> They demand the right not just to speak, but to control the speech of others. And what's more, they seek to destroy the careers and connections of anyone who dares to stand up for liberal principles, as the "walk of shame" protest yesterday demonstrates: https://freebeacon.com/campus/student-activists-target-stanford-law-school-dean-in…
Maybe Kyle Duncan is an culture warrior. Maybe the FedSoc members are provocateurs. I don't weep for them, I weep for the Dean who got caught in the middle and tried to stand up for what is right, and is now the target of shunning. The message from the students is clear: let us control the discourse, or else.
Suppose some conservative students didn't like a trans student using the "wrong" bathroom, and were waiting in the hall outside the bathroom in exactly the same manner of protest to show their disapproval. In this hypothetical, let's assume it is the official policy of Stanford that transgender students are fully entitled to use the bathroom matching their gender (which I suspect is probably the case in reality also).
Completely in-bounds nonviolent protest? When does nonviolent protest cross a line into personal harassment and intimidation?
That scenario would bother me because of intimidating targeting of a single student with no power. Here it was the DEAN, a person with more power than them, who had condemned them in writing, singling out their speech as inappropriate (as it was, since it was shouting down). They responded with a silent protest that effectively commented on the concept of being quiet vs. being loud. I don’t agree with their (wrong) point that shouting down is protected speech but the response to the Dean of the school condemning them was totally in-bounds.
I guess it hinges on whether you see the student protest as a statement that is adding to the discourse or an attempt at personal intimidation of an individual. People need the freedom to make statements, even if those statements are wrong, but I believe it crosses a line if people attempt to extract through intimidation concessions that they could not win through persuasion.
The power analysis breaks down if many students banding together are capable of inflicting more personal repercussions on a dean than the dean can practically inflict on them. The dean probably cannot sanction 1/3 of the student body, especially as they are the paying customers, but a protracted campaign by the students has a very real chance of inflicting a significant personal and professional cost on the dean.
Honestly this is drifting pretty far towards proving the students' assertion that nothing they do will ever be acceptable unless it's a decorous debate on the exact terms the people they criticize are demanding.
I have asked if you want to propose a principled distinction between protest and intimidation. I am genuinely interested in hearing one. Could the students show up at the dean’s house? The school her kids attend? The only line I have heard you draw is that a party who nominally holds the power is a priori presumed to be fair game for any form of nonviolent protest. I do not find this analysis convincing.
I'm talking about the latter. Even if the students managed to get this professor fired and shunned from the academic community, which is the outcome I would fear, I would still see that as 1A protected speech, similar to the Hollywood Blacklists.
But from a norms perspective, I think that threats to one's livelihood and personal space are coercive. We should feel justified in condemning people who try to win the argument by coercive means, particularly when they reject the idea of debate or defending their ideas on the merits.
Again, this seems unreasonably delicate towards the dean of students, a powerful person. Norms of “coercion” that serve to protect the powerful from the expression of the less powerful are dubious.
I guess that's our point of disagreement then. The Dean has a title, true, but does that necessarily mean she has more power? I think to answer that question requires looking beyond title and hierarchy but to the actual outcome of the conflict if both sides continued to escalate. If one side can inflict more consequence on the other in the end, I would argue that they had more power all along.
If the person with highest title always held the most power, then no king or queen would ever lose their head.
Your example is shockingly poor. Trans people are routinely murdered horribly for using the “wrong” bathroom, and everyone knows this. Meanwhile deans are not routinely murdered by anyone for any reason, and certainly not by law students protesting policy on speaker selection. One of these things is therefore very scary intimidation with an implicit threat of sexual violence and death, and the other really is not.
> They demand the right not just to speak, but to control the speech of others.
And what's more, they seek to destroy the careers and connections of anyone who dares to stand up for liberal principles, as the "walk of shame" protest yesterday demonstrates: https://freebeacon.com/campus/student-activists-target-stanford-law-school-dean-in-revolt-over-her-apology/
Maybe Kyle Duncan is an culture warrior. Maybe the FedSoc members are provocateurs. I don't weep for them, I weep for the Dean who got caught in the middle and tried to stand up for what is right, and is now the target of shunning. The message from the students is clear: let us control the discourse, or else.
Hard disagree. They didn't like a dean's stance and engaged in a nonviolent protest. Completely in-bounds.
Suppose some conservative students didn't like a trans student using the "wrong" bathroom, and were waiting in the hall outside the bathroom in exactly the same manner of protest to show their disapproval. In this hypothetical, let's assume it is the official policy of Stanford that transgender students are fully entitled to use the bathroom matching their gender (which I suspect is probably the case in reality also).
Completely in-bounds nonviolent protest? When does nonviolent protest cross a line into personal harassment and intimidation?
That scenario would bother me because of intimidating targeting of a single student with no power. Here it was the DEAN, a person with more power than them, who had condemned them in writing, singling out their speech as inappropriate (as it was, since it was shouting down). They responded with a silent protest that effectively commented on the concept of being quiet vs. being loud. I don’t agree with their (wrong) point that shouting down is protected speech but the response to the Dean of the school condemning them was totally in-bounds.
I guess it hinges on whether you see the student protest as a statement that is adding to the discourse or an attempt at personal intimidation of an individual. People need the freedom to make statements, even if those statements are wrong, but I believe it crosses a line if people attempt to extract through intimidation concessions that they could not win through persuasion.
The power analysis breaks down if many students banding together are capable of inflicting more personal repercussions on a dean than the dean can practically inflict on them. The dean probably cannot sanction 1/3 of the student body, especially as they are the paying customers, but a protracted campaign by the students has a very real chance of inflicting a significant personal and professional cost on the dean.
Honestly this is drifting pretty far towards proving the students' assertion that nothing they do will ever be acceptable unless it's a decorous debate on the exact terms the people they criticize are demanding.
I have asked if you want to propose a principled distinction between protest and intimidation. I am genuinely interested in hearing one. Could the students show up at the dean’s house? The school her kids attend? The only line I have heard you draw is that a party who nominally holds the power is a priori presumed to be fair game for any form of nonviolent protest. I do not find this analysis convincing.
Are you talking about for First Amendment protection purposes or for "free speech values" philosophical purposes?
I'm talking about the latter. Even if the students managed to get this professor fired and shunned from the academic community, which is the outcome I would fear, I would still see that as 1A protected speech, similar to the Hollywood Blacklists.
But from a norms perspective, I think that threats to one's livelihood and personal space are coercive. We should feel justified in condemning people who try to win the argument by coercive means, particularly when they reject the idea of debate or defending their ideas on the merits.
Again, this seems unreasonably delicate towards the dean of students, a powerful person. Norms of “coercion” that serve to protect the powerful from the expression of the less powerful are dubious.
I guess that's our point of disagreement then. The Dean has a title, true, but does that necessarily mean she has more power? I think to answer that question requires looking beyond title and hierarchy but to the actual outcome of the conflict if both sides continued to escalate. If one side can inflict more consequence on the other in the end, I would argue that they had more power all along.
If the person with highest title always held the most power, then no king or queen would ever lose their head.
Your example is shockingly poor. Trans people are routinely murdered horribly for using the “wrong” bathroom, and everyone knows this. Meanwhile deans are not routinely murdered by anyone for any reason, and certainly not by law students protesting policy on speaker selection. One of these things is therefore very scary intimidation with an implicit threat of sexual violence and death, and the other really is not.
Does "everyone" know this? I would love to see some data showing that trans people are "routinely murdered horribly for using the 'wrong' bathroom."