The Knight Foundation reports,
Students are divided over whether it’s more important to promote an inclusive society that welcomes diverse groups or to protect the extremes of free speech, even if those protections come at the expense of inclusivity. Nearly six in 10 students believe that hate speech ought to be protected under the First Amendment. However, students who belong to historically marginalized groups — African American students, gender nonconforming students, and gay and lesbian students —are far more sensitive to unrestricted free speech, particularly hate speech.
… Roughly one-third (32 percent) of students say that it is always acceptable to engage in protests against speakers who are invited to campus, while six in 10 (60 percent) say this type of activity is sometimes acceptable. Only 8 percent say it is never acceptable.
Pointer from Ethan Cai, who highlights other findings from the survey.
I want to talk about a personal experience I had Tuesday night, speaking to college students brought to DC by The Fund for American Studies. The mission of the organization is to “teach the principles of limited government, free-market economics and honorable leadership.”
If there are 330 students in this year’s program, then I would say at least half of them showed up for my talk. I took about 15 questions, and each student said where they were from. I don’t recall anyone from an institution in the Northeast or the West Coast. Several were from schools in Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, or North Carolina. Only one was from an elite school (Duke).
This was not Berkeley or Swarthmore. These were not the spoiled children of elite parents competitively gaming the admissions system. In terms of ethnic appearance, there were more African-Americans and fewer Asians than you would find in a class of that size on an elite campus. I’m guessing few Jews, if any.
My topic was the three-axes model. By the way, you can pre-order the new edition of the book (only $3.99 on Kindle), which will come out in August.
Given all of this background, I would not have expected to find a hotbed of hostility toward liberty and free speech. I was wrong about that.
I began with a very brief description of the three-axes model and then applied it to three issues: the controversy over the allegation of assault brought against Bret Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation process; African-American football players taking a knee during the National Anthem; and adult prostitution and pornography.
Next, I discussed the individual psychology that encourages people to talk past one another. I said that we experience disagreement as a threat, and this triggers various defense mechanisms. One such mechanism is confirmation bias. Another mechanism is the Illusion of Asymmetric Insight.
Then, I talked about the effects of group psychology. When you find yourself in a group that disagrees with you, this triggers an ancient fear of being abandoned by the tribe to starve in the wilderness, so you keep quiet. When you find yourself among ideological soulmates, you compete for status by expressing in strong, colorful ways our contempt for those on the other side.
I closed by saying that I was concerned with two developments that I had not anticipated when I wrote the first edition. One is the worldwide turn toward populism (I didn’t say The Revolt of the Public, but that was what I was thinking), including the election of Donald Trump. The other development, which concerned me even more, was the way that the campus left had embraced an ideology that justifies the suppression of opposing viewpoints. I said that I would be interested in the students’ feedback on whether or not I should be concerned with the campus-left issue.
I got feedback, but not what I was expecting. I thought I might get pushback of the form “The left is not so prominent on my campus,” or “The rest of us don’t get swayed by the few radicals.”
Instead, the majority of the questions were hostile toward free speech. When a particularly hostile point was made, the students broke out into applause. The applause was strongest when African-Americans made hostile points. I may be wrong about this, but I think that part of this was a desire to show solidarity with the African-Americans.
As far as I know, no one took a video of the event, so you’ll have to take my word for it that I don’t think that I said anything terribly provocative, other than to come out very strongly for free speech. If I had it to do over again, I would not describe myself as a free-speech “bigot” but would instead say free-speech “absolutist,” just to make sure that I was not misinterpreted. But as far as I know, no one misinterpreted what I was saying.
I also found myself saying “When I was growing up, . . .” in response to a lot of questions. I wanted to make the point that culture has been different and can be different. There was a McCarthy period in which it was people on the left who were hounded because of their opinions and needed a culture of free speech to protect them. There was a time when politicians compromised and passed bipartisan legislation. There was a time when news media competed for a broad audience, rather than right-wing media competing with other right-wing media and left-wing media competing with other left-wing media. There was a time when politics played a smaller role in people’s identities, and when people had more friends and shared activities with people of different political persuasions.
Those are valid points, but it is possible that the net result was that a lot of students heard me as an old story-teller. Maybe they dismissed what I had to say as outdated and irrelevant.
I got the impression that for some students, there is a sense that there are only two types of political opinion: progressives on the one hand; and racist, sexist Neo-Nazis on the other. It’s as if, never having engaged with an actual conservative or libertarian, they believe the worst about what the opposing view consists of. Accordingly, they see it as their right and indeed their obligation to shut down opinions that are not progressive.
I did not take any of the hostility personally. I am not unhappy with having given the talk. But I did come away with a sense that the culture of free speech is in much more jeopardy than I had thought previously.
As one old story-teller to another: When I was growing up, we liked to say, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me!”
