Academia, Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Politics, Society

Purdue Follows University of Chicago In Standing Ground In Favor Of Free Speech

Purdue_University_Seal.svgWe recently discussed the courageous stand of the University of Chicago against the growing speech codes and “safe spaces” in campuses around the country. Now, Purdue University has taken its own stand in favor of free speech in adopting “the Chicago principles.”

Purdue asked its students not to go through microaggression training or cultural sensitivity courses but a program on free speech and academic freedom that showed “the value and importance of robust speech and debate on campus.”

Purdue guaranteed that those on its campus will enjoy “the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn.” It also unequivocally declared that “it is not the proper role of the University to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”

Bravo Purdue Bravo.

49 thoughts on “Purdue Follows University of Chicago In Standing Ground In Favor Of Free Speech”

  1. Hey Prof. Turley, why don’t you do a post on whether the Santa Clara police union threatening to boycott the 49er games because of Kaepernick’s criticism of the police is engaging in conduct similar to college students seeking to ban from their campus provocative speakers whose views with which they disagree.

    1. http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Santa-Clara-Police-Officers-Association-May-Boycott-Working-49ers-Games-392214541.html

      The money quote is as follows:

      During 49er games, around 70 officers volunteer to work and are paid as security personnel. Now it is unknown whether more than half of those officers will show up at the team’s next game on Sept. 12.

      Are off-duty police officers indentured to the 49ers?

      Now, the students could do something analogous to what the police officers did, which is send a letter to the college president telling him that if they do not debar Charles Murray from the campus, we the undersigned will refuse to attend Charles Murray’s event. That would be pretty silly for the students to do that. Neither Murray nor the college administration has any need of their presence.

      The students can only get what they want if the administration takes their part and acts coercively. The officers get what they want only if the 49ers weigh their options and decide that’s a better course of action. Leverage is what being useful to someone gets you.

      Please note, the off-duty police are refusing to work for a commercial company which harbors a man who slandered members of their guild. The SJW students are demanding no one be permitted to hear Murray because they dislike his take on social relations in this country.

  2. If we can not get some doctors without borders to patrol our universities perhaps we could just give out free anti psychotic drugs to the punks with disorders. They might choose this over pot or heroin.

  3. i commend these 2 schools. But, there will be backlash, big time. I hope they batten down the hatches.

  4. PBS was supposed to be for everyone.

    The reality is that PBS is a taxpayer funded mouthpiece for Liberals.

    1. PBS was supposed to be for everyone.

      Yes, but the people who have worked there conceptualize their antagonists as a vicious, doltish or socially-deviant population who just are not what we mean by ‘everyone’. Billy Jack is a nice summary of the liberal worldview of the era.

      1. Yes, I have. The quality of the News Hour has deteriorated under Gwen Ifill’s tenure.

        Charlie Rose prefers to interview media figures of various sorts (more entertainment than news, but both), with a scatter of scientific researchers and political figures; a few x a month he’ll have someone who’s off the liberal reservation in an obvious way. Most such people are campaign technicians (e.g. Ed Rollins), with a scatter of public officials like Wm. Bratton. He avoids anyone employed by think tanks. He also avoids journalists ID’d as Republicans, with the odd exception of Hugh Hewitt. Given that the bulk of the newsmen he does interview are very ho hum characters, I don’t think quality’s the issue.

    3. Karen.

      I think PBS and most other newz sources are mouthpieces for the powerful. One of the reasons’s Jill Stein’s comment was cut was because she was laying out a liberal criticism of the TPP and Obamacare. Liberals do not support either of these programs and she was explaining why we do not support them.

      When Bush was in power PBS helped build the false case for the Iraq war. They have been more than happy to accommodate the powerful (with some exceptions), while suppressing actual analysis of what both neo-liberals or neo-conservatives have in store for this nation.

      We see these two, supposedly opposing groups, openly coming together under the Clinton banner. Major neo conservatives have endorsed and contributed to Clinton’s campaign. Meanwhile, the oligarchy, which moves as one, has used the media to confuse the public into a stance of “divide and conquer”. While the powerful have one agenda and work towards it relentlessly, we the people are kept in the dark about the oligarchy’s real aims.

      I feel that allowing free and open debate on campus is very important in its own right, but also because, as Olly points out, it helps people to develop critical thinking skills. Having those in place are one of the few defenses we the people have in seeing past the constant propaganda thrown at us by this society.

      1. When Bush was in power PBS helped build the false case for the Iraq war.

        You mean the were not a press agency for ANSWER? Why would anyone expect them to be?

