20% of young faculty accept violence by students to stop controversial campus speakers

Compared with 3% of above 35 years old faculty members.

This is from an interesting report from the foundation for individual rights and expression.

https://www.thefire.org/news/report-faculty-members-more-likely-self-censor-today-during-mccarthy-era

It's a non-profit civil liberties group founded in 1999 with the mission of protecting free speech rights on college campuses in the United States.

The organization is famous for, among other things successful suing to prevent the enforcement of the stop woke act from Ron desantis.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/17/florida-anti-woke-law-block-colleges-education-00069252

I mentioned this specifically, because here they are dealing with college level academic censorship that happens both from right and left wing actors, but generally is more common from the left at elite level academia as those universities tend to be very left wing leaning (specially at social sciences)

The report includes interesting and worrisome points:

-40% of liberal faculty are afraid of losing their jobs or reputations due to their speech

-Two in five faculty self-censor more now than in 2020

-Female faculty are more likely to support speech restrictions, campus investigations, deplatforming

-72% of conservative faculty, 56% of moderate faculty, and even 40% of liberal faculty afraid of losing their jobs or reputations due to their speech

Here is also a long form interview of the founder by lex Friedman for those that are interesting in following up on the topic:

https://youtu.be/buarAx_u2qg?si=x-tfUY5e09HjolEJ

I think this is an interesting topic regardless of the legality of this type of censorship.

liberal thinking, as described by enlightenment era philosophers, is a crucial aspect of the development of modern societies, and in my opinion responsible for the current material wellbeing of the world.

Ps:

Interestingly enough, this organization also ranks college based on their predisposition to defend free speech.

https://www.thefire.org/college-free-speech-rankings

it names Harvard as the worst university in the USA for free speech.

Here is a response from Harvard newspaper, the Crimson:

https://www.thecrimson.com/column/voices-unbound/article/2023/10/3/clark-young-free-speech-rankings/

"i don't like your ideas so i'm going to use violence against you."

classy.

I think I wrote this thread in a way that is hard to understand. Though I wanted to show how academic freedom of expression is eroding and diversity of view points is loosing ground among elite academic institutions.

I believe this is very important for society to see and try to resolve.

Definitely some points of concern here worth exploring further, and in detail. I'd like to know what speech they'd like to make that worries them and whether those concerns are unfonded (or if their opinions are trash and not worth platforming). No, hopes of squeezing in a little light racism and mysoginy here and there won't be welcome anymore.

And yes, I 1000000% green light punching nazis and fascists, as we as a nation have been doing for about 100 years now. Seems like some of you forgot when your faves started showing tendencies. No, we don't make room for their opinions or ideas. I have no interest in tolerating the intolerant. We know where that leads and we've learned the right way to handle that. Deplatforming and these hands. They work quite well. Ask Milo and Andrew Tate.

If hate, denying the rights to others that you demand for yourself, and sowing division are your bag, you can GTFO right along with them.

@adrian1480: the issue here is that you feel you can understand well what are good and acceptable opinions, and therefore feel you have the right to act violently against those that don't have those views.

But that is the same attitude of religious theocratic states, they also feel they know what is truly good and will be violent against the ones that expresses different opinions. Communist and fascist totalitarian governments also exercise violence to censor opinions they deem go against the greater good.

Without going so far, in other parts of the USA, an atheist or anti police speaker may be violently prevented from speaking by people that are sure they are making the world a better place.

That's why academic freedom is so important. There is no single person with the right definition of what is good and no way to guarantee your opinion won't be censored as well in the mid term future (society's idea of good changes over time)

Listening to people we consider to be bad allows them to also listen to us, and allows us to guarantee we won't find ourself censored in the future If morals change to a point in which our opinions are no longer popular.

This in regards to use of violence to stop speech. which is gladly not legal in democratic republics and I hope it stays that way.

In regards to providing platforms for speech to actors with opinions vastly different from us, I think the only real reason to prevent someone from speaking at a university setting should be either advocacy of violence or bad methodology.

People are free to speak their minds but they are not free from the consequences should their comments cross into certain areas.

This freedom is not a thing that covers all; you can (and in many cases, should) be sued/fined/imprisoned for saying certain things.

I think that your average person speaking their mind probably doesn't need to self-censor, but at the same time we have a lot of public figures that hide behind the skirt of our "freedoms" and have ruined it for the rest of us.

