The fight over free speech on campuses has again erupted in California where a speech by conservative author Ben Shapiro triggered demands that he be barred from campus. The doublespeak used to justify the denial of free speech is particularly chilling. The students insisted that allowing people to hear Shapiro put them at risk: “WE are tired of Stanford Administration’s complicity in putting Black, Brown, Trans, Queer, and Muslim students at risk by allowing SCR to bring Ben Shapiro to campus” On the other side, editors have called his flier anti-Semitic. While these students are intolerant and anti-free speech, but I do not believe that they intended any anti-Semitic message from using this image.
As “The Coalition of Concerned Students” wrote an op-ed in The Stanford Daily calling the speech by Shapiro an example of “another year of white supremacy, xenophobia and bigotry on Stanford’s campus.” The students declared their commitment not “to allow Shapiro’s talk to go uninterrupted.” In other words, we will not allow other students and faculty listen and have a discourse with Shapiro.
What is striking is how these students believe that denying free speech is a noble act — a view fueled by many faculty members who treat speech as violence or a tool of oppression. That makes being a censor sound like being a civil libertarian. You simply declare, as did the Stanford students, that this is a “harmful event” with “harmful people.” Done.
Conversely, Shapiro denounced the flier with the phrase “Ben B Gon” as anti-Semitic. Given that Shapiro is “a devout and outspoken Jew, the editorial board of The Stanford Review denounced the flier as insensitive and “a play on anti-Semitic tropes about extermination.” The group did send an email apologizing for the flyer. However, the group succeeded in interrupting the event by screaming and protesting to prevent Shapiro from being heard at points. This will continue so long as university officials refuse to take action against students to stop classes or school events.
I would have been more encouraged for an apology for seeking to silence those with opposing views. However, the rhetoric of these anti-free speech students is rising with their numbers. It is now fashionable to be against free speech. You just declare others to be “harmful people” with harmful ideas and insist on their silence.
It takes an astonishing lack of introspection to threaten a Jewish conservative invited speaker, and then scream so that his audience is prevented from hearing him, in the name of fighting hatred.
Ben Shapiro is not a hateful person. He believes in the scientific definition of gender, and refuses to permit compelled speech of 75 different pronouns. That does not mean that he hates trans people. Quite the contrary, he was interviewed by a trans YouTuber and was very respectful.
The Left targets dissent as “hate speech”, in an attempt to force opponents to waste their time arguing that they are not hateful. This circumvents discussion on the issues, of which they are incapable of defending.
Leftism in general is a hateful movement. I wish that moderates would reclaim the Democrat Party, but they seem to have lost control.
These dimwitted students are simply creating more Trump voters w/ every hissy fit. PC got him elected in 2016 and will reelect him in 2020.
Hi Nick! 🙂
It looks to me the Dems/Rinos/Certain Intel groups are going for voter/voting machine fraud or if that gets shut down they’ll likely move in for assassination.
I wonder what the gambling odds are showing?
odds on trump have gone up lol
https://www.oddsshark.com/other/2020-usa-presidential-odds-futures
OKY, How they hangin’?
In the past 25 years, right-wing media has created a number of ‘controversial’ pundits whose careers revolve around controversial statements and positions.
But one has to ask how important these pundits really are. Do they possess wisdom that could enrich the educations of students at fine universities? This question might be more relevant than so-called ‘free speech’ issues’
In the past 25 years, right-wing media has created a number of ‘controversial’ pundits whose careers revolve around controversial statements and positions.
Ben Shapiro is an ordinary Republican.
Charles Murray is an academic social researcher, much of whose work is too esoteric for Shill to engage. A mob at Middlebury put a local professor in the emergency room when he came to visit.
The people who send you talking points ought to be more selective about what they inveigle you to defend.
WIKI says both of Shapiro’s parents worked in Hollywood,
Wiki does not say that he graduated from the “Leadership Institute,” but I hear he did.
I have long wondered, in my paranoid-ness, if the LI, YAFfers, etc were CIA controlled opposition deliberately tying conservatives up in ineffective schemes and methods.
whether so or not, there is a strong need for leadership training.
after all, the CIA is like any other powerful organization– it has factions. inside and responsive to those on the outside, too
I have long wondered, in my paranoid-ness, if the LI, YAFfers, etc were CIA controlled opposition deliberately tying conservatives up in ineffective schemes and methods.
