A board at the University of Maryland announced it will postpone indefinitely the screening of “American Sniper” on campus after Muslim organizations opposed the watching of the film as anti-Islamic and offensive. I have not seen the movie, but the effort to prevent other people from watching films set badly with me both in terms of free speech as well as the pluralistic values governing university communities. The movie was critically acclaimed and nominated for six oscars, including best picture, actor (Bradley Cooper) and adapted screenplay. Even people like Michele Obama have publicly proclaimed how the movie touched them. This is not to say that they are right. However, opposing other people from seeing a major artistic work is part of a growing effort to curtail free speech in the West and particularly on college campuses.
We have seen a crackdown on free speech in the West. For other recent columns, click here and here and here. This trend has only increased after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo in the West. What is particularly worrisome is that these attacks on free speech are being done in the name of pluralism and tolerance.
The role of universities and private organizations in this trend is equally worrisome. This includes the disgraceful decision of Yale University Press to delete all of the Muhammad cartoons that triggered a spasm of murders and church burnings by Muslims around the world. Yale removed the cartoon from Jytte Klausen’s “The Cartoons That Shook the World.”
There has been a campaign across the country by Muslim students and faculty to ban the film as offensive. The University of Maryland’s Muslim Student Association declared that “American Sniper only perpetuates the spread of Islamophobia and is offensive to many Muslims around the world for good reason. This movie dehumanizes Muslim individuals, promotes the idea of senseless mass murder, and portrays negative and inaccurate stereotypes.”
There are many films that are objectionable from different perspectives. I never liked Zero Dark Thirty (2012) from a civil liberties stand point because it perpetuated the myth that torture was the key in finding Bin Laden or that it is somehow justified by such results. However, I would not seek to prevent others from seeing it. I am satisfied with voicing my objections to the accuracy and implied message of the film.
Recently, a similar effort led to initially to the canceling of a showing of American Sniper at the University of Michigan but later relented to showing the film after public outcry.
Maryland pulled the film after the objections but failed to explain where this line is drawn over groups preventing students from seeing films on campus. However, Student Entertainment Events, announced that it was contemplating “an event where students can engage in CONSTRUCTIVE and moderated dialogues about the controversial topics proposed in the film.” Once again, it is not clear whether other films would be subject to such special measures if groups or individuals object. While I commend the group for seeking a compromise, I remain disturbed by the lack of clarity in the standard for such postponements or barring of films. Any group can schedule a discussion about a film on their own. It does not serve their interests to be seen trying to deny free speech in this way to others on campus. We have long maintained that the solution to bad speech is more speech — not the denial of unpopular speech. There has been no restriction on the Muslim student group from planning such discussions. The question is why other students should be prevent or postponed in seeing a major and critically acclaimed movie.
What do you think?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-the-honor-brigade-an-organized-campaign-to-silence-critics-of-islam/2015/01/16/0b002e5a-9aaf-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html
“But in the past decade, such attempts at censorship have become more common. This is largely because of the rising power and influence of the “ghairat brigade,” an honor corps that tries to silence debate on extremist ideology in order to protect the image of Islam. It meets even sound critiques with hideous, disproportionate responses.”
This even happens on threads on this blog. Po called me a liar, Islamophobe, insulted my intelligence, and said he should put me in a harem because I’ve criticized extremist Islam for loathing dogs, for example.
We are either going to submit to censorship, or we will straighten our spine and say “Sod off” to any attempts to limit our hard won free speech. It’s not their fault for asking us to censor; it’s ours for allowing it.
randyjet…the conservative political current that was Stalinism. The Stalinists had more in common with the right wing than the left as was proven when the Soviet Union fell and the so called communists converted en masse to capitalists.
So sad.
po
TJustice and fiver said it well. Show the damn movie.
Let’s just make sure that when the same students decide to show a movie celebrating, let’s say 9/11, that the same freedom of speech supporters defend that too.
I’d like to see this. Why reinvent the wheel though? Wouldn’t it be faster and easier to just queue up the videos of Palestinians cheering in the streets?
