Stuart Taylor on Free Speech and Double Standards on Campus:
Taylor: "Loopy radicals dominate political discourse on many a campus, and they despise intellectual diversity." Read the whole thing, which includes a couple of choice quotes from me.
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I thought this column was a little over the top.
"in short, Kristol thinks about war in much the same way the narrator of Lolita thought about 12-year-old girls: with a constant, obsessive, perverse longing."
Yet it's the author who lives next to the Porn King.
Prof. Bernstein, I don't know how to reconcile your criticism at providing Ahmadinejad a forum with your advocacy for other unpopular speekers to be heard on campuses. Pointing out hypocrites has it's place, but in doing so, it has been unclear what principles you are advocating. What standards do you think should be followed? What is the dividing line between appropriate and inappropriate? Is partisan balance part of the goal?
I still have trouble seeing how Gilchrist is relevant to Ahmadinejad. I don't think there was ever any suggestion that A. got to speak because of his position. Agree, disagree, I'm not sure how Gilchrist not getting to speak is relevant.
I see. Thanks. Based on context I had misunderstood you as also talking about academic freedom in the context of academics' behavior aside the legal issues.
Once I see "ilk," I realize I'm dealing with a person who would rather complain than have a conversation. Like "loopy," it's shorthand for "I don't know how to talk about your ideas without insulting you."
I knew that my alma mater would get a shout-out, even if lumped in with other repressive institutions of higher education.
My one issue with affirmative-action bake sales is that, on the undergrad side of the world, they should charge women more than men. At most schools, men get a thumb on the scale because there are more women who apply to college. Maybe it would be helpful for schools to correlate the cost with the GPA and SAT score needed to get in.... ;)
i'm with you. my eyes glazed over once i realized this was strictly a partisan piece designed to make the left look bad and not an attempt at any sort of rational discourse.
Let's analyze Taylor's claim that Lee Bollinger is "selective in [his] devotion to the First Amendment." First piece of evidence: "When a student group recently canceled an event featuring an anti-illegal-immigration speaker for fear of a hecklers' veto by leftist students, for example, Bollinger had nothing to say." Observe that Bollinger did not himself cancel the invitation -- a student group did, so it's unclear what the prima facie case is for Bollinger's selective application of free speech principles. Observe further that last year Bollinger himself cancelled Ahmadinejad's invitation, which he has never done to Gilchrist -- so any selectivity that exists is in Gilchrist's favor. Finally, consider that Bollinger didn't have "nothing to say" about Ahmadinejad's invitation; he had vitriol to spew. It is simply untenable to accuse Bollinger of treating Ahmadinejad more favorably than Jim Gilchrist.
Nevertheless, Taylor goes on. Apparently Bollinger's denunciations and disciplining of the students who disrupted Gilchrist's speech last year were too mild. So Bollinger permits Gilchrist to speak and denounces and punishes students who attack Gilchrist, and this is a double standard because he . . . lets Ahmadinejad speak and himself attacks Ahmadinejad? Again, the double standard, if any, is in Gilchrist's favor.
Now on to some random observations about the hockey team's recruiting posters and the Teacher's College student evaluation criteria, with no apparent connection to the question of who can speak at Columbia or even to Bollinger at all (indeed, as Taylor acknowledges, the discipline of the hockey team was revoked -- are we supposed to think that it was Bollinger who made the initial decision to discipline the team but was then overruled by higher ups?) These are red herrings, content-free talking points.
Now this:
The obvious problem here is the US military isn't banned from speaking on campus, only running programs. Ahmadinejad can't run programs either.
That is the same problem with Taylor's final point, namely, that Bollinger signed an amicus brief in the FAIR v. Rumsfeld case, arguing that universities had the right to ban military recruiters. Again, there is no discernible reason universities should apply the same standards to who can recruit as it does to who can speak. It's perfectly consistent to let anybody speak, but only those who don't discriminate recruit.
In sum, Taylor's column is the sort of vacuous, poorly reasoned, partisan bitching that passes for political discourse on some tabloid op ed pages but is (usually) thankfully absent from volokh.com.
Funny, i don't remember mentioning bernstein at all in my post. now correct me if i'm wrong, but it was a guy named taylor that wrote the article.
They're doing a bang-up job on their own. And what's so irrational about identifying the phenomenon? Not that it will tempt the Lee Bollinger's of the U.S., and academia in particular, to reexamine their First Amendment values.
