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Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and it's a fair price.

Being annoyed, inconvenienced, or even negatively impacted by the speech acts of others is by design. To throw that out is to make a calculation that without freedom of speech, your perspective will be the natural default without activism to upset it. A dangerous assumption.

▲ clarionbell a day ago | parent | next [-]

Problem is that in the past two decades university admins gave in to various deplatforming causes and enforced codes. If they had stood firm before, the arguments against them wouldn't be nearly as strong. Unfortunately, they didn't. So when they now use the "free speech" argument themselves it rings hollow.

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mmooss a day ago | parent | next [-]

Those policies were designed to promote free speech from vulnerable groups. Political vulnerability has a huge influence on free speech (and freedom), and that's what they have been addressing.

(Picking two random groups:) If you are Pakistani and are in a room of all Indian people, and the others say how horrible Pakistanis are and how research shows that Pakistanis are less intelligent or prone to violence, that is a very intimidating atmosphere and it would be hard to endure, much less speak up.

If that one Pakistani says the same about Indians, it's obnoxious and annoying, but it's no threat to anyone. The many Indians are not vulnerable. That's the difference.

Furthermore, the dominant groups in a culture tend to create systems and knowledge that support them to the exclusion of others - sometimes explicitly and intentionally. That's systemic discrimination - the system naturally generates it if you follow the usual path. It takes some effort to create space for other points of view.

Whether the typical DEI policies are optimal is another question. I haven't heard anyone come up with a great solution. Some pretend it's not a problem and there is no prejudice, which is absurd and not a solution; it's just sticking one's head in the sand - because they can, because they are not vulnerable.

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lmm a day ago | parent [-]

> (Picking two random groups:) If you are Pakistani and are in a room of all Indian people, and the others say how horrible Pakistanis are and how research shows that Pakistanis are less intelligent or prone to violence, that is a very intimidating atmosphere and it would be hard to endure, much less speak up.

Much like a right-winger or a Christian at one of these universities.

The policies didn't help the groups they were supposedly about helping, they helped the groups that were already dominant (race and religion matter a lot less in a group that's all upper class), whether by design or because they evolved to.

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mmooss 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The policies didn't help the groups they were supposedly about helping

Do you have any evidence?

> Much like a right-winger or a Christian at one of these universities.

So is the first quote not based on evidence, but based on your ideology? There's no reason any vulnerable minority shouldn't be protected, though 'right-wingers' and Christians (usually meaning conservative Christians) are hardly vulnerable in the US, even if they are a minority on many campuses. They rule the country and always have, have access to every job and privilege.

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antifa 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nobody knows you're a Christian or right winger at a university until you open your mouth to let all the women and LGBT people know that you think they don't deserve rights, and it's not discrimination when people don't like you for being an asshole. The vast majority of Christians go to college, don't get mad that LGBT and non-Christians exist, and didn't get discriminated against.

The absolute narcissism on display here is crazy.

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mmooss 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Not all conservative Christians and right wingers think "women and LGBT people ... don't deserve rights". I find that if I approach people that way, it brings out the worst in them - they feel cornered and they fight. There's not much room for discussion when someone dismisses 'crazy antifa terrorists'. Are you going to reason with them?

It destroys social trust, which is what the real radicals aim at. If you want to fight the far right, work to build it.

I think the DEI rule should be simply to ban intolerance, with some education about how norms can be intolerant of minorities, and the experience of being a vulnerable minority in a room of majority.

	▲	antifa 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Not all conservative Christians and right wingers think "women and LGBT people ... don't deserve rights Weird how those specific Christians who think women and LGBT are people don't feel discriminated against.

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rightbyte a day ago | parent | prev [-]

No it doesn't ring hallow. It is just that the issue is old.

▲ geertj a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized

You have that right. But doing this is not always wise. Labeling people as immoral and ostracizing them, especially on 50/50 issues, is one of the reason why the American political system is so radicalized at the moment.

