Free Speech on College campuses

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

To end the derail of the election thread:

OAR, DG,

My point is that in quarter of a century the attitude toward free speech on college campuses seems to have changed, a lot.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

I have nothing more to say on this subject beyond this- I believe you think that it has changed a lot, but you're responding to a change in coverage. This whole narrative is a media-created fiction with the same level of reality as the War on Christmas.

[DanteGabriel]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

To end the derail of the election thread:

OAR, DG,

My point is that in quarter of a century the attitude toward free speech on college campuses seems to have changed, a lot.

I tend to agree with OAR's thought that things probably aren't very different actually, we just hear more about this because there are clicks and ratings to be had in peddling stories to comfortable middle-aged people about how The College Kids are Crazy and Not as Tough as Our Generation. This one even involves Trump, so, double bonus.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

So, the Students of Yale didn't try to have a professor fired for asking reasonable and carefully worded questions about free expression and how it is valued at Yale?

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/us/yale-lecturer-resigns-after-email-on-halloween-costumes.html?referer=&_r=0

[DanteGabriel]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, the Student's of Yale didn't try to have a professor fired for asking reasonable and carefully worded questions about free expression and how it is valued at Yale?

I dunno, was there a situation at your college 20 years ago where a professor said some things that angered some students but nothing came of it and you weren't personally offended so it's prescriptive for every similar event to ever happen at a university?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

DG,

She resigned over it.  Do you think the call for Prof. Christiakis was proper?

Here's another example of how a Student at Yale reacted when Prof. Christiakis husband attempted to engage the student body in a discussion about his wife's email:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEFD_JVYd0&feature=youtu.be

[DanteGabriel]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

DG,

She resigned over it.  Do you think that was proper?

Probably not, given what I have read about the situation, but like I said when I mentioned shit-peddler John Stossel in the other thread, it's hard for me to believe that even reasonably non-shitty media organs can get everything right about these campus controversies. Especially when it's just so easy to write stories in the well-worn template of sheltered, overprivileged college kids run amok over common sense.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

DG,

Take a look at the youtube video I just linked.  I'm curious to hear your thoughts.  It is the end of a three video string if you'd like to watch them all for context.

[DanteGabriel]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

DG,

Take a look at the youtube video I just linked.  I'm curious to hear your thoughts.  It is the end of a three video string if you'd like to watch them all for context.

Why is it so important for you to get me to indict the conduct of students at Yale? Is proving that some number of Yale students behaved badly and betrayed the ideals of an open exchange of ideas going to validate your apparent belief that college students are coddled little wimps and are worse than when you were in school and being blithely unoffended by things that affected minorities? 

[ThePrunesThatWasPromised]

40 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

To end the derail of the election thread:

OAR, DG,

My point is that in quarter of a century the attitude toward free speech on college campuses seems to have changed, a lot.

American campuses are an absolute disgrace and we'd be better off dropping napalm on every spring commencement than we would allowing these people into society.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

16 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Why is it so important for you to get me to indict the conduct of students at Yale? Is proving that some number of Yale students behaved badly and betrayed the ideals of an open exchange of ideas going to validate your apparent belief that college students are coddled little wimps and are worse than when you were in school and being blithely unoffended by things that affected minorities?

DG,

Could you please point to the post where I call current college students "Coddled little wimps".  I'll wait quite a while because I've not done so.  What I have said is that I believe the attitude toward free expression, free exchange of ideas, and open debate, seem to me, to have changed quite a bit since I was in School a quarter century ago.

These kids are willing to stand up to people in authority they are willing to make their voices heard.  That isn't particularly "wimpy" behavior in my earnest opinion.

However, what does concern me is their efforts to silence people who say things they have deemed "offensive" or "improper".  It saddens me to see such passion devoted to the cause not of overcoming someone else's ideas by means of rational dialog but to see that certian ideas and opinions, including those suggesting we should be welcoming and accomidating toward free speech not be allowed to be expressed.

That's the change that I see.  Please don't put words in my mouth.  These kids aren't "coddled little wimps" they're simply wrong.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, ThePrunesThatWasPromised said:

American campuses are an absolute disgrace and we'd be better off dropping napalm on every spring commencement than we would allowing these people into society.

TPTWP,

Yes indeed.  That's a helpful way to address the issue.  Thank you for illustrating what we shouldn't be doing.

[DanteGabriel]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Could you please point to the post where I call current college students "Coddled little wimps".  I'll wait quite a while because I've not done so.  What I have said is that I believe the attitude toward free expression, free exchange of ideas, and open debate, seem to me, to have changed quite a bit since I was in School a quarter century ago.

Fair enough Scot, I mischaracterized your comments.

I simply don't think that much has changed. To draw from my own experiences, students at my school protested a speaking engagement by Dinesh D'Souza and, I believe, succeeded in having the invitation withdrawn. This was years before D'Souza really hit his stride as a propagandist. 

So from my perspective, using as an example a case of a thing that really happened and not a vague recollection that no one that you know of was really offended by something, it seems like maybe things have not changed that much.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

44 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Fair enough Scot, I mischaracterized your comments.

I simply don't think that much has changed. To draw from my own experiences, students at my school protested a speaking engagement by Dinesh D'Souza and, I believe, succeeded in having the invitation withdrawn. This was years before D'Souza really hit his stride as a propagandist.

So from my perspective, using as an example a case of a thing that really happened and not a vague recollection that no one that you know of was really offended by something, it seems like maybe things have not changed that much.

