So, to be clear, the Barnard Administration’s position is consonant with the so-called, “Kalven Statement” (aka, “The Chicago Principles”) insofar as the President, its administrative spokespersons, department chairs, and website are concerned.
What about public safety? Barnard and other colleges have so-called, “time and place” rules regarding the right to hold political gatherings on college-owned property. My question is, does Chicago not have similar processes in place regarding public gatherings?
Although I don’t know the details of the process, @circuitrider , I believe it is open to any member of the university community or any recognized campus organization to apply for permission to host a speaker or constitute a public meeting on a campus venue. That would include protest demonstrations. I have never heard of “safety” being a criterion or a reason for refusal of such a request. Indeed, I would be highly suspicious of such a criterion in light of the way it has been invoked on other campuses - either on the basis that the speech or gathering in itself is said to make certain people feel unsafe or that an opposition group has threatened to disrupt a speech or meeting such that the university deems that it must be called off for safety reasons. The latter is a version of the heckler’s veto, which the Chicago Principles do not allow.
@DroidsLookingFor , if you’re confident that a poster poses a threat to a particular individual - and is not simply hate speech in general - I don’t see why you couldn’t tear it down. However, you’d better be damned confident. You’re proceeding at your own risk. Have you ever seen such a poster?
I’m trying to get at the principle here, not the specifics. Who is allowed to police violations of free speech limitations? The administration, or individual members of the community? (Or both?)
And even if it’s a bright red line, would there/should there not be some adjutication on the part of the administration to check that the violation, removed by, say, a student, as in fact a clear violation of those free speech limits?
I note that there’s a Disciplinary Committee for Disruptive Conduct at the University and would suppose that an infraction of that sort, if reported, could be so investigated and that a menu of possible disciplinary measures would be available. How the process would work I don’t know and frankly don’t have much interest in knowing.
As to your hypothetical, sure, if that particular poster were brought to the attention of the Administration, I expect they’d take it down. The reason I say I’d do the taking down myself is that I wouldn’t fear being disciplined in such an extreme case. In less extreme ones, you had better take it to the Administration, but if it’s only the hate speech you object to, you’re not going to get very far. That’s protected speech, loathsome as it may be.
The University should in my opinion have a light hand in these matters. That’s not everyone’s opinion. I note an op-ed piece in the latest issue of the Chicago Maroon by Jerry Coyne, an emeritus prof in Evolutionary Biology, who takes the Administration to task for failing to discipline members of the SJP for holding demonstrations without permission and even announcing their intention of carrying out blockages of University activities, as they have done on at least one previous occasiin (“no business as usual”) in defiance of the Chicago Principles. My own preference would be to wait for these further blockages to actually materialiaze and, if they do, send in the cops to clear them. If the Chicago DA then refuses to proceed with prosecution, the University should take its own disciplinary action. Indeed, it should do that in any event. “No business as usual,” if it became more than an obnoxious slogan and was acted on, is a dagger at the heart of the University’s mission.
I’m glad we can both admit even physics has “laws”. Now, if only we can identify what laws of the Universe rule the University of Chicago because I really don’t think its president would fare any better in front of a Congressional hearing than Liz Magill.
I don’t get it, circuit. What does any of this have to do with a supposed reluctance on my part to acknowledge laws, “even” those for physics? Hunh? Best to take our collogquy to a private message if you want to continue it, else the boredom will become overpowering for anyone still listening in.
As I’ve said on several occasions, for me the problem with the answer Magill and the other Presidents gave to that infamous question was not that it was the wrong answer but that their invocation of free speech principles was wooden and unconvincing in light of the histories of their institutions, and it gave rise to the natural conclusion that placating the campus ideology re Jews and/or Israel was really what it was all about. Could Paul Alivasatos have done a better job? I hope so, given the record of his institution in these matters. However, the performance of individuals is not really the point. I don’t view this as a competition among University Presidents.
