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.
The heckler’s veto is as contrary to free speech as any other form of censorship.
When someone feels the need to prevent someone else from being heard, it means they have no argument to counter that message. Their only option is to prevent others from hearing the message they can’t counter.
People need the freedom to attend events to hear invited speakers, and decide for themselves what to think.
But… “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Rep. Maxine Waters told supporters (in June of 2018).
-Cat
Most real supporters of free speech believe you fight free speech with more speech.
Every social media company and every government agency has this capability – to actually debate speech they disagree with.
Why aren’t they doing it?
Couldn’t speaking events adopt the system used by many DMVs and deli counters – “take a number” paper ticket. When your number is called you get to speak uninterrupted.
Many tribal societies use “Talking Sticks” – a stick that looks like a dog bone. You can only speak while holding the stick, then you pass it to the next speaker.
There is no infringement of free speech, it actually allows everyone to speak.
Especially if the talking stik had Louisville Slugger stamped on it.
This is one of the patterns I cannot understand in people from both sides of the artificially divided political spectrum. Both liberals and conservatives do the exact same thing here. They promote censoring on the “other side” when the speech is speech that they don’t like or approve of, then become victims of the very same censorship themselves by the “other side” when promoting their own ideals, politics and mores.
What is it about our society today that has so many people, …most people in fact, that allows them to condemn immoral behavior on the “other side” but when the same immoral behavior or deeds are done by members of “their own side” then they find reasons to excuse it away?
The conservatives are right in their vocal opposition to free speech, but let that speech be speech they disapprove of then suddenly they are all for censorship. Books they don’t approve of (unless targeted to minors in which case some form of age restriction is warranted) they are happy to ban or burn.
A protestor asks a question or makes a statement at a political rally they don’t like and they encourage shouting them down, silencing them, even beating them up and dragging them from the event, rather than trying to confront them and their speech with better speech.
Our flag burning, which has long been a way to protest the US govt, and is btw the primary approved method of “reverent disposal” of the US Flag as is outlined in the US code (and for the US Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force as well as the Boy Scouts and Public School system, as well). In the 1960s we used to burn old tattered flags in the back of the school. I know I was on one of those details in the 5th grade.
Yet the republicans gleefully cheer on the idea of writing laws to make flag burning illegal, and to arrest and throw in jail those who engage in this manner of peaceful protest.
Or what about “taking a knee”? I mean out of all the ways a group of people could choose to protest police brutality, I cannot imagine a more peaceful, reverent and respectful method of protesting than quietly “kneeling” before the flag during the national anthem.
Yet let a couple black football players exercise this form of peaceful, reverent protest and the conservatives blow a headgasket. And I’m not talking about conservative politicians, I’m talking about conservative voters. Calls to “lock them up!” and “eject them from the NFL”, …. literally cheering on ruining these people’s lives over their decision to peacefully and reverently protest the govt by taking away their livelihoods and even harming them in some way (constant calls to physically see them hurt) are all we hear from conservative voters, yet they cry buckets when the liberals call for censoring them. And rightfully so.
Censorship is bad regardless of “which side” is doing it.
The problem we have as a people, is we have two sides totally focused on what the “other side” is doing while completely engaging and even promoting the exact same behavior when “their side” does it.
In other words its not like two political parties with opposing views.
Its like watching two large groups of toddlers, who both want to do what they don’t want the other kids doing.
This is what needs to change. Both sides need to stop with carrying water for “their side” and start standing up for the principals they claim to uphold and adhere to.
Its time for people to grow up, and stop playing party politics and start standing up for the principals they claim to embrace.
Disrespect the flag at your own peril.
The athletes are invisible, were they not free riding on the owners dime.
And there it is. Your big mouth, rests my case.
You claim to love free speech, and hate censorship, but only when its speech YOU approve of. And you love censorship, …hell you worship it, as long as you’re censoring whatever you want.
And don’t threaten me big mouth.
It’ll take a lot more than your fat lazy lard keyboard clownact to ever tell me what to do or not do.
Why so mean jelly bean?
May tomorrow be a better day for you baby doll.