	▲	throw4847285 a day ago \| parent [-]
		That's a question of tactics, though. Moral outrage can be extremely effective, and it can also be counterproductive. And striking the right balance has been a challenge in American politics as long as American politics have existed. In his Second Inaugural, Lincoln threads the needle in a way that is frankly unachievable for even most skilled politicians. "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other" seems like an acknowledgement of moral nuance, but he follows it up with, "It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged." Speaking to a nation in which a part of it is in open revolt over the right to keep other humans as slaves is certainly an extreme case. But it isn't categorically different from any other political struggle. People are going to accuse one another of being immoral. It's the human condition. A legal system that protects this behavior is the bedrock of democracy. It doesn't matter how annoying you find the people doing the judging.

▲ lelanthran 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and it's a fair price.

Sure, agreed. But groups and institutions taking even a dime of tax money should not get to place a thumb on the scales of those arguments. US universities, in particular, chose a side and then silenced all opposing viewpoints.

It was inevitable that the silenced would eventually mobilise, and they did. And now the group has to abandon their arguments about allowing "punching up" and instead pontificate on "free speech".

Myself (and many others) argued over the last decade and more that the pendulum always swings back, so lets be a little less extreme in the left/right argument. I, on this site, got labeled a non-thinking right-winger apologist for pointing out that the mainstream views on transgender for minors does not match the views that the powers-that-be were pushing.

You can't push for normalising the silencing of views for well over a decade without you yourself eventually falling victim to the same normalisation.

▲ ytpete 15 hours ago | parent [-]

What did US universities do to "silence all opposing viewpoints" on any issues? Did they kick students out of school because of their viewports? Claw back their financial aid? Get them deported? Physically harm them? I sure don't remember things like that happening in widespread manner to conservative students, let alone happening in a way that was organized top-down by the universities' leadership.

	▲	lelanthran 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I want to assume you are asking in good faith and really aren't aware of academic administration's attempts to silence specific and common viewpoints. Your comment surprises me, because at this point, there really isn't any contention over the fact that universities have been doing exactly this. So while I am assuming that you don't actually know, I'll give you a short list of links (I'm not doing research that takes me more than 5m). > What did US universities do to "silence all opposing viewpoints" on any issues? https://www.forbes.com/sites/musbahshaheen/2024/06/05/stop-r... https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/diversity-statemen... https://www.thefire.org/news/anti-free-speech-trends-campus-... https://www.thefire.org/facultyreport https://www.hrdive.com/news/stop-requiring-diversity-stateme... (UK, but still the same idea) https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/kathleen-stock... https://www.thefire.org/news/speaker-disinvited-uncomfortabl... https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-speakers-... And, finally, some charts: https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/ne... Analysis of the data FIRE has collected reveals a clear political trend in the likelihood that a speaker will be targeted with a disinvitation effort. Speakers are far more likely to face disinvitation efforts from opponents to their political left than from those to their right. Since 2000, those behind the disinvitation efforts targeted speakers with views more conservative than their own nearly three times more frequently (97 attempts) than they targeted speakers with views more liberal than their own (36 attempts). The takeaway is that the right-leaning students and administration are far far more tolerant of speech from the left, than the left-leaning students and administration are of speech from the right. It pains me to say it, but it aligns with my experience. > Did they kick students out of school because of their viewports? Claw back their financial aid? Get them deported? Physically harm them? None of that is required to silence opposing views. > I sure don't remember things like that happening in widespread manner to conservative students, let alone happening in a way that was organized top-down by the universities' leadership. "Allowing only one viewpoint" doesn't require that the university administration has a top-down directive to expel students, only that they allow one viewpoint and silence the other. Once again, that this happened is not in dispute, so I am left wondering where you were going with this response.
	▲	mantas 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think it's vice versa. Some students prevent other students from exercising their free speech rights. E.g. try to prevent speakers they don't like from speaking on campus. Or harass some people for their ethnicity in context of Hamas/Israel war. Then universities look the other way.

▲ mantas a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I’ll defend other people rights to offend me. But nowadays some people think others, even just between themselves, can’t say what would offend them.

	▲	throw4847285 a day ago \| parent [-]
		A lot of people are fair-weather friends of freedom of speech. It's all well and good if everybody is allowed to express themselves as long as everybody, if they don't like me, at least respects me. I guess some people were never in favor of freedom of speech, they just wanted a world where they faced minimal interpersonal conflict, and the current order for a while was serving that purpose.