Proud of my university!

The "norms" of polite or public discussion are made by people, not the government. People can absolutely boo a racist off stage for saying racist stuff, the government cant make a law saying racists cant go on stage. Seems pretty simple to me. But thing seems to have warped to where people think they have "the right to be cool" and not have to hear they actually suck in public.

 

The Klan lost their power because they were successfully sued and went broke, not due to any governmental action. The public squares used to preach their hate gave them the authenticity and credibility. At the expense of repetition, Hate speech has no room in our society.

 

Someone pirate your handle, W?

You're sounding an awful lot like...not the proud commie you normally are.

 

But one cannot freely engage in dangerous speech. “I’m going to punch you square in the nuts,” is not necessarily lawful speech. It can be a crime, and it can give rise to civil liability. Threats to the President are not free speech.

Freedoms of speech gave us the right to critique our government, to foster new ideas and promote better governance. Everyone has a voice, god and bad, in a democracy. But that doesn’t mean that your voice can be used to dispense violence.

 

How about this for a solution: work with your students.

1. Let all students know that they can't camp on public ground or protest past a certain period of time, assuming that such rules are applied universally and not just to protests that you don't like.
2. However, you explicitly and forcefully state that you support their right to protest on campus.
3. You provide space by which they can do so safely and provide safety for other members of the community. These spaces will be reserved overnight for as long as students want them. You do so in good faith (i.e., you don't only offer space that isn't seen on campus, you don't go back on your word of protecting the spaces over night, etc.).
4. If a Pro-Israeli group wishes to do the same, they are afforded the same rights, but keep them well apart for the safety of both groups. Both groups have arguments based in facts of violence against their group. No need to recreate it on a micro-level.
5. Don't make up completely arbitrary rules with the goal of getting rid of protests. No rules against chairs (obviously, if you have ever been to a game, there is not a rule against chairs on public ground). No arbitrary rules affecting speech.

Take a positive position, even with those you disagree with personally and allow free speech and provide appropriate security to make sure nothing goes wrong. Seems like it might be more effective than arresting a bunch of people that want to feel oppressed or show how the government is working against them.

Basically, the solution is to make all of this boring, not turn it into a movie with tons of drama and the feeling that they are involved in the most important event in the world.

 

True threats aren't protected. Other threats are. Threats to the President can be free speech. Again, the bold is sounding a lot like the bad tendency test, a test we repudiated because it was so permissive of repression.

 

All sounds great. Except you are dealing wi5 professional organizers. The goal is to intrinsically grow the volume and the intensity, not to roast marshmallows.

 

Okay, let them try. Again, the solution is boredom. Hard to increase intensity when you have been standing out there for days and you are no longer getting much of a reaction. Bringing state power to bear is rallying, causes intensity, and is quite exciting. There is a reason that people watch things like V for Vendetta or Handmaid's Tale or 1984 or whatever and don't watch a movie where a guy stands and waves a flag for days on end while people go about their lives. People have a desire to view themselves as heroic. Bringing state power to bear against them allows those organizers to do their job. They can convince lots of people to be heroes to this story (in their mind). Much harder under my scenario.

 

I think the goal is to get the university to divest or make concessions or pledges to respect certain behavior or ideas. Dont confuse goals with tactics. The volume and intensity escalates when the school basically goes beast mode to not have to have a discussion, that is just a tactic responding to another tactic. Now you can say the school shoudn't have the discussion period, but then who's responsible when that solves nothing? The school is perfectly capable of waiting them out if that is the track they want to take. But they would rather it be gone now which basically creates all the scenes they'd rather not be seen, except by the people that love cops beating the shit out of kids.

Also, I'm not sure what makes them "professional" organizers ... who's paying them to protest?

 

Emory, Columbia, etc. all say hello.

 

None of those places tried my strategy. In fact, it could be argued that Columbia tried your strategy. They brought state power to bear. It didn't work. And now, they have a bigger issue because they made it exciting and heroic.

You know the places that have tried my strategy? Probably not. Because you aren't hearing about them. For example, the encampment at Hopkins just came up. Same at Northwestern. Same with Brown. How about try the strategy of the places that you aren't hearing about in the news?

 

Emory and Columbia both brought in the police to try and crush the protests, so I'm not sure how they disprove his point.

 

Is that the goal de jour? Yesterday it was to end the War against Hamas. Tomorrow it will be something different. The Palestinian PR team has proven time and again to be the greatest, most gifted professionals we have ever seen. They are able to snap fiction into fact, over and over and over again. I mean, they’ve managed to turn a Hamas—caught live and on video raping, torturing and murdering innocent civilians— into Knights of the Roundtable. That is good work by some skilled professionals.

 

That should resolve that issue once and for all!

 

Far too late and way after the crowds organically grew to untenable.

 

Are we living in the same reality? Because that's not how the vast majority of Americans see Hamas.

Wesleyan is taking the tack of just ignoring them as long as they behave themselves. We'll see how it works out for them.

 

The crowds got bigger after Columbia called in the NYPD.

 

I know I’m living in reality. I know exactly why I’m worked up about what’s going on. And I can tell you it’s not over a philosophical conversation of when free speech is acceptable and when it’s dangerous. Because it is absolutely, very real and very dangerous in many places right now, and that danger is not abating, it’s exacerbating every damn day.

 

First you say they cant decide on anything on the one hand, on the other they are skilled professional organizers. My thinking is a good organizer wouldn't change their message or demands every day, that sounds ... disorganized and amateur, and antithetical to actually getting your demands met. You really have to decide if these are stupid sloppy kids who just want to cause trouble or disciplined professionals who know how to outsmart hapless flacks like Ben Sasse by mixing it up on the fly.

 

I looked up that Wesleyan. Here is the quote from one of the organizers:

They are almost trying to will the administration into a crackdown (that the administration isn't even remotely threatening). Strange behavior if the solution is to crackdown. Almost like they want to be part of some massive crackdown where they get to be the hero of their own story.