We have been discussing the alarming erosion of free speech on our campuses and the increasingly twisted view of free speech by students calling for speech codes and regulations. At the same time, we have seen campus police denounced as being a “triggering” element on campuses (Here and here). Both trends were evident this month at the University of California at Berkeley, including the alarming published comments of a student senator, Juniper Angelica Cordova-Goff. Cordova-Goff denounced the large presence of campus police to deal with the protests as triggering while reaffirmed that free speech should not protect speakers who she views as part of a “violent conversation” like conservative Ann Coulter.
The comments appeared in a Sunday piece by the student-run publication, The Daily Californian, discussing the increased security measures to deal with protests. Prior protests led to property destruction and assaults. Cordova-Goff objected that the police’s “continued, heightened presence re-traumatizes students who come from communities with complicated relationships to the state.” She added that “I do not think campus safety must rely on the police. I think (UCPD) must be active in recognizing the trauma their presence alone brings to some students and work to limit visibility while remaining an open resource to those who choose to use it.”
It is rather difficult to accept that view with these images of prior protests by those seeking to silence conservative speakers, including the burning of a free speech sign:
Cordova-Goff’s distorted views of free speech were even more chilling. After being asked about the cancellation of the Ann Coulter speech, Cordova-Goff insisted that silencing people like Coulter is no threat to free speech because Coulter is not entitled to such protections. : “I don’t think that anyone’s free speech is being impaired. I think sometimes the free speech amendment is used as a way to frame violent conversations as a matter of free speech.”
Cordova-Goff is expressing the very type of anti-free speech rhetoric adopted by Howard Dean and others. The war on free speech appears to have produced a perfect generation of petty tyrants “mentored” in the necessity — even the moral imperative — of silencing those with whom we disagree.
This is stupid on the part of Cordova-Goff…
What did she want, the police to stand down and let both sides go at it?
Uncivil.
We are in the fight of our lives to preserve the First Amendment. It is the existential crisis of our nation. And it is a fight we had better win, because the cost of losing is the decay of our republic.
The right of Free Speech is the cornerstone to all of our freedoms. Without it, the rest crumble and become meaningless. And we won’t be allowed to complain about it.
Good warring.
Somebody needs to explain the founding fathers fondness for free speech.
“‘She did not get convicted for laughing. It was her actions as she was being asked to leave,’ the jury foreperson said.” Why would she have been asked to leave for laughing?
Perhaps explain the founding fathers’ fondness for free speech to the Senate and the prosecutor: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressional-hearing_us_590929bbe4b05c39768420ef
Loud, sarcastic laughter is disruptive, and you aren’t allowed to disrupt proceedings in the Capitol.
When security came to escort her, she unfurled a banner and began screaming. Since protesting inside the Capitol is illegal, she was arrested and charged.
Her claim that the laughter was incidental is incredible in light of her banner and previous conviction (which involved red paint and Henry Kissinger during a Senate hearing).
The law is good, for the same reason laws against disrupting courtroom proceedings or protesting in court are good laws.
In sum, she planned to break a law, for which she had a prior conviction, and did so. The law comports with the Constitution and federal law. Police gave her the opportunity to leave, but she doubled down and was arrested. A jury of her peers found her guilty.
This is how the system is supposed to work. Are you angry because you would prefer a system based on gut reactions to partisan media spin? Everyone would be in jail, forever.
I agree with you, but what about the Congressman who yelled at Obama during his first speech to a joint session? Was he asked to leave? Jus’ sayin.’
How about this?
https://twitter.com/NPR/status/859797626572730368
Adam Jones accused a fan of throwing a banana @ him in SF several years ago. The next day, the fan[Hispanic] stepped forward. He did not have to since he was not identified @ the ballpark. The fan stated he took a banana off a food cart and simply threw it onto the field in disgust, as his Giants lost 10-2. The fan apologized for the misunderstanding. All very believable. Jones never replied. Jones is a SJW. Loved Kaepernick not standing for the anthem and said baseball players didn’t do it because “It’s a white man’s game.” Jones was classless and rude to the defeated PR team when the US won the WBC. He has a huge chip on his shoulder. I am skeptical of this. Any other witnesses?
I despise Ann Coulter, but I have even less regard for censorship. The Republican-Democrat coalition that founded the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the 60s must be appalled (at least those that are not rolling over in their graces.” This student so-called leader ought to go work for the so-called president.
However much you despise Ann Coulter, she predicted correctly Donald Trump’s presidency while being laughed out by a group of liberals on TV.
I know; I never said she was stupid. (We are alums of the same law school – a conservative bastion in my time there in an otherwise unusually liberal town – Ann Arbor).
I just do not like her politics and what I consider to be her way of twisting reality.
(BTW, I meant “rolling over in their graves,” not their “graces.”)
Someone needs to shut this itchBay up.
Anyone from Planet Juniper has no right to speak on Earth– much less Berkeley.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/02/nyt-cheers-the-rise-of-censorship-algorithms/
NYT Cheers the Rise of Censorship Algorithms
May 2, 2017
Exclusive: The New York Times is cheering on the Orwellian future for Western “democracy” in which algorithms quickly hunt down and eliminate information that the Times and other mainstream outlets don’t like, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Just days after sporting First Amendment pins at the White House Correspondents Dinner – to celebrate freedom of the press – the mainstream U.S. media is back to celebrating a very different idea: how to use algorithms to purge the Internet of what is deemed “fake news,” i.e. what the mainstream judges to be “misinformation.” …
So, presumably based on what the Times, the Post, Bellingcat and the other esteemed oracles of truth say is true, 90 percent or more of contrary information could soon be vulnerable to the censorship algorithms that can quickly detect and stamp out divergent points of view. Such is the Orwellian future mapped out for Western “democracy,” and The New York Times can’t wait for this tightly regulated – one might say, rigged – “marketplace of ideas” to take over.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
Thanks for this link! It just keeps getting creepier.
You’re welcome, Jill.
“It just keeps getting creepier.”
It does. And it’s much worse that many people seem to realize.