Writes Erwin Chemerinsky, in "No One Has a Right to Protest in My Home/The difference between a private yard and a public forum," an Atlantic article, illustrated with a drawing of a conventional suburban house.
Is it about the sanctity of the home or not?
The dinner, which was meant to celebrate graduating students, was obviously disrupted.
The private family home is an emotionally compelling topic, but as you can see, it's not crucial to Chemerinsky's power to shut down the student who wanted to deliver a speech.
Some commentators have criticized my wife for trying to get hold of the microphone. Some have said that I just should have let the student speak for as long as she wanted. But in all of the dinners we have held over more than 15 years, not once has anyone attempted to give a speech. We had no reason to change the terms of the dinner to accommodate someone from an organization that put up anti-Semitic images of me....
Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?
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64 comments:
"Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?"
Is that a bona fide ask, or a leading question?
But OK, I'll bite. No. Anyone who co-opts a gathering for a purpose other than what it was intended shouldn't be accommodated.
Sure, of course. But there's a difference between him being more accommodating and what the law demands.
A big difference is that the speaker used a microphone. That wouldn't be allowed in a classroom setting as it would be disruptive. More so in a private home with neighbors.
It's not anti-semitic, just anti-smart white people vs dumber brown people.
Anti-semitic is playing off the Jews' using universal anti-semitism as a cultural way to keep low IQ Jews from assimilating. An enforced alienation.
High IQ Jews use alienation as a creative resource, as in Jewish scholarship.
You can't win a who's the biggest victim battle, and the much lower IQ Palestinians aren't going to give up the victim role, especially since it's part of the smart white vs dumb brown wokeness standard.
The right argument is that Jews do the moral thing - productive and mutual wealth producing trade with Palestinians, which is shot down or blown up by Hamas every time - and the Palestinians are the irresponsible and immoral ones. Nothing about anti-semmitism. The Palestinians are wrong because they're wrong.
Mutually beneficial trade is a result of Jewish scholarship. It's a Mitzah, a duty from God.
Since it's news, nothing is resolved that works as soap opera, which is why this will never go anywhere. Soap opera and clickbait rule. As in covering school shootings. Everybody knows it's a bad idea but it's great for advertising revenue so it continues.
And unfortunately Jewish spotting of anti-semitism everywhere supports the soap opera.
Uninvited speakers are rude, unless they are surprising the host with some sort of praise or gratitude. It’s the host’s call whether to accept the intrusion or not.
"Anyone who co-opts a gathering for a purpose other than what it was intended shouldn't be accommodated."
That's one policy, but Chemerinsky is suggesting that he might be willing to have a different policy: "We had no reason to change the terms of the dinner to accommodate someone from an organization that put up anti-Semitic images of me." He's implying that there could be "reason to change the terms of the dinner." Once he's said that, there's a whiff of viewpoint discrimination.
"Sure, of course. But there's a difference between him being more accommodating and what the law demands."
If he changed the policy to accommodate speakers, the law would demand something: refraining from viewpoint discrimination.
"These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have other principles."
It’s really not that hard.
He is saying that if you are asking me for an indulgence, a favor if you will, then perhaps I will be more inclined to accommodate your special request if you are not a Jew-hating terrorist simp.
I wonder if Dean Chemerinsky has ever commented on the ongoing protests outside of Judge Kavanaugh's house?
Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?
i'm PRETTY sure, that he is Explicitly Stating; that if the speaker had been a right-wing Christian..
The speaker would have gone to jail.
The ONLY Reason the pro hamas speaker was allowed to speak At ALL, was because her viewpoint was Completely Acceptable. The Only reason that the family is in trouble is because (Again) the speaker's viewpoint was Completely Acceptable
You're emphasizing potential viewpoint discrimination, but when I read his quote the point about antisemitism stood out. Which seems to be a rhetorical emphasis on perceived danger and highlighting hate speech which is not perceived as simply a different viewpoint.
Is hate speech something the university is required to allow to protect viewpoint diversity? Does the law compel a citizen to make space for hate speech that has already been proven to be personally directed?
A person can’t exhibit viewpoint discrimination in their own home? What exactly is the law that requires that? These are invited guests to celebrate their accomplishments. It’s perfectly fine to discriminate regarding any type of disruption. Otherwise, wouldn’t you lose the privilege of your property?
The implication (or inference) is that it’s only about viewpoint discrimination - that those across the isle are incapable of accommodating a different viewpoint. That’s not true: it is entirely possible to have a discussion - a heated one - with someone who doesn’t think like you.