HumpinDog
Non Muslim students at University of Maryland: speak up or forever hold your piece.
I suspect there are more non-Muslim students than Muslim students pushing this. It’s a campus-left initiative.
“This is the dumbest thing you have said so far”
What a fine and learned refutation, po.
Edward
What’s gun regulation and control have to do with this? I am a strong proponent of the right to possess weapons for self defense. I am against the NRA’s position on ‘no control’. I am against gun ownership by those who have been deemed unfit by society. I am for responsible gun ownership with mandated education and safety courses, like driving. The stupidity of comparing the US with pre WW2 Nazi Germany and post WW2 China is perhaps the greatest threat to the US. There is no comparison whatsoever. The only chaos approaching that of the examples of Nazi Germany and China is the chaos created and proposed by the NRA. This line of argument is similar to Pogo’s where he constantly states if gay rights are allowed then all rights no matter how ludicrous will be allowed.
The first indication of a losing argument is the total misalignment of examples with the situation at hand. It makes one wonder what sort of an American is holed up in their basement waiting for the US military to attack.
“Criticizing speech is not censorship” is a simple phrase that no one would argue with.
But when the University club censored this film, to claim that that was not censoring, not banning at all, but merely a form of “criticizing speech” is pure Orwellian genius.
I was congratulating you on that formulation; few could do that so well.
TJustice and fiver said it well. Show the damn movie.
Let’s just make sure that when the same students decide to show a movie celebrating, let’s say 9/11, that the same freedom of speech supporters defend that too.
Millennials confuse when something offend them with something being offensive.
Pogo is losing his head. Really?
This is the Muslim version of the Indiana bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding….the let and Sharia have much in common (vicious authoritarianism), hence their frequent alliances.
This is the dumbest thing you have said so far. have you being using from your stash of Oxycontin?
JC,
By “independent” I meant that the decision was made by a student run organization without direction from the University.
I think JT is missing the true objection. He’s limiting himself to the free speech impact, but that allows all others impacts to proceed without criticism.
Our biggest objection should be to the lunacy that movies or ideas covering normal topics are anti-Islamic or offensive (or anti-woman or racist). We’re creating a world where people feel free to make the most idiotic characterizations (Christina Hoff-Summers might make people feel unsafe) because making them doesn’t trigger any negative repercussion to their reputations. It’s important we prevent step up for free speech. But if we changed the culture to ridicule these idiotic assertions fee speech would be far safer, along with other benefits like the ability to have adult discussions.
“claims that demands for censorship are another leftist conceit is utter nonsense.”
Straw man.
No one has made that claim.
No one argued that censorship belongs only to leftist ideology.
Instead, the argument was quite specific: at the Universities where this film was banned, it was the left doing the censoring.
Pogo, You are obviously ignorant of the left and Stalin. The first victims of Stalin were the real communists who actually made the revolution. In FACT, ALL of the members of the CP Central Committee were killed off by Stalin, or died. It is as though Judas had taken control of the Christian Church, killed off all the other disciples, re-wrote the ideas of Christ, and then called it true Christianity. If you think that would have been the right way and could call that Christianity, THEN you would be right. Stalin even burned his own book, Foundations of Leninism which was written when Lenin was alive. After his death, he got rid of all copies he could get his hands on, and wrote a new one that suited his real views.
I read the autobiography of Krushchev, and was astounded at how little knowledge he had of almost anything. It struck me that he had never read Marx, Lenin, except in small doses, and had no idea of what Marx or any of the other writers on the left had written. After Lenin died, he was part of what Stalin called the Lenin levy of admissions to the party. This opened a floodgate of people to the party who were totally ignorant of politics, except for the fact that they owed Stalin. They swamped the existing membership, and served as the base for Stalin in the CP. The so called last testament of Lenin called for the CP to remove Stalin from his post as General Secretary as well. You have to take Stalin’s word or theories that he was the legitimate heir of Lenin, which is absurd on its face.
