Colleges and universities have been in the news lately. This has been for a variety of reasons, some good, some silly, some bad. Hanging it over it all, however, is something that's bothering me. We'll come to that shortly.
Let's start with the good. Threats and “fighting words” are not protected speech. Shouting the N word at a group of black students is plainly a threat, so I have no problem taking measures against it. This is what was going on at the University of Missouri. There were frequent, threatening racist incidents with nothing being done about them. So congratulations to the students for taking a stand.
The silly is the Halloween costume fracas that started at Yale. This is one where I will take the bold position of saying that everyone needs to calm down. It started with this e-mail from The Intercultural Affairs Committee at Yale. The e-mail very politely suggests that students show a little bit of cultural sensitivity in selecting their costumes. Seriously, go read it. It's just about the most innocuous thing you could imagine. There are no threats of disciplinary action against transgressors or stern warnings about acceptable and unacceptable costumes or anything like that. On the other hand, I do think a lot of students need to have their eyes opened to the ways in which things they view as harmless could be offensive to others.
Surely there's some point where a Halloween costume simply crosses the boundaries of good taste. If someone shows up dressed as a Nazi soldier or as a KKK member, am I really supposed to chalk that up to normal youthful callousness? I don't think so. I certainly would not appreciate it if someone dressed up as a Jewish stereotype.
I wouldn't appreciate it, but I also wouldn't make a federal case out of it. Alas, things quickly got out of hand at Yale. Erika Christakis, the house master of Silliman College at Yale, sent out a reply to the previous e-mail. Now, I disagree with much of what Christakis said. As I've indicated, I think the original e-mail was fine, and was written in the spirit not of threatening or controlling anyone, but of opening people's eyes to issues they might not have considered. But Christakis' e-mail is miles away from crossing any lines of acceptable conduct. She gave a thoughtful and reasonable exposition of her views.
And this brings us to the bad. Apparently a respectable number of Yale students cannot handle the idea of someone disagreeing with them, and sought to have Christakis fired. Those students should be given a stern lecture on the free exchange of ideas and then told to get lost. But this is all too common on college campuses these days. Upon hearing a dissenting view, too many students start whining about their “psychological safety” and go running to the administration for a firing. They need to grow up and learn how to make an argument.
There's plenty more to be said about all of this, but instead I will call attention to this essay by Marion Wright Edelman. She's concerned to scold colleges for their legacy of benefiting from the slave trade. She opens with:
On November 14, Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia announced the university will rename two buildings on campus named for two 19th century Georgetown University presidents: Thomas F. Mulledy, who in 1838 arranged the sale of 272 slaves from Jesuit owned Maryland plantations and used the profit to pay Georgetown's construction debts, and William McSherry, who also sold other Jesuit owned slaves and was Mulledy's adviser. The sale ignored the objections of some Jesuit leaders who believed using the money to pay off debt was immoral and their demands that families be kept together.
This is all the rage these days. Here's a description of recent goings-on at Princeton University:
The Black Justice League at Princeton had demanded that the president acknowledge the racist legacy of Woodrow Wilson and remove his name from buildings on campus, mandate “cultural competency” courses for all faculty and staff, and provide cultural space for black students on campus.
As long as they are doing nothing more than protesting peacefully they are free to demand whatever they want. There are plenty of issues to consider about the naming of buildings. Does a person have to be a saint? Or is he nothing more than the worst thing he ever said or believed? Is there no room to make allowances for the times in which the person lived? Quite the philosophical conundrum.
But the main thing that occurred to me when reading Edelman's essay was that it all seems so pointless. I wonder how many of these students who are out protesting vote; most college students don't. And while students are getting worked up about the names of buildings, the Tea Party is busy getting people elected. People, mind you, who delightedly move the public policy of this nation in decidedly racist directions.
That seems like a more pressing issue than getting buildings renamed.
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Shouting "nigger" at a group of black people is stupid, not threatening. Your assertion that it's not free speech is absurd.
The students at Mizzou have no legitimate gripes. The only two verifiable incidents (drunk student saying aloud, "these niggers are getting aggressive with me"; and a student burning swastikas into the ceiling) were dealt with appropriately by the college and the police.
