to engage in behavior which elicits fear amongst other college students and creates an environment where intimidating rallies and protests occur against a specific group of people.” “Let this piece serve as a calling for administrators, faculty members and students to look at their campus laws and policies to ensure that protests and rallies may occur, but only if they are contained so as to not forecast threats toward other students on campus.”
And it’s pretty clear that the author — a commentator at the University of Connecticut student newspaper — isn’t just speaking of speech that itself contains threats against certain people. Rather, in his view, even “draw[ings of] allusions to the extreme suffering of millions of innocent people,” “drawing[s of] symbols on campus which excuse horrendous human rights violations against enslaved blacks,” and similar “menacing and threatening” expression needs to be banned, presumably because it constitutes “targeted hate speech against an entire group of people.”
“Regardless as to which group is targeted, let us call out professors who abuse their position of power to utter reckless and incendiary comments. Let us work together to curb events which demonize people for their religion, race, ethnicity and other attributes.” And in context, it’s clear that he’s talking about coercive suppression of speech by universities, not just “call[ing] out” through counterspeech, or “curb[ing]” through public condemnation. Oh, yes, and jurors who take the opposite view are “pinheads.”
The particular speech that Mr. Tarr is focusing on is anti-Semitic speech, but naturally his rationale applies to whatever other speech can be characterized by university administrators as “intimidating” or “excus[ing] horrendous human rights violations” or “demoniz[ing of] people for their … attributes.”