Greg Lukianoff, Interim President Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), sent along the following email that I believe illustrates perfectly the critique of the academic “tolerance” culture that I’ve been at pains to describe and explain—both from a sociolinguistic and a political perspective.
And given how essential it is that such a philosophical paradigm is intellectually thwarted—despite its near ubiquity in university humanities departments, which then translates into its adaptation by policy makers, who tend to “learn” well the trappings of progressivism during their schooling (the irony being that those who get often better grades tend to be the most accepting of the social philosophy they are being asked to absorb and regurgitate)—such battles over the soul of classical liberalism are important to highlight at every opportunity. Writes Mr Lukianoff:
Dear Mr. Goldstein:
Karen Murdock, a professor at Century College in Minnesota, decided to post the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed on a hallway bulletin board to educate her students about the global furor that the cartoons provoked. Her display was taken down repeatedlyâ€â€even after she covered the cartoons with a curtain and hung a large warning sign. Worse yet, administrators, rather than condemning the vandals, have repeatedly insisted that she not repost her display. Murdock does not have tenure and understandably fears for her professional future. FIRE is demanding that Century respect her rights.
FIRE’s full press release on this case appears [here].
Unsurprisingly, what this situation highlights is that the way the students choose to interpret (and claim offense) to the posting of the cartoons—even under cover and with a warning—is given a kind of validation, on the grounds of tolerance, that is, by extension, not being extended to the free speech rights of a professor, whose intent is to inform, and who has taken pains to avoid giving offense.
Which is to say that what we have here is an example of a university promoting an idea of “tolerance” that is nothing short of the soft-totalitarianism of actively enforcing an “offense-free” zone (a decision that has the practical effect of assuring an array of victim groups, each of which will be given the equal “right” to censor those they consider offenders)—all while claiming to protect free speech.
This “right” not to be offended shows up in many different forms (from “coercion” in the Pledge controversy, to the hanging of Ten Commandments, etc)—and it is directly opposed to the idea of free speech which helps ground western liberalism.
That it is pervasive in the university culture is a sign that we have a lot of work to do to turn the tide back toward our own constitutional mandates, which—let’s face it—have become so twisted by pretzel logic in some cases that they are barely recognizable.
In this situation, I have no problem with students who use their free speech to counter hers. In addition, I would have no problem with her practicing self-censorship if she chooses to acquiesce to the demands of others to remove the cartoons, so long as the demands of others are limited only to speech with no threat of violence. That is the way things like this should work.
I have a real problem with a 3rd party who has authoritarian control forcing either side to bend to the will of the other. There is simply no need for it. I do believe it gets a bit trickier when the institution is privately owned, because then it is the absolute right of the owning institution to make whatever speech rules it wishes and equally the right of others to avoid that institution if they wish. This does not apply to state run schools, which are by definition, ours.
I’d like to see a SCOTUS opinion in one of these cases that reads in its entirety as follows:
The law does not protect against, and provides no remedy for, hurt feelings.
Why is this a surprise to anyone?
This has been ongoing for over thirty years. In ‘72, things were still in flux but trending to the left and the embrace of identity politics replacing the values of classical liberalism and individual freedom.
By the late 80’s and early 90’s it had become far more widespread and entrenched . Free speech on campus is not suffering a ‘chilling effect’ as many like to write. On many a university campus, it was frozen a long time ago. Furthermore it is a pervasive and systemic problem that will not easily be corrected.
You have very well and thoroughly discussed this in detail on this site many times.
I think the difference is that now, during a war, we are seeing how such muddleheadedness effects our ability and even will to wage a war against the fascistic political movement hiding behind a religion.
The question I would like to hear your ideas on is how do you go about correcting this? How do we reinvigorate moribund humanities departments and return to really teaching humanities and again making the campus a place where people can freely express their ideas and opinions without fear of some arbitrary reprisal? That’s not a jab or a taunt. It’s an honest question, because unless there’s a viable alternative I don’t see how you make the universities change.