The feces swastika was done by an unknown, and given that it happened well after these protests started, cannot be used as justification for them. Nor can it be assumed that it wasn't a protester who did it to stir up noise.
Beyond that, the only allegation is of an off-campus incident involving unidentified persons in a pickup truck shouting "nigger" at a black student. Given the distinct lack of honesty displayed by these protesters (such as claiming the president's car hit a student, when video clearly shows the student walking deliberately into the front of the car as it was backing up and turning at approximately 0.01mph to get away from the crowd, after which the car immediately stopped), I'm not prepared to take the student's word.
Nor am I prepared to wring my hands at the rich black kid going on a hunger strike, because he feels oppressed.
None of these student protests going on around the country are founded on legitimate grievances. They are all a bunch of spoiled little brats who can't handle anything that makes them feel the least bit uncomfortable.
You want "silly" on campus?
How 'bout the new cancellation of yoga classes at University of Ottawa on grounds of possible cultural usurpation?
Oh, and Thanny @ # 1 - Take it to The Blaze please, there's a good fellow.
I agree with Thanny's first point. Shouting the N word at a group of black students is not a threat. As for the rest, I don't presume to know whether any of the students at Mizzou or elsewhere have legitimate grievances. My guess is that some of them do. But claiming the N word is a threat, in and of itself, is silly, legally false, and counterproductive.
To be clear, I hate the type of racist a**holes who do things like that. But the proper response (IMO) is not to try to outlaw soeech that is merely hurtful (but non-threatening). It's to subject such people to the ridicule and condemnation that they deserve. (Also, of course, in a non-threatening way.)
I see that this has been covered by Thanny and qetzal, but maybe this will help clarify things.
Avoiding Schenck was a good choice, though.
^ The criminal prong ("threats") also fails trivially.
Agree with qetzal.
Its frankly baffling to me to hear that some college students are complaining that the administration is not doing enough to regulate how they dress (at least on Halloween). Seems they aren't content with King Log.
" If someone shows up dressed as a Nazi soldier or as a KKK member, am I really supposed to chalk that up to normal youthful callousness?"
How about a priest? For centuries, (relatively more, many more, in fact) people had far more to fear in terms of their lives and property from the arbitrary power of priests than from either of the examples you site. In lesser numbers, the same could be said of dressing as a rabbi--again, vast arbitrary power, though, in that case, not so directly lethal. Banishment from the community, however, could easily mean a life of ruin lived in exile and desperation since other communities wouldn't necessarily grant one asylum.
If the point is a joke in the form of a Halloween costume, then, perhaps yes, you could chalk it up to foolish youthful exuberance. No one is seriously advocating either the KKK or the Nazis by doing so, is he?
By the way, is "honky" similarly verboten? I doubt it. "Gringo"? Don't think so. In the context of a college campus, unless there'd been actual violence already occurring in the wake of such insults, are they, as some have noted, really cases of threats? In none of these cases is anything more than a sad shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders due. People growing up should learn to ignore stupid insults without expecting the forces of authority to scrub society squeeky-clean of their occurance; repressed verbal expressions live all the more vividly in the thoughts of those who know that they dare not express their thoughts. How many are thinking "X" without voicing their thoughts? We don't know under such proscriptions.
@Thanny
Its absurd that something that was meant to cover what Government can or cant do has now come to mean I can say anything I want without consequences.
@8; you seem to have misunderstood Thanny's point. Jason called it a threat, Thanny is replying that it is not a threat but rather the sort of speech the first amendment protects.
IMO as a fact this is true: regardless of whether a school has a legal right to regulate it (if they're private, they do), Thanny is right that derogatory epithets typically considered to be incitement or direct calls for violence and so when it comes to government censorship, are typically considered a form of free speech.
And it matters here because while I believe Yale is private, Mizzou is not. So the 1st amendment's restrictions on government censorship would matter to what speech the administration could censor.
sigh. That should read "derogatory epithets are typically not considered..."