        1. P.A.,

          I think many people, especially many Democrats, believe PBS is “on their side”. This opinion that PBS is a “liberal” newz source is also held by Republicans. Just as both Democrats and Republicans believe(d) Obama is a socialist when in reality, he, like Clinton, is a totalitarian corporate lackey, these deliberate false ideas are planted in the publics’ mind. So, yes, planting false ideas about who a newz corporation really is and who they represent does matter. As the Clinton e-mails and Obama’s Advertising Age Brand of the Year award in 2008 make clear, it’s all about the brand.

          Citizens should want accurate information from each other. The desire for truthful information is necessary in a functioning democracy. It’s part of the reason we don’t have one!

    1. PBS has to exercise editorial judgment. The trouble with PBS is that every issue is framed in such a way as to include only those alternatives acceptable to (or which would occur to) the staff of the program, so discussions on what Woodruff and Ifill have made of MacNeill / Lehrer have the character of intramural discussions at meetings of the College Democrats. It’s doubtful that either Woodruff or Ifill can think outside the box they’re in.

      As for Facebook (and Twitter), it’s a reasonable inference that their business is damaged by low-level employees who make use of their discretion to harass people they think of as cultural enemies. The question is why such employees are given such discretion.

  8. @Pretty amusing

    RE: “…a cadre drawn from a professional set with a history of peddling shizzy social ideology and junk science”

    Sounds like you could use a good shrink yourself!

    1. The interns employed by the moderator have as one of their tasks protecting you and “Jill”, and “bill mcwilliams” from a full and frank assessment of what you write, so your remark will not be deleted and your ID will not be blocked. Not a franchise extended to anyone else here.

  9. We live in a time when the liberal ideals upon which a free nation was founded are waning. It is a sad and worrisome time in the history of the Republic that any institutions, particularly those of highest learning, are having to do what Purdue and the University of Chicago have had to do.

    If we are in the midst of a backlash, may it soon begin to accelerate exponentially.

    1. @Pretty Amusing

      Off your meds? Speak for yourself not anyone else. I’ve gone head to head with several other commenters and have not been blocked.

  10. Awesome! Don’t let off the gas. We need anecdotal evidence of what this “style” looks like published far and wide. Show other universities and their students what it looks like when the entire school is a safe space for the free exchange of ideas. Prove that instead of trying to control thought that it produces more critical-thinking students and value-added graduates to society. It will take time to bear fruit but it would be great to see employment data that demonstrated these graduates secure desired jobs in percentages that far exceed that of other 1st amendment crushing universities.

    1. When I see something like this ad, I start to consider what it really is that this guy has a problem with.

  14. We need more psychiatrists and we need the on campus. Screen each student. If they need treatment keep them out of the school until they get their brains fixed.

    1. Requiring for availing yourself of tertiary schooling that you be certified by a cadre drawn from a professional set with a history of peddling shizzy social ideology and junk science? Sounds like a plan.

      1. I have no idea what that collection of vowels and consonants even means. Perhaps Isaac could translate that for me.

  17. I work at UC Berkeley. I would love to see our campus follow suit, especially given our campus’s history of free speech rights. I’m afraid, though, that the ship sailed in the 60s and political correctness now rules the day.

    1. The California legislature can repair the problem with revised enabling legislation for the Berkeley campus. Limit the institution’s maximal franchise franchise to the following:

      1. The following vocational schools and degree programs: athletics and kinesiology, business, professional and applied psychology, non-business administration, security and public safety, urban planning, public policy, medicine, nursing, public health, biomedical sciences (bacteriology, toxicology, &c), peri-medical occupations (audiology and speech pathology, optometry, physical therapy, occupational therapy, dentistry, &c.), agriculture and husbandry, veterinary medicine, information science and technology, engineering, hospitality, and miscellaneous trades and handicrafts.

      2. The following academic arts and sciences: tests-and-measurements psychology, experimental psychology / cognitive science, quantitative sociology, economics, economic history, demography, statistics, geography (i.e. human ecology, human settlements, and resource use), mathematics, theoretical computer science, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geological sciences (oceanography, meterology and climatology, geophysics, structural geology, petrology, palaeontology, and geomorphology), biological sciences (natural history / conservation / ecology, molecular biology/genetics/cytology, whole organisms, anatomy / physiology / neuroscience), biochemistry, microbiology, physical anthropology), romance languages, classics, philosophy.

      3. The vocational side of communications (film, broadcasting, &c).

      4. Music. (as in orchestral and chamber performance, musicology, &c).

      It can also require that the president, provost, academic deans, the dean of students, and the admissions director step down, to be replaced in the first iteration with candidates chosen by a commission the legislature appoints.

      The place would be cleaned up within 4 years.

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