If America were an art movement, we would clearly be in our Mannerist Period. University culture fetishizes our rights in sometimes beautiful and sometimes grotesque fashion like the Mannerists: the pursuit of happiness becomes gratification without consequence; equality under the law morphs into cultural relativism (we’re all good!); and inalienable rights are construed to mean natural rights, in no need of our viligant defense.
What Defense Guy said. Let the marketplace of ideas make the ultimate decision. Just let the consumer see all of the products. We’ve been through this before Jeff. No one has the right to not be offended. If one takes offense then one simply needs to provide a counter argument.
Speech does not cause bodily injury. Just hurt feelings.
This seems to be much ado about nothing (as is often the case with these stories of campus totalitarianism). According to Century College, they never censored the pictures the first time they went up. The second time they went up, the chair asked her to take them down because they were on the department bulletin board. And that makes sense…department bulletin boards are usually for department news, events, etc., not as a platform for making personal/political statements. (And even with that, the administration has made it clear that she has a right to put what she wants up there. The spokeswoman for Century said, “We certainly have no control over what people put on bulletin boards. There’s a First Amendment issue.”
If she wants, Dr. Murdock should just put the pictures up on the door of her office.
(Obvious disclaimer: I fully support the right of Murdock to post the cartoons in public.)
Here is a cartoon about the Mohd. cartoons. Pretty good.
maybe I’ll do a long rambling post at my little blogspot, but…
first, lefties have always had different meanings for words that most of us take for granted, but Orwell understood them: ‘war is peace’ ‘hate is love’ etc. (All right, it’s been ages since I read “1984″) In the mid 1960s, Gus Hall, the longtime boss of the Communist Party USA, was carrying on about free speech, etc, and was asked if that meant that groups like the John Birch Society should be given the same right to free speeach: Oh no, Hall replied, they shouldn’t have the right to free speech because they want to take it away from others.
Second, suppose someone on a college bulletin board puts up a picture of Hitler with some comment like, “He did some bad things but he also did some good things.” Should the picture be taken down or some someone else have the same posting rights to put up a picture of mountains of corpses at Dachau with the words, “And this is one of the bad things he did.” As conservatives or libertarians (I was a member of the Birch Society many years ago and also voted for Libertain Party candidates for many years) we should (in my opinion) go with the second response, but you know that… well, who knows – maybe they’d tolerate the Hitler picture and the Dachau picture, but not tolerate at all the picture that shows communist/leftwing atrocities.
I dunno… One only needs to think of the two day turn around the American communists did when Nazi Germany invaded Russia in June ‘41…
I dunno… sorry about any typos…
I dunno. Maybe the professor’s error was to put the cartoons out in the open where they could be seen (and removed), rather than putting them on page 2 or page 3 of the college newspaper.
Were she able to do that, then we would be discussing this on the merits and faults of censorship of the press rather than just common vandalism.
Of course, she would probably have to dodge a Jeep or two, but sometimes that is the price to pay for carrying the Torch of Academic Freedom.
An interesting contrast can be seen with what is going on at the University of Saskatchewan in their newspaper (http://thesheaf.com) regarding a cartoon named “Capitalist Piglet.”
tw: fire. For those about to rock, we salute you.
– There are a thousand ways to conscript freedom of speech of those you can’t tolorate, and only one honest way to really support free speech concepts and actions….
– Free speech is a reasonably identifiable thing by the direct and obvious results, and when its missing those results are just as easily seen.
Well, one place to start would be to clean out the Department of Education, declare postmodernism dead as a matter of policy, and start using the power of the purse as leverage.
The scariest thing I saw on the TV news in this issue a few months back was a pretty young coed at UCLA explaining that ‘yeah, we have freedom of expression, but you shouldn’t want to say “bad things.”’
Don’t see how a state institution which I guess this Century College is, can limit free speech in any way.
How can administrators “insist” that cartoons be removed?
They can ask; that’s about it.
Another tempest in a teapot….
Not pleased with implications.
Institutions of higher learning now apparently dedicated to setting foundation for next Fifth Column.