialog. This is plainly saying that the Federal Judges speech was “vile” and that the school was Sooooooooooo tolerant to allow that pseudo Nazi to set foot at Stanford. Courage? More like craven backpedaling after putting the finger up to the wind to issue a “brave” statement and not punish anyone for their behavior.

Consequences. There needs to be consequences for bad behavior. Giving the bums rush to the 2 Tennessee reps with bullhorn debate tactics is just the start.

Wa St Blogger said...

The reason the left does not want the right to speak is because the left has no defensible position. They can only win through filibuster and intimidation.

Political Junkie said...

This is another example of the decline of America.

Matt said...

This issue seems so simple to me. Both sides have the right to speak and to protest. But you do not have the right to a heckler’s veto. My free speech cannot be used to prevent others from hearing what you have to say.

And doesn’t the left’s position on this highlight that they now believe in objective truth? When did that happen?

RideSpaceMountain said...

"It was a very valuable experience to me, and a lesson that ideas, no matter how vile, should be argued, defended, and defeated in public."

Just like transgenderism. Matter of fact, it would've been defeated even longer ago if it wasn't for the MSM putting their hand on the scale.

Temujin said...

Kids in '69 were different than kids in '23. The culture is different. Schooling is different. iPhones vs no phones, which could have meant more access to more factual information but turned out to mean more BS dressed up as fact, flooding kids phones with a dangerous combination of truth and fiction.

We didn't have to battle the lack of clarity in '69. Today is a muddle. Though we had issues in '69, things were much clearer.

All that said, the commenter is, of course, absolutely correct and in a more sane world, this would be how a civil society works. It used to.

Sebastian said...

"ideas, no matter how vile, should be argued, defended, and defeated in public"

This is what modern progressivism denies. And that is the meaning of the Stanford episode.

"Today, there's this notion that the young people would be injured by having to hear bad speech."

But that notion should not be taken at face value. It is a power move, a tool for asserting prog dominance.

Sheridan said...

It seems that your fantastic commenter was living in his own bubble in 1969. While his words ring true even now: “a lesson that ideas, no matter how vile, should be argued, defended, and defeated in public" they were unfortunately passe even as he and his fellow history friends were kicking Nazi butt. The Vietnam War protests were in full swing and no-one on the anti-war side was listening to any calm, thoughtful counter argument. They only heard the noises coming from within their own echo chamber. (Of course the same could be said of both the Johnson and Nixon Administrations.) It's even worse today as the current-day protests are not about war-mongering in Ukraine (paging John Kerry) and elsewhere. It’s about the de-construction of American society (“the fundamental transformation of America”) and it’s re-construction along the lines of intersectional grievances and a Corporate Oligarchy. Everyone will obey and everyone will be happy! Or else. I keep thinking about the Uyghurs.

hombre said...

That is a lesson conservatives learn at a very young age. While the comment is apt, one wonders how old the author was before the lesson took hold. Also, how long will it last in the progressive silo of NYT readers?

Flat Tire said...

I'm glad but a little surprised that is the most liked comment at the NYT.

Fred Drinkwater said...

What those kids had? Actual adults in their lives.

Sprezzatura said...

Althouse, on this blog you censor comments when you don’t like the POV of the comments. The massive POV based comment deletions (and the many total (though not permanent, so far) bans) that I’ve experienced here would probably be news to anyone reading your frequent jabber re you claiming free speech is good.

I’ve been here starting more or less fifteen years ago. For me witnessing Althouse’s film flam is interesting. It makes the blog cool. W/o the film flam Althouse would be boring. IMHO.

Carry on.

Owen said...

Great comment. Kudos to the writer; but also (maybe even more so) to his principal for helping the kids prepare and conduct themselves. A life-changing experience IMHO.

Maynard said...

Today, there's this notion that the young people would be injured by having to hear bad speech, but these kids had an energizing, uplifting, sublimely memorable experience.

What is this thing called "bad speech" ?

Misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, words as violence?

Asking for a friend who is a First Amendment absolutist.

Ellie said...