I,m a customer of the NFL, I have a right to free speech, also. I’m telling the NFL if they don’t fix the product they are selling, I’m not buying anymore.
What ever goes on between me and a vendor I’m using, is none of your business. So you can buzz off.
Chris
You do understand the difference between burning the flag in a ceremonial way showing proper respect for our banner and a bunch of communist clowns burning it as a symbol of disrespect while stomping on it, right? You do understand the disdain and disgust it is to a majority of Americans that served this Nation and/or had family members killed or maimed doing same to have “a couple of black guys” disrespect our Nation by refusing to stand for the anthem. This isn’t about carrying water for either side, this has been an orchestrated political effort to divide this Nation along every social fissure. This is the progressive communist plan of attack, divide and conquer.
America is the best Nation the world has ever known, providing more opportunity to freedom, prosperity and liberty than any other at any time in history. We just need to remember that and get back to lawful order and accountability!
Troll calling itself “Traveler”.
There is no difference. They’re forms of protest. One you approve of, and one offends your delicate sensibilities so you offer a weasels argument for why you need to censor THAT form of protest as to others.
And don’t wax patriotic with me while hiding behind your trolls handle. My families done more than their patriotic part pal, and we didn’t do it so clowns like you can weasel your fascist control in the back door so you can turn our flag into the next Swastika.
When will idiots like you wake up and realize what Turley has been trying to tell you all along?
Its the principal not your emotional attachments to something that decide freedom.
The flag stands for that freedom and the very right to protest it, even to the point of burning it, which you so conveniently ignore that burning IS THE APPROVED RESPECTFUL manner of disposal of the US Flag.
You’re trolling for one side, selling propaganda and seig heils to elevate the flag itself above the principles it stands for one of the chief being the RIGHT TO PROTEST IT.
But thanks for proving my point.
You censor just as much as the clowns on the left, BOTH want to censor what YOU DON’T APPROVE OF.
Sorry pal, freedom doesn’t mean you have to like it. If its my flag and I wanna burn it, then that flag and the blood of my family and all the families who fought for it say we have that right.
Take away that right from Americans and you desecrate the flag more than any one trying to burn it or protest it ever could.
You desecrate the flag with your very words.
Lol
You’re argument is so stupid and weak with a one size fits all logic it’s mind numbing. I wouldn’t disagree that if you wanna burn your flag then burn it but don’t get upset when another kicks your ass for disrespecting the symbol of our Nation, as it would be his way of expressing his freedom to protest.
And I am not your pal
C W – Please name a speaker who has been shouted down by conservative students.
Don’ troll me scumbag. We aren’t talking about colleges, I said clearly a protester at a RALLY. Respond to MY words not your trolling nonsense or keep your mouth shut to me.
So tough ain’t ya baby?
Nope, just not a mealy mouthed chickensh@#$ so afraid of standing behind his own words, … that he cowers daily behind an ever changing anonymous series of troll handles.
That would be you… baby.
Your mealy-mouthed tough guy ‘act’ ain’t so tough, baby doll.
It’s funny. As in, ‘hey check out this fool.’
Again, the only one pretending to be tough is you little man, while too timid and cowardly to actually put your own name behind your own words.
Weasels like you are the vermin of the world, the scum who hide and cower and heckle too ashamed of your own words to stand behind them.
You’re a coward, and all your anonymous heckling won’t change that.
Don’t troll me bro…
Liberal logic on full display. I would have to believe that any right to protest or free speech that extends beyond Society’s appetite for acceptance was thought of by the framers as to be “handled” by the opposing sides. Say what you want, protest how you wish but don’t be surprised when the opposing side provides you a lunch in the form of a knuckle sandwich.
Freedom is never Free
did ya not hear me troll? I said don’t troll me, and I didn’t use the word “bro” you just lied and made that up, making you an a number P.O.S.
And the only liberal here is apparently you using words like “bro”… I speak English, scumbag.
And I’m libertarian, FAR from liberal and FAR from bootlicking pinheads like you.
Take your medication
I am all for everyone’s right to speak, just as I am all for my right ignore them if I choose. Next issue please.
