Cornell Free Speech Alliance Launches

An encouraging sign for the future of American higher education has been the emergence of local faculty groups organizing themselves to advance free speech principles at their particular institution. The latest is the Cornell Free Speech Alliance at Cornell University.

Of particular interest is their new report on policy recommendations for universities. The key points can be found here. The full report is here.

Although motivated by the specific situation at Cornell, the policy recommendations are not specific to that university. The report makes for useful reading and lays out a valuable agenda for faculty across the country.

Comments

[gVOR08]

The key points look mostly generic BS. The only specific point is that the U shouldn't charge a security fee based on content or anticipated reaction. So RW groups can invite the worst provocateurs they can find, hoping for a fight, without cost? Left wing too, but they lack the history of doing so.

[Rossami]

That is ... a remarkably revisionist take on the recent free-speech-on-campus debates.

[Randal]

How so? It seems pretty accurate to me.

[Michael P]

Let me guess: You're an only child.

Most of us grew up learning that other people do not "make" us react badly, and that misbehavior is our own choice. The same is true when leftists breach the peace during someone else's speech or presentation.

[Sarcastr0]

Most of us grew up learning that other people do not “make” us react badly, and that misbehavior is our own choice.

Pish tosh.
How many on here cry that the evil liberals are why they must put aside their principles and argue for authoritarianism?

[Michael P]

"Why do you insist on enforcing laws?" asks the "punch a Nazi -- and all of you are Nazis" crowd.

[Sarcastr0]

This strawmanship of course tracks not at all with your defense of Trump.

[Michael P]

Whoosh.

As TIP recognized, you are strawmanning like hell here, among other flaws in your argument. In contrast, I only attributed a paraphrase of your question to your more forthright comrades. Most of the more authoritarian arguments from the right are premised as tit-for-tat responses to non-speech acts, whereas the left argues for violent escalation: bringing a fist to an inauguration, a knife to a word fight, or -- famously -- a gun to a knife fight.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"How many on here cry that the evil liberals are why they must put aside their principles and argue for authoritarianism?"

None?

[Currentsitguy]

Where did you get the idea that is an only child thing? Both me and my my wife are only children. Neither I nor she has ever displayed that kind of crazy stupidity.

[Michael P]

I think it is an attitude that can only occur in an only child, not that it is common to only children. (Lots of people get the same lesson in kindergarten or grade school, even if they have siblings.) In formal logic, the attitude implies only-childhood, but only-childhood is not a reliable predictor of that attitude.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No.

"But it’s also important to recall that 10 years earlier, New Left darlings such as Angela Davis also found themselves facing the wrath of a similarly censorship-happy, right-wing administration (Davis was required to provide for and pay for her own security when she spoke at UMass in the late 1970s). Even though the ideological pendulum has swung in the other direction — toward the multicultural left — the tactics and methods the university uses to stifle free debate on campus remain as shameless and despicable as ever."

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=harvey+silverglate+boston+phonex+send+in+the+clowns&ia=images&iax=images

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Plus extra security fees for female students with short skirts.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Absolutely.

I'm told you can make *good* money as a bouncer at a strip club because of the security needs of the strippers.

Security needs they don't have when they keep their clothes on.

[AAC]

Call me cynical, but I wouldn't be surprised if colleges are doing this because their progressive majors are no longer a pipeline to a DEI job.

IOW, they need something new to sell.

[mydisplayname]

Points 3a and 3b are certainly worthwhile! But they beg questions: Who thought DEI _should_ be a part of the institutional mission? Why was the faculty apparently powerless (or unwilling) to prevent its implementation in the first place?

Previous lack of proper stewardship and self-governance is rational factor for consideration: all too many addicts feign recovery only long enough to avoid impending trial and incarceration. What precludes recidivism?

[Randal]

There's lots of data now that DEI didn't really have the desired results anyway.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Yet another separatist group dedicated to (1) whining about how and why strong, legitimate, mainstream institutions are insufficiently hospitable to stale, ugly conservative thinking in general and racism, superstition, gay-bashing, misogyny, white nationalism, xenophobia, antisemitism, supernatural dogma, and Islamophobia in particular and (2) pushing for affirmative action for bitter clingers on reason-based, inclusive campuses.

[Bwaaah]

Yeah...no problem with widespread feelings among U.S. students across the political spectrum that they shouldn't openly express themselves, especially at the more intellectually competitive schools. Nothing to look at. Carry on. (It didn't happen at my child's school, more than a few times, as recently as last semester.)

Nothing to see. Carry on.

[Commenter_XY]

Professor Jacobson is busy over at Legal Insurrection. 🙂

[Sidney r finkel]

Most of the recommendations are generic and not subject to controversy or disagreement But this phrase,

"Affirm that words are not violence. . ."

is total and complete garbage and one wonders why it is even in there. What exactly is the point???

Speech can be violence and often is. Speech urging violent action has become all too prevalent in our political discourse. There are a number of suicides from bullying by speech. False and reckless speech can and has ruined countless lives. Failure to recognize and prevent violent speech that results in injury both physical and mental and death is a cancer in our society and an affront to the first amendment.

[Randal]

What exactly is the point???

I think the point is to refute exactly that viewpoint.

Which, of course, makes the Cornell Free Speech Alliance pretty fucking hypocritical. "Words are not violence" is itself a slogan of political activism, and as such it shouldn't be endorsed by the Cornell administration according to the CFSA's other recommendations.

[Cheerio]

"'Words are not violence' is itself a slogan of political activism, and as such it shouldn’t be endorsed..."

Well, at some point self-referential paradoxes have to be addressed on first principles. "Viewpoint neutrality" has long been established as a constitutional absolute, but alas, the viewpoint that government should be neutral is...a viewpoint. So, do we get rid of the viewpoint neutrality rule?

[Michael P]

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are real killers." - crybullies

[Krayt]

You think that's a lotta deaths, wait until government gains the power to silence people.

[Cheerio]

"Speech can be violence and often is. Speech urging violent action has become all too prevalent in our political discourse."

Since Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court has drawn a pretty clear line on what constitutes such an "urging" that would cross the line from speech to conduct. When people say "speech," I assume they're referring to speech in the constitutional law sense.

[Randal]

This is a better statement than the one you signed, Keith.

It does little to address the underlying tension between free speech and an inclusive community, but it's better than your statement in that it at least leaves the issue open rather than explicitly endorsing racist invective on campus.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

an inclusive community

That excludes campuses operated by conservatives.

Tidy your own fourth-tier, shabby houses before figuring you are positioned to offer pointers on education to the libertarian-liberal mainstream, clingers.

[Currentsitguy]

I think you will find that those of you on the libertarian-left and those of us on the libertarian-right are both in the extreme minority.

[Cheerio]

Arthur seems to be consistently more left-wing than any sort of libertarian...

[Dr. Ed 2]

I don’t see it protecting students, nor do I see it dealing with the Star Chamber BITs, and until I see both, I’ll just dismiss it as irrelevant.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I see that Schrödinger's Monday Open Thread is gone again.

[MachineGunBodine]

What's with that? Does it happen often?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

And it's back.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“These recommendations are founded upon the University of Chicago and Yale University policy guidelines presented in the APPENDICES that follow.”

So they’re recommending the policies of a couple of obscure cow colleges in clinger country? Policies recommended by a couple of can’t-keep-up losers – apparently their names are Kalven and Woodward, or some such.

[Randal]

Pretty lucky not to have been the Clinton Report or Bush Report, really.

Or Obama.

Or Sotomayor or Alito or Thomas or Kavanaugh.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Sure, what you said...whatever it means.