To borrow one of your phrases from another context, category creep has widened beyond recognition the scope of what counts as coercion or violence.
Compare Alex Tabarrok’s blogpost, “Why Sexism and Racism Never Diminish—Even When Everyone Becomes Less Sexist and Racist:”
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/06/sexism-racism-never-diminishes-even-everyone-becomes-less-sexist-racist.html
Looking on the bright side, it’s a sure sign of broad prosperity.
“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me!” was never true. Like, “all men are created equal” it was a statement of aspiration presented as a statement of fact. We should treat all people equally. We shouldn’t let words hurt us. Because to do so will make a better society.
I think what has changed is that many people (including many “opinion leaders”) think that letting words hurt, even exaggerating how much words hurt, will make a better society.
A couple of thoughts on this. The Paradox of Tolerance comes to mind when the left censors extremist speech. There is a reason that we don’t commonly see leaders of the KKK on CNN or Fox talking about their platform. There are definitely limits to giving a person a platform upon which to disseminate their views. That said, the tendency for the far left to include ever more views into the “untouchable” category is not okay.
My second thought is to relate Hegel’s dialectics to the political pendulum theory. In econ we recognize certain frictions in the market dynamic, like sticky prices. Applying this same concept we should recognize that as the pendulum has swung very far right since Reagan, and now is moving left, that there are more “sticky opinions” which are not ready or willing to move. These frictions acting on the pendulum are causing a painful rift in American discourse, a symptom of which is for the far left to try and remove the friction on the right by eliminating the views altogether instead of trying to persuade them.
Actually, my favorite ‘sticky politics’ is American is conservative nation and there are burst of ‘Progressiveism’ throughout. And after this burst, the nation becomes conservative nation with the burst still standing. (So think 1930 New Deal, 1960s and a small burst of early Obamaism which really started in late Bush years and lasted until 2010.) This was put forth by Kevin Drum.
Look at the Democratic Primary where we see Joe Biden dominating the older D voters and young voters are definitely non-Bidens. (Mix of Warren, Sanders, Mayor Pete.) Biden is running on past nostalgia of civil 1980s politics (????) with some Obamaism mixed in.
Tolerance is simple: we all tolerate what we do not see as a threat, and are intolerant of that which we see as a threat. Want to know someone’s fears? Look at what he vehemently denounces.
People who hate are people who fear. What then of those who seem to hate everything they don’t agree with? Those who hate someone else’s mere words, while they themselves speak only in the vaguest terms? What is it they fear? Something vague, something unconscious, for all their concepts are vague. But in order to act, they need to put a face to it. You need a target to aim at. Direct action needs a direction.
I have a theory about what it is the forces of “tolerance” really fear. I think they fear their own absurdity. They seek to control the universe so that the universe won’t swallow them up. On the theory that the best defense is a good offense, they attack everything that does not bow before them.
On what do I base this? On personal encounters. I hear their words and it’s just angry gibberish – word salad or chanted slogans. But I look in their eyes and I see emotions, ugly emotions. Among these is fear.
At any rate, they’re showing an awful lot of the whites of their eyes for some reason.
Economically, opinions moved to the right during the 80s and 90s. Socially and culturally though, they kept moving left. Economically – at least as far as the political landscape is concerned, if not yet actual policy yet (and even that will change the next time we have both a Democratic president and congress) we are further left I’d say than we were in the 60s or 70s, and socially and culturally, decidedly more so than ever and with the pace of the shift increasing. I think the so-called conservative revolution of the 90s was a blip compared to events today.
I got the impression that for some students, there is a sense that there are only two types of political opinion: progressives on the one hand; and racist, sexist Neo-Nazis on the other.
This is unfortunate in general but the conservative media is dominated by strong loud conservatives, like Limbaugh, Hannity and other talk radio leaders. Republicans elected Donald Trump! And compare his speeches to the better Barack Obama ones. I remember Dennis Prager in the 1980s when he held religious talks like a PHd in religion versus Limbaugh with PHd. Young people don’t hear Ross Douthat or David Brooks but see conservative as raging Trumps and Limbaughs.
1) Probably the worst aspect of young people growing up today is they hear Trump as the conservative leader. So I played by teenage kids 1980 Reagan speeches and they were amazed he was not ranting against Mexicans. (They are not political but it took me some efforts to prove to them Reagan was popular in California.)
2) Young people today are growing with diversity and their neighbors and best friends are minorities. Moving to Orange County, CA in 1980s, I did have a unique experience of a diverse High School where this was a normal thing to me. (Yes heavier with Asian Immigrants) They don’t like the Claremont Institute vision and think that is yesteryear when people lived in more segregated neighborhoods. Even if they don’t silence Clarement vision, they immediately turned off by it.
3) The decline influence of local religion and community is playing a huge role here. (And include local economy.)
