The Freedom of Speech Thread

[Berkut]

I'm talking specifically about shouting down speakers on campus.

Your counterargument about the school's reputation is a decent one and I admit it's validity.  However in pursuing that goal they are obstructing the ability of the speaker to communicate to the audience that wants to hear them.  I see the ability to communicate unobstructed as a pretty basic right, and it shouldn't depend on your liking of the message.

I guess my question is why the audience needs to listen to the speaker on a college campus specifically? If the audience is so keen to listen to the speaker, couldn't they rent a hall / convention centre / church basement somewhere not on campus? And if so, is anything really lost?

I mean - it's possible that many of the protestors would still show up (minus however many are there because they don't want the speaker on their campus), but they'd just be protesting outside. College students and staff would have much less leverage over locations outside of campus and would be unlikely to get the speaker disinvited - and thus their protest would fair game from your POV, right?

But there is already a functioning mechanism for deciding who ought to talk on a college campus. You cannot just show up and start chatting in a lecture hall at Yale, there is some kind of process in place that involves some kind of review and evaluation of the speakers credentials and the relevance of their message.

The cancel culture crowd you are so fond of is the mob Jake. It is people who have decided that that process doesn't confer on THEM the power to decide who gets to speak, and they demand that power. I think there are multiple examples where it is clear they are using that power in a incredibly negative manner, not at all based on their supposed concern for the repuational integrity of the school, but simply because the speaker is going to say something they don't like, or has said something they don't like in the past.

Your "reputational integrity" argument is kind of silly. You are pulling that out as a somewhat rational reason why a speaker ought to be not invited, but you know perfectly well that isn't the actual reason the mobs shut down speakers. There are already people at the school whose job it is to decide if a speaker presenting some topic is going to damage the school reputation in a manner that is not acceptable, and it isn't the twitter mob.

[Berkut]

An absolutist approach to freedom of speech means that the tools to fight that are - targeted refutations, so that the two can compete in the marketplace of ideas.

I think part of it is that the marketplace of ideas is a lovely ideal, but that the outcome of the competition is subject to a whole host of forces other than just the quality of the ideas themselves (including monopoly creation, collusion, and various forms of corruption).

Compounding the challenge is perhaps the fact that the means for developing the skill set to critically evaluate competing ideas has increasingly become an arena of political struggle.

THis is very, very true.

The mob is not the answer to the problem. Even when it agrees with us.

[FunkMonk]

An interesting article in The New Republic that's somewhat relevant to the thread. An excerpt below:

At stake here is whether American universities can serve democracy, as they should, without turning into places where anything goes and knowledge is determined by those with the most money or the loudest voices. In Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom: A First Amendment Jurisprudence for the Modern State, Yale law professor Robert C. Post distinguishes "democratic legitimation," which is why we have the First Amendment, from "democratic competence," which is why we have universities and academic freedom. As he explained in a 2012 interview, he developed these terms after realizing "that First Amendment protections can function to debase knowledge into mere opinion and thereby to undercut the very political conversation that the First Amendment otherwise fosters." Democratic legitimation, he writes, "requires that the speech of all persons be treated with toleration and equality." Democratic competence, by contrast, "requires that speech be subject to a disciplinary authority that distinguishes good ideas from bad ones." How to reconcile the two? Post concludes that we must understand academic freedom to be based on democratic competence but not on democratic legitimation. Democratic competence—the knowledge and insight made available to society through its universities that are based on study and knowledge and not reducible to mere opinion or viewpoint—can be ensured when academic freedom, not free speech, is the ruling principle: Universities must be "free to evaluate scholarly speech based upon its content."