I think any anger shouldn't be directed towards the "woke" people that are sick and tired of hateful rhetoric, but instead at far-right people that say sensationalized, inflammatory things for publicity and profit. People like Alex Jones, Boebert, Taylor-Greene, and so on are not a symptom of the problem, they are the problem. And they ruin it for the rest of us every-day moderates, liberals, and conservatives.

@mrbojangles25: I think other than analyzing this in terms of political sides, which makes people tribalistic, its more helpful to understand in terms of clarity of rules.

You can divide this in to two topics.

1. Acceptance of use of violence: this is a huge problem regardless of your political views. It will only lead to conversation being shut down and replaced with more violence as an answer. We need to address the fact that younger people are getting increasingly more comfortable using violence to shut discourse they disagree with.

2. Deplatforming: this is a much more grey topic. This is usually framed in terms of political hot topics: racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny are usually used, under the banner of hateful rhetoric as a justification for deplatforming.

But this concepts tend to have very flexible, and changing meanings and be interpreted very subjectively.

I will give you a couple of examples:

1. You make or quote a study that suggests that women are more anxiety prone than men. Some people would certainly not consider this misogyny but some people have actually been fired by this.

2. You quote or make a study that suggests that intelligence as measure by iq is partially inheritable and that there is a correlation between ancestry and IQ.

This can be considered to be very offensive but it's generally considered to be correct.

So how do you define between acceptable and non acceptable speech in a clear, detailed and consistent manner?

I find both those examples totally reasonable and not offensive. I mean, is talking about race racist? Can a doctor get in trouble for saying that black people are genetically predisposed to heart disease more than white people? The problem is people tend to take it to extremes in order to elicit a response from the opposing side.

Also these arguments are often presented without context, which makes them sound a little less reasonable (for example, arguing that women are more anxiety-prone is fine but you have to balance your argument by saying why this is, what benefits it can offer and not just the cons, etc.).

Concerning violence, that's a really tricky argument. At some point it is very much necessary; I imagine the trick is determining when.

Should Alex Jones have the crap beaten out of him? I mean, he has indirectly caused death and suffering simply from speaking. Parents of murdered children have been harassed and attacked because he goes on a show and tells lies, and people believe him.

Alex Jones was recently sued for 1+ billion dollars. That's a lot of ass beatings except in dollar form. But at the same time, he is currently failing to pay these amounts. Do we start whooping his butt? If he doesn't have to pay the fine, and he still gets to tell lies on his show...what do we do?

@mrbojangles25: then would you agree with people from the right beating up a controversial figure from the left?

Or religious group beating up atheism advocates?

I am sure they Also think they are fully correct and morally superior.

May countries to their days accept mob revenge and violence. Many times it's directed against homosexuals, unfaithful women, unproperly dressed women, atheists, the blasphemous, etc.

They all think they are protecting good.

Well they fined him with an insane amount. It's like the yearly GDP of Italy or some shit. So yeah he can't pay it lol

Maybe instead of trying to attack him physically people mind thier buisness, realize "words don't hurt them" and stop being little whiny c**** when somebody says something they don't like. People say stupid shit all the time but I'm not going to attack them physically over it. Now if your screaming in someone's face, like the spit out your mouth is getting my face from your words, that's different, because now its on the verge of getting physical. But attacking people with violence for simply thinking and saying something you disagree with is stupid.

The issue isn't hurt feelings, it's the fact that people were directly motivated by his words to cause harm to others.

People were stalked, their families were doxed so they could be abused by whole crowds of people, there was an untold amount of emotional distress caused by him and his crowd that resulted in PTSD, depression, anxiety, and even some suicides. Kids were denied vaccines by parents and got sick as a result, died because of his words.

It's not that he was staying stupid shit. Joe Rogan says stupid shit, I don't think he should be sued or attacked. Alex Jones motivated people to do harm.

We can only say "oh they're just words, people make their own decisions" for so long. I believe in personal responsibility but there's a point where being brainwashed is a literal fact, and your actions are more or less the expression of someone else's will.

@mrbojangles25: is still don't see how this has anything to do with physical violence. They have courts for a reason.

To be fair, some of the ideas are "You should use violence against those whose ideas you don't like"

@rmpumper: in that case you would be reaffirming their ideas by using violence against them.

Most countries are not a Somali-like failed States and there is a reason why the vast majority of governments monopolize the use of violence within their country.

Otherwise it becomes about who has the most capacity for violence, not about who has the best arguments or popular support.