University of Maryland President Darryll Pines has joined the ignoble line of educators and administrators enabling the growing anti-free speech movement on our campuses. Pines has defended the shouting down of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md) as exercising free speech as hecklers. He is dead wrong and the Board of Directors should address his inimical view of free speech in higher education. As for Raskin, it is an ironic but telling moment from a member of Congress who has supported censorship and consistently opposed efforts to investigate the silencing of those with opposing views.
I have been highly critical of Rep. Raskin on a number of issues, particularly his efforts to thwart investigations into censorship.
Pines terminated the event after protesters repeatedly interrupted his speech as part of the the Irving and Renee Milchberg Endowed Lecture series, titled “Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century.”
According to the Maryland Reporter, the protesters accused the Jewish legislator of being “complicit in genocide” and rebuffed his efforts to engage them in a dialogue on the issue. After efforts to resume his remarks, Pines finally ended the event early.
Rather than protect the right of Raskin to speak and others to hear his views, Pines offered only a mild criticism of the protesters as needing to be more civil but then insisted “what you saw play out actually was democracy and free speech and academic freedom.” He added that, “from our perspective as a university, these are the difficult conversations that we should be having.”
No it is not as difficult as you suggest. These protesters stopped the free exchange of ideas in a university event. They prevented opposing views from being spoken or heard. In so doing, they blocked the critical condition needed for higher education in allowing an exchange of ideas. Heckling is an effort to stop discussion, not to engage in discussion.
Clearly, the “difficult conversation” for Pines is to enforce university policies and protections for free speech. It takes courage and principle. It requires administrators to have the commitment to suspend or expel students who disrupt classes or events. They have every right to protest outside or to ask difficult questions. They do not have a right to prevent speech.
As for Raskin, he is now the victim of the anti-free speech movement that he has helped fuel in Congress. In my forthcoming book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I discuss this pattern as the anti-free speech movement turns on politicians and professors who once supported them. Others spent years in conspicuous silence as others were targeted, but now have grown alarmed as their own views are declared “harmful” and “triggering.”
As discussed today in relation to a controversy at Tulane, universities continue to enable this movement by failing to enforce policies at events or refusing to punish those responsible. Pines is not alone in his view that this is just an exercise of free speech. Academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech. CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,” Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech.
In the incident last year of a federal judge being shouted down at Stanford Law School, Dean Jenny Martinez later apologized and then released a letter with Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne that reaffirmed the commitment to free speech, but did not commit to holding the students accountable for their disruption.
Dean Martinez later issued another letter with a strong defense of free speech and declared that all students (including the victims of the disruption) would be required to attend a free speech appreciation session. However, she declined any action against the students responsible for the disruption. That is a familiar pattern at universities.
The question is whether the Board of Regents for the Maryland system will call Pines to account for his view of free speech.
O the irony! It’s just so much easier to indoctrinate students when they aren’t confused by conflicting opinions.
It is easier to fool someone, than it is to convince them that they’re being fooled.
He should move to North Korea.
I doubt N. Korea would accept him.
*as I understand it, N Korea has strict immigration laws.
Univ. of MD died when Len Bias died. It has become an unrecognizable shell of prescribed mediocrity (in most cases).
It will take more “Isaacson’s” standing up in the audience and ending the disruption. I have done so at a meeting; it was uncomfortable but not impossible. A group surrounding the idiots to get them to leave may also encourage the security/venue to take action to protect people.
The only message the University and the Board of Directors will understand is if donations and endowments are cancelled and withdrawn. It’s time for alumni, especially boomer alumni, to step up.
University President: “Heckling is Free Speech. We support students who disrupt racist speakers.”
U.S. President: “Federal Student Loans and Grants will be denied to institutions that curtail free speech and lawful assembly.”
University President: “Arrest and expel those troublemakers now!”
Going after one egregious wokester will not solve this problem. Until we fumigate the entire nation (like Terminex does when it tents your house to get rid of termites) this will not stop. We have been infested by a lethal ideology that will kill this nation if not stopped in the same way that termites will destroy your home from within. Spending time picking one misguided fool is wasting time when we should be attacking the very core of this problem. How we do this will be a painful and heavy lift but it must be initiated, soon, or we are lost as the nation that everyone thought was the Shining City on the Hill.
I do have to wonder, did Rep. Jamie Raskin feel any degree of fear for his own safety?
There may come a point where some of those protesters would not be satisfied with just heckling him.
There may come a point where some of those protesters would not be satisfied with just heckling him.