Universities are thus critical institutions in democratic countries because the work they perform—discriminating between opinion or propaganda on the one hand and reasoned argument on the other—inhibits the development of alternate realities rooted in power and special interests. Why, then, has it been so easy and tempting for everyone to treat academic freedom as a synonym for free speech? For two reasons, we suspect. One, "expertise," some conception of which is integral to academic freedom, is in bad odor these days, for some good and some bad reasons. Two, the idea of "competence" pales next to the triumphant rhetoric of free speech—the idea that everyone has a right to speak their mind. According to Post, while "it is not intelligible to believe that all ideas are equal," Americans gravitate to free speech over the cognitive ideal embedded in academic freedom because "Americans are committed to the equality of persons," and "the deep egalitarian dimension of the First Amendment resonates far more with this ethical value than with any cognitive ideal."

https://newrepublic.com/article/165649/professors-speech-disqualifying

[Berkut]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/scary-future-american-right-national-conservatism-conference/620746/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1gZQgzueOA3p4Zqdons9-Szs02HpLVa3nuS46fVIY_gvd8gneSs_LEeVs

Note that all of you arguing for the supression of speech on the basis of it's the only way to influence institutions of power....well, the other side is making THAT EXACT SAME ARGUMENT.

This is what abandoning principle gets you. If you don't support freedom of expression as a principle that applies to even expression you don't like, then it just becomes a tactical fight over who can suppress the views they don't like more effectively. Maybe the left will actually win that fight, but I suspect that victory won't look nearly as sweet as we imagine.

[Berkut]

This shit is fucking terrifying:

My old friend Rod Dreher of The American Conservative argued that because the left controls the commanding heights of the culture and the economy, the only institution the right has a shot at influencing is the state. In these circumstances the right has to use state power to promote its values. "We need to quit being satisfied with owning the libs, and save our country," Dreher said. "We need to unapologetically embrace the use of state power."

This is what we are getting from the lefts refusal to allow anyone to speak openly. The right gets to say "See, the left absolutely dominates the colleges! They won't even let someone make an argument for conservative values in those institutions! We have no choice but to use whatever means necessary to take over state power!"

Its bullshit of course. But the idea that the mob has to shout down and de-platform some scientist because they once questioned the 1619 project has consequences, and they are real, and they are almost universally negative.

[DGuller]

You're conflating the entities in the analogy of the marketplaces.  In the regular marketplace, the companies are typically the entities doing the competing.  It doesn't have to be companies, but the vast majority of the time it is companies, so that's why I was talking about companies rather than a more tedious term like "market players".  In the marketplace of ideas, it's the people who are the "market players".

Besides, boycott is just one of the prohibited anti-competitive behaviors.  If all the market players do get together and form a single company in order to be able to refuse to deal without it being a boycott, they'll probably steer clear of charges of boycott, but then they'll be guilty of monopolistic practices.  The point is that in the regular marketplaces, laws exist to ensure that products can get a chance to compete, even if they're shitty.

I'm conflating them because they overlap.  Companies by their nature are designed to allow groups of people to act together for a common purpose, usually but not always to make money.  You have a problem with groups of people acting together to boycott something, but if a company with equivalent market power did the same thing you wouldn't have a problem with it.

None of the boycotts by any group of people in the US has approached the power or organization of, well, even a medium sized company.  That's not even close to monopolistic behavior, and so wouldn't move into that realm.  Just about all the big economic shifts due to social politics have been companies saying they are not doing business in a city or state due to legislation, not groups of individuals boycotting.  Individuals boycotting haven't really moved the needle.  Hobby Lobby and Chik Fil A are both doing fine, despite being targets of boycotts for many years.

I think you're going too deep and too narrow into the analogy.  For one, it's not just about the boycott, and for that matter it's about more than coercion and intimidation as well, the three words are a shorthand for the concept of anti-competetive behavior.  Anti-competetive behavior is not regarded as a feature of the markets, it's regarded as a bug to be combatted by regulation.

Let me briefly restate the general point I was making:  there is a difference between losing in the marketplace of ideas, and being kept out of the marketplace of ideas altogether.

Here are a few hypotheticals:

You express your opinion, most find it stupid.  You keep expressing it, people keep finding it stupid.  —- You're losing in the marketplace.

You express your opinion, others ask you if your employer knows you hold that opinion.  Other people who share your opinion observe this and think twice about whether they want to deal with that bullshit.  —- People are being coerced/boycotted/intimidated out of the marketplace.

You express your opinion, most find it stupid.  You keep expressing it, and others tell you to STFU already or they'll let your employer know.  —- People are being coerced/boycotted/intimidated out of the marketplace.

