There is a new free speech controversy on a university campus this week. Robbie Travers, a 21-year-old third-year law student at the University of Edinburgh, is under investigation for a “hate crime” after mocking ISIS fighters targeted in a massive air strike by the United States. Esme Allman, a second-year history student, accused Travers of “blatant Islamophobia” and creating an unsafe environment for students through his mocking of the terrorists being helped to paradise.
Travers commented on Facebook on the US Air Force dropping a MOAB (“mother of all bombs”) on a network of ISIS tunnels in Afghanistan in April. He wrote “Excellent news that the US administration and Trump ordered an accurate strike on an ISIS network of tunnels in Afghanistan. I’m glad we could bring these barbarians a step closer to collecting their 72 virgins.”
Allman accused Travers of statements putting “minority students at risk and in a state of panic and fear.” However, this was a posting on Facebook, did not make any express threats, and the police have not commenced any hate speech investigation (despite the broad criminalization of speech in England).
A university spokesman is quoted as confirming the investigation and saying that “We are committed to providing an environment in which all members of the university community treat each other with dignity and respect and our code of student conduct sets out clear expectations of behaviour.”
Yet, what about the concern for free speech? Investigating students for statements made on social media is a heavy handed measure that will obviously chill speech for many. I understand if Muslim students object to any over-simplification or stereotyping of their religion. However, the solution is not an investigation to try to bar such speech but a robust response in the same public forum.
Allman identifies herself as a “womanist from inner-city London” who seeks “inclusivity as well as building and preserving safe spaces for us . . . [and working] alongside the other liberation groups to ensure EUSA are fully representative of our views.” Yet, there is also a legitimate concern of the space for free speech on campuses. Why is it not enough to counter speech with speech? Even if the law student held anti-Islamic views, why shouldn’t he be allowed to voice those views and values in the public forum?
What do you think?
I’m sorry. I’m confused.
Being glad that the US government struck an organization deemed terrorists by his own country as well as the US, and with which both countries are currently at war, made the university unsafe how, exactly? Are we supposed to express dismay when wars go well now? Were students in danger of hearing an opinion? They are in clear and present danger of being glad of a military action? Is the country who invented dry wit now unable to mock terrorists who think their religion grants them women as a commodity if they murder innocent people? Mocking hideous terrorists is rather gratifying.
So I’m guessing that this Onion article from 2001 would be prosecuted in UK?
What bullies and cowards these neurotic students have become. ISIS makes sex slaves out of female captives for the rest of their lives, and then when they are bored with them, they strap suicide vests to them. They have burned little girls alive in cages. They dumped concrete on a POW. They behead people slowly with dull knives. They murder gay people. Why aren’t the activists out there gleefully demonstrating in support of the military every time they take out one of these abusers? This “womanist” Allman should be first in line congratulating the US on their strike or doesn’t she actually believe in protecting women from slavery and rape?
http://www.theonion.com/article/hijackers-surprised-to-find-selves-in-hell-1445
Rights and freedoms are global and not the purview of any government.
Suppression and denial of rights are the business of dictatorships.
When the American Founders told you that freedoms and rights were natural and god-given, they meant that those rights and freedoms were to be enjoyed universally without abridgement, truncation, diminution or other limitation.
They declared that natural and god-given rights are unalienable and they existed before governance was established.
All conceivable natural and/or god-given rights and freedoms not enumerated previously, are provided by the 9th amendment.
“Hate” speech law is an unconstitutional abridgement of speech as “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”
1st Amendment –
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
George, this thread is about Scotland. Not part of the USA in case you haven’t noticed.
Really not much different in the USA. Check-out what’s going on at San Diego State re GOP student group being labeled “white nationalists.”
Miss Sockpuppet, I apologize. I failed. I tried to make it clear, even to the lowest common denominator, God is universal, nay, infinite. God-given rights and freedoms exist infinitely and apply to every person on the globe. Even Scots and sockpuppets enjoy them. God-given rights and freedoms existed infinitely before the concept of governance crossed the synapses of homo sapiens. Countries that do not allow every concealable right and freedom are illegitimate governments as dictatorships.
Here is my free speech. I quote Saturday Night Live! but contort some places and people.
“Bomb Bomb Bomb! Bomb bomb Scot Land!
Bomb bomb bomb, Bomb bomb Scot Land!
Oh, bomb Scotland. And all the Scotish bands.
Rockin and a rollin, rockin and a reelin Barbara Ann.
A Scot is a Scot, is a Scot all the way. From his first cigarette to his last dying day.
Is it true that Allman is running for Black and Minority Ethnic Officer and has a “Manifesto”? If so maybe her “Manifesto” will give us more insight to where she finds fear, panic and who has the right to free speech.
By her own acts, she should be investigated, for stupidity.
Strikes me as if there is a lot of intimidation towards the expression of free speech.
There is a book on the Use of Lawfare and Intimidation by CAIR. It includes almost 150 documented cases of frivolous lawsuits, extortion, intimidation and subversion undertaken by CAIR, all aimed at silencing its critics and advancing its agenda. (more at)
https://www.amazon.com/Council-American-Islamic-Relations-Lawfare-Intimidation/dp/0615857051/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406659832&sr=1-1&keywords=council+on+american-islamic+relations
http://www.dailywire.com/news/20720/leftist-editor-you-shouldnt-be-allowed-even-think-amanda-prestigiacomo?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=051717-news&utm_campaign=dwtwitter
The views of an employee of a lavishly funded sorosphere component.