If yo want to brow-beat and cudgel any form of discussion, and actively engage in aggressive activities promoting your viewpoint then you are de facto wrong and should be condemned for that activity.
When he says this:
"But in all of the dinners we have held over more than 15 years, not once has anyone attempted to give a speech. We had no reason to change the terms of the dinner..."
He seems to be claiming that a historical fact or pattern (no one attempted to give a speech in 15 years of this dinner) somehow converted itself into "the terms" of the dinner.
Given the situation, clearly he'd like it to be the case that he can comfortably claim that invitations to this dinner came with terms. But the historical pattern can't convert itself into terms, I wouldn't think, unless the historical pattern had been announced or conveyed to this year's invitees. Since it's a new crop of invitees every year (the 3Ls) they can't reasonably have known what the historical pattern, unless he was explicit about it when issuing the invitation, or at the point of entering the party, or somewhere else along the line.
Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?
At base level this is about Freedom of Association.
Ann's Devils Advocate position here is these Palestinians are oppressed and should therefor be able to afflict anyone with their point of view. Those Jews have to listen to the Palestinian Protester that wants them wiped out from the river to the sea because the Jews are Strong and the Palestinians are oppressed.
But Ann bans people from this space so this is clearly not her position. So what is the right answer?
Elon just started a row on twitter last night pointing out that the left has replaced "Might makes right" with "Weak makes right" and the obvious poor outcomes you get replacing one axiom with another.
The necessary realization is that every society oppresses something. That is the definition of society. Society only exists when you suppress incompatible elements and maintain societal order according to a social contract.
In the case of the Palestinians and the Jews the Palestinians have made it clear that one side or the other has to go. They have forced this choice. This is clear to every person in the world.
You cannot use morality as a decider in this case because no matter what you decide you are going to oppress someone. There will be killing and there will be oppression. That is the basic requirement for society to exist. Anyone who uses a moral argument in this situation is wrong and their position is based on fallacy.
The attacks on my post are predictable of course. I will hear it from idiots on both sides of this who cling to moral pretensions.
There are only two considerations you can make here:
1. Why is there a problem?
2. What needs to be suppressed in order to maintain societal harmony?
We have already established that this problem exists because Palestinians demand the Jews be eliminated. It must also be pointed out that in every country the Palestinians live in they are the problem. Israel has killed fewer Palestinians than Jordan has.
History provides an obvious solution: The Palestinians just need to go. The men need to be killed until they surrender and disband their tribe and the women and children be absorbed into something societal arrangement that is less ridiculous. Nobody wants them around. They are killed wherever they go and they have made themselves toxic as an association.
Israel will fail because they are holding moral pretensions that they are not strong enough to live up to. They failed when they didn't disband the gaza strip completely and moved the Hamas Society out of the space they use to attack them when they had the chance.
It was his home- he is completely free to practice viewpoint discrimination inside his home. However, since it is Chermerinsky, it is hard to have any sympathy- I view it mostly as him getting what he deserves at a personal level. And I bookmark this for just such occasions.
"If he changed the policy to accommodate speakers, the law would demand something: refraining from viewpoint discrimination."
In his own home? The law does not demand we entertain the rants of people who hate us inside our own property. Nope. Where, exactly, is this protocol written out about who and what we are forced by law to permit in our private homes? How far does this principle go?
What will actually happen is that, because of threats such as these from lawyers, these graduation dinners will just cease to exist. Congrats!
Next year don't invite all the students to dinner. Explain to the students why you no longer feel that you can. If you have a favorite student or two, wait until grades are posted and get together with them socially if you feel like you want to wish them well. That would be my advice. No one needs to take abuse in his own home.
When my kids were teenagers, we hosted gatherings of their friends on a fairly regular basis. Since it was my home, everyone followed my rules. When they met at other homes, they followed those rules. I recall taking one young lady aside and explaining that in my home, I expected my guests to treat each other courteously, so if she wanted to continue to be a guest in my home she could not make fun of or humiliate others.
The woman giving the speech at the dinner was not following the rules set by her hosts. If they asked her to stop speaking, she should have put down the microphone and returned to her seat or left the gathering. Hosts are free to set the rules of conduct for guests in their home, and there is no constitutional right to be a guest in someone's home.
Ideally someone would have thought to turn off the speaker rather than try to take away the microphone away from her, but she had no constitutional right to give a speech at the gathering, even if others had been permitted to speak.