I could respond to this but AF did it very nicely. if the right wants to make itself look bad, taylor's article and your post couldn't have done a better job of it.
is this going to be a recurring theme? you runaway everytime i try to defend myself? or you continue to refuse to attack the substance of my original posts. Fine then...if that's the way you want it.
Neurodoc is a bigot. (see 10/1/07)
Taylor's points were quite clear; that you don't like them doesn't make them incoherent. It is clear that Bollinger is not that worried about free speech on campus or he would do more to protect conservative speakers. It is clear that Bollinger is using discrimination against gays as a mere cover for anti-military views or he wouldn't be inviting the head of state of a regime that murders gays. That Bollinger ended up critizing A proves nothing more than that Bollinger is spineless -- if A was as bad as Bollinger says, why did Bollinger invite him to begin with? Clearly Bollinger realized that inviting A was a big PR mistake and, therefore, he tried to make up for it by critizing A. (which was stupid because he just made A look like a martyr.)
Taylor's piece may have made you uncomfortable but there was nothing embarassing or weak abou it.
SFB
AF:
Are you really equating verbal criticism with violently shoving someone off a platfrom and not letting him speak?
a) Univ. president invites head of government to speak as part of a program that invites other heads of goverments to speak, including ones from countries w/ as bad if not worse HR records (Turkmenistan's president spoke the same day under the same program and Freedom House rates Turkmenistan's HR record worse than Iran's for 2006).
b) Univ. president is not reported to have commented on a student organization's decision to rescind an invitation to the leader of an anti-immigration group, who was forced off the stage by protestor, an action that the president condemned and punished students for.
So positive act (a) cannot be about free speech because of the non-comment (b). Huh?
US military is barred from recruiting at Columbia because it bans homosexuals. Iran's military cannot recruit at Columbia either, but Iran's president, who hates homosexuals, is invited to speak. When Columbia bans military officers from speaking at Columbia, there's a contradiction. Otherswise, not.
The only thing Taylor is right about is that UC Regents should not have rescinded Summers invitation based on a faculty protest letter. Summers said some inept and silly things at a luncheon talk several years ago, which he later apologized for and admitted were not sensible (he suggested they were not sensible in his talk, which raised the question of why he raised them; he had every opportunity to explain why recruiting senior female faculty in the hard sciences is hard at the conference he was speaking at, but failed to do so). He's still a leading economist and has every reason to be invited by the UC Regents to speak. Those faculty who signed the protest letter were petty.
MDJD2B: No, I'm not equating the students' treatment of Jim Gilchrist with Bollinger's treatment of Ahmadinejad. I am saying that Bollinger's treatment of Gilchrist was better than his treatment of Ahmadinejad.
So, if the ACLU wished to recruit on campus, it would not implicate free speech concerns to bar them (and only them) because, after all, we're only talking about recruiting, not speech, right? And similarly, if Greenpeace wanted to set up an on-campus program to train environmental activists and they (but only they or those with views like them) were prohibited from doing so because the administration found their views offensive, no big deal, 'cause that's just "running a program," which of course has nothing to do with free speech, correct? (Insert here usual caveat about private institutions not being subject to First Amendment.)
Oh, that's rich! The Left doesn't need anyone to make them look bad, they do a first-rate job all by themselves.
Again, Columbia's policy is consistent in principle with state law (which doesn't apply to the military). New York State can't prevent the Klu Klux Klan from recruiting, but it can stop it from discriminating. This is basic stuff.
If an employer is penalized because of views which you (or the powers that be, or whoever) think are permissible, then that's "free speech" and restrictions thereon are unwarranted.
If an employer is penalized because of views which you (or the powers that be, or whoever) think are impermissible, then that's "discrimination" and restrictions thereon are fine.
If that's NOT what you really mean, please advise.
HAHAHA...i see you skipped over redlands post. your joke certainly isn't funny enough to make twice on the same board.
However, Columbia has not done either of things. It has applied its free speech policy neutrally.
The distinction between employment discrimination and speech is familiar and universally accepted. I can't tell whether you really don't get it, or just pretend not to.
check this out regarding Rumsfeld's appointment at an institution affiliated with stanford
Is that hard for you to understand?
The article actually states, "loopy radicals" and does so 3 times. This may mean "loopy leftist" to the author or the reader but it doesn't read that way.