BU Law ‘88 here. I see my alma mater continues its fine tradition of treating students like unfortunate inconveniences that come with the need to collect large tuition checks.
BU Class of '90 here. In '87 or so, a scheduled Ramones concert was abruptly cancelled by then President John Silber because--despite the concert being open only to BU students--he claimed "they attract the wrong element." I remember those words perfectly. Well the Ramones showed up anyway at the invitation of the student council, accompanied by Abbie Hoffman and someone from the ACLU. They stood on the steps of of Marsh Chapel talking (well, mostly Abbie was talking) about the importance of freedom of speech and expression. And that, friends, is how I learned about cancel culture at BU .
Commencement speeches are largely a last hurrah before real life outside academia. The best ones are brief, inspire, motivate and reassure graduates. Commencement exercises are a combination of the sacred and profane " (thanks Barbara Stevens Barnum - RIP).
Speakers who accept these invitations and who are corporate moguls, ultrawealthy and who hold power beyond their qualifications of character and service had better expect treatment somewhat different than those kowtowing to them in the c-suite.
Good on the BU protester graduates and their loved ones! Go get 'em!
May 31, 2023·edited May 31, 2023Liked by Ken White
Seems to me the students who paid through the nose for a degree and did the coursework to graduate are very entitled indeed to attend their own fucking commencement. Certainly more than the indifferently competent corporate blowhard invited to speak.
I have nothing to say but :applause emoji: and thanks Ken!
OK one more thing. I think this is absolutely emblematic of how online debates around subjects are structured: there are legitimate criticisms to be made of 'cancel culture' or what have you. Legitimate arguments in favor of cultural acceptance of unpopular topics and modes of speech. But the way these subjects are discussed online snows those legitimate points under a blizzard of bullshit so that it becomes impossible to talk about them without digging down underneath the shit first. Hence a post like this, which is both great and necessary, but man I wish we could get past arguing semantics, knocking down strawmen, and having to counter the most uncharitable readings of intent.
Can you imagine what his reaction would be if I'd been there? He'd have had to have someone look up the definition of the obscenities I would have used.
“As I’ve argued before, arrogating to yourself the power to decide who can speak and who can listen is contemptible and could reasonably be described as “cancel culture.”
So - the CC question can’t be based on the effectiveness or size of the protest group. If the above statement is true, those who would have hoped to have the power to decide who can speak (but failed) deserve the same criticism as a group who succeeded. I don’t get that their ineffectiveness seems to render them sort of blameless.
If your goal is contemptible, you shouldn’t get off because you were lousy at execution.
IMO, this is explained simply: people seem to generally lack the sophistication to keep more than one Current Thing They Don't Like in mind at one time, so everything becomes cancel culture. What they really object to in cases like this is something called "The Heckler's Veto", which is not free speech but also requires disruption to the extent that the speaker can't speak or the willing audience can't hear.
The student protest was relevant and appropriately directed and , in effect did no more than draw attention to a very topical issue. But White’s defense of it the protest is merely pragmatic. Yes, the protests didn’t silence this speaker, but that’s because the event was large, the university was prepared, and the proportion of attendees protesting was small. Not all speakers are so privileged: most events are far smaller, are not so well supported, and it’s easy for them to be overwhelmed by protestors.
I think the protestors would have been fine with silencing the speaker. There’s certainly no evidence that they had some sort of coordinated agreement to go so far and no further in disruptive behaviour. For what it’s worth I believe White is *also* opposed to the hecklers’ veto and would have criticised the protestors, too, if they had succeeded. But that puts us in the unsatisfactory position of defending protests only as long as they’re ineffective. I’d like to see some more principled response, because my experience (outside the US) has been that the knowledge that their events are likely to be disrupted by protests has meant that less privileged groups are effectively silenced.
I would say that the pre-commencement appeals to uninvite the speaker were cancel culture. I would also say that they are unambiguously legitimate speech deserving of as much protection and respect as any request from members of an institution and its community to its management regarding an issue of institutional operations that will affect them. We need not even reach the constantly retreaded argument that even objectionable speech deserves protection, because there is no legitimate objection to the head of an institution receiving constructive feedback from its members and community.
Suggesting that an institution must never be questioned when it chooses to give a platform to a particular speaker is simply wrong. The same goes for a private institution choosing not to give a platform to a speaker (or a government institution choosing what not to express as government speech) and by extension calls for it to (not) do so. Cancel culture is, thus, legitimate speech in such contexts.
Whether this legitimate deplatforming argument can then be legitimately leveraged against protesters is an interesting question, as it suggests that this value can be allowed to cannibalize itself. To avoid the paradox and err on the side of free speech, I would say that it cannot.
Right - I don’t know the details. If it’s a few random people that are not really organized, that doesn’t seem to be a truly concerted effort with much potential for disruption.
But it doesn’t seem that the intent is all that different. I would guess that those who did it in this case would be happy for the speaker to stop, give up, etc. And if so, criticism of them seems fairly legitimate.
I would just add - while the effectiveness/value of this kind of protest is widely debated, I wouldn’t want it to be curbed, exactly. But I also agree that deciding “who gets to speak” in this way is generally offensive.
BU Law ‘88 here. I see my alma mater continues its fine tradition of treating students like unfortunate inconveniences that come with the need to collect large tuition checks.