Plenty of words that are not explicit threats make reasonable people feel unsafe. One man yelling epithets at a group of people is a harmless jackass; if a gang (e.g., a bunch of crackers in a pickup truck) is yelling at a single unarmed person, or a large male shouts epithets at a smaller woman on a lonely street, it's entirely reasonable for the target to be afraid of what might happen next. This week two racist white airline passengers have had Arab-American passengers removed from their flights because their existence was"threatening" - and their fears, directly inflicted on innocent others, have gotten much less public criticism than the expressed fears of black students who are living on campuses that have been the subject of internet death threats. Are some of them overreacting? Certainly - but no more than plenty of white people would in the same circumstances, and I feel sure they would get more sympathy if they were white.
@11: your last example seems to be arguing against your point. You're saying we should not be treating the white passengers' fears as a reason to restrict the speech and freedom of the Arab-American passengers, correct?
jane,
Feeling unsafe is irrelevant. A threat is, by definition, a statement of intent to commit harm which a reasonable person believes is genuine.
If there is no statement of an intent to commit a physically harmful action, then it cannot be a threat, by definition.
Pierce R. Butler,
I had never heard of "The Blaze" before your comment. As a liberal who despises the blowhard nonsense of Glenn Beck, I'd hardly be a regular reader. Which raises the question of why you're unable to recognize a liberal no-nonsense comment when you see it. Perhaps you've forgotten what liberalism is.
I'm on the road at the moment.
Threats can be implied. There doesn't have to be an explicit statement of intent. And even if we decide that shouting the N word by itself is not a threat, the context in which these incidents occurred woud make any reasonable person who was the target of the epithet feel they were being threatened.
At any rate, what was going on at Missouri was not just a few incidents of hurt feelings or boorish behavior. From what I understand, there really was quite a serious racial divide at the college.
Students don't stage hunger strikes, and football teams don't go on strike, for frivolous reasons. Some of the recent unrest has been dishonorable, such as the recent protest at Dartmouth, but what happened at Missouri seems different to me. So I stand by what I said at the start of the post.
All this talk about what is, and what isn't, protected by free speech is pointless. Shouting the N word may be protected by free speech. But free speech has never meant consequence free speech. You may not be charged by shouting the N word. But you can certainly be expelled or fired.
I agree, and context can be really important in determining whether a threat has been implied or whether the person was just voicing an opinion. Which is why I strongly disagree with your assessment of the Mizzou case; it was a group of people who drove by a protest and shouted an epithet out the window as they drove. A clear sign of racism, but not a clear sign or signal that they intended to come back later and do the crowd or protest participants harm.
Not in my opinion. Unless there is a pattern of driveby yells presaging an attack, then the context in which this incident occurred would make me think "drunk idiot," not "he's going to come back to my dorm tonight and assault me."
A few months ago I would've agreed with you. However demanding someone be fired because they opined that the administration ought not regulate Halloween costume choice...it seems to me pretty clear that the student body at some schools *is* reacting very strongly to frivolous things.
To be clear I'm glad that the football team threatened to strike, because I think endemic or widespread racism on campus is something worth fighting against in its own right. I just don't think its the same thing as an imminent threat or incitement to violence. Our response strategy must therefore be different. We have to fight it using the tool of 'respond to racist speech with good speech' rather than 'respond to threatening speech by making such speech illegal.'
@eric
A university is also a place of employment and a place of privilege for students - its not purely government so speech is always more limited in a university. You can use quite strong words to criticize government - but you'll likely not get away with it in a university , right ? A citizen could call the President the N word - but a student certainly cannot call a professor that without consequence, right?
In addition words can be threats without necessarily using violent terms. As an example while walking on a road in Michigan , a group of teens in a car shouted out "terrorist" (I have brown skin after all). if they had pulled over - I would absolutely consider it a threat. I imagine its the same for the N word.
@17: to your first point, I guess that depends on the University and their rules of student conduct. A private University may have every legal right to more heavily restrict speech as well as behavior in ways a publicly funded school or government agency cannot. That doesn't mean I think its a good idea to do so.
