Proud of my university!

I’ve never been a “free speech absolutist.” There is and has always been a balancing of interests. There is no place for pure, inciting hate speech. Indeed, giving pure, inciting hate speech a platform itself gives the loathsome message a platform of credibility.

As to your second paragraph, I just don’t see the need for UF to wait for the windows to be smashed to institute rules, particularly when the protests are organized by the same outside agitators.

 

"The University of Florida is not a daycare and we do not treat protesters like children...."
Priceless, timeless and succinct.

 

I like how those protestors are so dangerous, the police just casually march over there and take them away seemingly without incident. That sort of belies the entire argument the govt would use. Especially if they are UF students.

 

It depends. Can they occupy space for their protest? Yes. Can they get groups together to intentionally try to block walkways they're not occupying to harass students? No. The question of verbally accosting people is also not a simple one. It depends on how they do it.

Constitutional and First Amendment law is what I do. Respectfully, this is simple stuff:
"The students live on campus. They pay to go to college there. UF has public squares. They are not required to go off campus to make their views known. And UF cannot create rules that violate the Constitution. It is a government entity."

Certainly, First Amendment law gets a lot more complex once you start going deeper, but those aspects of it are straightforward and uncontroversial.

 

Well usually that’s how things work, you wait for a crime to happen to prosecute crime.

Rallies and “protests” can be dicey. Often the impetus is for the police to have a “show of force”. That often backfires and it’s best to just let the protest have its moment, but then there are some situations where it gets out of hand. That UF scene actually looks pretty laughable.

 

Immature and unprofessional.

 

It's interesting that you use that language. There's a long history of that sort of language being used to justify suppression of speech, particularly in the South. During the Antebellum period in the South, when Northern abolitionists tried to send periodicals to Southern slaveowners chastising them for owning slaves and accusing sins, the Southern elites sought for Congress and the Northern states to criminalize it on the rationale that outside agitators were trying to foment violence and insurrection. Their basic rationale is that the abolitionist ideas would trickle down to the slaves and lead to slave revolts. (Abolitionist speech was already illegal in the South during this period.)

During the Civil Rights Movement, white Southerners also claimed that outside agitators were behind the protests and the fight for equality. They claimed it was an attack on their way of life. They claimed it must be stopped by any means necessary.

I don't draw these comparisons to accuse you of being a racist. Let me make that clear. I draw these comparisons to point to the danger of suppressing speech because of the potential that "outsiders" might be agitating for violence. We are thankfully in an era with a fairly libertarian view of speech. It makes me uncomfortable how many folks seem to want to return to eras where suppression of political dissent and minority voices was far too widespread.

 

You sound like the far right defending their constitutional right to bear arms.

Yes, free speech is important just like the right to own a gun is to those who wish to do so. Issues arise though when free speech goes too far and leads to hatred and as history has often shown, possible actions that can harm innocent people. It is similar to owning a gun as it is your right to do so but it obviously not your right to use that weapon to threaten or cause harm to anyone else.

UF parents and students are very concerned about these protests. Add in the fact that many of the participants are not UF students and that is another valid concern. Student safety is the number one priority and again, UF is doing exactly the right thing to be sure these protests do not escalate.

 

You do not have to dangerous to be told to leave campus and not return. Same thing can happen at any public place. Plenty of people are arrested that are not dangerous. Just being stupid and/or trespassing can get you arrested. I have not seen the numbers on how many were or were not students but I am sure there are non students involved. They have a lot less to lose than a student does.

 

All true. I only respond to the luncheon that the term "outside agitators" in that context, was coded usually for the term Jews. Amazing how things evolve. obviously, those that are concerned about the safety and mental care of Jewish students come from many perspectives. I would count myself among them, differing only on the correct response in balance. Obviously, like all humans, I happen to think that I strike the perfect "balance", and everyone else is slightly off.

But a lot of the lust for violence comes not from those quarters but from the usual suspects. A US Congressman actually asked Columbia's President before recent events whether she was aware that she had a biblical responsibility to favor Israel to avoid being cursed (not all, to be sure)

 

Not really. I sound like somebody who knows First Amendment law and the history of speech suppression in this country, better than likely anybody on this board. Unlike the far right with their guns, I am not arguing that the right to free speech is unlimited. Rather, I'm arguing that neither "student safety" nor events at other universities justify restricting speech beyond the constitutional limits. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

 

Interestingly, the hottest Broadway musical now is Suffs, (multiple Tony nominations), about the struggle of women to get the vote





Here's Smithsonian Magazine on the long, highly disruptive protest movement that was necessary. Like now, those that just wanted to uphold the law favored heavy policing and incarceration, with a lot of torture that would delight the MAGA mind

The civil disobedience and hunger strikes culminated on November 14, 1917—the “Night of Terror.” According to the accounts of suffragist Eunice Dana Brannan, the harrowing night began when the women asked to see Lorton prison superintendent W.H. Whittaker in an organized group to petition to be treated as political prisoners. Upon meeting his wards, Whittaker threw the first woman to speak to the ground. “Nothing that we know of German frightfulness short of murdering and maiming non-combatants could exceed the brutality that was used against us,” Brannan recounted in the New York Times, prevailing upon the ethnic nationalism of World War I-era America.

She went on to tell how Burns was chained to a cell with her hands over her head all night in “a position of torture” and how Dorothy Day—later the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement—was “thrown back and forth over the back of the bench, one man throttling her while the other two were at her shoulders.” Brannan’s words carried weight among American upper and middle-class men, who might have dismissed younger, single women such as Paul or Burns as radical, hysterical women, but would be less likely to brush off Brannan, the wife of a prominent physician and the daughter of one of President Lincoln’s well-known advisors.

The heavy enforcement tactics failed to quell the demand for justice, and ultimately backfired.

Radical Protests Propelled the Suffrage Movement. Here's How a New Museum Captures That History | History| Smithsonian Magazine

 

I assume this is about the American movement, but I'd love it if they included the British suffragettes who engaged in 2 year bombing/arson campaign

 

Complete #%@&%n horseshit.

There are about a billion places they can gather and show their asses.

They just want to target a specific audience. Jews. Young Jews. To intimidate. To cause fear in.

You know the word that comes next...say it with me...to

*terrorize*.

Even in Gainesville, there must be a thousand places to gather.

They just wouldn't have the captive audience a university offers--and when a university allows a bully org to bully a specifically targeted minority group on their campus, I would submit they are endorsing the bullying, not protecting free speech.

Take and keep that shit the @#$%# off campus.

Check it out: they can spew their vitriol right here in Tom Petty park:

https://www.gainesvillefl.gov/Parks/Tom-Petty-Park

....and our Jewish students can go about their education like the rest of the student body.

 

Covered in the Smithsonian article. Don't know about the play.

Most Americas' idea of the British movement is based on Mary Poppins. Slightly different.

Of Course, MAGAs don't see it as progress. Already fringe calls to deny women the 19th and move to "family Voting", with the Husband having final sway. If past is prologue, what was fringe GOP will become mainstream shortly, especially if the women's vote is decisive against them in the next election.

These days, they adjust to electoral losses with violence and restricting potential voters.

 

GO GATORS!!!

 

'

 

Where are the tear gas launchers and rubber bullets??! Also, some canine LEOs would be nice, too.

 

...pues tomate un cafecito, mijo....

 

I'm guessing uber-duber-superhero *gator*lawyer is pretending to be the Atticus Finch for da' po', ostracized, victimized bully terrorists...

Garsh, I'm sure I'm missing out on some grade A bullshit right there...