Yea? Well glad you agree with me 100 percent, …only I don’t recall asking for the two cents of a troll trying to dismiss my comment.
Especially one too stupid to follow his own advice.
Mob rule!
I’m not for censorship, but I have had enough of Jaime Raskin.
Raskin has been a bag of poo and a neo-communist his entire political life. And like all the other enablers of police state fascist communists, he ignored what police state fascist communists ultimately do to their enablers, whether it’s Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Fidel Castro, etc – the ones who supported them and enabled them on their quest to control the people of their country and what they’re allowed to think and do – they too ultimately become yet another set of victims taken out by the tyrannical fascists.
And now it’s Raskin’s turn – attacked by the very same street thugs he enabled and supported.
Haven’t learned a thing since Robespierre and the rest of those Jacobin socialists brought in the fascist ‘justice’ of the guillotine to kill anyone in disagreement themselves soon made the trip to their own guillotine: taken out by the very same fascists they enabled and supported.
Gee, this looks to be a classic case of the pot (Raskin) calling the kettle black…
Really wouldn’t matter what Raskin would’ve said, it would all be lies.
Jonathan: In a previous comment (4/2/24@5:29pm) I pointed out how DJT is now in bed with Don Hankey, the king of subprime auto loans. Hankey posted the $175 million bond but something strange happened in the NY Appellate Division Clerk’s office. It rejected the bond. That’s right. The clerk didn’t recognize Hankey’s Knight Insurance Group as a bonding company they normally do business with. So they sent the bond application back to Hankey asking for a statement of financial conditions to make sure Hankey’s company can pay the bond amount if DJT loses his appeal.
And their are other problems with the $175 million bond. When Hankey says the bond is fully “collateralized” it doesn’t necessarily mean DJT put up the money in liquid assets to secure the bond. DJT is short on cash so bond experts think DJT may have given Hankey a stream of income from some of his rental properties. Something most reputable bonding companies won’t do because DJT is such a poor credit risk. That’s why 30 reputable bonding companies turned him down because they wouldn’t accept that kind of deal.
So DJT had to turn to Hankey for help. What does that say about their relationship? It says a lot. Over the years federal regulators have sued Hankey 4 times over his subprime lending practices. In 2017 the DOJ (under DJT) sued Hankey for illegally repossessing vehicles owned by military service members. Hankey had to settle that case for $761,000. In 2022 the DOJ (under Biden) sued Hankey in California for illegally failing to provide military service members with interest rate benefits they were owed under the law. Hankey settled that case for $225,000.
Hankey doesn’t like being sued by the DOJ. So what might be the unwritten promise DJT made Hankey to get the bond? A quid pro quo? A promise by DJT that if he regains the WH he will tell his hand picked AG to “lay off Hankey”? When you are compromised anything is possible. And DJT is already compromised big time–to the tune of $175 million!
Dennis
The only thing my has a right to know is that Hankey has put up the bond
Hankeys relationship to trump is not their business
Whether the bond is collateral used is hankeys problem not new yorks
“And their are other problems with the $175 million bond.”
Learn to spell. Jeez!
Ah, the French Revolution is a troublesome thing.
So … the shoe of censorship that denigrates free speech is on the other foot … the left foot!
As a MD Alum the U is on that slippery slope for years!
Shouting somebody down is , of course, not ‘engaging in a conversation’ as Pines calls it, as no conversation takes place. If Pines really believes his own words, then his lack of intelligence and ignorance would disqualify him from being university president. If Pines knows better but scared to enforce university policies, then he is a coward and disqualified to be the top executive of the university. Perhaps it is both. I suspect Pines is another DEI appointment.
People like him are paid millions per year to say things that are opposite of reality, like shutting down speech is free speech, or a man can get pregnant. How did our society lose its collective mind?
Most people aren’t intellectually equipped to differentiate empty rhetoric from rational thought. College professors and political pundits thrive on that mental deficiency.
“How did our society lose its collective mind?”
– OMFK
__________
Americans lost the fortitude and resolve to perpetuate the dominion of the Constitution and Bill of Rights through a severely restricted vote and the Naturalization Acts.