I'm not sure many of today's high school and college students have the knowledge or skill to debate anyone about anything or the inclination to do it. I also believe it's been deliberately planned to be that way by our educational system.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

I was a high-school history geek as well, and the event was not a speaker, but a formal debate on 09 April 1965, the centennial of Lee's surrender at Appomattox. The topic was Resolved: the South could have won the Civil War. This was in Connecticut, and I took the Affirmative as a challenge, but not one other student would take that side. I was alone as a sophomore, debating two seniors, one of whom was State Champion.

Beginning with "could" as a concept, I subsequently laid out multiple factual details, again and again -- suppose that cigar case holding Special Order 191 [Confed battle plan for Antietam] had not fallen out of the rider's shirt pocket -- I presented a portrait of major outcomes ultimately determined by minor accidents of fate. I told family stories of having one GGgrandfather fighting with Stonewall and another (with his sister) running the principal Union spy ring ing Richmond. That ring had multiple narrow escapes from being blown up entirely. And so on.

Could is not the same as "would", and the Affirmative carried the day, even in totally Union Connecticut, by a crushing majority. Like 'Vesuviano' I mourn the loss of that intellectual era, in which facts and effective logic still mattered.

Today's privileged snowflakes will eventually be mugged by mathematical, historical, logical, and practical realities. Their emotion-driven reactions will not be pretty, or kind.

phantommut said...

This is the way.

hawkeyedjb said...

Which is worse: The fact that Stanford law students don't have the debate skills of high-schoolers, or that they've been taught that they don't need such skills?

Tomcc said...

"Today, there's this notion that the young people would be injured by having to hear bad speech...". Amen, sister. Words are violence to them. I don't like to think that we've regressed that much as a society, but there it is.

farmgirl said...

Amen to that!

What a beautiful day for a Holy day!! We had a busy Easter Day- a lovely Mass w/so much enthusiasm (the “foreign priests” are rubbing off on us lol)- dinner here, b/c I made the mistake of hosting one yr and now all the Holidays are here- and just watching our younger and even younger generations grow.

My love to all. The sun is shining, sap’s still running clear and pretty soon the peepers and red-winged blackbirds will be singing!

Why am I so happy?
It’s a great day to celebrate victory over the tomb. What a very long Winter(Lent) it has been.

Happy Easter!!

farmgirl said...

And I’m so excited- I guess I broke the rule of posting non-related info.
Well, it’s a celebration of free speech , after all.

The etiquette of good debate was taught in our HS. This man was taught the same way. We lose these lessons at our own peril.

MikeR said...

That works with Nazis, but not with conservatives. You get shredded instead.
Best not to risk it. Shout them down.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Here's an example of the stuff the media appears to believe it's too vile for us to hear.

If you want to listen to Trump's Easter message, like me, you may not be able to. I can't find it anywhere.

Rit said...

It is no notion. Far to many young declare that they are triggered by and injured by the speech of others, and their solution is to shout them down and cancel them. Worse, far to many so-called adults engage is such behavior themselves and encourage others, including the young, to emulate said behavior.

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Today, there's this notion that the young people would be injured by having to hear "bad speech"

That's because the ones pushing this are the Nazis

IOW, the ones whose opinions and beliefs are such total crap that in any honest discussion they'll be shredded

And that's why the Left is all in on censorship

D.D. Driver said...

I agree that we need public execution of all ideas.

MadTownGuy said...

1. Soft target. Their perception is that they shredded the speaker's argument. That may be so, or it could be no more than their perception. My guess is that they effectively debunked the Nazis, but it was probably not hard to do.

2. For sake of argument, let's say the Stanford protesters took the same approach. In their Q&A, what are the odds that they would hew to the Narrative, facts be damned, and would have come away from the hall feeling like they succeeded. I doubt that would be objectively true, but in their minds, the feels prevail.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

"...argued, defended, and defeated in public."

Why is this kind of public discussion/programing so rare?

Hint: It's a stalwart Althouse issue.

gspencer said...

The dean's tepid response is considered a defense of free speech? With no adverse consequences to the offenders despite their awful behavior?

Not one to rely on if you're ever found in a foxhole.