4) Always assume The Great Recession had more impact on people than we assume. These young people are growing up at a time when standard of living really has not improved in their memory lifetimes.
Maybe in these speeches I recommend playing Ronald Reagan speeches about Immigrants as I bet most young people don’t know that reality.
In terms of Trump’s win in 2016, I try to think about the campaign narrative and I do believe his positive campaign message was MAGA meant we were returning America back to 1965 with some 1985 mixed in.
He seemed to come out of nowhere, because he came out of a blind spot. Those who refuse to hear certain things also refuse to see certain things. They simply refused to look in the direction from which he emerged.
Trump campaign was both new and old and the strongest parallel of Perot 1992 which was the weirdest election before 2016. (Remember Murphy Brown and the First Lady cookie cook off?)
1) Trump was thought to be more economically centrist than HRC in November 2016 and ran heavily on Richard Gaphardt speeches from 2004ish. He rant against free trade globalist.
2) Conservatives loved the taunting and Trump ability to get over it while also being a successful business person. (last point kinda debatable but Republicans have wanted to elect CEOs for a while.)
3) There is really a battle between free market conservatives and SoCon such as Ross Douthat. And the Social Conservatives are concerned that the free market is weakening the religious influences (very reasonable), and weakening the family. (debatable)
I do believe his positive campaign message was MAGA meant we were returning America back to 1965 with some 1985 mixed in.
Neither 1965 nor 1985 were better places to live for any of America’s non-white minorities. Or women.
This is part of the problem. The seeming obliviousness of Trump’s supporters to the fact that large parts of the country do NOT see 1965 or 1985 as a particularly desirable past to return to.
In the context of conditions for women and/or non-whites, please fill in the blank: “Excluding technological progress, 1985 America is worse than 2019 America because 1985 didn’t have …”
The various Civil Rights Acts and the bulk of the most important caselaw and regulation came before 1985.
One might say we had to wait all the way until 1986 for Meritor Savings, but that was a 9-0 decision because it was so reflective of existing consensus and practice, and which had already been implemented nationwide for years by lower federal and state courts.
I’d say that 1985 was a time when there was a lot more sexual harassment and much stronger cultural limitations on women rising in the workplace. Glass ceilings and old boys networks and so forth.
Social norms have changed in positive ways since 1985. And a lot of those changes are actually things that Trump supporters complain about – i.e. that the social rules make it so they are afraid to ask women out because they might be accused of harassment, etc. A lot of people honestly do not like the fact that they can’t get away with making racist or sexist jokes in the workplace. They consider that too “PC”.
True about 1965, but by 1985 things were better. Just something I saw today: https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1141525449673068544
“In the 1960s, female applicants for academic positions were less likely than male applicants to get the job; this began reversing in the 1970s, and by the 1980s, *male* applicants were generally less likely to get the job. ”
I doubt things were any worse for black people than women. My perception that women were lagging black in opportunity gains. Today there’s just a lot more belief that all the grievance groups aren’t getting ‘their share’, with little evidence of it.
Maybe things evened out for women in the 1980s in academia. But I doubt you could say the same thing about the private corporate world.
I do see the 1980s as a time of progress, but looking back it also seems in retrospect that attitudes were comparatively more sexist. For instance – the office clothes. Skirts. Pantyhose. Heels. Those horrible jackets with shoulder pads. Imagine a woman showing up to work in a pair of khakis and loafers – in 1985.
I’m a big fan of the movie “Working Girl”, but it makes a big point about wearing the right amount of jewelry and makeup. Concerns that show how much women were judged by their appearance.
I don’t think that has much to do with it at all. White men were not better off in 1965 either. Contrary to what many progressives seem to believe, most white men were not affluent patricians who had the president on speed-dial until recently. The progressive contention that Trumpism is mainly about ‘restoring white/make privilege’ is a self-serving myth. In fact, ardent Trumpists seem willing to suffer material losses to reduce the trade deficit or make America seem strong on the world stage.
It’s a clear case of two sides arguing past each other. It’s abstract conceptions of national glory, measured by trade things like trade deficits and stock market performance, that seem to matter. It is, of course, a series of nonsensical measures for an incoherent or irrelevant variable, but it isn’t over rising female workplace participation or falling black unemployment rates that Trumpists wring their hands. It’s over China or over the belief that immigrants are diluting American culture. In short, internal race and gender issues aren’t the motivating narrative, rather the “America vs. foreigners” conflict is what motivates them.
