In a stinging press release issued by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) Thor Halvorssen, FIRE’s CEO, reminded colleges that “[p]arody and political satire are not illegal in this country…. College administrators,” he continued, “appear to be under the mistaken impression that protesting affirmative action is not covered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
FIRE’s memo discussed the suppression of AA bake sales at the University of Washington, the University of California at Irvine, Northwestern, Southern Methodist, and William & Mary. Indiana University was singled out as an example of an institutions that “are taking their moral and legal obligations seriously and have defended their students’ freedoms.”
In a response to the AA bake sale at UW that is sadly typical, Jerry Grinstein, the president of the University of Washington Board of Regents, wrote the student newspaper that “civility” should control debate and that “[l]earning is not advanced when the dialogue is demeaning and disrespectful.” The letter began:
The “statements” of the UW College Republicans in putting on a bake sale about affirmative action were tasteless, and hurtful to many members of the University community. Protection of free speech and unfettered discourse is a fundamental tenet of University values. So, too, is the protection and promotion of civil discourse, where the widest possible perspectives and experiences can contribute to our collective enlightenment. In the free competition of ideas we, as regents and individuals, celebrate and endorse inclusiveness and diversity as essential elements of the fabric of a vibrant academic culture. We pledge our best efforts to foster a welcoming environment for a diverse University community.
The UW police closed down the bake sale after some offended students attacked it, some physically. It would appear that UW, and other kindred institutions who have also closed down the parodies of affirmative action, believe that the protection of “free speech and unfettered discourse” does not protect or save from fetters speech that is critical of “diversity.”
I don’t like the bake sales very much, but I agree that universities should not be shutting them down just because they don’t like them.
[The bake sales make a point, but seem to imply that affirmative action programs are arbitrary and have no genesis in fact or reason. I think that whether or not you like affirmative action as a solution to the problem of historical discrimination, to protest while ignoring the historical discrimination is a very big mistake.]
Mr. P, you miss the point completely.
If you view affirmative action as some kind of “payback” or retribution for “historical discrimination” you are so sadly wrong. Affirmative action as a solution to historical discrimination? That is to suggest that the way to fight past discrimination is with more current discrimination. Absurd.
The purpose of the bake sales is to show how discrimination, in ANY form, is unjust. It seems the groups that sponsor these bake sales have learned that discrimination based on gender or race is wrong, regardless of who is the target of discrimination. You seem to think that discrimination is OK as long as the majority is the target.
I’m a first year law student, so everything looks like a nail to my hammer. But here were my thoughts with regard to the bake sales that were physically broken up:
I’ve been taking Torts, and as far as I can tell, provocation is not a defence — it merely can lessen the damages awarded. Therefore, if there are organizations willing to bankroll students in these sorts of protests, why don’t they sue the students who broke up their bake sales for assault or battery — as I think there would have been an imminent apprehension of harmful contact — or, failing that, trespass to chattels (breaking the cookies and/or the signs) or conversion (throwing the cookies on the ground, rendering them inedible).
It would cost more to take it to court than the damages would be, but the fact that the other students would have to go to court, face the humiliation of losing a law suit and being forced to pay damages, and have the whole affair made very public might serve to discourage people from taking such “direct action” in the future.
This is a tried and true method — the Southern Poverty Law Center used it very successfully against such slime as the Aryan Nations.
(Also, if the university were acting illegally in shutting down demonstrations, it too would be liable.)
Ok, so lawyers (and first-year law students) can be scum, but we’re useful scum, right?
San Diego had a similar situation some years ago. Conservative protestors were roaming the corridors of the local airport to call attention to the fact that illegal aliens were being permitted to board planes without an ID check. A group of “immigrant rights” advocates took offense and staged a violent confrontation. The airport told the anti-illegal protestors that they’d have to stop, citing the violence inititated by their foes. Luckily a local judge overturned this on the sensible grounds that this is a “heckler’s veto” over free speech, curbing the rights of one group just because some other group is prepared to get physical about it. Seems to me the same argument would apply here.
Grinstein, sadly, is one of the legion of hypocritical apologists who cannot truthfully admit that free speech applies only to “politically correct” leftist speech.
As the past and present amply show, conservatives attempt to engage their leftist detractors in orderly discourse. The latter, on the other hand, being largely ill-bred and ill-mannered scum, reply immediately with violence. They, who should be punished for their attack, are instead vindicated by Grinstein.
I am from UC Berkeley, and it is painfully apparent to me that this place, which is supposed to the birthplace of the free speech movement, has the most dismal free speech environment imaginable.
Those cretins who choose to get naked on the steps of the administration building and extoll the virtues of communism are supported and encouraged by their sympathizers, and left entirely unmolested by those who hold more sensible views. This is free speech.
But if you should whisper anything that runs counter to the PC dogma, you are heckled, attacked, labelled as racist, fascist, anti-Semite, etc, by those who five minutes earlier were the most vocal proponents of the so-called free speech. This is free speech as viewed through pink-colored glasses.
The sad irony is that the lefties have little appreciation of the grim realities of the socialist system they so wish to install. Whereas I have lived on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, and am too well aware of the “gifts” of socialism.
A few days in a gulag would provide a very effective cure for them, but sadly they are unlikely to experience this unless they manage to destroy the freedoms of this country completely.
I find that the Universities are truly violating the first amendment. I would like to know why there is no type of federal help for poor white students. Have they not had a tough life or been discriminated against? I think that if affirmative action cannot cover all types of minorties, then it should be abolished.