To your second point...but they didn't pull over in this case, did they? What you're telling me is that the same words in a slightly different context could have been construed as a threat. I agree, in a slightly different context they could have been (that is trivially true of all words, gestures, even sounds and grunts). That capability of words, however, is not an argument that in this context the shouters were making a threat.
eric - Correct, I strongly disagree that the fears of racist white passengers justify depriving nonwhites of services they have paid for. My point was that the conservative media have largely not criticized those people, but have been far quicker to belittle black students for expressing fears in response to verbal and symbolic abuse though no harm has thereby been done to the feared individuals.
Thanny - Feeling unsafe isn't relevant to whom? Not to the person who feels unsafe. You provide a preferred definition of a threat, but I did not offer an alternative definition; on the contrary, I argued that statements and acts that are NOT threats can nonetheless be perceived as threatening.
Supposing for the sake of argument that you are a white male, imagine that you are walking late at night when a car full of young black men drives by, slows down, then the passsengers start shouting out the window "----ing honky!" or some such. They clearly haven't threatened physical harm. But be honest now, wouldn't you be afraid that they might be about to? Wouldn't you consider it reasonable to be nervous at that moment? Then - especially in an era where terrorist attacks by aggrieved white males are on the rise - the fear that black students targeted in comparable incidents feel is also reasonable.
@eric
The point is that a public university will restrict speech between say student-professor or peers more than say citizen v/s government. It will have its own rules and regulations , which if they are reasonable , will be constitutional (e.g. a student cannot disrupt a class)
It was an example - someone else might feel that the folks could have thrown something from the car. The behavior is meant to intimidate - Its not just stupid people doing stupid stuff.
I think you have too narrow a conception of “The Mizzou Case.” The incident that you are referring to was just the straw that broke the camel's back. The racial divide at Mizzou has been simmering for a long time. We're not just talking about a few incidents of jerks shouting things from cars.
The original claim was
I see no qualifications there, saying that it *could* be a threat under certain circumstances. Rather, the claim was that it's *plainly* a threat, and therefore unprotected.
Which is just wrong. Continuing to defend or justify that is silly and undermines your arguments on the larger issues.
@20:
You're doing the same thing again; adding an if-they-would-have detail that would make this a threat. I already agreed that if the story details would have been slightly different this could have been construed as a threat. But this sort of hypothetical event construction doesn't change what actually happened in this case, so in this actual case where nothing was thrown, I don't see the shouting as a threat of physical harm.
Jason's point is reasonable in that I don't know the totality of events at Mizzou and its possible that a student with much more in-depth knowledge would reach the conclusion that it could reasonably be construed as a threat. In fact I somewhat alluded to that possibility when I said 'unless drive-by shoutings typically precede attacks.' That would be an example of background info that would allow us to infer this was a threatening shout. However like qetzal, I don't see 'threat' based on the description given above and I certainly don't see how it is clearly a threat. The most agreeable I could get would be to say that, yes, it *could be* a threat, if lots of things we don't know about the story lined up to support that hypothesis.
Yes but the point is since no one knows what the future holds , while the event is happening , it is reasonable to interpret it as a threat.
And as you also concede , this is not happening in a vaccuum.
No offense, but that's just ludicrous. At some point in the future, "Deepak" might come to mean "I'm going to kill you!" It's possible, right? After all, no one knows what the future holds!
Claims like that just guarantee that you won't be taken seriously on anything.
"Students don’t stage hunger strikes, and football teams don’t go on strike, for frivolous reasons."
Yes, they do. Students these days do all sorts of absurd things for absolutely frivolous reasons.
And I've seen absolutely no evidence that there's a pattern of racial division at Mizzou.
These are not reasonable people with legitimate grievances. They're coddled infants who have been taught to whine about every perceived slight, no matter how unreasonable.
I'm sure you would have seen none in the 1930s-to-1950s south either. Or anywhere.
You expect to be taken seriously do you?
"I’m sure you would have seen none in the 1930s-to-1950s south either. Or anywhere.
You expect to be taken seriously do you?"
That's an amazingly ironic question from someone who's comparing the climate of 65+ years ago to today. Honestly, did you think you were making anything remotely close to a valid point? Do you think I'm a racist who would support blacks being kept down more than half a century ago because I scoff at a rich black kid whining about nothing today? Do you have any capacity for perspective?