The LA Times for decades has run Chemerinsky's far left views in its op-ed pages. He is an ally of the pro-criminal LADA George Gascon. He has never seen a leftwing cause that he hasn't supported. The German word for his new and ironic predicament is schadenfreude.
The left will seek his firing as dean. The story of Robespierre comes to mind.
Truly believing in Free speech only counts if it's speech that you hate.
Free Speech is an affordance: the creation of a space where people whose views you may not share may express their views. Affording such spaces is an alternative to violence. Belief in Free Speech is the approval of such spaces, even when the ideas expressed do not meet your approval, but only in a sufficiency to accommodate the need of the speaker to be sufficiently heard.
Nothing about this says that every space need be a Free Speech space or that every gathering of people or open plot of land can be converted into such a space at the initiative of a man or woman with a microphone. We have, led by thinkers like Chemerinsky, convinced ourselves otherwise and now Free Speech belongs to the bold who are willing to disrupt a dinner party or a funeral, or camp out in a quad at major university. The answer to disruption, more and more, is cancelation, whether it is classes or graduation ceremonies. Now we ask for affordances for our ordinary lives and are told that, due to the first amendment, nothing can be done.
Chemerinsky's son ran against Gascon in the last DA primary.
I'm enjoying the great comments in the thread flushing out what the Dean possibly meant by what he said. Like others, I wonder what the Dean thought of protest events when a public figure was eating at a public venue in a private manner. I think speech should be allowed in such a circumstance but intentional disruption of a person dining should allow a limit to how method and length of speech. Example, saying "Fuck Joe Biden" a couple of times and then dispersing, fine. Giving a 20-minute speech on why Joe Biden should get fucked using a megaphone at a restaurant should be curtailed. The language is intentional, because the harshness of the statement usually enters into other areas in which the law doesn't allow vulgarity in public.
Put all the whiners in jail.
Would have been better to have just shot her.
It would provide a valuable life lesson to others...
Howard said "Truly believing in Free speech only counts if it's speech that you hate."
Obviously believing that being surrounded by hate 24 hours a day, like a Jew in Nazi Germany, is a step towards Freedom is delusional.
Believing in Free Speech is believing in reciprocity with differences in power set aside.
For the love of the numberless gods of the underworld, please don't make me defend Chemerenski again.
But your fisk here is so selectively dishonest, let's play another pretend game of Coycratic Method.
First, Chemerenski wrote THE effing book on speech law, so I encourage folks to read his article to understand the law here. Not Althouse. She is deflecting, not engaging laws and facts, and her comments about the article focus on linguistic minutia, irrelevant what-if-ism, and some nasty snipes about feelings about homes, rather than truth, laws, and facts. Not to mention that he was there and gives a full account of the attack, which began weeks before the party, took place on campus, and included insinuations of violence from the protesters. How threatening? Posters accusing Chemerenski of being a mass murderer, with images of him with his mouth dripping with blood were pasted all over campus walls; coordinated campaigns demanded that the dinners be cancelled; coordinated campaigns demanded that he and his wife be fired for being genocidal Zionists.
So that's the backstory. To Chemerenski's credit, he refused appeals to have the campus posters removed, saying they were free speech practiced in a public place, and he insisted on hosting the dinners at his home despite the threats. But he and his wife knew they were being targeted by virulent anti-semites, some of them members of an US designated terrorist group.
Althouse decides to read his mind and say that she senses a "whiff of viewpoint discrimination," even in this courageous, rational, and consistent stand.
Yeah, take a whiff of Theo Van Gogh, or Salaman Rushdie, or Molly Norris, or the writers for Charlie Hebdo, or -- oh, I could go on, but why bother. You don't seem to believe in the extent of organized Islamic terrorism on campuses and know nothing about its tactics.
Chemerenski also shares other disturbing but unsurprising facts: ten students disguised themselves throughout that dinner party as merely guests, then stripped off their shirts to reveal matching shirts with a threatening messsage used by terrorists when the main terrorist began chanting.
Protesters showed up at his home the next night banging drums, disrupting that night's dinner, and his neighborhood. Now it's on. He has a price on his head. The attacks will only escalate.
These people don't want debate, let alone free speech. They want revolution, with professors like you hanging from streetlights or being humiliated until death in re-education camps.
The Chemerenskis knew this and still behaved with principle, and frankly, courage. The least you could do (recalling your little dance around the "draw Mohammed day," when you felt ouchy about your pal having to go into hiding, but, oh well, justification, justification, justification: look at those pretty flowers painted on broken shop windows) -- the least you could do is tell the truth about what was done to these people.