I doubt they’ve ever had that degree of influence.
Your problem, in part, is the institutional set up, which provides opportunities for obstructive veto groups. In part I’ll wager it’s the culture of Republican office-holders. They don’t want to do much but toss bon-bons at business lobbies, tinker with marginal tax rates, and pass some pork to their home district. Someone who want’s real structural adjustments (Giuliani, Thompson, Walker, and Gingrich / Armey) is as rare as hen’s teeth.
I haven’t read this yet, seen the headline this morning. Wikipedia over with Commies:
https://rairfoundation.com/wikipedia-founder-larry-sanger-a-cabal-of-bad-actors-descended-on-the-site-video/
Tabby, I dont know why you’re referencing Charles Murray or what he has to do with my comment. If Murray’s an academic then he’s not a media pundit. So he has no relevance to my comment.
he tried to give a talk and they went ballistic. that’s why. duh
Anonymous, so what??? I’m not here to defend the hecklers. You’re just assuming that because you’re in the right-wing bubble.
I think they told him to play dumb as part of a red-herring strategy. Or, as Judge Judy says, ‘You’re either playing dumb or it’s not an act”.
Tabby, this exchange is an example of how the Culture Wars literally gets insane. You’re assuming because I’m liberal that I naturally side with hecklers. In a normal America an assumption like this is nuts. My comment merely asked if right-media pundits really belong on college campuses.
Why is it controversial to understand that an XY chromosome makes someone male? What is confusing about differentiating between someone’s performative behavior, which could be feminized, and their scientific gender?
What’s wrong with the right to decide for yourself how you perceive others.
That’s the thing. This is not controversial, nor is it hate speech. There is nothing stopping anyone from referring to a feminized created persona as a “she” if they want to. The problem lies in trying to force others to follow suit, or else be labeled haters. It’s anti science to claim that gender is determined by behavior rather than chromosomes.
A man can suffer from gender dysphoria. He can ask that others call him “she”, get surgery, and wear overly feminized clothes. But years from now, forensic anthropologists would label his remains “male.” A forensics lab investigating a crime scene would label his DNA “male.”
There is more to my gender than simply waking up one morning and deciding you’re a woman. Wearing dresses does not make you a woman. I rarely wear them. Wearing makeup doesn’t make you a woman. I often don’t wear any makeup. Speaking in a feminine voice doens’t make you a woman. You should hear my boss mare voice at the barn. These are just an idealized version of feminine accoutrements. It’s pretend.
A man cannot decide he is really a woman, and then go compete fairly in women’s sports. He still has a male body. The reason why there is gender segregation in sports is because women would have no chance to compete in sports that depend upon physical strength otherwise.
Those who claim that gender is a social construct, and criticism is hate speech must see the flaw in their logic when they see trans women blowing biological women out of the water in sports. Pointing that out is somehow so unfair that these students feel justified screaming at Ben Shapiro? I guess there’s going to be a line of targets for them, and Martina Navratilova is next.
Why is this an issue, they aren’t denying or infringing him his right to free speech, he can say anything he wants, just not on their property. He’s totally free to say anything he wants, just somewhere else.
You over educated types make me laugh.
I would think that every liberal would want every student to hear speakers like Ben Shapiro if, for no other reason, than to defeat his ideas. If I were a liberal, I would say, “Don’t shield them from such views. Doing so is condescending.” If a liberal truly believes their views will stand up to Shapiro’s scrutiny, they should welcome it. They could then write an op-ed for the student newspaper to refute Mr. Shapiro line by line. If I were a liberal, I would want future liberals to have strong minds that know the philosophical ideas and ideals of the other side, and they know how to defeat them with their own philosophical beliefs.
“if I were a liberal, I would say, “Don’t shield them from such views.”
