Intolerance at Stanford and Free Speech

It's no secret that I'm very pro-free speech, so I feel I have to comment on this Stanford Daily article, about a project highlighting intolerance. The project has an admirable goal: to get people to think about intolerance at Stanford and in general. I think it can something that we don't think about too much, and there were some nasty incidents near me this year.

But I really disagreed with this part:

“Our goal is to make the process of reporting acts of intolerance more transparent and more effective,” Diana Huynh [one of the coordinators] said. “We also hope to raise awareness and encourage people to speak out against acts of intolerance.”

That seems innocuous enough, but that part about reporting acts of intolerance rubs me the wrong way. It seems to me that most of these acts are harmless, in that there's no actual threat, and people are just exercising their free speech rights, albeit in incredibly unfortunate ways. It seems to me that unless the act is intended as a threat, there's nothing to report.

Granted, it's unfortunate that there are closed-minded people in the world, but even they have a right to their opinions, no matter how repugnant they are. Unless they cross the line and actually violate a law, I feel really strongly that there should be no action taken against them.

Maybe that's what the group meant. But for some reason I doubt it. The people running colleges seem to have this idea that free speech doesn't apply to things that make people uncomfortable, or even to things that are downright hateful. But it does. We take away the right to say those things, and we can kiss goodbye all of our rights. It won't be immediate, and you might not even notice it, but once the right to free speech starts to erode, it will be eventually evaporate, and it will take democracy with it. You might think that's hyperbole, but I am utterly convinced that we cannot budge an inch in our defense of free speech, and I think that

The WBC decision

By now I'm sure you've heard of the huge settlement the Westboro Baptist Church has been forced to pay (although it will be appealed, and we have no idea what will happen then). Most people seem to be very pleased with this, after all, this is a very disgusting group doing very disgusting things, frankly they had it coming.

But I don't know how I feel about it. My main worry is that they were actually within their first amendment rights. The article doesn't give any specifics on this, so I don't know if they did something that nullified their free speech protection. If they did, then they should be punished, and a huge fine seems appropriate.

Still, if this fine is for them being huge douchebags, I can't say I agree with it. It seems especially troubling as I am a member of a vocal and hated minority (atheists) who frequently upset people. A religious person could easily claim that many of the things I've written or said were emotionally damaging, and if that's the basis for this decision, it is wrong.

I feel quite strongly that we as a nation need to toughen up and learn how to react to offensive speech/actions with sanity. After all, offensiveness is completely subjective (I, for one, am offended by nothing, I think it's a stupid reaction under all circumstances). It seems like there's a new offender in the news every week, someone who said or did something that other people don't agree with and is suffering for it (James Watson comes to mind, but that's slightly different). If you think that someone said something hateful and should suffer for it, you should use your speech to condemn them, but keep the legal system out of it.

So if the WBC is only on trial for saying mean things, they should be acquitted, absolutely. I would hate to live in a country where people couldn't say mean things, because freedom of speech is an absolute necessity in a free and good society, while freedom from being offended is an impossible pipe dream, and a stupid one at that. Offensiveness is what happens at the boundaries of dialog, and we can't have dialog without it.

What's wrong with people?

When I saw this article on Fark that described the outrage over a college newspaper, my interest was piqued. I love free speech issues, and surely if people were calling for editor to be fired it must have been something quite terrible. Here's the badness, according to the article:

The comic strip, dubbed "Polydongs," depicts explicit images surrounding the humiliation and degradation of a 14-year-old Latina girl. The paper printed a disclaimer saying it "does not support the kidnapping of (and subsequent urinating on) children of any age or ethnicity."

Well, now my interest was definitely piqued. A newspaper showing explicit images of urinating on a 14 year old girl? That's something else. So I downloaded the PDF of the newspaper available on their website, and here's the offending comic, for your enjoyment (click to embiggen):



Personally, I don't see why that's so bad. For starters, there's nothing explicit at all in there, the girl isn't even pictured. Then there's the fact that the comic characters are shapes, further removing it from reality (and making it more absurd). Finally, there's the fact that it's a comic strip, and even explicitly states that it's a joke, and the staff don't condone that kind of thing in reality.