[Berkut]

In the interest of another Sam Harris favorite, I am going to do my opponents a favor, and imagine how *I* would make their argument. This is called steel-manning.

And it isn't without merit, and is summed up nicely here:

They are wrong, too, to think there is a wokeist Anschluss taking over all the institutions of American life. For people who spend so much time railing about the evils of social media, they sure seem to spend an awful lot of their lives on Twitter. Ninety percent of their discourse is about the discourse. Anecdotalism was also rampant at the conference—generalizing from three anecdotes about people who got canceled to conclude that all of American life is a woke hellscape. They need to get out more.

Cancel culture is a problem. But it isn't that big of a problem, and in fact is really just a tactical reaction to the previous reality where the progressive left was itself "cancelled" and the voices of those concerned about systemic racism and inequality where stifled as a matter of course. Not through cancellation, but simply through a systematic and privileged refusal to give them a platform. Now that they have finally gotten a platform, it is inevitable that they will want to dominate what little platform they are given.

Further, much like the right, the left needs to stop playing nice, and get dirty when needed. Cancel culture might be terrible when it comes to anodyne discussions on websites, but in the reality of the culture war, sometimes you have to be willing to get dirty to win the war, and worrying too much about some poor university professor getting canceled is missing the forest for the trees. Omellettes, eggs, etc., etc.

[Zoupa]

I like how it's always "the left" 's fault, even when you have the dude from the other side literally saying they should use state power politically 

[Berkut]

I like how it's always "the left" 's fault, even when you have the dude from the other side literally saying they should use state power politically 

Except nobody it is sayiing it is the lefts fault. 

This isn't about fault, it is about how we should fight this culture war. 

I suspect 100% of the people in this thread agree that most of the actual problem with our fucked up society is the rights fault, if fault were the subject.

But the point is that if you accept that the left ought to be cancelling people, then by definition you cannot complain when the right does the same - then it just becomes a fight between two teams and who can better control the narrative, rather then who has the better ideas.

Personally, I think we have better ideas, and hence should not accept a fight where the quality of the ideas no longer matters.

[DGuller]

On balance I agree that collectively the left's ideas trounce the right's ideas on merit, but I do think that this advantage is eroding, in large part due to lack of respect for truly open and frank discussion. 

Even if you start off with the right idea, if you allow only one side to freely express their opinion, you'll eventually ratchet that idea to such an extreme that it would no longer clearly be a right idea.

[Josquius]

The problem there is "the right" play lots of games with strawmen and the Overton window.
 They present issues as a debate between a loopy left wing view and a on the surface less loopy but actually very dodgy right wing view and when it's rightly pointed out they're being dishonest and hiding fascy shit behind their claims to be the reasonable ones then it's those left wing crazies who are to blame - that the majority of people on the left don't have these views and dislike extremists of any stripe, though obviously see the right wing ones as more of a threat, must never be mentioned.

It's a favourite fallacy of fascists to pretend that the left is intolerant of anyone with a differing point of view all because their one particular view is beyond the pale. They're always very keen to create an opportunity to push this point.

[crazy canuck]

An interesting article in The New Republic that's somewhat relevant to the thread. An excerpt below:

At stake here is whether American universities can serve democracy, as they should, without turning into places where anything goes and knowledge is determined by those with the most money or the loudest voices. In Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom: A First Amendment Jurisprudence for the Modern State, Yale law professor Robert C. Post distinguishes "democratic legitimation," which is why we have the First Amendment, from "democratic competence," which is why we have universities and academic freedom. As he explained in a 2012 interview, he developed these terms after realizing "that First Amendment protections can function to debase knowledge into mere opinion and thereby to undercut the very political conversation that the First Amendment otherwise fosters." Democratic legitimation, he writes, "requires that the speech of all persons be treated with toleration and equality." Democratic competence, by contrast, "requires that speech be subject to a disciplinary authority that distinguishes good ideas from bad ones." How to reconcile the two? Post concludes that we must understand academic freedom to be based on democratic competence but not on democratic legitimation. Democratic competence—the knowledge and insight made available to society through its universities that are based on study and knowledge and not reducible to mere opinion or viewpoint—can be ensured when academic freedom, not free speech, is the ruling principle: Universities must be "free to evaluate scholarly speech based upon its content."