Mr. Majestyk said...

This comment illustrates very nicely that if you can't shout down someone with whom you disagree, you are forced to do research to arm yourself with facts and to put in the work to make a coherent counterargument. And the Stanford Law School incident illustrates that if you CAN shout down someone with whom you disagree, there's no reason to bother doing those things. Which of these situations is better for the students? Better for society? (P S. These aren't trick questions.)

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I follow the subreddit r/unpopularopinion and it has to have by far the highest rate of censored post in all of reddit. I've taking to calling it r/mildly unpopular opinions. (I'm not the only one)

In fact, the censoring at Unpopular Opinion got so bad, somebody made a r/True Unpopular Opinion sub and that too started to get overly censored.

link

Static Ping said...

It is more than that. The United States will not survive, at least not in its current form, if all sides cannot discuss their views publicly. A United States where only the government approved speech is allowed will collapse into civil war and/or tyranny. Yet, that is now the overt position of the Left and substantial swaths, if not the entirety, of the Democratic Party. There's no way forward from that position. It is an eliminationist position and someone will have to be eliminated. That's not a position I endorse, by the way, but that's where it logically leads. Some are too stupid to see it, and some welcome it.

It shouldn't be that hard to explain to college students, at least the sane ones, that the following are not acceptable:
- Blocking speakers from speaking, whether that be physically or drowning them out
- Threatening people
- Violently attacking people
- Demanding ransom of people you don't like (which literally just happened)

It should also not be difficult to explain to officials at a college or university that endorsing any of the above is a complete betrayal of their institution in general and their duties in particular.

And, yet, here we are. I mean, I'm not sure I should be surprised by anything anymore. The Democratic Party is the party of child sexual abuse, child mutilation, and transgender serial killers.

Iconochasm said...

Yes, those students had a positive experience because their position was logically supportable. Obvious inferences are obvious.

Sprezzatura said...

“If you want to listen to Trump's Easter message, like me, you may not be able to. I can't find it anywhere.”

Here ya go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj6E2_3nraQ

Nancy said...

No matter how vile ...
That's pretty loaded language.
There was a lag of many hours before the first comments were posted. Were you thinking about it, Ann?

MikeD said...

Well, it is Easter Sunday wherein we celebrate the Resurrection but, why does our hostess continue to choose to "die" on the DIE hill?

pacwest said...

I don't think that shouting down someone you disagree with qualifies as speech. Only one person was speaking. The others were just caterwauling. Distinct difference.

Original Mike said...

"Today, there's this notion that the young people would be injured by having to hear bad speech,"

It's because of the way they were raised. Sometimes I feel sorry for them.

TheDopeFromHope said...

Remember, kids, you don't get to "Nazi" without "Socialist" and "Workers' Party." ("Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei") Today, Nazis are the natural allies of the left.

Breezy said...

It’s sad that our culture now eschews a good debate on anything. It is the fountain of wisdom.

James K said...

Is it a question of
Are students ready for different viewpoints
[vs]
Are teachers ready for and willing and able to present them?

I have known teacher refusing


My daughter was in a class a few years ago at a prominent university, in a section (led by a TA) that had been designated as an opportunity for free and open discussion. The class had wandered into the topic of Trump's immigration policy, and my daughter made a seemingly innocuous comment that it was unfortunate that people can't listen to and discuss differing points of view anymore. Well the TA just lit into her with a tirade about how Trump was a threat to her family, and there was no room for discussion. My daughter sent a note to the professor about the TA's behavior and got no response.

Some 40 years earlier I was in a class at that same university that was discussing affirmative action. I raised the possibility of a stigma that might attach to those perceived to have gotten in based on their race, and the prof just ridiculed the notion. (I dropped the class and changed majors.)

So yes, the instructors are a big part of the problem, and have been for a long time.

Narr said...

Category confusion.

The HS debate (assuming it happened) was about historical fact and interpretation of evidence, while the Stanford shoutdown and the Nashville bullhorning were disruptions of public meetings by narcissistic freaks and louts looking for publicity.