Forgive me, oh Beelzebub, for defending Chemerinsky, but the path to hell is paved with a hell of a lot of weird things.
"Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?"
No, he's not.
Jenny @ 9:32 +++, also Yancey @9:28.
Oh and, by the way, Chemerenski also explains that the same group would not have the legal right to disrupt the dinner if it was held at a dining room on campus. So, no, this isn't merely some emotional meditation on the meaning of houses, though the facts do make clear that it's not merely a "speech" issue when there has been a level of premeditated and publicly stated malice that would make any reasonable person actually fear for their safety when, out of some 60 people in your home, at least 11 who had announced their desire for your death in advance suddenly enact a coordinated assault on the event (the terrorist chick and the ten others).
To the best of my knowledge, he neither illustrated that article with a picture of a house nor chose its title. It would be highly, highly unusual if he did. Magazines and newspapers universally select illustrations and titles. So, in fairness, your argument should stick strictly to his text, unless you also have some beef with Atlantic magazine's graphics department.
"Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?"
No. Just clarifying the absurdity of the situation and his personal stake.
Next time: garden hose.
Chemerinsky should remember the old story about lying down with dogs.
You get up with fleas.
“We had no reason to change the terms of the dinner to accommodate someone from an organization that put up anti-Semitic images of me....“
More of an emotional than a nuanced legal argument.
IOW — a rhetorical and ironic gesture meaning, “to add insult to injury.” The chutzpah!
More popcorn please!
Never grab the mic, just go over to the amp and turn it off.
“If he changed the policy to accommodate speakers, the law would demand something: refraining from viewpoint discrimination.”
Never allow anyone to talk in your house, or you will be required to allow everyone to talk.
how hard is it to say = dumb and doofus Dean in deep doo-doo
If you lie down with dogs, you get up with dogs.
suppose that the microphone weilder had been allowed to carry on ad nauseum maybe with party participation!
Neighbors call in about noise complaints
what now> discuss
If the Palestinian student had decided to stand up clink her glass and decide to give a spontaneous speech singing the praises of her hosts, that would have been fine.
So it's not about the interruption of anything it's all about the content of what the student said.
Free speech isn't for snowflakes
Everyone is tired of entitled brats.
Typical Law professor crap. Or should I say Lawyer crap. Smears. Misdirection. Ofuscation. Straw men. Misrepresenting the other persons POV. Insults. And appeals to authority.
I'm getting very very tired of privilaged Jews screaming Anti-semitism at anyone who dares to criticize them or who they dislike.
Look at this beauty: "She belonged to an organization that posted an anti-semetic picture of me"
IOW, I'm going to call her a Jew hater, but I don't have any good evidence.
And who cares if "No one made a speech before"? Or that "It was my house". It was a University Function and he was PAID by the University to hold it. This wasn't some rando off the street, it was a 3rd year law student.
In any case, like almost all Leftists, this Professor is on the record as approving "Rudness" and "breaking rules and traditions" when protesters are doing something he and the Left like. Is anyone really so stupid as to believe Chemorsinky would care if this same women had barged into Elon Musk's home and made a speech about White Men being racist? LOL!
But hey, its Him, and he's Jewish. So its different. Yeah, Okey-dokey.
Does the host of the party not realize that he should be praising the disruptive guest for using words, not explosives and ball bearings strapped under her garments, to express her support of Hamas and the Gazans? He should be down on his knees praising her for not yet killing him and every other dirty infidel present. Of course, he should always be down on his knees in her worldview, because, hey, Jew.
Pro-Palestinian protesters carry the burden of demonstrating they are NOT going to kill people around them indiscriminately as their form of protest. Convince me I'm wrong, or die trying to convince a Hamas supporter I'm wrong.
The real question is why do the 98 percent of Americans who are NOT Jewish, constantly put up with the attempt to make every incident with a privilaged person who happens to be Jewish, a nation-wide issue with all us having to go "there, there, it will be OK" everytime they think something "antisemitic" happens?
Or put up with this tribalist egotism and demand that everyone care? Or that people who are rude to them be destroyed? Or allow 2 percent of the population to dominate almost every media outlet? Why doesn't the Media ownership "Look like America?"
Muslims can be as Anti-American as they want.
But they can’t be Anti-Semitic.
The Chemerinsky Rules
It is delightful to see these professor being harassed by their own creations. They could have stood up for Western Civilization but the professors preached their war against it for decades, now their red guard is at their homes.