*****************
Judges don’t want to rule; generals don’t want to fight; politicians don’t want to lead and liberals don’t want to debate. Too big a risk. Who knows when you’ll be overruled, sacked for losing , thrown from office or made to look silly, stupid and out of touch.
that’s liberalism from the Voltaire era
liberalism now is postmodernism. in postmodernism you have a rejection of the Enlightenment notions about free speech and debate.
the notion is that all truth is relative to the facts of existence. and, that powerful forces shape the biggest facts of existence. and so it all comes down to who has the most organized forces, who will impose their will on others, by one way or another. reason and debate are just considered tools in the toolbox, to use when it’s expedient
Leftists are operating in a 20th century mindset and the whole classic liberal rationtination comes from the late 18th century, early 19th.
i submit that “conservatives” or whomever the adversaries of the culture-destroyers want to be, bring themselves up to date in their world view and strategic mindset. then it will become clear.
where to look for ideas? don’t look to the plutocrats of the late 18th century. they are gone.
the most dynamic ideas are coming from, you guessed it, Russians, who understand postmodernism, how it animates the atomizing forces of global plutocracy, who have outlived the bullies of communism, and what they must do to counteract them today.
“sovereign democracy”
“fourth political theory”
there’s a reason they want us to hate Russia. Look anywhere but Russia they say; regard Russia as the foe. why?
“Why is this an issue”
Sure, it’s their property, but Stanford still has to contend with both the possible loss of federal research funds under Trump’s recent executive order and with possible repercussions under California’s own state law.
The only education that works is when you educate yourself.
What’s an Executive order and where in the Constitution does it give the President the authority to make decisions by executive order.
When you can answer that question then I will consider your comment!
So the trend is quite clear. There is a new headline regularly. Extremist Democrats have taken over universities, and are harassing conservative students. They also employ diverse methods to prevent invited conservative speakers from talking, while feeling entitled to enjoy whomever they invite. Meanwhile, conservatives are not barring Liberal speakers regularly at universities across the country.
Voting Democrat supports this tyranny. This has gone on for years, so either moderates lack the political power or will to do something about it.
https://reason.com/2019/11/11/daily-northwestern-jeff-sessions-editorial-triggered-students/
Another piece of evidence that the up-and-coming generation is thickly populated with fools catering to hysterical children.
the rabble from Chicago would migrate north and eat Evanston alive if the police (and high rents) were not there to stop them.
I think the police should not stop them.
It’s been a hotbed of foolish utopian ideas since the WCTU launched the pious nonsense of Prohibition long ago.
twice i have been to well recommended thai restaurants in Evanston and twice I couldn’t get a beer.
the legacy of “temperance” lives on there. funny and ironic since there’s no problem buying a beer in thailand.
i’ve stopped drinking beer mostly now, and I’ve also stopped stopping in Evanston. it has zero to recommend it.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/11/student-petition-opposes-former-republican-senator-scott-browns-selection-as-new-england-law-schools.html
Millennials…
Leftist students should learn basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, and cease engaging in political confrontation as a responsibility avoidance mechanism. Today’s leftist students cannot even algebraically solve the following basic axiom, where LS is equal to “Leftist Students.”
6 x LS = 3 x Wits
LOL. Half wits.
Sez…
The SCOTUS, it’s model has collapsed even further into Failure. It’s past time to either get rid of it or remodel it with say 2 judges on the court from each state pick by the state’s senate?:
https://www.infowars.com/red-alert-supreme-court-rules-against-2nd-amendment-in-devastating-opinion/
this is alarmist. alex is mad at the law firm because they’re the sandy hook lawyers. the SCOTUS is following the trend of product liability law. the net outcome will be firearms manufacturers being more careful about how they advertise their wares and not much more than that. less macho BS in advertising will be the immediate consequence, that’s about it. some insurance company will have to pay a big verdict a couple years from now, maybe.
reconfiguring the SCOTUS would probably be impossible at this point. Easier for Congress to strip funding and subject matter jurisdiction. But that would be met with riots and outrage from the Sorosphere.
Whats really in order is stronger measures against globalist oligarchs who manipulate the mass media like all their own little playthings.
I mean, super strong measures, like communists use. Really. Look at how the Chicoms deal with their errant billionaires. Jack Ma’s on a very short leash these days. That’s the way a strong state corrals potential troublemakers.
The American state is actually too weak. That’s the lesson that I’m taking overall. The weakness is traced to the SCOTUS in part, which is the policymaking arm of the global plutocracy, bent on protecting their home turf, but also the “Deep State” and its perpetual mischief undermining order everywhere and always ginning up trouble that could get us all nuked.