Americans lost the fortitude to soundly defeat any and all challenges to the most beneficent and profound fundamental law establishing self-governance in human history.
Americans lost faith in the fundamental integrity, virtue, and value of securing genuine absolute freedom through the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Americans began with an election turnout of 11.6%, voter qualifications being male, European, 21, and a net worth of 50 lbs. Sterling or 50 acres, and rigorous immigration criteria.
Americans were to preserve restrictions, a firm grasp, and strict discipline on the vote in order to maintain and perpetuate the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Americans were to “pursue happiness” in freedom, not be served and accommodated in every aspect and facet of their individual lives, and certainly not to be enslaved under dictatorship in any form, including that of the “proletariat.”
The Ten Commandments stand unaltered to this day.
The “Land of the Free” is as enslaved as any communist nation has ever been.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
_________________________
“the people are nothing but a great beast…
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”
– Alexander Hamilton
_________________________
“The true reason (says Blackstone) of requiring any qualification, with regard to property in voters, is to exclude such persons, as are in so mean a situation, that they are esteemed to have no will of their own.”
“If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
_____________________________________________________
“[We gave you] a [restricted-vote] republic, if you can keep it.”
– Ben Franklin
________________
You couldn’t.
Spot on. We’ve been tricked into trading our Liberty (derived from a Constitutional Republic) for “equality” derived from a democracy. Hardly anyone can even tell you the difference, and yet…it is critical to our future as a nation.
Bob Lawblaw said: “Hardly anyone can even tell you the difference”
A Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting for the luncheon entree.
Well-said.
When the approaching dissolution of the Democratic Party occurs, historians will date it from October 7, 2023.
@Cionnath
This is the eventual outcome IMO, too: the dem party is going to fracture, no longer able to bear the weight of progressive insanity, and the people that ‘just played along’, because of, ‘vote blue no matter who’, are going to be as ashamed as people that were a part of the National Front overseas. It will be something to hide. It is beyond idiotic that it has taken this long for otherwise intelligent people (including our host) to wake up when so many of us have been sounding the bells for so long. Makes one wonder what most actually pay attention to, and what their notions of empathy and compassion actually mean in real world terms.
Cionnath, and James,
My sister is a Democrat and she is appalled by many of the policies her party have taken. If the party continues to embrace the stupid, she said she would consider registering as a Independent.
@James
Yes, their irresistible urge to pander will eventually cause them to surrender to that loud, squealing 8% of their party that is driving all of this lunacy. That will cost them the other 92%. I’m not saying they will roll into the Trump camp, but RFK JR will begin to look better to them when the curtains of the voting booth closes behind them. And because they have driven dissent underground, it will come as a total shock when they lose, just like 2016. Whether or not the party will expel the rabid fringe socialist wing, or allow them to take over remains to be seen. Either way the party is finished. Because of Israel. And if the Biden FDA is really stupid enough to ban menthol cigarettes, game over.
Let the record reflect that I made the above predictions before THIS: Biden Demands ‘Immediate Ceasefire’ from Netanyahu in Phone Call
I expect them to ramp up the crazy crap they are shoving down our throats as we close in on the election. Now that they are worried about a loss, they will try to get everything on their agenda done before Nov. Watch for Joe to give the vote to illegals, likely close enough to the election that the courts cannot intervene until after. I hope you’re right about them getting crushed. Dems like to say Democracy is on the ballot. I believe AMERICA is on the ballot.
So very tired of this sh*t. The civil rights battle has already been won. The party these people align themselves with like a religious sacrement are now, ‘The Man’, the ‘aristocracy’, they purport to be fighting against. I am so done with leftist ignorance. It is clear we are just going to have to take back our country, discourse with people that have the mentality and evolution of five year-olds is a literal impossibility. May they set more precedent in court that works against them, and thank the gods they have been absolute masters at that due to their greed, hubris, ignorance, and intolerance. People seem to have already forgotten that striking candidates from ballots was shot down by the court in a unanimous decision. These people are flipping children. In any other country but this one that actually has a 1st amendment, they’d likely be in jail or dead, or at the least pushed aside; and the privilege they emanate within the bubble of their relatively peaceful and privileged lives, even WITH all of the dem mendacity of the past eight years, stinks to high heaven. Impossible to take seriously. The age of idiotic radicalism is *over*. They may not be hoping for marginalization, but marginalization is what they are going to get. These are not particularly smart people. They are most definitely not fair or equitable people. Zombies, the lot.