I don’t get a vote, but I would vote to keep the thread / discussion active. The discussion is civil and interesting. I personally have a hard time squaring Marlowe’s position, but I appreciate the discourse trying to support it. FWIW, UChicago is on my daughter’s radar for next year and this discussion will have some impact on her decision to apply.
Regardless of whether you take this to PM, I wanted to thank you for the interesting posts.
For those in the Chicago community who are interested in free speech on campus you might be interested in signing up at the newly formed University of Chicago Free Speech Alliance which you can do at Substack by searching uchicagofreespeech
@SF2030 , I don’t have much of a clue about substack but found that site on it (I believe) and signed myself in.
@merc81 , it’s a form of argumentative jiu jitsu - Socrates would have called it sophism - to hold that a belief in free speech equals acceptance of any particular speech itself. The free part is only the starting point. Error, nonsense, disingenuousness, bad faith, and, yes, woodenness are all permitted - i.e. they are not pre-emptively ruled inadmissible - but then comes analysis and discussion on the merits.
If Voltaire is to be believed - and if indeed he actually said any such thing - he would have “defended to the death” the right to assert nonsense - say, that we live in the best of all possible worlds. This would not have prevented his ridiculing that statement.
I’m late to this party, but you’ll want to spend that money on said legal fees.
Advocating for genocide is perfectly legal under the 1st Amendment, so long as it passes the Brandenburg test. So long as there is no immediacy to the advocation (which is a high threshold), then it is perhaps protected speech.
You say ‘advocating violence’ is one of the limits to the 1st Amendment, but that too is wrong for the exact same reasons. So long as I’m advocating violence without an immediate temporality, that’s protected speech.
A better argument might be the 1st Amendment exception for speech incidental to the commission of a crime, but for that you would need to prove a conspiracy to commit genocide and apposite mens rea, which I suspect is unlikely in any relevant university speech case.
You later point to ‘hate speech’, but the 1st Amendment recognizes no such thing. Beauharnais v. Illinois was impliedly repealed by New York Times v. Sullivan. And ‘incitement’ still must satisfy the Brandenburg test — it must be an immediate call to harm those students right there, right now. Calls for genocide elsewhere are unlikely to satisfy any such requirement.
Whilst there are international law requirements to prohibit such speech (hate speech/genocide), the US has never agreed to such. Indeed, it is an outlier in that way.
Now, we may have moral disagreements with that legal proposition, but that doesn’t change the law. Whether a university wants to tolerate such speech is also a separate question from its legality (though note the speech obligations that nonetheless apply to universities, especially public ones).
The problem with your post and with my posts in this thread is that we need a specific context or case in order to justify our positions.
I made multiple posts above. The quote that I included here indicates that I agree that there needs to be an attempt to incite violence. In the context of heated campus protests, speech advocating for the genocide of Jews is a real and immediate threat and, therefore, not protected free speech if so found by a trier of fact.
Your use of “so long as” in the above suggests agreement on our positions in that whether or not hate speech is protected under the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution depends upon the facts of a particular case.
No, I disagree with your assessment here, yet again. On multiple grounds.
(1) Speech advocating for the genocide of any group does not, contrary to your assertion, seem to present any immediate threat whatsoever. The threat has to be to people right there, right now. If I am advocating for the genocide of some group of persons, there is no clear link to the immediacy standard found in Brandenburg. It has to be likely to incite immediate unlawfulness. Advocacy of genocide – say I think one country (not here) should commit genocide against another country (not here) would fail this test. I would have to be calling for genocide to be performed right here, right now, against the people right here, right now. Advocating for genocide in general does not satisfy this condition.
(2) Yet again, this is also incorrect. ‘Hate speech’ as a speech category is not recognised by the 1st Amendment. Hate speech is permissible. Speech that incites immediate unlawfulness, fighting words, true threats, speech incidental to the commission of a crime, and so on, does not enjoy protection.
We are not in agreement. Context matters, and facts matter. The context and facts suggest that, contrary to your repeated assertions that this could fail the 1st Amendment protection thresholds, I see no evidence of this.