The Memphis expellee made a political speech from the pulpit of the Church on the River (U-U)
this morning. God, I hate that stuff.

ken in tx said...

The Soviet Union lasted for 87 yrs. Jim Crow lasted from 1877 to some time in the 1960s or 70s depending on the location. Both of them with restricted freedom of speech helping perpetuate the false ideas propping up the regime. We may be in for a long haul with the current critical Studies regime.

Rusty said...

Happy Easter, farmgirl!
It was a glorious day.

RMc said...

But that's not where the liberal/left is at today. They are in power and don't need "free speech". So, why let others speak and disagree?

Everybody, no matter how vile, firmly believes that they are one of the Good Guys. And if you're one of the Good Guys and are in power, why should you listen to the Bad Guys for even one second?

Tina Trent said...

If applied to the current example, Stanford law students would be asked to hold a moot court exercise on the purported cause of their protest: the judge's refusal to change the name of a convicted serial child sex predator who had already failed to fulfill prior parole obligations and to register as a sex offender. The pedophile wanted to have his name retroactively changed on his prior convictions and is now serving his sentence in a NY prison for "special gender" prisoners.

The Judge's sin was merely refusing to change existing court records, saying that at the time the offender committed the crimes, he went by his birth name.

There is a recent explosion of cases in which male prisoners (especially sex offenders) claim to be transgender without actually altering their sex in order to be transferred to women's prisons. Also, given that this pedophile's desire to change his name and identity has bearing on the purpose of the sex registry, it's worth wondering if his latest demand isn't just a way to continue exploiting the justice system with frivolous appeals and opening the door to future litigation to remove aliases from the sex registry.

All the judge did was narrowly rule to refuse to retroactively alter a pedophile's name on court records created before his purported sex change. Lots of issues to debate here.

Perhaps if Stanford continues to be so spineless as to not expel students and fire employees who attacked a judge merely because he didn't pander to a convicted child sex predator, they could at least make the students research and defend the judge's ruling as an exercise in actually learning how to be lawyers.






Ann Althouse said...

"If the Stanford Law students diagreed with Judge Kelly, they could have engaged in a debate. And asked questions, no matter how pointed, and listened to the answers."

What you're missing is that the form of expression is part of expression. You're engaging in what I call civility bullshit — bullshitting about civility. Yes, I could have said "blathering about civility" or some other more polite thing.

Please review the Justice Harlan's opinion in Cohen v. California, rejecting the argument that Cohen didn't need to use the expression "Fuck the Draft" when he could have used "Down with the Draft" or some such thing):

"To many, the immediate consequence of [freedom of speech] may often appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance. These are, however, within established limits, in truth necessary side effects of the broader enduring values which the process of open debate permits us to achieve. That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense not a sign of weakness but of strength. We cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling and annoying instance of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these fundamental societal values are truly implicated. That is why "[w]holly neutral futilities . . . come under the protection of free speech as fully as do Keats' poems or Donne's sermons," Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 333 U. S. 528 (1948) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting), and why, "so long as the means are peaceful, the communication need not meet standards of acceptability," Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U. S. 415, 402 U. S. 419 (1971)."

Ann Althouse said...

Now, I just wrote "Please review the Justice Harlan's opinion in Cohen v. California" and gave you the relevant passage. I could have written something obscene and personal to convey my position that you don't understand the full dimension of freedom of speech. I chose the civil approach, but I'm defending the freedom to use a rude form of expression.

Tina Trent said...

I'm sure the Federalist Society students, the only members of the Stanford community who have consistently behaved with hospitality and intelligence throughout this farce, would happily host a moot court and even represent the position of the mob, if the mob represented the judge's decision in the case I cited above that the mob used as an excuse to pull their little Lord of the Flies stunt.

The protesters are (presumably) law school students. Definitively, they should be learning how to practice the law, not act out. All they have accomplished is generate well-earned disgust. This could partially redeem them, and people with better judgment and skills than they possess would literally be pleading their case for them in the manner it should be addressed among civilized and educated adults.

Gravel said...

Nobody is "missing that the form of expression" is part of expression; I suspect the majority of us are at least as familiar with McLuhan as you are.