So if you steal an ink pen off my desk it appears this ruling is saying that if you take that pen & stab your neighbor’s eye out that neighbor & you can sue me & the ink pen mfg.
The same type bullshiit with gas cans, raw milk/butter, vaccines, 1st amendment Rights, all commerce, etc….
AKA: Upside down buzzoro world.
And if Jones is such an alarmist how is it Facebook/google/youtube/twitter/apple & many other are in violation of the FCC sec 230 immunity, claiming to be a platform/Public Commons yet continue blocking Jone’s & millions of other’s 1st amd Rights.
What do I expect anyway, Pres Trump can’t even Fire a known anti-American CIA Spy from the WH!
yes oky that is the essence of product liability law. but look at the other side of the equation too. products need to be designed safely. now i hear jones complains about big pharma all the time but it’s product liability lawyers who have held big pharm’s feet to the fire more than anybody
overall, on the whole, product liability law in the US is a big blessing. you go to other places in the third world where they don’t have it, things are way less safe.
the Remington case i think is just the SCOTUS letting the states do their thing. I don’t see that one in particular as a big threat.
but what else you said– about the lockdown of social media by FB GOOG apple and twitter IS A BIG THING!!!
they definitely need to be corraled by antitrust action
section 230 is important for free speech– it’s being eroded in various ways– most of all by the big providers getting into the business of editing content and still expecting to get section 230 immunity
section 230 immunity is mostly to make the internet a place for free speech– not a place for billionaire outfits to become the new thought-police censors in place of government
I would like to see Turley write more about that!
Mr K,
One of lawyers I’ve known for decades, he was pointing out that over time large lawfirms have been blocking out small firms. That it’s now the case the citizens/their lawyers are just about irrelevant & powerless.
He used that Mc’d coffee case as an example.
That this current war is between billionaires. They’ve long ago bought the judges /congress/etc.
And they want us to just be spectators to their big game of running us over with illegal/dead voters, voter machine rigging.
Yes, product liability laws have helped in many ways but now it’s went so far it’s been one of the things that are destroy this nation to function/have commerce.
IE: About 30/40 years ago Mid America Lumbermen Assoc of American had somewhere between 4000 to 5000 lumber/hardware stores that belonged to their group to gain pricing power & other benefits.
At the time I remember they had far more stores then I think Lowes & Homedepot put together.
In many areas certain building materials the quality has went down as well as customer service.
Small dairies, local butcher shops, local restaurants using local milk/meat/etc., they’ve been run completely run out of business, if not their profits have been wiped out.
As this nation has moved further towards Commie typ authoritarianism, from like Woodrow Wilson(FRS), FDR cost have went out of control so bad damn few can afford the products. IE: housing in Cali, the hyperinflationary melt up that leads to the Argentina/Venezuela type collapse with a defenceless/unarmed general population. (Think Hong Kong right now against the Armed Commies)
I really wish I knew all this stuff 50 years ago.
(they definitely need to be corraled by antitrust action
section 230 is important for free speech–)
Something is wrong with P Trump, he should have already acted over a year ago.
There isn’t time for a antitrust action to work it’s way through these courts before 2020. ( illreputable harm has already happened)
It’s now just a few months before the most important pieces of the Nov 2020 election, that is the Spring Primary elections. This is where the citizens get ph’d by the DS most every time. We get their hand picked Boy not ours!
Jones/Infowars were blocked out of those commons over 1 1/2 years ago. Millions of others since. Hell even I have had Paypal block my transactions with conservative biz’s.
Trump had over 2 million supporters on a site, I think, called the Real Donald on Reddit (sic)
Reddit pulled it & Trump did nothing.
Jones had I think 4 different law firms send to Trump the case write up over a year ago.
The point is, others, I, tried to explain this issue to Trump, he’s failed to act. At this point Trump, us may be screwed & end up right in the middle of an unwanted Civil War.
antitrust is a DOJ issues. Trump’s had a lot of problems with getting the DOJ to do anything he wants that’s for sure. as we have seen. he can barely trust anybody in the Swamp. now if he were Teddy Roosevelt he would hit em with a big stick.,
Let me attempt some humor on this SCOTUS issue.
