free speech

The Incompetent James Wagner, President Of Emory College

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Trump 2016

The incident was simple and easily handled for any college president with a modicum of common sense, respect for free speech, and a comprehension of the needs of basic higher education. Unfortunately for Emory college, its students and stake-holders, James Wagner is not such a college president. He is, instead, a craven incompetent. Harsh? You decide.

At Emory, someone wrote the frightening words “Trump 2016” with chalk on a stair railing. Given that this is an election year and Donald Trump is running for President, such a scribble should be regarded as unremarkable. Oh, if it happened on a campus where I was enrolled, I might think, “Gee, apparently they accept idiots into this institution, and my degree may not be worth spit,” but that would be the extent of my dismay.

Ah, but it’s 2016, and thanks to the pusillanimous campus leadership at the University of Missouri, Duke, Occidental, Princeton, Yale and so many other places, college students nationwide have gotten it into their delicate heads that there is a basic human right to be shielded from any writing, words, slogans, pictures, historical references or sidelong glances that might upset their preconceived views of life in any way. Thus a group of Emory students who gasped with horror at “Trump 2016,” which is not only political speech but, unfortunately, mainstream political speech, went to Wagner and demanded action.

What Wagner should have said, following in the footsteps of the few college presidents who have shown themselves worthy of their jobs, is some version of what Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Dr. Everett Piper, wrote on his school’s website in response to similar student complaints on his campus: Continue reading →

Fairness To Clinton: #WhichHillary Is Fair, Black Lives Matter Isn’t

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Racial Justice Sign

Protesters who interrupt speeches are not engaging in free speech, they are defiling it. We can expect protesters of all sizes, shapes and colors to be interfering with campaign appearances this year, forcing candidates into a lose-lose-lose proposition of either giving the activists a platform they don’t deserve, rewarding rude and disrespectful behavior and looking weak (as Bernie Sanders did last year, allowing a Black Lives Matter group to hijack a campaign appearance), trying to ignore the disruption and thus being unfair to those who came to hear a speech without static, or being  confrontational with the protesters and alienating voters who may sympathize with their cause.

This is one area in which Donald Trump has a clear advantage: since neither he nor his addled supporters care about ethical values, he can safely be abusive to protesters, and he is. At the rate his abuse is escalating, I expect him to egg on one of his mobs to burning or eating one by the spring.

Thus I must sympathize with Hillary Clinton, who just had an ironic ethics encounter. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

First-Amendment-on-scroll1

“The text of the First Amendment is enshrined in our Constitution, but there are certain cultural values that undergird the amendment that are critical for its protections to have actual meaning. If that culture starts to wither away, then so too will the freedom that it supports.”

—FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai  to the Washington Examiner, in an interview where he expressed concern that respect for First Amendment principles were diminishing, particularly on college campuses.

Isn’t it fascinating that so many of those who are concerned about the freedom of speech being diminished by political correctness have responded by supporting a Presidential candidate who regularly abuses the right of free speech, and whose response to protesters at his own speeches is to abuse them?

But I digress.

Today’s example of what Pai is talking about comes from California State University Los Angeles (CSULA), where president William Covino, responding to expressions of dismay from the same kinds of students who needed counseling at Rutgers, cancelled a scheduled speech by conservative pundit and Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro, and in a particularly Orwellian touch, did so citing the need for the “free exchange of ideas.” Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On Georgetown Law Center’s Scalia Foofarah

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Scalia-Georgetown

I am a Georgetown University Law Center grad, as well as a former administrator there. I also know and have personal relationships with several members of the faculty. None of this especially informs my ethical analysis of the community argument there that arose from a rather innocuous official expression of respect and mourning in the wake of Justice Scalia’s death, but if anyone wonders why I’m posting about this rather than many other ethics issues nipping at my heels, that’s part of the reason. The other reason is that this academic dust-up raises interesting ethics issues, and has received national publicity.

Observations on the tale as it has unfolded:

1.  Georgetown Law Center issued a press release mourning the death of Antonin Scalia, including a statement from Dean William M. Treanor that read:

““Scalia was a giant in the history of the law, a brilliant jurist whose opinions and scholarship profoundly transformed the law. Like countless academics, I learned a great deal from his opinions and his scholarship. In the history of the Court, few Justices have had such influence on the way in which the law is understood. On a personal level, I am deeply grateful for his remarkably generous involvement with our community, including his frequent appearances in classes and his memorable lecture to our first year students this past November. The justice offered first-year students his insights and guidance, and he stayed with the students long after the lecture was over. He cared passionately about the profession, about the law and about the future, and the students who were fortunate enough to hear him will never forget the experience. We will all miss him.”

