There is a disturbing story how this week concerning the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and specifically Commissioner Michael Yaki, a Democratic appointee who was a former senior adviser to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Yaki spoke on sexual harassment law in education, a subject on which I have previously written to express my concerns over the loss of due process rights for accused students. Yaki’s comments however seem to threaten core free speech principles as he laid out his view of the need to curtail harmful speech. Yaki spoke of the need to outlaw unpopular or what he considers degrading speech because college students are too impressionable.
He highlighted the types of speech that he want banned as including certain types of fraternity or parody displays considered offensive. He also included pageants as possible speech crimes due to the dangers inherent in “a situation involving women” in which they “parade around in skimpy clothing and turn in some show or something.”
He then added: “I mean where do you think you can, that the university can’t deal with ensuring the route it has environment that is not oppressive or hostile because obviously a campus, especially certain types of campuses where there’s a lot of — where — that are geographically compact, that have a lot of working and living situations in a close area to create a campus atmosphere . . . Doesn’t that gravitate toward having greater ability to proscribe certain types of conduct that have the ability to escalate beyond what anyone would consider to be reasonable or acceptable?”
Whatever that may mean, Yaki then made the most dangerous turn of his comments in suggesting that speech limitations are appropriate on college campuses under the same theory as applied to elementary students: “It has to do with science. More and more, the vast majority, in fact — I think — overall in bodies of science is that young people, not just K through 12 but also between the ages of 16 to 20, 21 is where the brain is still in a stage of development.” Yaki’s distinction between “the juvenile or adolescent or young adult brain processes information” and “adult brains” would allow for sweeping speech limitations. He simply declared that even college brains are “vastly different from the way that we adults do.” He added that “when we sit back and talk about what is right or wrong in terms of First Amendment jurisprudence from a reasonable person’s standpoint, we are really not looking into the same referential viewpoint.” This distinction, he argued, offers “very good and compelling reasons why broader policies and prohibitions on conduct in activities and in some instances speech are acceptable on a college campus level that might not be acceptable say in an adult work environment or in an adult situation.”
We have seen in recent years increasing demands for the curtailment of speech as hate crimes or forms of discrimination. We have even seen professors engage in alleged crimes to stop speech on subjects like abortion. While Republicans were once criticized in the 1960s as hostile to campus speech, it now appears that Democrats are more often demanding the criminalization or the banning of different forms of speech. The suggestion that college brains are undeveloped and requiring protection from bad speech is truly unnerving.
Source: Yahoo. Eugene Volokh first reported on these statements by Yaki.
“the Commissioner is undoubtedly confused.”
Theo,
Where is the evidence he is confused?
The core of the 1st Amendment is that you answer speech w/ speech. I do not want to stop the Pelosi’s, Yaki’s, Holder’s, from speaking. I want to broadcast their words from the highest mountain. I want people who don’t spend much time on politics. So many people are just working hard to get through the day. The woeful economy has them working 2 or 3 part time jobs, making it difficult for them to think about anything but taking care of their families. I know, I don’t believe, I KNOW if people read and hear these Constitutional terrorists speak, it will end. Because it is antithetical to the genetic makeup of the vast majority of people in this country.
I am in favor of free speech and the Commissioner is undoubtedly confused. But where is the evidence he is on the Left and where is the evidence that so many on “the Left” as you call it are demanding curtailment of the First Amendment? If you mean liberals, liberalism is a philosophy of the center not of the Left and at the present time constitutes no set of beliefs but has been me-tooing ever since the rise of the Right. If you mean neoliberals, they are a pretty repressive bunch these days judging by the activities of both parties in the Congress and in the executive branch. You undoubtedly know that the First Amendment has never covered speech in the work place nor has it in practice covered speech on campuses, where it has always been hotly contested by the authorities.
Deliver us all from junk brain science. The destruction of the scientific method in the name of “settled” and cherry picking to target causation where correlation may not even exist is just underwhelming. The same people that want to control speech and thought for “the sake of the children” have been the drivers of indoctrination of earth religion, climate crisis, nutritional tyranny and exercise myopia…all of which have contributed more to illness, neurotic obsessions and high anxiety children than anything ever recorded. Even hiding under our desks in the 50’s did not create the anxiety we see in kids today who have programmed by liberal progressive think police to expect a climate apocalypse at any moment. To the speech police: Want to shut others up? You first.
Groty – great post!
Of course, what happens in Socialist and Communist societies, like Russia and China? The inevitable suppression of free speech and dissenting opinions. It starts out “for the people” and ends up controlling the people.
Lee:
I suggest you carefully re-read different topics on this blog.
When people voice a conservative opinion, the result is instantaneous personal attacks. I have been told to leave the planet, and that I’m racist, and want poor kids to die, merely for voicing a fiscally conservative opinion.