But why then does white people seeem to appeal almost exclusively to white people? I don’t think that it’s really something that needs much explaining. Frankly, when it comes to policy, Trump isn’t really even playing ‘white identity politics.’ His policies aren’t ‘white-centric’ policies. It’s the converse that’s the case. A Republican can never mention race, and say and do nothing for white people, and still always win the majority of the white vote, and progressives would invariably fall over themselves to identify what ‘dog-whistles’ the candidate is using to win white voters, ignoring that he doesn’t need dog-whistles. The other party already favors non-whites (and is increasing openly antipathetic to white males). Asking why so many white men vote for Trump – as for pretty much any Republican – is like asking why so many Muslims or Mexicans vote for Democrats. Are they subtly signalling that they support national application of sharia law or changing our official language to Spanish? Or, more plausibly, are people just put off by a party whose leaders like to give them the finger?
Neither 1965 nor 1985 were better places to live for… women.
I think 1965 was better for the significant number of women, who would prefer to be a stay-at-home mom if that didn’t cost social status and mobility.
Honestly, I don’t think 1965 or 1985 was better than today but there were a lot of good aspects in past societies we now miss. (I enjoyed 1985 as a teenage btw.) But we are choosing the specific items and forget the realities.
I have two teenagers graduating HS next year and in 1965:
1) One was to drafted to Vietnam the next several year.
2) The other had a tumor in his back would have survived the age 23. (He is doing fine btw.)
The best part of 1965 world was the GM idea that what was good for GM is for America. That was true at the time but nobody believes what is good for the largest private employer today would be necessarily good for America. (Wal-Mart here) There was a togetherness of community, church and economy that worked for 25 years until it started collapsing in 1974.
It was not perfect but a lot people were happy at the time. And there was a lot of good things in the 1980s that Reagan Revolution occurred as well.
Whooosh.
Sure, there were certain aspects of 1965 that were good, for certain groups of people.
That doesn’t mean those things were good for everyone else.
Segregated schools were good for whites – they could spend less money on education by putting all the black kids in poor quality underfunded ghetto schools, and give all the funding to the white schools.
1965 was the civil rights era which was good for blacks, but in objective terms it was a time of comparatively high racism. The chances of being verbally abused or beaten for being black, or imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit, were much higher. The Klan was still active. People still had crosses burned on their lawns, bricks thrown through their windows for being uppity. People still used the “N” word freely.
I think you would have a lot of trouble finding ANY black person in America who would prefer 1965 to today.
Ask a black child growing up in today’s inner city. At least in 1965 he or she would have had a pretty good chance of growing up in a nuclear family with strong black role models in their life. The black community has been so utterly and systematically destroyed by government policy over the past 50 years that it’s not clear to me that a segregated school in 1965 is any worse than the inner city schools these kids go to today. There was some level of education occurring in those schools in that era, inadequate as it most certainly was. Today those kids are just trying to not get beat up or shot walking home from school. Education is an after thought.
“Segregated schools were good for whites – they could spend less money on education by putting all the black kids in poor quality underfunded ghetto schools, and give all the funding to the white schools.”
I don’t know the situation in every jurisdiction in 1965, but today and for as long as I’ve been alive heavily black schools receive equals and sometimes greater funding per pupil than white schools.
“1965 was the civil rights era which was good for blacks, but in objective terms it was a time of comparatively high racism. The chances of being verbally abused or beaten for being black, or imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit, were much higher. The Klan was still active. People still had crosses burned on their lawns, bricks thrown through their windows for being uppity. People still used the “N” word freely.”
In the South perhaps. As a northerner I don’t get the impression this stuff was common, but at a minimum it seems to have become non-existent by the time of my birth.
The number one aspect of those times was blacks driving whites from the cities through violence. Victims don’t conquer territory and get deferred to by their frightened oppressors.
All that said, when people say “Make America Great Again” it seems pretty clear they are talking about the economic (strong union jobs), cultural (low divorce rates, pre-sexual revolution), and social (low crime, etc) that was prevalent in 1965. Not that they want to burn crosses. You know this. Do black people like bad jobs, high divorce rates, and social degeneracy?
At the time, people said the exact same things about Reagan that they now say about Trump.
I remember that being true and we forget how many bad jokes about Reagan there was back in the day. Reagan took lots of naps. Reagan did not understand facts. Reagan said goofy things. And that was just Johnny Carson on every night. (Who probably voted for Ronnie)
Remember the open mic. when Reagan “outlawed the Russia and bombing starts in five minutes?” (My kids did not believe me on the last one.) We do forgot the realities of political battles in the past and the MSM loves nothing more than TipandRonnie striking deals over a drink these days. Anyway, a successful politician is able to get over these complaints.
If the Good Professor quoted for his students the below I bet more students would guess Obama over Reagan.:
‘You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk.’ But then he added, ‘Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.’
“I bet more students would guess Obama over Reagan.”
This does not sound like Obama at all. If it had said a Frenchman should be able to come here and live like a Frenchman, then I’d say Obama.
C’mon Obama was very inclusive and his cabinet was very diverse. It would have be reasonable for Obama to say that.
