No idea what Dorian Abbot has to do with the topic of this thread (his speech has been extensively discussed elsewhere on CC), but is is a good example of flip-flopping some do when it comes to free speech on campus. His speech was cancelled by MIT. Surely MIT can pick and choose its own speakers. That too is free speech.
On controversial topics, it would seem the choices are to either allow all free speech or demand heavy censorship. Presumably students who donât wish to be exposed to their classmates will self segregate.
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I wish you were correct, but I believe that you are not. A school like Berkeley does not have the resources to stop a hecklerâs veto, even if they wanted to. It would require more police & security. Who is gonna pay for that? Take it from academic tuition? Charge teh campus club who invites the speaker to pay thousands of dollars for the extra security? (Isnât that a hackerâs veto in financial form?)
Sure, the Uni could ask for IDâs and suspend students, but what about the non-student community rabble rousers?
Iâve been reading the back and forth here. I have an undergraduate student at MIT.
They have felt isolated due to simply not wanting to endorse an absolute view that Israel has no right to exist and that any actions taking by Hamas (including rape, abduction of babies, murder, etc.) should be considered justified resistance.
Student leaders signed several statements to the effect in the name of all members of a student group.
Students were told they needed to attend rallies and teach ins and viewings of antisemitic documentaries about how âthe Jews control the US media.â Students have been told that if they donât agree, they donât belong and are complicit in apartheid and genocide.
My student tried to first speak with the student leadership, then an administrator, and then finally reached out and ccâd everyone they could think of to get out of the particular situation that was the epicenter of this for them.
As far as the universityâs response overall, there was going to be a lab effort to combat antisemitism, then antisemitism and IslamophobiaâŠand so far the most visible result was a four speaker series (run by the administration, not students), with one speaker on antisemitism, one on free speech, one speaker on Islamophobia, and one speaker specifically on Islamophobia as it relates to Palestine (and this speaker had said earlier that October 7 was justified resistance).
I hope the administration stands by their time and place restrictions and enforces them so that students who do not agree, or have a more moderate opinion, or who have no real opinion and simply want to focus on college can do so without being harassed.
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All it requires is a few dozen suspensions.
Itâs already beginning to show results at MIT.
And external agitators can be arrested for trespassing. Even better.
Assuming, if course, the administration has the political will. Or wants to remain employed.
âŠOk, maybe UCB can continue to serve as an example to others. 
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Honestly the experience described by @Nemesis_Artemis is more depressing than anything I have heard from my son. I truly hope the situation improves soon (or is improving) for their student, and I hope their experience of isolation is not typical of what is happening at MIT. 
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I know. Ugh.
Interestingly, the statement (link below) was signed by a lot fewer student groups than a similarly disgraceful one issued at the outset of the Hamas rocket attacks in 2021 that caused my olderâs summer research internship in Israel to go remote.
Good for @Nemesis_Artemis 's kid on taking the stand and saying ânot in my name!â
If they ever find themselves looking for company on a Friday night, I know they would always be welcome at Hillel. Free food and a great crowd that will happily embrace a friend.
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Thereâs a lot of opinion here about how free speech has been a festering, chronic issue on college campuses. This assertion has then been levereged in two ways. One, initially after October 7, it was used to bolster the claim that Universities were obligated to make a public statement about Israel. Now, it is used as a context for painting a picture of college campuses as being chronically politicized and biased.
A lot of the support for this opinion comes from the FIRE survey. This survey is no basis for valid opinion. https://www.chronicle.com/article/harvard-last-in-free-speech-dont-trust-fires-rankings. If you are skeptical about this article, a 15 minute wade into the actual survey that FIRE distributed (and was answered by <1% of college students) is helpful. Further, for example at Harvard, FIREâs poor rating was based in part on Harvardâs refusal to allow Kyle Kashuv to enroll - a student who publicly in speech and in writing repeatedly used the N-word and called for the genocide of all Jewish people. Another of the 6 episodes of Harvardâs administration being intolerant of free speech weighed by FIRE was when a presentation by Harvardâs president was interrupted by protestors and moved to another room in the same building. In neither of these examples is it clear to me how free speech was inappropriately limited. In the second example, didnât the free speech by the student protestors matter? Would anyone believe a survey I took of 5 of my next door neighbors as authority for my town? That would be a similar fraction as was sampled by FIRE
I am in no way against anyone expressing horror about anything that happened or is happening in that area of the world. Still, to say that Universities are obligated to take a stand or that Universities are hyper-politicized because of a supposed âdysmalâ rating by FIRE doesnât make a lot of sense.