[Note: In the original post, I missed the first line, and kept missing it. Don’t ask me why. The text has been finally, after a couple botched attempts, been revised to include it.]

Is there anything inappropriate about the dean’s statement? Not in my view. This is nothing but a traditional expression of professional respect on behalf a prominent institutional member of the legal community. There is nothing in the statement, save for the last sentence, that anyone could argue is untrue. Countless academics, as well as Scalia’s more liberal colleagues, did learn “a great deal from his opinions and his scholarship.” He was an influential and significant figure on the Court. Scalia was generous with his time and passion as a teacher, and by all accounts he was a good one.

The opening statement,  “Scalia was a giant in the history of the law, a brilliant jurist whose opinions and scholarship profoundly transformed the law,”  seems to be what rankled Scalia critics. It shouldn’t have. At worst it is standard memorial puffery. But calling Scalia a giant “ in the history of the law” seems fair whether you agree with his jurisprudence or not: he is certainly among the 20 or so most quoted, most debated, and most provocative justices. The rest shouldn’t be troubling to anyone who isn’t suffering from Scalia-phobia. A Justice can be brilliant and transformational while being wrong.

None of the reports of the controversy ignited by this standard issue sentiment mention it, but Georgetown Law Center isn’t on the Georgetown campus. It has its own campus that is a 15 minute walk from the Supreme Court. Law students regularly attend oral arguments; I did: it was one of the great advantages of studying law there. More than any law school, the Law Center has good reason to feel a special affinity to the Court and all its justices.

2.  What about the last sentence? Is it appropriate for Treaner to speak for the law school community and say that “We will all miss him”? He was reasonable and fair to assume that.  Unfortunately, in today’s vicious partisan divide where opinions and sincere positions reached after thought and research are too often treated as proof of consort with Satan, and ion which even lawyers, who are trained not to take legal arguments personally, are frequently unable to respect a colleague for a well-reasoned argument that they may still think is completely wrong, it was not a safe assumption. Pillory the dean, then, for giving all members of his community the benefit of the doubt, and assuming they are capable of grace, compassion, fairness, professional respect and civility.

It’s still not unethical to assume one’s colleagues have some class.

3. They all don’t, unfortunately. Law Center professors Gary Peller and Mike Seidman (I know Mike, never met Gary) then used the Campus Broadcast system, usually used for event announcements, invitations and policy changes, to send a message  to all members of the student body titled, “Responses to Dean Treanor’s Press Release Regarding Justice Scalia.”  Peller’s statement reads,

Like Mike Seidman, I also was put-off by the invocation of the “Georgetown Community” in the press release that Dean Treanor issued Saturday. I imagine many other faculty, students and staff, particularly people of color, women and sexual minorities, cringed at headline and at the unmitigated praise with which the press release described a jurist that many of us believe was a defender of privilege, oppression and bigotry, one whose intellectual positions were not brilliant but simplistic and formalistic….That ‘community’ would never have claimed that our entire community mourns the loss of J. Scalia, nor contributed to his mystification without regard for the harm and hurt he inflicted.”

This was partisan grandstanding of the worst kind. The professors, of course, have a right to proclaim their opinions to the student body any time they want to, but their complaint here was petty and mean-spirited. It also models behavior that is poisonous both to the legal profession and the culture as a whole. The are saying, in essence, “We don’t mourn him, we won’t miss him, and we’re glad to be rid of him, because his legal theories aren’t our legal theories, and we are on the side of the angels while he was an uncaring villain.” Such a message accomplishes nothing positive, and much that is destructive. The professors engaged in demonizing, when their profession and their duty is not to denigrate but reason. If they really think they can prove that Scalia was a defender of privilege, oppression and bigotry, they can make that case in a scholarly paper: I doubt that they can. Scalia often defended the rights to engage in conduct that he did not personally support, as well as some he did: the sloppy rhetoric of Seidman and Peller echoes the legally ignorant who accuse criminal defense attorneys of defending robbery and murder. Continue reading →

“His WORDS Are Too Horrible to Bear!” Why Is Rutgers Pampering Student Delusions About Free Speech?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
"He DISAGREES WITH ME!! ARRGH!! It's too painful to BEAR!!!"

“He DISAGREES WITH ME!! ARRGH!! It’s too painful to BEAR!!!”