However, I think the quote is especially interesting that young people would not believe a modern Republican politician would have stated that. (Although it was a letter from an immigrant citizen.)
Perhaps one way of reaching hostile youth is in appealing to their idolization of African American figures.
One could quote Frederick Douglass:
“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”
Or
“They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.”
Or Martin Luther King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Alternately, many have found, myself included, Toussaint Louverture, a great inspiration in the cause of freedom. Perhaps students need to learn who he was and to ask themselves what he meant when we said:
“Let the sacred flame of liberty that we have won lead all our acts. Let us go forth to plant the tree of liberty, breaking the chains of those of our brothers still held captive under the shameful yoke of slavery. Let us bring them under the compass of our rights, the imperceptible and inalienable rights of free men. [Let us overcome] the barriers that separate nations, and unite the human species into a single brotherhood. We seek only to bring to men the liberty that [God] has given them, and that other men have taken from hem only by transgressing His immutable will.”
in his “Address to Soldiers for the Universal Destruction of Slavery”, Bulletin official de St-Domingue, 18 May 1797.
Focusing on one great man and his struggles ethat encapsulate the great innate drive to achieve freedom and equality may be more persuasive than a more philosophical approach.
As always, poetry is the best approach to approaching any question, conveying an attitude , and persuading an audience. Maybe Wordsworth would work in such a situation:
O TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE
TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy of men!
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den; –
O miserable Chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.
Yes, there are oppressors (including those who style themselves guardians) and the oppressed, but there are also the liberators, and they deserve much greater recognition and praise.
But if one is more comfortable with a more prosaic approach, the novelty of examining what happens when free speech is infringed in other countries might appeal to younger audiences.
I imagine you can probably count on two hands the number of US college students today who are familiar with the Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar, but you might readily establish rapport with a young audience by pointing out that this dictator was a university professor of economics.
Despite having the noblest of intentions in serving the poor and being relatively self-disciplined, he found it necessary to suppress free speech, his regime going so far as to arrest college students for making a toast “to freedom” in a bar.
Students who might agree that such actions are taking things to far might be pushed to explain how limits on “hate” speech could be kept narrowly focused and not be turned against them by their own political opponents. This might be worked into the TLP discussion of progressive and libertarian styles of language.
Sometimes it is difficult to be an absolutist and not come across as lecturing or speaking down to young people who are already primed to resent you. Here too perhaps a more socratic approach taking advantage of the novelty of using examples outside the USA.
For example, consider Brazil where the constitutional guarantees of free speech prohibit anonymous speech and the legal code contains numerous restrictions on speech. Young people might be asked what they thought of criminal law provisions like the following and what their reaction to the provision tells them about their relationship to the three-axis model:
*Article 287 – Make publicly, praise or justification of criminal act or crime author. Penalty – detention of three to six months or a fine.
*Article 331 – Insulting a public official on the job or by reason of their duties. Penalty – detention of six months to two years or a fine.
*Article 339 – To cause police investigation, court proceedings, administrative investigation, civil investigation or action administrative impropriety against someone, charging them with a crime that of which the authors knows that the accused is innocent. Penalty – imprisonment of two to eight years and a fine. § 1 – The penalty is increased by the sixth part, if the agent makes use of anonymous or assumed name. § 2 – The penalty is reduced by half if the charge is the practice of misdemeanor.
One suspects that when pushed beyond “I don’t like it, it’s bad, outlaw it” to “how do we design and implement a sensible public policy” students would be more inclined to adopt more tolerant and pluralist positions. Not that tolerance and pluralism will ever be welcome in US classrooms.
Or maybe examining an actual free speech provision from an African constitution might be a more appealing exercise. How would each of the three axes address, for example, the Constitution of Botswana’s provision:
3. Fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual
Whereas every person in Botswana is entitled to the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, that is to say, the right, whatever his race, place of origin, political opinions, colour, creed or sex, but subject to respect for the rights and freedoms of others and for the public interest to each and all of the following, namely—
(a) life, liberty, security of the person and the protection of the law;
(b) freedom of conscience, of expression and of assembly and association; … ….
What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a relatively vague provision versus a bright line rule and how much difference is there in actual practice?
Sections 90, 91 and 93 of the Botswana’s Penal Code contain provisions on hate speech laws that limit public scrutiny of officials. For example:
“Section 93 (1) Any person who in a public place or at a public gathering uses abusive, obscene or insulting language in relation to the President, any other member of the National Assembly or any public officer is guilty of an offense and liable to a fine not exceeding P400.”
And I don’t mean to pick on Botswana which is a highly respectable country from which the USA could learn much, in particular with respect to election integrity.
Wow! Good for you for giving the speech, Arnold. This is the most upsetting thing I’ve read this morning.