Democrats know their audience which explains why they hire private security guards with campaign monies, while demanding defunding the police, e.g. Rep Cori Bush
https://www.newsweek.com/cori-bush-investigation-what-we-know-1865338
Representative Cori Bush is reportedly facing a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation related to alleged misuse of funds. “THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT is conducting a criminal probe into @CoriBush,” Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman posted on X, formerly Twitter. He cited six anonymous sources “familiar with the investigation.” The New York Times also reported that Bush, a Missouri Democrat, is under investigation, also citing anonymous sources.
Estovir,
Ah, yes! Hypocrisy at its finest.
Reading the news, possible Iran retaliation for the Israel airstrike, escalation of war, even WWIII, that is when I can see Rep. Jamie Raskin and others in the Jewish community could face real physical threats.
“No it is not as difficult as you suggest. These protesters stopped the free exchange of ideas in a university event. They prevented opposing views from being spoken or heard. In so doing, they blocked the critical condition needed for higher education in allowing an exchange of ideas. Heckling is an effort to stop discussion, not to engage in discussion.”
Hear! Hear!
Well said professor!
He who lives by the outrage mob shall perish by the outrage mob. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. Do I support mob rule? No. But it’s not going to stop until the people who invented and embraced mob rule in America are forced to experience the consequences. FREE PETER NAVARRO
time to END Federal Aid to colleges, cities, states, and non-profits
Let Democrats FUND THEIR OWN FAilure!
Yes end the bs taxpayer funded grants and tuition loans and you name it and lets not stop there
tax the devil out of them. they’re nonprofits, ok, but they have to pay real estate taxes like anyone else
THAT should be the new rule
if there’s any left still causing mischief once that’s done, RICO investigations and asset forfeitures can finish them off
‘the tools to fight back and save our nation are there, we need only use them via government and law
and we must know the true enemy: not each other, not some subset of petty troublemakers, not some far flung national boogeyman like China or Russia–
but there is an enemy, and it is “our” very own “American” billionaires, ie the PLUTOCRACY, or as they used to be called, INTERNATIONAL CAPITALISTS
that’s right. they are trying to engineer the death of America, destroying native industry, education, peace law and order, morality, religion, gender, etc
we need to do them in before they finish us off
St Paul said the love of money was the root of all evil
Obviously the billionaires love it the most.
There’s no clearer group of scoundrels in need of rectification than them
Saloth Sar
peaceful protesting isn’t shouting someone DOWN!
That is HARRASSMENT and is a CRIME!
Who knew “Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century” was to become performance art.
The text is obvious, neither of those clowns needs to be heard from for Reason to be achieved, but the sub-text of MD Jewish political power under threat from blacks is intriguing. If the Baltimore Sun is still a newspaper, again, like Pine and raskin – not necessary for Reason, the editorial board must be quite confused as to how they are supposed to think about this one.
Time for students to start heckling at the President’s house at 2AM every morning
In a way, this is kind of like lynching a Klansman. Yes, it is wrong, and people should not get lynched without a fair trial, etc., but still oddly satisfying in some way.
Har. Yes, even Raskin should not get ‘lynched’ without a fair trial! How do you feel about ‘gag’ orders, Floyd? \../
Don’t know who, in their right minds, would go to a ‘speech/lecture’ from that rascal Raskin about anything, much less ” “Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century.”
And I dislike ‘got-ya’ journalism, too. But I would be willing to ‘debate’ Raskin on the merits of ‘Democracy, Autocracy, ‘speech’, fair ‘trials’, reason in the 21st century .. . or the finer points of ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
*I suspect that ‘debate’ would be worse than a Biden v Trump redux.
I don’t consider heckling to be speech. I consider it to be cacophonous screeching.
William C Miller,
Well said and spot on.
Ironic or Karma?
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgflip.com%2F48imxo.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=3865d03c9de1f0ed28e5b58932cc0f12517b352f69f6c3a90081374841112fd1&ipo=images
Exactly! BTW, is Raskin wearing a yamaha thingy there, because if so, that probably made it worse.
Even Raskin should be allowed to speak, if only to show what a hack he is.
^^^^ this is the true value of free speech^^^^
Exposing the clueless hucksters
It could not happen to a better person! Who was that famous French person who sent millions to the guillotines and changed the migration habits of catfish in the Seine??? Jack somebody??? No, this guy, who invented the humidor or something – Maximilien Robespierre! Then, one day, it was his turn to lie beneath the blade!