So when they finish off all of our Rights & destroy all of our Commerce where will those mentally ill pedos get the bubble wrap up in to keep their candy azzes safe & at the same time how are those freaks doing to be able to shove their tampons up their aholes?
LOL;) The point is that SC/Congress & many/most state govts have literally become the Butt of the Joke.
The 1st thing we can do is point that out at every chance we get.
first off, the smallest thing, perhaps, but an interesting one to me. I don’t see the fliers as antisemitic. That’s been a bogus charge time after time and it has lost its sting.
But see, I am not Jewish. A jewish person might see it that way and have their feelings hurt. There is an analogy suggested in the flier to extermination when it says “ben b gone.” a word that’s very loaded with echoes. So. I can see the point. So….. Why, with all these weak minded sissies and snowflakes, who demand such sensitivity, is there suddenly a loss of sensitivity to Jewish people? I’m a little curious about that.
Particularly when considering that some of the leaders of the California left are Jewish. Such as Noam Chomsky. A long list might be compiled. One wonders what’s happening there. I don’t claim to understand it. Were all Jewish people just supposed to be left wingers or at least democrats perhaps?
Secondly, the fliers are obnoxious. I could care less about the snowflake sissies who have their feelings hurt all the time.
Thirdly, yes, as other people explained, the faculty suborn and encourage this bullying.
THE FACULTY SHOULD BE BULLIED IN TURN. They can’t be reasoned with and they’ve abandoned reason. Deal with them like any other pack of criminals.
Kurtz: I’m not Jewish either, I’m Irish and it’s okay to make fun of us as drunks wearing ragged, patched clothes. Which brings up several questions: Who decides which groups can be laughed at and which groups must be tip-toed around? I assume that we must be ever so cautious about offending blacks, because they are the most vocal and aggressive, including the willingness to riot and loot. Jews aren’t going to do that, so being anti-Semitic will get you called out on social media, but not burned out. It’s totally safe to make fun of “dumb blonds,” because nobody really believes that blonds are dumb. Germany and the Scandinavian countries are quite successful. But we can’t say “dumb Mexican” or “dumb black” because those folks are highly sensitive about their intellects relative to others. Saying “dumb Japanese” would get you a quizzical look, but the Asians aren’t sensitive about their I.Q.s. The second issue is to what extent we are expected to know about other group’s sensitivities. I recall recently a young black girl accused two white boys of cutting her hair and saying it was “nappy.” That surprised me because how would some 10 y/o kids even be familiar with that term? It’s like something out of my grandmother’s era. Well, it turned out to be fake, The media whipped it up into a big story of white racism, then the girl admitted she made it up. But references to “nappy” hair and exterminating Jews are things that younger people are likely to have never heard of. And most of us don’t spend our time studying the various historical insults leveled at other groups. Yet the continually aggrieved groups among us expect us to be familiar with every possible offense. Maybe it’s all just a power trip; forcing others to monitor their own speech and expression.
thefire.org/research/disinvitation-database/ Look it up, JT’s one-sided story does not cut it anymore.
oh ha interesting you even know of such a website
they’ll get to it
Well I know you have been busy looking up why the Biden’s got Sean Spicer kicked off Dancing With The Stars. Have Jim Jordan ask how and why, cause he will have no other questions that make any sense.
i watched that show once many years ago. why would you think i watch it now? oh wait you must be one of the fools who loves the idiot box and assumes other people do too.
I can assume you watched The Apprentice. And thought WOW, that guy with the fake show would make a great President.
i did watch it, back when i watched more tv than I do now. i did enjoy watching Trump. i watched it at least 4 or 5 times.
until zombies, that was my only tv show. after zombies i stopped watching anything else on the boob tube. that and PPV mixed martial arts, which doesn’t count.
as you can see, I am a person of plebian tastes. not an aristoi like you fishhead
i also used to like opera however, until it succumbed to its current pathetic state of habitual gimmickry.
i never thought Trump would run for POTUS, actually. I just liked seeing him fire sneaky losers.
… I was surprised when Trump ran, thought he would be a fluke, didn’t think he would win the primary nor the election. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. perhaps the first president i’ve genuinely liked since Reagan.