Universities are thus critical institutions in democratic countries because the work they perform—discriminating between opinion or propaganda on the one hand and reasoned argument on the other—inhibits the development of alternate realities rooted in power and special interests. Why, then, has it been so easy and tempting for everyone to treat academic freedom as a synonym for free speech? For two reasons, we suspect. One, "expertise," some conception of which is integral to academic freedom, is in bad odor these days, for some good and some bad reasons. Two, the idea of "competence" pales next to the triumphant rhetoric of free speech—the idea that everyone has a right to speak their mind. According to Post, while "it is not intelligible to believe that all ideas are equal," Americans gravitate to free speech over the cognitive ideal embedded in academic freedom because "Americans are committed to the equality of persons," and "the deep egalitarian dimension of the First Amendment resonates far more with this ethical value than with any cognitive ideal."

https://newrepublic.com/article/165649/professors-speech-disqualifying

Yep, there is a very important difference between the concept of academic freedom within a university and the concept of freedom of expression. 

[Berkut]

On balance I agree that collectively the left's ideas trounce the right's ideas on merit, but I do think that this advantage is eroding, in large part due to lack of respect for truly open and frank discussion. 

Even if you start off with the right idea, if you allow only one side to freely express their opinion, you'll eventually ratchet that idea to such an extreme that it would no longer clearly be a right idea.

You also lose out on the market place of ideas within the progressive movement.

Much like it is important to note that most people who Islamic terrorist kill are other Muslims, most of the people the woke left love to cancel and despise (like Sam Harris) are other progressives. 

[crazy canuck]

This shit is fucking terrifying:

My old friend Rod Dreher of TheAmerican Conservative argued that because the left controls the commanding heights of the culture and the economy, the only institution the right has a shot at influencing is the state. In these circumstances the right has to use state power to promote its values. "We need to quit being satisfied with owning the libs, and save our country," Dreher said. "We need to unapologetically embrace the use of state power."

This is what we are getting from the lefts refusal to allow anyone to speak openly. The right gets to say "See, the left absolutely dominates the colleges! They won't even let someone make an argument for conservative values in those institutions! We have no choice but to use whatever means necessary to take over state power!"

Its bullshit of course. But the idea that the mob has to shout down and de-platform some scientist because they once questioned the 1619 project has consequences, and they are real, and they are almost universally negative.

Utter nonsense.  The right is forced to use the power of the state to curtail freedom of expression?  No, they need to compete within the marketplace of ideas like everyone else. 

[Berkut]

This shit is fucking terrifying:

My old friend Rod Dreher of TheAmerican Conservative argued that because the left controls the commanding heights of the culture and the economy, the only institution the right has a shot at influencing is the state. In these circumstances the right has to use state power to promote its values. "We need to quit being satisfied with owning the libs, and save our country," Dreher said. "We need to unapologetically embrace the use of state power."

This is what we are getting from the lefts refusal to allow anyone to speak openly. The right gets to say "See, the left absolutely dominates the colleges! They won't even let someone make an argument for conservative values in those institutions! We have no choice but to use whatever means necessary to take over state power!"

Its bullshit of course. But the idea that the mob has to shout down and de-platform some scientist because they once questioned the 1619 project has consequences, and they are real, and they are almost universally negative.

Utter nonsense.  The right is forced to use the power of the state to curtail freedom of expression?  No, they need to compete within the marketplace of ideas like everyone else. 

Hence the statement "It's bullshit of course".

Look, arguing about how fucked up the right is has zero usefulness. There isn't anyone here on the "No, they are totally correct!" side.

Of course they need to compete in the market place of ideas like everyone else - which is why we need to make sure to protect their access to that marketplace. What is more, we should be fully confident in our ability to beat them in that marketplace.

But you know who else we should make sure get access to that marketplace? Progressives who are not as progressive as you are, and even the despised moderates and centrists.