a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by jadedog

There are no laws involved in that article. Those are private entities (American universities) creating restrictions for interaction on their property.

Hate speech laws vary widely around the world. In the US, there needs to be some imminent action that is getting incited from the hate speech for the law to get triggered.

The hate speech wikipedia entry has a listing of the different laws by country.

    The court ruled in Brandenburg v. Ohio that; "The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force, or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."[83]

    This test has been modified very little from its inception in 1969 and the formulation is still good law in the United States. Only speech that poses an imminent danger of unlawful action, where the speaker has the intention to incite such action and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of his or her speech, may be restricted and punished by that law.

At the point where violent action is imminent, mocking is probably not an effective deterrent.

The restrictions of speech on those American university campuses would unlikely fall under those laws.

There has been a lot of debate over the years about whether hate speech should be restricted on US college campuses. This is a speech by an ACLU Executive Director that hate speech should be allowed on college campuses.

Universities are businesses. Like any other business, they would lose customers if the customers felt the environment was hostile to them. Many American universities make the argument that the learning environment is impaired if students feel alienated or threatened by the speech in their environment.



bioemerl  ·  2858 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Free speech in terms of a right given to the US people is only legally given by way of the first amendment.

That doesn't change the fact that free speech is an ideal. It is an ideal that we, as a nation, should uphold and support regardless of where it is, and that includes being very unsupportive of any entity that wishes to shut free speech down or ensure that some cannot speak their views.

I don't care if it's only a government regulation, any company that attempts to say "you can't speak your view" from universities to websites should not be getting anyone's support or consideration.

---
user-inactivated  ·  2856 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  
This comment has been deleted.
jadedog  ·  2856 days ago  ·  link  ·  

First off, thank you for the kind words. I've enjoyed your topics and comments, so I'm glad that you were also interested in the back and forth. It looks like you put a lot of work into your comment, so thank you for that as well.

As to the content, you and I are not disagreeing on the main gist of the topic. The article in your OP was about American universities, with a couple examples of some overboard actions they took in the name of hate speech restrictions.

Hate speech is a term that has two meanings. One is a colloquial meaning used outside the law. The other is a technical meaning under the law.

    Hate speech, outside the law, is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation.[1][2]

    In the law of some countries, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it incites violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.

In your text, you were using the term interchangeably. In this case, they're not interchangeable. It was evident by your choice of words that you were using the principle of hate speech laws to denigrate the hate speech restrictions described in the article.

The American universities were restricting hate speech using the term in the colloquial sense. There were no US laws involved. For US laws to be involved, there would need to be imminent violence. None of the examples in the article would rise to the level of violating a hate speech law.

The reason that the distinction counts is because the laws and the restrictions are motivated by different things and railing against one doesn't affect the other. The laws are motivated by deterring people from doing violent actions motivated by hate. The restrictions are motivated by a private institution creating a conducive and enticing environment for paying customers to continue giving them money. For the universities, it's a business decision.

Railing against hate speech laws doesn't affect anything in the article because the hate speech laws weren't ever at issue. If you were railing against the silly things that private institutions do to maintain their customer base and that could affect the thinking of future generations, I see your point. And so does an executive at the American Civil Liberties Union who also believes that hate speech should not be restricted on college campuses (link in my previous comment).

Fighting about what private institutions can do on their own property takes away the big juicy concepts like freedom and liberty. The government affecting people's freedom is not at stake here.

If you'll forgive a poor analogy here, it's like railing against soft drink companies for putting too much sugar in their product. Yes, it affects future generations negatively. Yes, it's worthwhile to raise the flag of awareness. But without the government involved, it's just people choosing or not choosing to consume a product.

Students are free to attend or not attend private universities as they choose. Creating laws to force institutions to allow hate speech is curtailing the universities' freedom to do what they want on their own property. As a big advocate for freedom, I don't think you're arguing for the government to create more laws to restrict the freedom of an organization to create rules about hate speech as they choose.

Online interactions and colloquial free speech are a whole other topic that's much bigger than this article. It's a topic that I'm interested in, but it might be better in another topic post. I've been on both sides of the issue, so I have a lot of thoughts about it. That said, that topic is unrelated to hate speech and the article in your OP.

---
snoodog  ·  2856 days ago  ·  link  ·  

"private" institutions take way too much "public" money. I'm ok with them doing what ever bullshit they choose to but they should not be receiving public funding and students should not be eligible for federal student loans. If they want that money they need to play by the same rules as public universities

---
user-inactivated  ·  2856 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.
user-inactivated  ·  2858 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.