This is about what I’d expect from a (very non-random) group of students sufficiently interested in politics to want to spend a summer in DC. Did these students sign up for the program because they shared an interest in the sponsor’s “principles of limited government, free-market economics and honorable leadership”? Or merely because it was a program that would get them to DC for the summer? What’s the application process like?
That is certainly a live demonstration of Thomas Sowell’s statement in his most recent Uncommon Knowledge interview, “Social justice is an actual impediment to acquiring human capital”.
It would be interesting to know whether these students were inculcated against both studying and becoming educated prior to arriving at their university only to have their beliefs reinforced, or this happened at the former facility for higher learning. From your description is seems like few of these emphatic students had sought out differing viewpoints to build up “anti-fragile” opinions.
“The young student should come to regard acquaintance with the varying views as necessary to the formation of a reliable opinion on any topic and of sound judgement in general.” –“How to Study and Teaching How to Study”, F.M. McMurry, 1909
These schools are even failing on the refinement and breeding task as well. A 1940s newspaper filler graphic of a woman in contemplation over coffee advises ‘Always welcome the opinions and beliefs of others. A charming person is open-minded — never intolerant’
A progressive would say that the difference between McCarthyism and Hatemonger Deplatforming is that the American Communists of the 1950s weren’t hurting or harming anybody by expressing their political beliefs and preferences regarding social organization. In contrast, people who express offensive hate speech make people feel unsafe (i.e., equivalent to true threats), and cause emotional distress and pain with serious physical consequenes, and create all kinds of harmful and costly disruption to the lives of individuals and to organizations.
They would say it has long been recognized that even the First Amendment is no bar to the federal government disciplining or even terminating the employment of civil servants if what they say constitutes harassment in at least one of many potential categories and makes their coworkers feel uncomfortable. And while people may debate the proper scope of the legal definition (e.g., did what James Damore wrote constitute ‘harassment’ and so lose any labor-rights protection – which is what the NLRB held was the case), almost no one disputes the right of the government to act in such a way, or compares it to ‘McCarthyism’.
Indeed, consider all the recent advocacy in favor of more ‘civility’? Any argument in favor of civility and harsh criticsms of incivility, offensiveness, insults, etc. necessarily concedes that certain kinds of speech have such negative personal and social consequences that they deserve social sanction severe enough to deter those expressions. Well, the fairly arbitrary taboo against using state power to achieve desirable ends which favoring all manner of softly-coercive private actions is not one progressives share.
The question of whether those Communists could be genuinely loyal and regarded as equally trustworthy in senior positions in government or would use any position of public influence to pursue dangerous and nefarious anti-social ends – which would in turn perhaps justify harsh and extraordinary efforts to detect crypto-Commies and make them ineligible for, or hound them out of, certain jobs – is a separate matter. After all, most people would be in favor – and justified – of doing precisely the same thing for likely foreign agents, or members of ISIS, and progressives are obviously in favor of doing this to racists, sexists, and bigots of all kinds.
It is in extreme jeopardy, which leads to what I think would be two uncomfortable points for most libertarians.
1. A need to re-articulate a defense of free speech ‘absolutism’ (though even libertarians tend to make exceptions for some of the traditional common law restrictions such as fraud, defamation, incitement, and tortious interference).
My claim is that it can’t be done in any way that is compatible with progressive philosphy, language, ideology, and morality. Try to fill in the blank for: “We need to allow Nazis to express hateful, offensive, and hurtful speech because …”
In connection with the above, this is why the harm-based distinction with McCarthyism is so important, because it invalidates one of the principle ways libertarians tend to argue for free speech absolutism. The usual argument of speech restriction being a ‘power’ that could be abused by the right and used against progressives when the right gets in charge doesn’t work. No one uses that argument to invalidate the other harm-causing exceptions to free speech absolutism, so why should it apply to hate speech, which, they would say, ought to be another recognized exception to the general rule.
About the only hope one might have is by making a much more subtle argument that without an absolutist principle in place, it is in the nature of social dynamics to keep pushing into territory that will inevitably result in tyrannical overreach of the kind even current progressives would disagree with, by demonstating conclusively that those consequences are the unavoidable implications of the principles being furthered. Unfortunately, Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility holds, and progressives are never convinced by those arguments until they no longer object to the parade of hypothetical horribles, and instead actively embrace them as the next front in establishing a more socially just society.
2. The only thing likely to preserve the actual rights and value of free speech in an ideological environment turning quickly against it would be to use the state as a countervailing power, and to require certain organization, companies, and institutions to be “common carriers” and to forbid those private actors from discriminating on the basis of speech, opinion, and expression. Libertarians will have to choose between a society in which one can speak his mind and express his honest sentiments, or one in which the state allows socially powerful private institutions and the modern mob to enforce the evolving progressive zeitgeist on everyone.