This reminds me of the Muslim furor over those Danish cartoons, which is apparently still going on. It's just more people overreacting and showing that they have no sense of humor or value of free speech.

Which isn't to say that those who don't like it should do nothing. I think it's perfectly reasonable to try to remove the newspaper's funding, either through alumni contributions or student support (at Stanford certain student groups get special funds that need to be approved every year, I imagine other schools are similar). But asking for the editor to be fired is just silly, and I even think trying to remove funding is an overreaction.

Maybe one of these days people will stop being so damn sensitive about every little thing, but I doubt it. Until then those who offend will have to deal with this kind of reaction, and people who find it funny (like myself) will continue to laugh.

Volokh on the "Fuck Islam" Facebook group

Here's a good post at the Volokh Conspiracy about freedom of speech on Facebook. Volokh does a great job describing the situation, and I don't have much to add, go read it.

Muslims want tougher speech laws

Via Ed Brayton comes this story of Muslims demanding special protection against the desecration of Muhammad in Sweden.

Ambassadors from Muslim countries have indicated that they intend to present the Swedish prime minister with a list of demands when they meet for talks on Friday...

"We want to see action, not just nice words. We have to push for a change in the law," he said.

"Muslims need legal protection against the desecration of the Prophet Muhammad, maybe something similar to the protection enjoyed by Jews and homosexuals."

I like Ed's response to this, "I agree, Muslims need exactly the same protections that Jews and homosexuals have against being made fun of: absolutely none." I don't really understand why so many Muslims get their panties in a bunch every time someone mocks their religion, it's simply beyond me. Wouldn't it be easier to just write it off as the uneducated opinion of an idiot than to demand that the speech be made criminal? Some people must just be so frightened of hearing anything that goes against whatever they believe that they just want it all banned. I just wonder why they don't demand protection against calling Jews pigs and all that other racist crap (remember Iran's cartoon contest?), or what would happen if someone deemed the speech in their religion as fitting being banned (I could see it happening).

What would be great is if all of the hypersensitive people in the world toughened up. I'm not just talking about the Muslims who say there should be no "hate speech" against them, but all of the other idiots who want to ban types of speech. Because in the end, when you ask to ban speech, all you do is show your true colors as an idiotic despot.

Another infringement of free speech

Via Ed Brayton I'm made aware of an insane case of violation of free speech at Tufts University. The school newspaper printed an ad critical of Islam, saying,

I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them." -- The Koran, Sura 8:12

Author Salam Rushdie needed to go into hiding after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa calling for his death for writing The Satanic Verses, which was declared "blasphemous against Islam."

But you see, those things are true. It's really easy to find ways to paint Islam as violent, barbaric, and backwards, and that's mostly because in many parts of the world it is. Of course, this doesn't mean that all Muslims are anything; it's impossible to go from saying "the Koran condones violence and mandates submission" and "Islamic countries are intolerant of criticism and outside ideas" to "ALL MUSLIMS ARE EVIL!!!" The first two claims are true, the second is clearly false.

What's the school's reaction to a newspaper ad filled with true statements?

In the case of the Muslim Student Association ("MSA") v. The Primary Source, by a vote of 7 to 0, we find that the MSA proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that The Primary Source harassed Muslim students at Tufts, and created a hostile environment for them by publishing "Islam-Arabic Translation: Submission." The Committee found that the MSA established that the commentary at issue targeted members of the Tufts Muslim community for harassment and embarrassment, and that Muslim students felt psychologically intimidated by the piece.

These decisions are grounded in our conclusion that although Tufts students should feel free to engage in speech that others might find offensive and even hurtful, Tufts University's non-discrimination policy embodies important community standards of behavior that Tufts, as a private institution, has an obligation to uphold. Our campus should be a place where students feel safe, respected, and valued. Freedom of speech should not be an unfettered license to violate the rights of other members of the community, without recourse.

