Friday, November 8, 2019
Thursday, November 7, 2019
University Of Michigan Forced To Allow Free Speech
Free Speech Triumphs at the University of Michigan
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
In a victory for free speech on college campuses, Speech First, a nonprofit focused on defending the exercise of First Amendment rights, has agreed to a settlement with the University of Michigan that protects students’ free-speech rights and resolves the issues prompting the lawsuit.
This landmark victory for free expression means the University of Michigan can no longer intentionally chill student speech while ignoring the guaranteed protections of the First Amendment. The settlement paves the way for college students who may have been too fearful or too intimidated to express their opinions to finally embrace their free-speech rights and engage in true academic inquiry and discussion.
The case began in May of last year when Speech First sued the University of Michigan in an effort to protect their members’ First Amendment rights. Speech First objected to campus-disciplinary code definitions of “harassment” and “bullying” because the definitions blatantly violated students’ free-speech rights.
Harassment was defined as “unwanted negative attention perceived as intimidating, demeaning, or bothersome to an individual." This definition does not include objective standards but relies on people’s subjective perceptions of others. It changes the right of free speech to the right of non-bothersome speech.
Speech First also opposed the administrators' decision to form a so-called “Bias Response Team.” The group was designed to investigate instances of bias and lead disciplinary proceedings against supposedly biased students. The group used nebulous definitions of “bias” and other terms, requested meetings with students accused of bias and even disciplined some students.
This process seemed intended to suppress speech classified as “objectionable” by the administration—more than 150 cases since April 2017—at the expense of students’ constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.
Not long after Speech First sued, the university unilaterally abandoned its unconstitutional definitions and—while the case was pending—the university disbanded its so-called “Bias Response Team,” instead replacing it with a seemingly benign “Campus Climate Support” program.
Given these reforms, which should make it easier for students to voice their opinions in the classroom without fear of punishment, Speech First negotiated a settlement in which the university agrees to never return to the unconstitutional definitions of "bullying" and "harassing," and to never again implement its now-defunct “Bias Response Team.”
The landmark settlement with the university lays the groundwork for challenges to potential abuses down the road and gives protectors of the First Amendment a leg up when it comes to defending and preserving students’ right to free expression on college and university campuses nationwide. Schools around the country are now on notice that simply changing a policy during the course of litigation to try and moot their lawsuits will be viewed critically moving forward.
If a student is ever punished or threatened with expulsion for exercising his or her free-speech rights, this case can be used as the foundation for future lawsuits, all thanks to the Sept. 23 decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Administrators at Michigan are trying to spin the settlement to argue that nothing has changed. But based on how quickly the university accepted Speech First’s conditions, it hopefully has received the message that it cannot violate students’ free-speech rights.
During the settlement process, Amir Baghdadchi, a university spokesperson, said, "When it comes to a student's personal expression, we protect that speech.” I hope that is true from now on.
Free speech watchdogs, like Speech First, will monitor Michigan’s “Campus Climate Support” program and take action if it morphs into just another odious bias response team run amok. Rather than finding refuge in a “Campus Climate Support” group when you’re offended, Michigan students should engage with speech they find offensive.
This sentiment echoes that of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who argues that the proper way to respond to bad ideas isn’t by chilling speech, but in rebutting the controversial idea with more speech—not less. “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence,” he writes in Whitney v. California.
Officials at the University of Michigan never should have adopted speech codes that enforced students’ silence. That the university so quickly surrendered their unconstitutional speech codes is an encouraging sign for students across the country. It’s a victory that paves the way for college students who may have been too fearful of expressing their opinions to finally embrace their free-speech rights and open themselves up to true and rigorous academic discourse.
Ken Blackwell is a former vice president of Xavier University in Cincinnati and the senior fellow for human rights and constitutional governance at the Family Research Council.
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Can This Divide Be Repaired?
The Left-Right Divide Is About Reality Itself
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
The left-right divide in America is, unfortunately, unbridgeable.
There are three reasons.
First, we are divided by our vision of what we want America to be.
The right believes the founders' vision was brilliant and moral, that bourgeois middle-class values are superior to alternative value systems; that rights come from God, not man; and that the state must be as small as possible. The left (not liberals) shares none of those values.
Second, we are divided by the means we use to achieve our vision. Given their different ends, left and right obviously differ on what means to use to achieve their ends.
Third, and perhaps most troubling, there is a reality-perception divide.
Left and right have different perceptions of reality.
I have been aware of this for many years, but it was dramatically brought home last week when I was a guest on "Real Time With Bill Maher." Given that the other two guests on the panel and more or less the entire studio audience were on the left, their reactions to what I said proved my point.
For example, I said that though there are, of course, racists in the United States, America is the least racist multiethnic and multiracial country in the world.
I was booed.
I said the United States military has brought so much liberty to the world it deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
I was booed.
Clearly, there is an unbridgeable divide in the way we perceive the reality of the American military's role in the world.
I said that it turned out the Russia-Trump campaign collusion never happened.
I was booed.
There is an unbridgeable divide in the way left and right perceive this reality.
I said the Trump-Ukrainian president phone transcript did not show a quid pro quo.
I was booed, and one of the other panelists said it actually showed "extortion."
This, too, constitutes an unbridgeable divide between the way left and right view reality.
I said John Brennan, the former CIA director, has voted communist. (He has admitted that he voted for the Communist Party USA presidential candidate Gus Hall in 1976.) I was dismissed as having made something up. Bill Maher sarcastically responded that he didn't recall Mao having been on any ballot.
And I said that people on the left say men can menstruate.
For that, I was not merely booed; I was laughed at by the panel, Maher and the audience.
Anyone can Google this and learn that I was entirely right. Just type "can men menstruate." One of the first results will be from the popular left-wing website The Daily Beast: "Yes, Men Can Have Periods and We Need to Talk About Them," reads one of its headlines. "How is this possible?" you might ask. Well, if a woman declares herself to be a man, then "a man" can have a period. In fact, last month, Procter & Gamble announced that it will remove the female Venus symbol from its Always line of menstrual products. After all, not only women menstruate.
The irony is that as soon as most progressives become aware that LGBTQ groups say that men menstruate, they will say that men menstruate. And that will be another differing perception of reality.
On each of these issues -- all the issues for which I was booed -- right and left have different perceptions of reality. That -- even more so than differing values -- makes the left-right divide unbridgeable. When you cannot agree on what is real, there is no possible bridging of the gulf.
The left believes the president colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. The reality is that there was no collusion. This is the conclusion of the Mueller report, but still, the left doesn't accept it.
The left is certain President Trump said the neo-Nazis are "very fine people" when referring to the protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. The right is certain the president didn't say there are good neo-Nazis any more than he said there are good "antifa" members. When he said there were "very fine people on both sides," he was referring to those demonstrating on behalf of keeping Confederate statues and those opposed. See "The Charlottesville Lie" by CNN analyst Steve Cortes.
The left believes socialism is economically superior to capitalism. But the reality is that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty. This is, therefore, not an opinion divide -- "You prefer capitalism. I prefer socialism" -- but a reality divide.
The reason this is so frightening is that it means one side has lost its grip on reality. If half of this country cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, that is not a good sign for the nation's future. On that point, ironically, left and right can agree.