DG,

People were offended.  One guy involved in a debate with a friend of mine was so offended by my friend's essay that he put a veiled threat up in the course of his response to my friend's essays.  What they didn't do was try to silence each other.  They kept talking.

In fairness to your point that is one example and not necessarily true of all college campuses from the early 1990s.  Nor are Yale and Emory necessarily emblimatic of all college campuses today. 
 

That said, some of the things we are seeing in connection with free express do give me pause.

[TrackerNeil]

Oh, I knew one of these threads was coming!

I think there is in general a tendency among liberals to train fire at each other and play whose-pain-is-worse, but I'm not sure this is worse on college campuses than anywhere else liberals tend to congregate. It can be really annoying, but it's one of those things I try very hard not to get worked up about, because I think it springs from a genuine desire for inclusivity and respect. (Admittedly, you don't always see inclusivity and respect on display in these internecine conflicts, but then the reality often falls short of the ideal.)

[DanteGabriel]

21 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

In fairness to your point that is one example and not necessarily true of all college campuses from the late 1990s.  Nor are Yale and Emory necessarily emblimatic of all college campuses today. 

I think you should also consider the idea that the events at Yale and Emory are not necessarily emblematic of all Yale and Emory students. The articles about the Emory incident, I believe, mentioned a protest of 40 students? In a student body of about 15,000?

I also think that these 40 students probably would not have gotten riled up about Cruz or Rubio graffiti. There is something sui generis about the Trump effect. It probably has something to do with him being a bigoted misogynist who incites his supporters to violence.

[sologdin]

scot--

why is protesting by students who are pissed off not an exercise of their freedom of expression?  the approach to this that assumes pissed off students must quietly acquiesce in something that they don't like or find offensive or whatever--wherein they are the sole arbiters of their own aesthetic sensibilities rather than some rightwinger who alleges that they should not be and therefore are not truly offended--is completely totally absolutely cocked up.  

[Altherion]

36 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

I have nothing more to say on this subject beyond this- I believe you think that it has changed a lot, but you're responding to a change in coverage. This whole narrative is a media-created fiction with the same level of reality as the War on Christmas.

I disagree. It's true that college students have always protested -- sometimes over matters that are much more serious than the current crop, sometimes over things that are even more ridiculous. However, in the past, college administrators behaved like educators and told the students  when they were wrong. Today, this is no longer the case: the notable thing about the stories is not that students are protesting (that leads in notability only over college students drinking too much beer at a party), but that the administrators are resigning, acceding to the students' demands or otherwise enabling the ridiculous behavior.

This is bad both because the demands are usually either not well thought out or a power play by certain members of the faculty and because it gives the impression that the faculty and administration are either utterly incompetent or not in control (that is, in colloquial terms, the inmates are running the asylum). The latter is particularly bad because it promotes anti-intellectualism. You see it even in this forum, but it is much more common elsewhere. It's important to remember that universities are valuable -- many of the things we take for granted (medicines, semiconductors, etc.) were either developed directly at universities or by people who received most of their training at universities. This is a valid argument... but it is not nearly as exciting or impactful as a media professor whose research includes fans' relationships with Lady Gaga and 50 Shades of Grey readers calling for some "muscle" to remove a student-reported from public property. There are already plenty of reasons for anti-intellectualism; we do not need any more of them.

The good news is that there have been significant negative responses both from the government and from prospective students (and their parents, I suppose). In the most egregious case, the government has forced the university's hand and led to the firing of the above-mentioned "muscle"-calling professor (they deducted nearly 10 times her salary from the university's budget). Prospective students and their parents simply realized that a college with weak administrators might not be in their best interest:

Quote

“I am writing to you today to confirm that we project a very significant budget shortfall due to an unexpected sharp decline in first-year enrollments and student retention this coming fall,” wrote Interim Chancellor Hank Foley in a university memo Wednesday. Instead of a 900-student drop, as Mizzou expected, the university was looking at a 1,500 student drop, and that meant a continuing revenue shortfall as a smaller freshman class moves toward graduation, he explained.

Still, some permanent damage has likely been done to the reputation of academia as a whole and given all of the other things already not in its favor, this is highly unwelcome.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 minutes ago, sologdin said:

scot--

why is protesting by students who are pissed off not an exercise of their freedom of expression?  the approach to this that assumes pissed off students must quietly acquiesce in something that they don't like or find offensive or whatever--wherein they are the sole arbiters of their own aesthetic sensibilities rather than some rightwinger who alleges that they should not be and therefore are not truly offended--is completely totally absolutely cocked up.

Sologdin,

I have no problem with protesting.  I have trouble when the protests involve attempting to get people fired for saying something they don't care for or seeking to punish people for engaging in political speech they object to.

[lokisnow]

4 hours ago, NestorMakhnosLovechild said:

Hahahahahhaha. The infantilization of elite American university students continues unabated. It's amazing how quickly the idea of higher education at elite universities has transformed from a place in which the open and free exchange of ideas was lionized to a padded changing room for thumb-sucking 19 year old babies to have their diapers changed. 

Interesting you use that terminology. Yesterday, I watched the Documentary on the rise and fall of National Lampoon's on Showtime, and one of the things that struck me is that in looking back, National Lampoon's attributes their success to college students and college students were willing to embrace them because they are all babies.

They're brand new adults, newly free, newly indpendent, no responsibilities and that means college students are babies, and they react like babies. And he held that college students today are still babies, just like they were back then, because it is a phase of life, not any sort of back-in-my-day we were blahblahblah silliness.

Being scared of Trump chalk is the sort of thing that babies are scared of, for certain.