BU Class of '90 here. In '87 or so, a scheduled Ramones concert was abruptly cancelled by then President John Silber because--despite the concert being open only to BU students--he claimed "they attract the wrong element." I remember those words perfectly. Well the Ramones showed up anyway at the invitation of the student council, accompanied by Abbie Hoffman and someone from the ACLU. They stood on the steps of of Marsh Chapel talking (well, mostly Abbie was talking) about the importance of freedom of speech and expression. And that, friends, is how I learned about cancel culture at BU .
I liked the part where the president lamented that some students were "entitled to attend" their own graduation." Hilarious choice of words.
Thanks Ken, good article as always
Commencement speeches are largely a last hurrah before real life outside academia. The best ones are brief, inspire, motivate and reassure graduates. Commencement exercises are a combination of the sacred and profane " (thanks Barbara Stevens Barnum - RIP).
Speakers who accept these invitations and who are corporate moguls, ultrawealthy and who hold power beyond their qualifications of character and service had better expect treatment somewhat different than those kowtowing to them in the c-suite.
Good on the BU protester graduates and their loved ones! Go get 'em!
"I flinched, as my reaction harkened back to my teen years, over half a century ago, on the south side of San Antonio, Tex."
Yeah, definitely no bad words were used in Texas over half a decade ago.....
Seems to me the students who paid through the nose for a degree and did the coursework to graduate are very entitled indeed to attend their own fucking commencement. Certainly more than the indifferently competent corporate blowhard invited to speak.
I have nothing to say but :applause emoji: and thanks Ken!
OK one more thing. I think this is absolutely emblematic of how online debates around subjects are structured: there are legitimate criticisms to be made of 'cancel culture' or what have you. Legitimate arguments in favor of cultural acceptance of unpopular topics and modes of speech. But the way these subjects are discussed online snows those legitimate points under a blizzard of bullshit so that it becomes impossible to talk about them without digging down underneath the shit first. Hence a post like this, which is both great and necessary, but man I wish we could get past arguing semantics, knocking down strawmen, and having to counter the most uncharitable readings of intent.
I long for the day where I am important enough to be heckled.
At this point in my career, though, I'm pretty sure that that ship has sailed.
Can you imagine what his reaction would be if I'd been there? He'd have had to have someone look up the definition of the obscenities I would have used.
My reaction to this:
“As I’ve argued before, arrogating to yourself the power to decide who can speak and who can listen is contemptible and could reasonably be described as “cancel culture.”
So - the CC question can’t be based on the effectiveness or size of the protest group. If the above statement is true, those who would have hoped to have the power to decide who can speak (but failed) deserve the same criticism as a group who succeeded. I don’t get that their ineffectiveness seems to render them sort of blameless.
If your goal is contemptible, you shouldn’t get off because you were lousy at execution.
IMO, this is explained simply: people seem to generally lack the sophistication to keep more than one Current Thing They Don't Like in mind at one time, so everything becomes cancel culture. What they really object to in cases like this is something called "The Heckler's Veto", which is not free speech but also requires disruption to the extent that the speaker can't speak or the willing audience can't hear.
The student protest was relevant and appropriately directed and , in effect did no more than draw attention to a very topical issue. But White’s defense of it the protest is merely pragmatic. Yes, the protests didn’t silence this speaker, but that’s because the event was large, the university was prepared, and the proportion of attendees protesting was small. Not all speakers are so privileged: most events are far smaller, are not so well supported, and it’s easy for them to be overwhelmed by protestors.
I think the protestors would have been fine with silencing the speaker. There’s certainly no evidence that they had some sort of coordinated agreement to go so far and no further in disruptive behaviour. For what it’s worth I believe White is *also* opposed to the hecklers’ veto and would have criticised the protestors, too, if they had succeeded. But that puts us in the unsatisfactory position of defending protests only as long as they’re ineffective. I’d like to see some more principled response, because my experience (outside the US) has been that the knowledge that their events are likely to be disrupted by protests has meant that less privileged groups are effectively silenced.
Thanks for the link to Gerald Ford's speech!
Imagine the frothing if Biden or Harris used that same quote!
(For the Tl;Dr crowd, Ford quoted Mao, and then went on to riff on the differences between China & the USA).
I would say that the pre-commencement appeals to uninvite the speaker were cancel culture. I would also say that they are unambiguously legitimate speech deserving of as much protection and respect as any request from members of an institution and its community to its management regarding an issue of institutional operations that will affect them. We need not even reach the constantly retreaded argument that even objectionable speech deserves protection, because there is no legitimate objection to the head of an institution receiving constructive feedback from its members and community.
Suggesting that an institution must never be questioned when it chooses to give a platform to a particular speaker is simply wrong. The same goes for a private institution choosing not to give a platform to a speaker (or a government institution choosing what not to express as government speech) and by extension calls for it to (not) do so. Cancel culture is, thus, legitimate speech in such contexts.
Whether this legitimate deplatforming argument can then be legitimately leveraged against protesters is an interesting question, as it suggests that this value can be allowed to cannibalize itself. To avoid the paradox and err on the side of free speech, I would say that it cannot.
It's not 'begging the question', it's 'raises the question'.
Right - I don’t know the details. If it’s a few random people that are not really organized, that doesn’t seem to be a truly concerted effort with much potential for disruption.
But it doesn’t seem that the intent is all that different. I would guess that those who did it in this case would be happy for the speaker to stop, give up, etc. And if so, criticism of them seems fairly legitimate.
I would just add - while the effectiveness/value of this kind of protest is widely debated, I wouldn’t want it to be curbed, exactly. But I also agree that deciding “who gets to speak” in this way is generally offensive.