It is unethical to make students or their parents pay obscene amounts of money to be rendered incompetent and dysfunctional for the life challenges that face them. Based on this bizarre incident at Rutgers—tuition about $25,000 per year, per student—that is exactly what that esteemed institution is doing. How many others are doing the same?

Journalist Milo Yiannopoulos—that’s being generous: I’d call him a professional troll, or a white, gay Ann Coulter—kicked off his “Dangerous Faggot” tour at Rutgers. He’s an in-your-face, liberal shibboleth-shattering, intentionally provocative rabble-rouser of the hard right, famously banned by Twitter, which now appears to be sucking up to Social Justice Warriors. Milo, who is one of the ugly, culture-scarring mutants created by the radiation emanating from the hyper-partisan environment encouraged by the Obama Administration,  expounded on  gender wage gap myths, feminism, the “rape culture” and Black Lives Matters in as offensive a manner as he could, and he is talented at being offensive. Some 50 students in the audience who were there to bury Milo, not to praise him,  stood up and smeared fake blood on their faces to signal their opposition. Ten protesters left, forty stayed.

Then they had a collective breakdown, or something. The Daily Targum, Rutgers newspaper, reported that following Yiannopoulos’ appearance, students and faculty gathered in the Paul Robeson Cultural Center to discuss their trauma at his words and the reaction to it from students in the audience. “We are here to show support,” was the mantra repeated by nearly every person in the crowd as they introduced themselves, as if voluntarily listening to a hard-right, politically incorrect conservative provocateur was the equivalent of experiencing sexual assault or the death of a child. Continue reading →

When Corporations Don’t Respect Autonomy And Freedom Of Speech: Nike

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Nike dont

Nike allows purchasers to customize their Air Jordans, but reserves the right to control what ideas, thoughts and preferences you proclaim on your shoes.

Nabeel Kaukab, self-described as “an All American kid with an unusual name,” was browsing the online NikeiD store where customers build and buy custom footwear, and discovered Nike’s lack of support for the concept of free speech when he explored the customization features, one of which includes the ability to place up to six letters on the athletic shoes. When he entered “Islam” and “Muslim,” he was unformed that these words do not fit within the Nike guidelines.

Really? Nike’s guidelines specifically exclude “profanity,” “inappropriate slang,” “insulting or discriminatory content,” “content construed to incite violence,” “material that Nike wishes not to place on products” and anything that “violates another party’s trademark or intellectual property rights.” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Professor Robert Donald Weide, And Any University That Employs Him

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

crushing dissentThe results of the Curmie Award vote are up at Curmudgeon Central, where blogger Rick Jones tracks episodes of supreme embarrassment for his profession, education. I think next year’s winner may have already arrived. It’s not that I can’t imagine worse conduct by an educator—I have a lively imagination—it’s just that the conduct California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) professor Robert Donald Weide is an apt symbol of why U.S. higher education is no longer a solution to anything, but a tragic problem in itself. There is no reason, none, why any school shouldn’t immediately sack a faculty member who behaves like this. If the issue is tenure, then tenure needs to be abolished. Tenure should not shield campus fascists.

What did Weide do? CSULA’s branch of Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative political organization, dared to invite Ben Shapiro to give a lecture called “When Diversity Becomes a Problem” about such emerging issues as Black Lives Matter, “microaggressions,” “safe spaces,”  trigger warnings and other assaults on free speech on campuses and elsewhere. Naturally, since the topic is an important and legitimate one, many at CSULA are attacking the event and arguing it should be blocked by the university, citing trigger warnings, safe spaces,  microaggressions, and, of course, the ever-useful censorship concept of “hate speech.”

Perhaps here is as good a place as any to note that I wouldn’t cross the street to listen to Ben Shapiro, and wouldn’t do so even before his website, Breitbart, decided to shill for Donald Trump. That, however, doesn’t alter the fact that he is every bit as worthy of a campus speaking gig as Lena Dunham, Bernie Sanders, Sean Penn, or the Pope. Continue reading →

At Revere High, An Explanation For Campus Anti-Free Speech Demands And Pew’s Shocking Poll

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Free Speech diagram

Our rising generations don’t respect free speech because that’s what the public schools teach them, and nobody’s protecting them from indoctrination in un-American values by already indoctrinated teachers and peers.

Is that too assertive?

It’s correct.

Last week, the Pew Research Center released a poll that indicated that 40% of millennials believe that the government should regulate offensive speech. Of course, when black students at colleges across the country are demanding protection from speech, thought, and microagresssions, this revelation should not prompt a cardiac event. Other groups that the poll indicates should be hanging their heads in shame: women (33% to their apparently less delicate male counterparts’ 23%), Democrats (35%…Who would have thought that this party would have seen its core values deteriorate to this point?”), and non-whites, even higher at 38% ( Does the melting pot still function, or are anti-speech attitudes coming in from across the border and melting ours?).