Read that last sentence again. What it says is that Freedom of Speech, the very first right guaranteed to all Americans, is less important than the right to, "feel safe, respected, and valued." Last time I checked feeling "safe, respected, and valued" is NOT in the bill of rights, or any enumeration of rights. So Tufts has just said that they don't think freedom of speech (or of the press) is a right, but feeling warm and fuzzy inside is.

For the life of me I cannot fathom how someone could possibly believe that. It's just ludicrous. It is absolutely absurd, completely ridiculous. People do not have a right to feel respected and valued, and they only have the right to feel safe in the sense that no one can directly threaten them.

And their statements beg the question, how was that ad making them feel unsafe, disrespected, or unvalued? All it did was quote truths. If quoting from the Koran makes Muslims feel any of those things, then they have some kind of problem. Maybe they realize that Islam as it exists today doesn't mix with the modern world, but just don't want anyone pointing it out. Whatever the case is, their religion is not free from criticism, nor should it be.

All I can say is shame on Tufts, and I hate the fact that this happens so damn often. Why doesn't free speech matter to academics anymore?

Rhode Island Controversy

My home state, Rhode Island, seldom makes the news. But it has done so twice in the past five years or so over the same thing: a scholarship for white males. The first time this happened it was by the College Republicans at Roger Williams University (some five minutes from my house), this time it's the same group at the University of Rhode Island (this time they tacked on "heterosexual" to white male). It was even for the same amount, $100, not even enough to buy my Electromagnetics book.

Pretty much the same thing happened this time as last time, except this got slightly less national press and the university didn't handle it as well. Oh, and no one won it this time. Here's the backlash:

The student senate was not amused, and in February the Student Organizations Advisory and Review Committee demanded that the College Republicans: A) not award the $100 scholarship, B) apologize in writing for having violated the anti-discrimination section of the senate’s bylaws, and C) seek permission from the senate before mounting any programs in the next 12 months. The group cheerfully agreed to A – why not? – and declined to comply with B and C.

In response the Advisory and Review Committee exercised the nuclear option and voted to derecognize the group, in spite of the fact that Robert Carothers, the university’s president, had declared on April 6 that it was unconstitutional to require the College Republicans to “make public statements which are not their own.” (The relevant First Amendment category is “compelled speech.”)

The funny thing about this, and what most sane people usually recognize right away, is that white males are automatically denied many scholarships. Don't believe me? Go to any scholarship search service, and large numbers of them are directly for minorities. Even when I told Fastweb that I'm a white male, I still got tons of minority- or women-only scholarships. All that the college republicans are doing is pointing this out, and showing that when someone discriminates the other way people get angry.

I'll never understand why this matters to those people. This is like when College Republican groups have bake sales and charge more to minorities (reverse affirmative action), they want the backlash, they want it because it shows how intolerant the supposedly tolerant people are.

Honestly, tolerance isn't accepting people with different skin color or sexual orientation; it's accepting people with different ideas. Every decent human being understands that all people are the same when skin or sex is concerned. It doesn't take any kind of feat to accept them; it's much more difficult to accept people with whom you vehemently disagree. (Yes, I'm aware that there is still discrimination against some people in the world. I mean acceptance at an individual level, not at a societal level. We're not even close to acceptance at the societal level for many peoples.)

By pulling these stunts the College Republicans showcase one of the many hypocrisies of our culture. If the liberals who disagree with their positions want to deal with them in a liberal way, then debate their ideas, don't shut them down. I find that far too often that's the reaction to things that liberals don't like to hear (especially on college campuses), and it's more disgusting than some Republican positions.