The problem with 2: the officials who interpret and enforce the rules aren’t necessarily going to be neutral; in fact they probably won’t be, and their neutrality will probably lean in the wrong direction. Anti-discrimination laws provide an example of this. In theory, such laws protect men as much as women, but in practice, discrimination against women is far ‘more illegal’ than discrimination against men because of the ideological leanings of the relevant regulators and judges. Unless non-leftists take over the courts and bureaucracies that implement your proposed nondiscrimination law, it may even backfire.
Can you describe the points make by the African American speakers that were anti-free-speech? I am curious as to what those positions were?
“I got the impression that for some students, there is a sense that there are only two types of political opinion: progressives on the one hand; and racist, sexist Neo-Nazis on the other. It’s as if, never having engaged with an actual conservative or libertarian, they believe the worst about what the opposing view consists of. Accordingly, they see it as their right and indeed their obligation to shut down opinions that are not progressive. ”
This has been my experience being around and talking about issues with progressives. It’s especially unfortunate in this context, because I think the three axes model is one of the better antidotes to it.
I’ve also gotten that impression before too. I guess I just havn’t been on college campuses for so long that I’ve forgotten how oppressive it can be.
My more recent experience is with the whole Trump phenomenon on libertarian message boards, with the invasion of alt-right commenters. I havn’t interacted with campus progressives for a long time, but I’ve interacted with a lot of online racists of varying stripes recently.
Yeah I agree, I was thinking more about this too. I don’t necessarily think Trump is racist — I read somewhere that the “very fine people” thing about Charlottesville was taken out of context and he was referring not to neo-nazi’s but people that wanted the statues up in general.
But there are plenty of people in the comments section of this blog who are very racist — I’m thinking of asdf, for example, who has commented several times that black people, brown immigrants etc are all incapable of contributing in a first world country. So, interpreting these progressives charitably, it might not be as ridiculous as it first seems.
Note: it’s still pretty ridiculous. There are plenty of conservative and libertarian non-racists. I also don’t think accepting the science (which appears pretty overwhelming) that there are group level differences (on average) between populations on certain characteristics makes someone a racist or a sexist. I think you can believe all that and treat people as individuals too.
“I’m thinking of asdf, for example, who has commented several times that black people, brown immigrants etc are all incapable of contributing in a first world country”
“I also don’t think accepting the science (which appears pretty overwhelming) that there are group level differences (on average) between populations on certain characteristics makes someone a racist or a sexist.”
My view that brown people can’t form a first world country is based firmly in that science. If you open up IQ and the Wealth of Nations can you point to any major countries with average IQs of 85 (actually higher then the African average due to white admixture) that have formed first world countries?
Can you even find polities within first world countries with slightly lower then average IQ levels that aren’t comparative basket cases (I’m thinking Detroit or Baltimore here)?
Maybe you just mean “contribute”? But what does that mean. If I produce X, but consume X + Y, certainly I’m contributing -Y for society on net. If you run the numbers, black/brown people clearly contribute -Y (by a lot). So this is just math…
I’m just not seeing your argument here…
Russia and Ukraine are territories populated by white peoples with reasonably high IQ who could not form (and unlikely will ever be able to form) first world countries.
This is my experience as well. I live near a college campus, and the views I hear are rather depressing. Most people seem to genuinely believe that the average Republican or conservative is functionally a sociopath (and the average libertarian as well) or mentally disabled. Even a centrist position, like opposing socialized medicine in favor of the status quo will get one accused of ‘wanting sick people to die in the street.’ I thought that, three years on now, people would have calmed down a bit and realize that, no, the world is not ending because of Trump’s election, but I hear phrases like “if the world even still exists in a year” or “we’re basically living in the Handmaid’s Tale” more than ever (I don’t even live in Alabama or Georgia).
When people live and work and socialize exclusively with people of like mind, their idea of what’s acceptable narrows, and people of even moderately different worldviews grow farther and farther away until someone with a different opinion on corporate taxes seems like a Nazi. It’s to the point where it seems a non-leftist really can’t have a conversation with someone about political topics in a typical urban, especially academic setting. It’s just not worth it. I work in a STEM field, but the repressive culture is increasingly pervading even those areas. It makes me wonder whether it’s worth it to work in academia at all, having to walk on eggshells all the time while others are free to insult you (by ideology, race, by gender) with impunity, as so many people seem to get a great deal of joy in doing (it is amazing how often someone will throw a completely irrelevant disparaging remark about white males into a meeting discussion about math), and where intellectual discussion is thoroughly stifled. I can only imagine how aggravating it would be to be a non-leftist in the academic social sciences, where one’s research is likely right in the middle of the toxic culture, not mercifully distant from them like STEM fields.
“. . . until someone with a different opinion on corporate taxes seems like a Nazi.”