At Revere ( Mass.) High School, a senior cheerleader named Caley Godino was kicked off the team for issuing a politically incorrect (and  incoherent) tweet, which read as follows:

‘When only 10 percent of Revere votes for mayor cause the other 90 percent isn’t legal’

Other students complained, and instead of responding, as they should, “Her opinion was expressed off campus on her own private social media account, didn’t involve school matters or personnel, and is none of the school’s business or concern. Take it up with her, preferably on social media, and stop appealing to authority to protect you from free speech. This isn’t Yale,” the school banned her from cheering for the rest of the year. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

blog_credit_card_swipe

It’s a small victory to be sure, but those of us who want to protect free speech must take our hope from whatever sources we can.

In the case of Dana’s Railroad Supply v. Florida, the sharp-eyed Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals  struck down a Florida law barring merchants from imposing a surcharge on customers for credit card use.

The law allowed merchants to give discounts for cash, but would not permit surcharges for using credit cards. “Ah HA!” realized the court, This violates the First Amendment, because it penalizes businesses that want to call price differences based on credit card use a surcharge rather than a cash discount, and they are the exact same thing. “You can penalize credit card users,” the dumb law said, “but you have to call it what we tell you to call it.”

“Tautologically speaking,” the opinion said, “surcharges and discounts are nothing more than two sides of the same coin; a surcharge is simply a ‘negative’ discount, and a discount is a ‘negative’ surcharge. As a result, a merchant who offers the same product at two prices—a lower price for customers paying cash and a higher price for those using credit cards—is allowed to offer a discount for cash while a simple slip of the tongue calling the same price difference a surcharge runs the risk of being fined and imprisoned.”

“The First Amendment prevents staking citizens’ liberty on such distinctions in search of a difference.”

Love it.

___________________

Pointer and Facts: ABA Journal.

More Nascent Totalitarianism In Middle School And College

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

voting

Does anybody care except the occasional blog? More specifically, has any Presidential candidate condemned these incidents?

At Everett Middle School in the Mission District in San Francisco:

Principal Lena Van Haren decided to withhold the results of the school’s Oct. 9 student council election for more than a week, because she felt the results weren’t diverse enough. She said that the school community needed to figure out how to have a more representative government. There were no Latino or black candidates chosen for the top four spots.“This is complex, but as a parent and a principal, I truly believe it behooves us to be thoughtful about our next steps here so that we can have a diverse student council that is truly representative of all voices at Everett,” she told parents in an e-mail Thursday.

They reacted furiously, indignantly and correctly, accusing her of tampering with a fair and free election. Her response was unethical, dishonest, rationalized, and idiotic.

“We paused to have a conversation. [You withheld the results.] I never, ever said we wouldn’t share the results or they weren’t good enough. [If they were good enough, why the need for a “conversation”?] This is middle school. It’s not a presidential election. [ It was supposedly an election for the student leadership of the school, and thus as close to a Presidential election as a middle school gets. What’s your point, that its OK to manipulate elections for lesser offices?] It was not about hurting democracy or putting diversity over democracy. [ Funny, it sure looked like that’s exactly what it was about.]

Then she said that she wanted to wait until there was a plan created with student input to increase diversity among student leaders, perhaps by adding positions.

The students apparently paid no attention to race and ethnicity in their voting. That’s the objective, isn’t it? The principal want to perpetuate group identification and divisions, even if the students have educated themselves to understand that neither should matter. Adding positions to make it easier to have token “diversity” makes a sham out of any election. What other brilliant solutions does this principal have? Special representatives of every race and ethnic group? Quotas? Giving minority groups bonus votes? Forcing minorities to run for the council? Forcing whites not to?

Schools have elections to teach them about democracy. This principal is teaching them that democracy and the will of voters must meet progressive agendas, or it is “wrong.” She’s also teaching them to lie. Withholding results sent a message that the students had done something wrong by not considering race and ethnicity as qualifications for office that should take precedence over skill and demonstrated ability. Her denials were obvious and made no sense.

This how the extreme leftist educational establishment indoctrinates students to progressively weaken our democracy. Responsible parents should not accept [Correction note: The “not” was inadvertently omitted in the initial post.]such transparently dishonest excuses for it. If this could happen, the entire school and school system needs to be overhauled.

At Wesleyan University… Continue reading →