Oh, FFS.
If a guest comes to any dinner party and behaves inappropriately, the host has the right to ask the guest to leave.
The inappropriate behavior might be as benign as criticizing the menu (as a vegan might), stating that the other guests are boring or otherwise unpleasant, or saying that the party should have been rescheduled due to the guest's religious or family obligations that require her to leave early. There are no free speech rights at a private party in a host's home. The guest could even be required to leave, or denied entrance, for dressing in jeans and a torn
T shirt for a formal dinner.
Too many made-up "rights" exist nowhere but the imagination of the unaccomplished.
It's not complicated, despite the best efforts of Dean Erwin "Robespierre" Chereminsky.
"Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?"
I would say, you are welcome to infer that, but he is not suggesting it.
It's paywalled, so I am wondering, where did the microphone his wife tried to grab come from?
@8:39
No he isn't. You're reading in.
Four decades ago, at posh Ivy League department chair’s backyard barbecue for department grad students, professor called me his “little babushka, my immigrant girl with perfect GRE scores”. My, times have changed.
Favorite interrupting clinking of glass to give a speech, Last Chance Harvey (2008)
"Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?"
I would think not. I believe the objective of these types of get togethers is to have close conversations with colleagues, not be subjected to lectures. I don't know, though. I was not not invited to many of these types of gatherings at my Alma Mater, although I heard they occurred. fat cats and alley cats, ya know.
In the vast majority of these cases, over drinking alcohol is the problem. Here that does not seem to be the cause.
They have no issue accommodating the antisemitism if they would just be more polite about it…
Hey, Rcock, did you actually look at the evidence, the murderous threats against Jews from this organization, or did someone semitic beat you out of an AP class or a woman once in your pathetic life?
Why don't you grow some balls and use your real name, so I don't have to spend $25 to tell it to everyone here, big boy (or little girl)? Because I can get it in 24 hours.
You do claim to support free speech. So let's tell everyone who you are. I may alreday have it, so decide quick. And Ann, show us if you're made of -- anything substantial -- or are just a sniping quisling.
"If you lie down with dogs, you get up with dogs"
Unless the dogs have since left the sufficient proximity.
Ann, I read Chemerinsky's comment slightly differently than you.
I think his point is that not only did the 15-year tradition of these events militate against having any of the students be given the opportunity to harangue the other guests at his house, but if he was giving that privilege to anyone, it certainly wouldn't be a representative of an organization that had posted anti-Jewish caricatures of him.
"But in all of the dinners we have held over more than 15 years, not once has anyone attempted to give a speech. THEREFORE We had no reason to change the terms of the dinner to accommodate ANYONE, ESPECIALLY someone from an organization that put up anti-Semitic images of me...."
My insertions may go further than reporters usually go in "cleaning up" unscripted speech, but even if I'm being too charitable, it seems you are jumping to a conclusion that he is implying that he would have allowed "a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint" to give a speech. What he calls out for criticism is her MEMBERSHIP in the organization that posted the anti-Semitic images of Chemerinsky, not the content of her speech.
That said, I think you are probably correct in your overarching point even though I disagree with the parsing of the statement: If it had been an African American law student who started to harangue the dinner guests, particular if this were in the plague-summer of St. Floyd, Chemerinsky and his wife would probably have nodded along enthusiastically.
But, baby steps. Baby steps. Probably the realization that their feral pets have turned against them and feel absolutely no gratitude for the patronage that enabled them to be graduating from an "elite" law school is about as much cognitive dissonance as the Chemerinskys of academia can process now.
Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?
So what if he is? If I'm hosting a dinner and someone gets up with a microphone to insult me to my face, why shouldn't I respond aggressively? It's expected behavior at a a Hollywood roast, but not at a dinner celebration. Your (and, to be fair, Chemerinsky's) efforts to go all lawyerly is one reason why people applaud so much when they're watching a play by Will Shakespeare and the character on stage calls for killing all the lawyers.
Hate has a home here - You don't.
“Is he suggesting that he might have accommodated a speaker with a more pleasing viewpoint?"
If it was Publishers Clearing House, I sure would.
"is he suggesting"
Is this one of those 'just asking questions' type of posts?
A. He might be saying that just because her cause is the new thing, doesn't mean he has to change what he's done for 15 years
B. Presumably at these dinners students have spoken before. But probably about their time at the university, what they learned, how thankful they are etc etc.
So yes-hed probably accommodate them
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