I think higher ed administrators cater to the labile, and get more bad behavior from them as a result.
I don’t use the phrase: “That is really phuqued up” very often,,,
Shouldn’t the entire country be an “unsafe space” for its declared enemies?
Esme Allman, a second-year history student, accused Travers of “blatant Islamophobia” and creating an unsafe environment for students through his mocking of the terrorists being helped to paradise.
Hate crime? Isn’t the hate element applied after a crime has been committed? If this type of investigation can take place just on someone’s words, then any claim can be made on any words anyone finds offensive.
I am currently trying to teach my 9 year old how to process what he hears at school. How to respond, how to debate, when to just walk away. From what I’m seeing in stories like this is a generation or more of people that have either not been taught critical-thinking skills, or are regressing back to adolescence and they are being rewarded for their behavior.
You can’t have a globalist movement unless you squelch free speech against it. We are the world, you know, we are the children. Pathetic Scottish fools.
Gobbledygook.
David:
I’ll get you some flash cards next time.
David B Benson = Ken. Sockpuppets trying to make it seem there are more alt left than there really are.
False.
You just are Making Stuff Up.
Whatever happened to the land of the Highlanders, fighters feared around the world who darn near conquered England in 1745 with a loose association of clans. They might have won, too, if Stuart hadn’t been such a fool. The Scottish Highland Regiments were always feared. You know, the “Highlander Howl” and all that.
The Highlander’s favorite pastimes included sword dancing, tossing cabers, and enduring freezing cold…in the rain, lack of food, and constant gloom all with patient stoicism in a wet wool kilt. They rode horses in kilts with their bare freezing cold legs abrading against wet leather, which would remove the skin from lesser humans. They would consider base deprivation to be just another day.
So what the hell has happened to Scotland?
Oh, now that I’m thinking of Scotland, may I recommend one of my favorite pieces from the band Caledonia, “Hamsterheid”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UII8CPnJuro (music starts around 2 min)
http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=The_Scottish_Highland_Regiments
“The Scottish Highland Regiments are renowned for being some of the bravest regiments in the British army. One man once said “The limbs of the Highlander are strong and sinewy, the frame hardy, and of great physical power, in proportion to size. He endures cold, hunger, and fatigue with patience.” The Highland Regiments have been known for their fierceness in battle, using shock to scare their enemy, and for their unique kilts. Throughout their history, they have been known to engage in melee combat overzealously. During World War I, they still used fierce bayonet charges commonly. This caused the Germans to refer to the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) as the “Ladies from Hell”[1]. The Black Watch wears the term today as a badge of honor. Even recently, in a 2005 battle in Iraq, where one hundred insurgents ambushed a group of thirty Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the Highlanders fought the ambush. Without any ammunition, these men bayonet charged into the insurgents, surprising the insurgents so much that they retreated. The Highlanders took only three casualties (all wounded), while the insurgents had an estimated thirty dead.”
Sigh. Autocorrect. The band is “Clanadonia”.
This is not hate speech.
Ridiculous. All he did was exercise his free speech rights. He did nothing more to create an “unsafe environment” for students than the student is doing by airing her own prejudices through her own free speech rights. His comments were on Facebook, a neutral social website, not an ar pm of the university. How can that be seen as creating an unsafe environment for students? They don’t have to read it. Suppose he was not a student at the university, but wrote the same thing on Facebook while at some other university tens of thousands of miles away? Would he still be seen as having created a hostile environment at Edinborough University? What kind of world are we living in? How is this any different from living in a totalitarian dictatorship where no one is allowed to express an opinion about anything? I think this third-year law student should go back and do over her law education. She was apparently not paying attention the first time around. She should never have gotten out of her first year. She is a fine example of the word “sophomoric.”
Imagine that. It’s almost like… well… his dissent is being attacked. Maybe you are waking up.
Allman (the complainer) is not a law student, but a history student. Travers, who made the posting on Facebook, is the third-year law student.
So we can assume that there are a lot of ISIS fighters going to Oxford? This is ridiculous.
I do not know how the suppression of free speech took root in a country where it was until recent times, taken for granted as a tenet of the culture, but whether here or elsewhere, those who oppose it should be ruthlessly defied.
Jonathan Turley, the University of Edinburgh is in Scotland. The laws there are not precisely the same as further south, in England and Wales where the two kingdoms have exactly the same laws, ever since Henry VIII.
Do try to keep up to date…
Well one perspective from this could be that the university treats all members of the Islamic faith as terrorists since to the U they are globally offended by bombing terrorists. It infers these people all support terrorists, which is rubbish. I am certain most people in these countries with ISIS / Taliban presence want these thugs removed by whatever means is available.
The fact the police are not going to investigate is moot. The investigation itself serves as a form of punishment and a warning to others.
Good points in a world gone crazy.
The world today makes Looney Tunes and Road Runner cartoons look like Shakespearian prose.
I agree!
That’s the best thing I’ve read today JJ! I think the powers that be used the genius of those cartoons to realize they don’t have to follow physical laws and reality–they can create their own! You know… like how I have to run Russians out of my office every morning when I go to work. They’re under my desk, in my cabinet… just everywhere. Spraying just doesn’t work; I always end up using a broom.
Plus they’ve learned the other important thing, there is a shelf life to these things, so you have to have the next transgression simmering so you can roll it out.