I also had a chance to talk to some official Soviets when their Youth delegation came to town. It took me only a few minutes to find that I knew more about their history and politics of the left than they did. To call them communist would be charitable to say the least.
Pogo,
The phrase “criticizing speech is not censorship” is not at all the same as the phrase “Censorship is really Criticizing Speech.” The first notes that there is a difference between criticism and censorship. The second states they are the same. In other words: they mean exactly the opposite, Einstein.
Quite simple really.
Also, the first is what I actually wrote. The second was your invention.
Have a nice day.
I should add that had this nonsense been attempted on any self-respecting university campus in the late 1960s, students would have shown it anyway. We thought we had won the free speech wars then. We were obviously wrong.
Anyone who knows a lick about history, and I mean quite literally anyone, recognizes that claims that demands for censorship are another leftist conceit is utter nonsense. Stupidity is not ideological.
I have frequently expressed my views on the breadth of the First Amendment, most recently here: http://jonathanturley.org/2015/01/10/blasphemy-and-freedom-of-speech/
It matters not a whit to me how offended anyone is over a film, a book, a painting, a song or one of Squeeky’s Irish poems. And every college campus ought to be a center of challenges to orthodoxy. The University of Maryland should have rejected without hesitation all requests to postpone the showing of this film. That it succumbed to intolerance is both dishonorable and dangerous. Perhaps the word “university” should be removed from its name.
Isac, I am happy to see you. Here is a link I found especially for you. Please take to time to read it in it’s entirety. It is very educational.
OOPS,to quick to click
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/01/gun-control-dictator-style-tyrants-who-banned-firearms-before-slaughtering-the-people/
Isac, I am happy to see you. Here is a link I found especially for you. Please take to time to read it in it’s entirety. It is very educational.
@fiver SEE is not an “independent” student group. they have access to university funds and facilities.
This is another case of political correctness gone too far. . Next they will want to prevent the TV stations from showing the people being beheaded by their extremest brothers, after all they believe they are the good guys.
WAKE UP PEOPLE! your freedoms are being usurped. Hitler started out the by controlling what the people saw and learned. College is a place where you go to broaden your outlook and learn to think. The college should be challenged in this decision by the students.
It is an excellent movie about the life of an ” AMERICAN HERO ” who volunteered and risked his life for his country. He and many others fought so future generations would be free, something that a lot of the ” ME ” generation would be reluctant to do.
Instead they continue to be so politically correct that they let small very vocal minorities take their freedom away, piece by piece. This may well be the beginning of the end for the freedom of future generations. Look at the history channel, broaden your education about dictators and their evil regimes. They ruled by terrorizing the people. One of my relatives brought back pictures of some of the horrible things that were done to soldiers and civilians alike in world war two. There are a lot of good Muslims in there world, but there are also a lot of bad ones. Do you want
women to wear burqas in this country.
At least now ” what you see is what you get “.
Fiver, that was pretty good.
Censorship is really Criticizing Speech.
It reminds me of:
Ignorance is Strength.
Freedom is Slavery.
War is peace.
The University of Maryland didn’t “bar” anything; it didn’t “pull” anything; and it didn’t “indefinitely postpone” anything. An independent student group that shows movies for entertainment postponed two May showings following complaints about the film. There was no university input or direction whatsoever. The source article makes that clear from the headline onward.
And somehow this is a “crackdown” on free speech? Huh? Students are being “prevented” from seeing American Sniper? As a resident of the D.C. area, perhaps Professor Turley could enlighten us as to how many thousands of times the movie has already been shown in theaters across Prince George’s County. How many more thousands of times on DVD?
If postponing two showings of a movie that has already been shown millions of times nationwide is “banning the movie,” then a career porn star’s weekend off is virginity.
No. The censorship, um, ship has long since sailed. Indeed, it doesn’t even appear to have ever had any passengers. While there has plenty of criticism of the film, the claim that “[t]here has been a campaign across the country by Muslim students and faculty to ban the film as offensive” is simply not accurate.
Criticizing speech is not censorship. Nor is an independent student group’s evaluating complaints of bigotry and propagandizing in this film.