What do I think about the scholarship itself? They make a good point that there are many scholarships that outright bar white males from applying. But there are two things to keep in mind: First, there are thousands of scholarships available, most of which are open to anyone; Second, it's private money and people are free to do what they want with it. If I wanted to give a bunch of money to college students, I'd pretty much go for those who need it regardless of outer characteristics, but some people feel the need to correct for past and present inequalities based on superficial characteristics. Just as they are free to offer scholarships to one group, so should the College Republicans be free to offer their puny scholarship. As a form of protest against the state of scholarships, I think it's weak. But as a demonstration of how intolerant college liberals are, it's beautiful.

Why Free Speech is Necessary

I got a bit more negative reaction to my recent free-speech post than I was expecting. This is one of those things I find so obvious that I didn't really consider that any thinking person would disagree with me. I realize now that this is not the case, and I will briefly present the rationale behind my stance.

I think that the case against the "total and complete" free speech position that I take is most sensibly voiced by commenter JeNn:

I think you're inflating the importance of freedom of expression. Heck, it's probably because people like you think it's ok that "if they want to make a big effigy of Muhammad and burn it then they should be able to do that too" that Muslim extremists are able to recruit radicals so easily - because they can then justifiably say that Americans are bigoted and disrespectful of the beliefs of other people.

I would argue that freedom of expression is not a right; it's a privilege that's accorded to responsible and mature people who will not abuse this power to influence others. If you're going to abuse the religious beliefs and cultural identities of others under your right to freedom of expression, you're just going to create discord and make the world a worse place than it already is.

Even if it is a right, it should still be exercised responsibly, with respect and brevity. That's why censorship exists, because they're impressionable people who could easily be influenced negatively and because they're irresponsible people who would use this to their advantage.

In short, I think your stand's too extreme. I'm all for freedom of speech and whatnot, but not if it's going to cause me to turn against my neighbours or create a climate of fear and social instability. Better safe and alive than living in fear under a false distorted notion of freedom.

This is about as well as I've seen it put, so I'm going to argue against this (and more or less only this).

First, the slippery slope. I don't generally like slippery-slope arguments, but here it is totally valid. If my (admittedly ridiculously extreme) example of burning an effigy of Muhammad shouldn't be allowed, where do we draw the line? Am I allowed to call Islam stupid? Am I allowed to condemn radicals? Am I allowed to condemn the moderates who allow the radicals to get away with their radicalism? Am I allowed to criticize Islam at all, on any level? I don't think that there's a clear place to draw the line, and trying to put it at something like "respectful criticism" just won't work, because to many people the only respectful criticism is none. We're seeing this happen in Europe right now, where people are being sent to prison for criticizing Catholicism, and the UN is trying to go the same for Islam (and presumably other religions).

If you put the cutoff somewhere, then what's stopping someone from moving it? If I say "Christianity is full of shit", should I be arrested? What if I say "I believe that Christianity is wrong"? It's the same exact statement, one is just worded provocatively. If I can't use provocative language, then I've effectively been neutered as a writer.

And moving further along the slope, what stops people from banning unpopular but valid opinions? What's stopping the grand arbiters of censorship from declaring the President (or any politician/party/idea) beyond critique? You could try to put careful laws in place, but once you do that you're setting precedent for outlawing more and more speech. What starts as a campaign to keep the mouths of the citizens clean and decent could very, very easily result in stifling dissent. I think everyone can agree that is a very, very bad thing.

Moving past the slippery-slope, we get to "Speech is a privilege, not a right." I can't think of any new way to combat this other than to say, "Says who?" Every document I know of (which I will admit is only the UN Declaration of Rights and the US Bill of Rights) explicitly lists freedom of speech as a universal, unalienable human right. Saying that speech is a privilege is pretty silly when it's so universally regarded as a right.

Moving on to offensive speech. No counting the slippery-slope arguments against restricting offensive speech, I only have one left: No one has the right to not being offended. I'm not certain where this idea came from, but it's flat-out stupid. If I say something that offends you, have you not considered that it might be your problem? If the offensive remark is baseless, then you can dismiss it out of hand, but if the remark has a basis in truth, then perhaps you need to reconsider your beliefs. For example, offensive racial remarks speak loudly about the person saying them. However, offensive religious remarks tend to speak loudly about the religion (or at least that's my view).