And if you think about it, this will sound familiar on the national scale. Voter photo ID = racist. Welfare reform = racist. 16/20 free contraceptive choices = war on women. Have a problem with missing climate change data or conflict of interest = stupid denier who wants polar bears to die. Disagreeing that scant education funds should be used to provide free breakfasts to all students, regardless of socioeconomic status = wanting poor kids to die. Sound familiar?
But I agree with you that demonizing your opponent is wrong no matter who does it.
Par for the course, and completely on trend, unfortunately . . .
Name Game:
Yaki, Yaki bo waki
Banana fanna fo wacky
Fee fi mo yacky.
A schmuck like this needs to go into politics in Romania or some such place and get out of America before it turns into AmeriKa.
leej, You are correct, some folks have gone too far. Maybe I need to start playing advocatus diaboli. When I got here it was the left that were nasty. You’re one of the tough ones who have stayed during the swinging of the pendulum. Many have proven to be cowards.
The other way to try and limit speech is by calling names and stigmatizing as in “progressives is non sensical, as in a disease, etc. That is how you turn away one side of the conversation. Even MSNBC has republicans on and those that do not agree with dems and liberals. Maybe I have not paid close attention but it seems that the right, in particular, on this blog has more and more often been insulting and demeaning to those with whom they disagree rather then mounting legitimate debate and argument.
“you have to ask yourself, how can a person so incoherent be on the US Civil Rights Commission?”
Is this another example of Pelosi’s “fog of war” avoidance strategy.
Progressivism is totalitarianism. The academic left has convinced itself that it has arrived at it’s positions non-ideologically – using ONLY reason and logic – guided by morality. That’s why they use the “appeal to authority” argument so often. If they’ve used reason and logic guided by morality to arrive at their positions, there is no rational basis for dissent. Dissenting views, therefore, MUST be arrived at using lesser human characteristics such as prejudice, bigotry, fear, hate, greed, self interest, etc. So if progressives start from the morally superior position arrived at using only reason and logic, there is no point in considering any other position. The progressive views are righteous and uncontestable. All other views MUST be suppressed because if they take hold they will lead to morally inferior, sub-optimal outcomes and a less than utopian society.
And if you persist in promoting a non-progressive position, you will be punished and put your career at risk. See, for example, the guy from Mozilla, the Duck Dynasty guy, the Christian brothers with the real estate TV show, etc. They’ve unsuccessfully tried to silence Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for decades. We’re now seeing climate scientists with long and distinguished careers being stigmatized and threatened with physical harm for expressing views that dissent from the alleged consensus about climate change.
The inevitable result from this, I think, will be a far less vibrant, stagnant society. All scientific and economic innovation is arrived at by challenging the existing orthodoxy. And if progressive totalitarianism only permits people to think and speak progressive thoughts, and punishes people who have dissenting views, then how can new or differing ideas ever get traction?
The more non-sensical, the more “Progressive”,as in a disease.
Gerard Harbison
If the brains of 20 year olds are ‘undeveloped’, should they have the vote? If they aren’t mature enough to be exposed to the full spectrum of debate, how can we expect them to make mature electoral choices?
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The Squeeky wheels grease the get.
The frontal lobe judgment begins to mature at about 17-25, depending on the individual and on the culture that individual belongs to.
bailers, LOL! Right on cue. See what I mean.
Gerard, Pelosi appointed him. YouTube “Pelosi is an idiot” and your question will be answered, and you can have a good laugh as well. Unfortunately, the fact that she is so powerful is not the least bit funny.
Bailers, There are some people not even worth the effort of response. Intellectual honesty is foreign to them. Just sayn’.
Wayne, Donna Shalala was Clinton’s HHS Secretary. Prior to that, she was the University of Wisconsin President. She was known as “The High Priestess of PC” and was a strong proponent of speech codes. Shalala was the architect of speech codes @ UW. That was over 25 years ago. I know JT has been strong on this issue for the 2 years I’ve been here. I have to believe he has been repulsed by this leftist attack on the 1st Amendment for much longer.
“randyjet
nick, I see that you do not know US history at all. The rightwing had control over all things you mentioned until recently.”
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You say that as if that excuses the extremes the left is now trying to go to. It’s as baseless as still blaming Bush.
The right only got one shot at behavior like this during McCarthyism. The left has expanded on that and gone one step better. Instead of passing laws (that can be overturned) make it social unacceptable to have countering viewpoints. Oppose the President? It must be because you’re racist! Think women pay gaps isn’t the problem that it is being made out to be? Sexism! I could go on and on with the extreme and personal attacks that are being made. We both know it’s true. We don’t need laws anymore. The internet has made it possible to ensure the scarlet letter follows any heretic wherever they may go so they can be personally destroyed even if they have a reasoned argument.
With the possible exception of the drug war, I don’t remember the right ever being so competent in limiting speech.
bailers, I guess you never heard of WWI, WWII, the antebellum South, the Alien and Sedition laws, etc..McCarthy was just the most recent dictatorship that the right established in this country. McCarthyism was FAR worse than anything that the so called left has done or is doing.