This calls to mind the hysterical reaction to the Trump administration ending Net Neutrality. I read that the FCC chair received death threats.
Amen x 1000. I worked in a private biomedical research institute that ran on NIH grants, so it was the functional equivalent of a typical research environment in academia. I had precisely the same experience. I opted to leave.
If you give a lecture which posits that a progressive perspective will prioritize concerns of oppression over concerns of freedom, why are you so surprised that you were right?
Does free speech oppress?
Or has category creep changed the meaning of oppression, too?
One of the reasons why this was a disappointing post was that Arnold was vague about how the students were hostile to free speech.
Its a delicate dance to maintain openness of speech, while allowing vigorous debate over the ideas. Its very common to conflate the two. I would have wanted to know where the line was for Arnold, and where the line was for the questioners.
What an interesting thread: the post and the comments.
You write:
“It’s as if, never having engaged with an actual conservative or libertarian, they believe the worst about what the opposing view consists of. ”
One way to set up discussions with such students is this 3-step, light-hearted process:
1. “Who here has an older family member….mom, dad, uncle, aunt, grandparent…who you think voted for Trump?” Show of hands.
2. “Can you tell us about him or her, just a super short bio – occupation, family, hobby, weird clothing choices, anything…as a person, not about politics.” Call on 20 people in a row.
3. “Just those 20 people – raise your hand if that person is kind of a neo-Nazi who just happens to be family; keep your hands down if person is a reasonably nice person and just politically a Trump person. Great. Okay, now reverse it, hands up if the Trump voter is a reasonably nice person.” (Most hands now up).
4. “That’s my experience too.”
Double move. One, revealing something to the Group that the Group doesn’t know about itself. Two, (a classic “teacher move”) getting individuals talking before you do, so your later remarks “attach” to theirs.
I like it. I think you would have to call on fewer than 20 people because many people don’t want to be brief, but I like the idea.
I think there are three things going on that explain most of this. 1) people are hardwired to see problems everywhere. Once our most dire problems like food and shelter are solved, we don’t become content, we worry just as much over more minor problems. Most sensible people will agree that the majority (if not in some cases all) of the the oppression-gap for ‘historically marginalized groups has been eliminated in the last 50 years, but people will still be as upset as ever, because rather than seeing fewer problems, smaller problems simply look larger. 2) People are better off and have more free time than ever before, so spend less time and resources on mundane things like survival, or solving local, tangible, apolitical problems, and more on abstract ones; we also can no longer define ourselves as much in terms of our material struggles, and need new outlets for meaning, so we end up actually worrying even more about our much smaller (or sometiems nonexistent) political injustices than our grandparents did about their much larger ones. And 3) Since we self-sort more now in more of our activities, because we can afford to do so more than our ancestors (hard to get by while insisting on only working at a vegan-friendly, progressive coal-mine, or a pro-life methodist steel-mill), higher institutions become increasingly homogeneous, and homogeneity is self-reinforcing, and more and more people, especially in academia, live more and more cloistered, and further and further away in the ideological parameter-space from the out-group.
All of this has been said before though. I don’t think it’ll get better. One could toss hundreds of conservatives and libertarians into a progressive university and stir, and over time, alternative points of view would become normalized, people would become less hostile toward people of other positions. I think that’d be the only way: large scale ideological integration. But that’s not going to happen. Not sure there’s any way it could be done that wouldn’t be far too heavy-handed. I think the libertarian and conservative position regarding higher education from now on should simply be to defund it as much as possible (particularly non-STEM fields). If academic research and education is to be publicly funded, only technical and practically useful research and education should be. Soc. Sci and humanities departments are never going to deconverted from the sectarian seminaries they’ve become or are becoming, so we may as well just top giving them public funds just like we don’t fund Catholic or protestant seminaries.
The article at the link to “Asymmetric Insight” depends heavily on Sherif’s “Robbers Cave” experiment. As I understand it, that experiment turns out to be not so reliable. There was a preliminary version of the experiment (“Middle Grove”) that showed the opposite effect., but went unreported and unpublished. Indeed, to get the results he wanted, Sherif interfered with and manipulated the subjects. Cf. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/16/a-real-life-lord-of-the-flies-the-troubling-legacy-of-the-robbers-cave-experiment
See also https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication
This wording is ambiguous in a way that seems designed for bad actors to exploit. Does “to engage in protests against speakers…” mean merely to engage in speech activity that does not interfere with the invited speakers’ own, or does it really refer to forcibly preventing the invited speaker from being heard by the supporters who have paid to hear him, as has frequently happened lately to Ben Shapiro and others?
Clearly the latter is a civil rights violation and, arguably, an act of terrorism, and anyone who seeks to disguise that act by labeling it as speech is not being honest with the public.