People sometimes forget how powerful a tool indignation is. Some of the best, most powerful, and most poignant works are offensive or controversial, and that's precisely why they're so powerful. TV shows like South Park use ridicule as a tool to point out flaws in people and organizations, and it works. Taking that away would kill an entire means of expression and argument, perhaps the most effective one.

JeNn mentioned Islamic extremists being inspired by acts against their religion, and perhaps they are (however, extremism is built into Islam itself, and I very much doubt that the actions of individuals in the west inspire radicals in the Middle-East). But if they are, is that the fault of our speech? Should we kowtow to their demands? Again I refer to South Park, that did a brilliant two-parter on exactly this topic:

Woman: Mr. President, we're awaiting your orders!
Kyle: Sir, just think about what you're doing to free speech!
Cartman: No! Think about the people who could get hurt!
FOX President: Ah... I don't know who to listen to!
Cartman: Okay, I'll make it easy for you. [pulls out a gun and aims it at the president] Pull the Mohammed episode, now!
FOX President: Okay, I'll listen to you. [gets back to the phone] Julie?
Kyle: Noo! Wait! You can't listen to him! He's a lying deceitful monster who only wants Family Guy off the air!
FOX President: But he has a gun.
Kyle: You can't do what he wants just because he's the one threatening you with violence!
Cartman: Shut up, Kyle!
FOX President: I can't be responsible for people getting hurt. Especially me.
Kyle: Yes, people can get hurt. That's how terrorism works. But if you give into that, Doug, you're allowing terrorism to work. Do the right thing here.
Cartman: Give the orders to pull the episode, Mr. President!
FOX President: I shouldn't even be in the office still. It's supposed to be half-day Friday.
Woman: Mr. President, thirty seconds to airtime. What do you want us to do?!
Kyle: Do the right thing, Mr. President.
FOX President: How about I allow the episode to air but, just censor out the image of Mohammed again.
Kyle: I wish that was good enough, but if you censor out Mohammed, then soon you'll have to censor out more.
Cartman: No gay speeches, Kyle!
Kyle: If you don't show Mohammed, then you've made a distinction what is okay to poke fun at, and what isn't. Either it's all okay, or none of it is.
Woman: Five seconds, Mr. President! [the programmer J. Walker has his finger hovering on the button]
Kyle: [softly] Do the right thing. Show Mohammed. [Cartman still has his gun on the president] Do. The right. Thing.
Woman: Mr. President, we need a decision now!
FOX President: Family Guy goes on air as planned. Uncensored.

This has been quite long. Perhaps I haven't addressed everything, I probably can't. But I hope that I've convinced some people that free speech is not a privilege, or even just a right, it is a necessity. If you live in society where your speech is restricted in any way, you do not live in a free society. It's just that simple.

Free Speech on Campuses

If you want to get really pissed off about the state of free speech in colleges and universities, read this. I'm definitely a strong believer in "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." I don't understand how anyone could ever try to limit anyone else's expression in any way (with the obvious exceptions of inciting riots or libel and that kind of thing).

If those students wanted to take a Hezbollah flag and stomp on it then they should be able to. Hell, if they want to make a big effigy of Muhammad and burn it then they should be able to do that too (provided, of course, that they're safe with the fire). And you know what, I have the right to call them idiots, and that's what should be done. It's the same reason that the KKK has the right to hold their rallies, and non-bigots have the right to have counter-rallies with 10 times the participants.

It just makes me so angry that this happens (and it happens all the time), and especially that it happens at the very places that tout themselves as havens for creativity, speech, and discussion. It's just sickening.

Remember, everyone has the right to free speech, whether it's unpopular, bigoted, hateful, or intolerant. If we lose that, then we have nothing.