I have yet to meet even one Democrat that is open to reconsidering their position or has any qualms about it. When IDENTITY POLITICS is the order of the day, stepping outside the group, no matter how insane or illegal their actions, exposes one to ridicule and cancellation, and I believe, while some Dems may see what the party is up to, none of them have the spine to think for themselves or speak out, except maybe Bill Maher. I don’t agree with him on everything, but he has stood up for common sense and clear thinking more than all the rest of the Dems combined. I had to laugh when a liberal judge decided illegal aliens could carry guns in the US. Heads must be exploding from the Catch-22 they’re in. They don’t want to say ‘no’ on anything to illegals, yet one of them is surely the next mass shooter, thanks to the progressives having no common sense or grip on reality.
I personally know a retired school teacher in her 70s who claims to have voted for the Democrat nominee in every presidential election in the past half century but who will not vote for Biden. She also hates Trump and will not vote for him.
There are tons of Democrats who have abandoned the party. RFK’s family is synonymous with the Democrat Party. His uncle was elected President as a Democrat; while his father and uncle Ted both ran for president as Democrats. He is no longer a Democrat. Tulsi Gabbard was the Democrat VP nominee and Co-Chair of the DNC. They ran her out of the party which she now correctly despises.
Sasha Stone is a lifelong Democrat activist who actively worked to get Hillary elected, who voted for Biden, and now despises her party with a passion. Matt Taibbi is no longer a registered Democrat. I’m not sure if Glenn Greenwald was ever a registered Democrat, but he was certainly aligned with Democrats for much of his journalistic career until they went bat sh!t crazy after Trump’s election.
There is a recent video of James Carville talking about how blacks and Hispanics are leaving the Democrat Party. I forget the adjective he used (‘flood’, ‘droves’, etc.) but the meaning was en masse. He was waving the red flag.
Unfortunately, the Democrat Party is not suicidal. They will soon change the messaging and propose some new vote buying scheme to try stop the hemorrhaging. In a just world, obviously, it would be ground into dust and the Earth salted to permanently extinguish it and ALL of its horrible policy ideas. That’s not the world we live in. Democrats have worked extremely the past century at corrupting the voting public itself. They’ll come out with a new scheme to bribe people for their votes promising to stick it to “the rich” and many will bite.
These people are mercenaries and factotums for the BILLIONAIRES. There is no real “Left” in the US, it is only fakes posing as leftists to dilute and destroy any possible resistance to the international capitalist globalist billionaires which otherwise might be possible.
They own the mass media, education; they own the bureacracies and the courts; the own the major parties.
Look here, the Republican Speaker gonna send another 100 billion to Ukraine which basically lost already? Whats that gonna do? They dont have enough artillery shells, and soon not enough people, it will be over whether our government spends it or not
BUT WHO GETS PAID? Not muck to Ukrine so much as a lot to the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX which benefits a bunch of companies owned by Blackrock, State St, Vanguard, and mostly controlled by Larry Fink.
he’s as much the monster as Soros ever was
And they’re ginning up a war against Iran next. which will be another disaster that makes them even richer and us poorer
THEY ARE OUR ENEMIES THE BILLIONAIRES, THE PLUTOCRACY
Saloth Sar
Dear Prof Turley,
Having attended many convocations in the distant past, I would need to know if Raskin’s “Irving and Renee Milchberg Endowed Lecture, titled “Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century” was mandatory to determine the appropriate response.
If it was, a mandatory lecture (i.e. with no ‘debate’), I would be compelled to lodge a formal protest with the Dean .. . and take a spring break ‘mental pause’.
*that’s why I’m different; ‘I can sense the slightest human suffering’!
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.