Well, watching zombies that need to eat brains to survive is as close as it comes to being a trump supporter. Because they sure do walk around looking clueless.
zombies as a cultural phenomenon, reflects the popular sense that there are teeming masses of mindless automatons who look like people, but are actually mindlessly controlled two legged predators, shuffling about slowly in herds, manipulated by sinister powerful actors. like the mass media. one on one they are easily dispatched, but in the herd they are a titanic force that threatens us.
we feel like small communities beleaguered by chaos and teeming hordes of filthy barbaric humanoids that see us,and our pockets of culture, essentially as prey
that is indeed how a lot of Trump supporters feel.
a lot has been written about that. sometimes it is in a disrespectful and hating way, such as you phrase it. and yet those who feel it, know
The only answer is to never vote for the Democrats again. They are the enemy of the people.
The professor keeps complaining about the students. Well, youth culture is seldom impressive and it’s been particular unimpressive the last dozen years or so. That having been said, it wouldn’t be happening if the faculty and administration hadn’t given their permission. You’ll notice the professor says nothing about them.
Campus administration is supporting this intolerant behavior by their silence. It will continue and only get worse without any intervention by officials.
Did you catch how the president of one of the state colleges in Connecticut went berserk when some random person posted fliers with the message ‘It’s OK to be White’ on the campus? If it mattered to them, they’d do something. That louts in their student body prevent an ordinary Republican from speaking doesn’t bother them. That someone asserts that being white is not a pathological state does bother them.
Another day and another sun rise and another story of a college banning free speech. I guess it is good that JT is calling this out, but what good is it doing? What is the tipping point where either colleges start promoting/marketing that they have free speech unlike these colleges or conservative colleges start springing up and ban all that is liberal.
Again, all you need is
1. for the Campus Security chief to allocate the necessary overtime, and for his officers to haul the louts off the premises. And;
2. For the dean of students to suspend the perpetrators for a semester. The second time this happens, said disruptor is suspended for a year. The third time, he’s expelled.
That’s what’s not happening. It’s not happening because the disruptors are agents of the faculty and administration. The problem originates with your collegues, Professor.
Stanford’s academic and intellectual rigor has declined precipitously in the last decade. These students’ level of ignorance has been abetted by Leftist and Democrat politicians and professors who have taught our youth to adhere to dogma and ideology and discouraged them from thinking critically. They have grown up in a world of progressives and liberals who teach students how to make signs, chant and march instead of how to have reasoned and dialectic conversation. The “Climate Hoaxed”, Always-Fascist, Intersected Generation is the most ignorant ever produced … and we know who to blame.
The Liberal, Progressive, Democrat chickens have come home to roost. Ben Shapiro would eat them for dinner and they know it.
PS – And yes they are Anti- Semitic.
I worked with a woman years ago who told me her brother graduated from Stanford. I asked what’s he doing now? She said “he’s a mailman.” Long pause. “Uh, okay, what was his major at Stanford?” Reply: “Mexican-American Studies.” So there you have it. Stanford has highly regarded computer science and engineering programs, and their grads will get excellent jobs in nearby Silicon Valley, but for the affirmative action and liberal arts students in the social sciences, they don’t have much of a career awaiting them and they know it, so being a social justice warrior while in college is going to be the highlight of their lives, and they’re going to make the most of it until they graduate and end up in some insignificant job that they resent.
This situation isn’t going away, so if these university groups really want to hear conservative speakers, they will have to hire an adequate number of security guards who are willing to physically remove anyone who becomes disruptive. They can also reduce the possibility of disruptions by carefully screening who gets tickets, and making a live-stream of the speech available to those who want to view it from their own homes.
God. I am so sick of lefties imposing their petty tyranies on the rest of us.
Let’s hope that voters wake up to the threats these people are to the constitution.
Even that “moderate” Bloomberg is a petty tyrant who bans anything that he doesn’t like (or that brings pleasure to the lower classes).
Among America’s most intelligent and apparently deeply neurotic….”At risk.” Just pathetic, really. How about “Sticks and stones can break my bones (there’s some risk) but words will never hurt me.” A notion too old school for mentally unanchored 20 something smart children who dont know who they are.