Preventing others from speaking is not "expression". Frankly, it's completely fucking stupid - not just dishonest, but stupid - of you to imply that it is, whether you did so intentionally or not.

n.n said...

Dezis are like Nazis? Apt analogy.

DIEversity, redistributive change, wars without borders, wicked solution...

That said, to fuck or not to fuck that is the first choice.

Narr said...

This is about obscenity all of a sudden? (Ref. Prof's 745AM)



Smilin' Jack said...

“I could have written something obscene and personal to convey my position that you don't understand the full dimension of freedom of speech. I chose the civil approach, but I'm defending the freedom to use a rude form of expression.”

The issue isn’t the form of expression but the volume. Nowadays you can talk like a character from Deadwood and nobody cares. The use of shouting/bullhorns etc. is not a speech act and should not fall under freedom of speech. Its sole purpose is to obstruct the freedom of speech of others. Loudmouth demonstrators don’t seem to understand that they have a right to speak, not a right to be listened to.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"Are teachers ready for and willing and able to present them?"

At Hamline University, it got a professor fired. All she did was present Mohammad, as represented via historic art. Everyone knew the topic well in advance and had the option of not attending. One kid attended -- and then complained. Just one. The professor was discharged and the Dean has announced her retirement.

The concept of America died decades ago. Screw the Left.

Robert Cook said...

"The Soviet Union lasted for 87 yrs. Jim Crow lasted from 1877 to some time in the 1960s or 70s depending on the location. Both of them with restricted freedom of speech helping perpetuate the false ideas propping up the regime. We may be in for a long haul with the current critical Studies regime."

What is false in Critical Race Theory? I'm not asserting there is nothing false (or mistaken or overstated) in it--though, in its broad strokes, (all I'm familiar with), it seems well-founded--but what, broadly or in detail, do you find in to be false? Or do you merely cast the aspersion and assume that is sufficient to refute it?

Of course, your comparison of Critical Race Theory and theorists to Jim Crow in the South or the Soviet Regime is ludicrous, and undermines you as a serious or honestly-intended debater on the topic.

Robert Cook said...

"At Hamline University, it got a professor fired. All she did was present Mohammad, as represented via historic art. Everyone knew the topic well in advance and had the option of not attending. One kid attended -- and then complained. Just one. The professor was discharged and the Dean has announced her retirement.

"The concept of America died decades ago."


The fight for free expression in the US has always been fraught. We have never had a golden age where all was free to be discussed, disseminated, or displayed. This is just another appalling incident in the ongoing fight against the agents of suppression. It certainly reveals the school officials involved to be cowardly traitors to any commitment to academic freedom. I wonder if this will harm applications to the school? It should.

Tina Trent said...

And no, Ann, I'm not going to play your cossetted experience of being a not very incisive educator of constitutional law.

I've seen far better.

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Ann Althouse said...
Now, I just wrote "Please review the Justice Harlan's opinion in Cohen v. California" and gave you the relevant passage. I could have written something obscene and personal to convey my position that you don't understand the full dimension of freedom of speech. I chose the civil approach, but I'm defending the freedom to use a rude form of expression.

Bullshit

Me telling you you are full of shit is a "rude form of expression".

Me hacking your website and not letting you publish is a violation of your freedom of speech.

The "student" thugs" and the "DEI Dean" hacked the speech.

You can't actually be so stupid as to not understand that Justice Harlan's opinion in Cohen v. California has NOTHING to do with shouting down a scheduled speaker.

in fact, in this case YOU are the one taking the censoring position.

You are the one saying you can't say "fuck the draft", but in this case you're saying "you can't say there's no such thing as gender, or that religious people have rights, too."

No one is preventing the worthless left wing piles of shit from saying the stupid and pathetic things they claim to believe. What we are saying is that those piles of shit don't get to stop US from saying what we believe

No matter how much they claim it hurts their feelings.

Dean S and her recruited thugs censored Judge Duncan's speech's dn the speech of the Stanford Law Fed Soc members who brought him there.

And you're supporting their censorship