Students I have seen admitted to elite universities are selected for their grit. The ability to overcome adversity or keep adversity in perspective and still find a way to prosper. Students I have met who could not overcome even very real adversity or discrimination or who canât keep adversity in perspective are never admitted. Harvard is now being sued for millions of dollars in damages by students stating that a campus protests made their ability to get an education impossible. I wonder what changed since they were admitted.
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Donât we commemorate MLK with a national holiday? Groups that for whatever reason do not have representation among those in authority often lack access to a public platform. And actions like marches, shouting, blocking of public right of ways, temporary occupation of public places are part and parcel of civil disobedience including for the United States civil rights movement, more recently the BLM movement, and Me Too. These are ways for groups to gain a voice.
There are extreme views on both sides of this argument. And extreme sensitivity has been deployed also by both sides to enrobe themselves in the discussion of safety.
Isnât this a lot like our collective discussion of Karens? The use of prosaic rules to stifle activity or people that they find objectionable.
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FIREâs numerical rankings, they are secondary.
You donât have to believe Harvard is the worst to acknowledge there is a long-standing problem with free speech on many American college campuses.
The short answer is NO.
The right to free speech does not convey the right to deny that right to others.
âYour rights end where my rights begin.â
It beats violent protests.
That word âtemporaryâ is a good one.
And thereâs nothing wrong with students marching and shouting.
Without FIRE, then, your statement that âthere is a long-standing problem with free speech on many American college campusesâ then just becomes your opinion.
My observation after over a decade on campus at the Ivy League is the opposite. I can count on one hand the number of demonstrations I witnessed, and almost without exception, passing students either looked away or looked annoyed because they were late to class or to the library. These are the same kids who got 1600 on the SAT, played 3 varsity sports and two instruments. And it takes some work to get a job at Lazard or into Yale law.
Generally, hyper-politicized people believe that university campuses are hyper-politicized. If you read any other threads on this website, you might think instead that most university campuses are full of students who are hyper-careerists.
Rights donât start and stop at other people. Otherwise Iâd have every train car, restaurant and hotel to myself. Civil rights activists infringed on lunch counter ownersâ rights in Greensboro, NC. Absent actual violence (not the subjective fear thereof), much of it is simply free speech. Have you seen Central Park Karen? She was afraid. That doesnât always carry the day.
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âŠso⊠microaggressions arenât really a thing?
If microaggressions mean you can sue Harvard for millions in damages, some students really need to check their grit. They may also struggle in just about any workplace.
Karen-ism is just one of many very vivid examples of how a subjective report of fear can be weaponized against others you wish to silence or remove.
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What about students that disrupt places of learning because they feel strongly about something happening somewhere else?
Would they continue to do that at their place of work?
I bet no employer would tolerate that.
Why do colleges have to?
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Arenât colleges precisely the places where young people are supposed to express and be exposed to a broad range of ideas and views? Isnât that a principal point of diversity in the college experience? Have you heard of the 1960âs? This seems like an international phenomenon as college protests seem pretty much ubiquitous in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas.
A little bit different from IBM? Except yes, hoping to live a life free from microagression is a bit far fetched. Anywhere.
Doesnât a lot of this just boil down to publicity? If a group can claim that Harvard is against them, it makes for good press and endless newsprint. Just ask FIRE.
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Call me old-fashioned, but I am not paying hundreds of thousands for my kidsâ math lectures to be disrupted by SJW terror sympathizers and their âideasâ.
I didnât sign up for this kind of âdiversityâ.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/17smhxm/this_is_a_math_class_this_morning_at_mit_this_is/
I bet many of the current campus protestors would disagree.
Oh, the irony.
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The problem is that some protesting students are disrupting academics and, in some cases, intimidating students who donât align, or care to participate, in the protest at hand. I believe that a universityâs raison deâetre is to educate their students. When protesting starts to undermine an education, thatâs where, IMO, administrators need to take action. I agree, as someone posted earlier, that ~20 expulsions would quiet just about any campus - and that may be whatâs required.
In general, I find it amazing that students work so long and hard to gain admission to some of these elite universities only to then feel entitled to impose their vision of social justice on their fellow students. Sad.
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There certainly can be something wrong with marching and shouting: time, manner and place. (Marching and shouting outside of a room conducting finals should not be allowed, for example.)
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Of course, appropriateness of marching and shouting activities includes attention to time place and manner.
However, itâs possible to engage in appropriate marching and shouting. Itâs not possible to engage in appropriate harassment or vandalism.
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