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How not to defend free speech

May 10, 2017 10:37 am By Robert Spencer

“‘A diverse and inclusive learning environment’ ought to mean a college where students and faculty members of differing backgrounds and views can come together to participate in a marketplace of ideas, and no idea is excluded without due consideration. But ‘diverse and inclusive’ has come to be a euphemism for its opposite: homogenous and exclusionary.”

Here is an excellent summation of my recent adventures at a couple of colleges, and the freedom of speech implications involved. And here is video of my Gettysburg address:

“How Not to Defend Free Speech,” by Ashley Thorne, Real Clear Education, May 9, 2017:

Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, spoke before a large, respectful audience at Gettysburg College last Wednesday, at the invitation of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter. In the lead-up to the event, students complained and 375 alumni signed a letter calling for his talk to be canceled because, they wrote, “Allowing him to visit and speak will be an act of violence against Muslim students at Gettysburg College and will further legitimate his false and hateful message.”

Spencer writes and speaks about radical Islam and jihad. His most recent book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran (2016). In 2013 he was prohibited from entering the UK to give a scheduled speech, and in 2006, Pakistan banned his book, The Truth About Muhammad. In his talks, he frequently reads passages from the Qur’an that he says justify human rights abuses in radical Islam, such as sex slavery.

Outrage and protest over Spencer as a campus speaker are not unique to Gettysburg. Most recently, on May 1, students at the University of Buffalo drowned out his presentation, chanting and screaming throughout the event. According to Spencer, the UB administrators did nothing to restore order.

At Gettysburg, President Janet Morgan Riggs answered the alumni letter by declaring that Spencer would still make his presentation on “The Political Ramifications of Islamic Fundamentalism,” and that another speaker, Luther College professor Todd Green, would give a talk that same week, on “Professional Islamophobia.” Riggs cited the college’s freedom of expression statement, which quotes Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis: “If there be a time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

In these days of campus speaker shout-downs and dis-invitations, Riggs stands out for her principled defense of intellectual freedom. At least, so it might seem. Riggs is not quite a shining example of free speech protection. Her response to the situation sent conflicting messages.

Selective on Second Speakers

Riggs’s choice to bring in another speaker appears to be a helpful gesture toward ideological balance. Debates and panels that offer competing points of view are sadly rare on college campuses now. Students deserve to hear more than one perspective on controversial ideas. But here the additional speaker concept is applied selectively. For example, in March the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Gettysburg hosted transgender activist Aren Aizura, who promotes “queer theory” and gender reassignment surgery. The college did not bring in a speaker to present the counter view that accommodating gender dysphoria is destructive in a manner similar to accommodating anorexia.

The “more speech” policy appears to apply only in cases where the point of view does not conform to progressive ideology.

Clash of Values

Riggs wrote the following in her letter to the community:

This issue is difficult because it pits two core institutional values against one another:

  • the free and open exchange of ideas and the exploration of their ethical and spiritual dimensions; and

  • the commitment to a diverse and inclusive learning environment.

Taken literally, these values are really not in conflict. “A diverse and inclusive learning environment” ought to mean a college where students and faculty members of differing backgrounds and views can come together to participate in a marketplace of ideas, and no idea is excluded without due consideration. But “diverse and inclusive” has come to be a euphemism for its opposite: homogenous and exclusionary.

In that sense, Riggs is right to recognize a clash of values. This is the reason so many campus speakers are prevented from talking: when the free exchange of ideas is confronted by the notion that a certain view is “hateful” to a preferred identity group, free speech usually loses. This time, Gettysburg College did the right thing by ensuring that Spencer could speak. But Riggs noticed something real, the incompatibility of “diverse and inclusive” (as the notion is practically applied) with intellectual freedom. Colleges and universities should reconsider their institutional values and drop the language of “diverse and inclusive” in order to protect intellectual freedom.

Taking Sides

As is sometimes the case with college administrators who countenance controversial speakers, Riggs couldn’t resist showing her own biases. At the Todd Green event, when a student challenged her decision to allow Spencer to speak, she replied, “My fantasy is that we will have four or five people sitting in a room with Robert Spencer, and the other 2,500 members with Jerome at his rally.  I think that’s what we can do to counter the fear that a speaker like this can bring to this community.”

Riggs’s call for students to boycott Spencer’s talk to attend a simultaneous “Muslim solidarity rally” and her assertion that Spencer could bring “fear” to campus compromised her defense of his right to speak. This declaration was essentially an act of self-justification to students and alumni who might accuse her of not being on the right side. Getting steamrolled by angry students is a legitimate concern for college presidents these days, but it is up to presidents to show students how to listen to views they disagree with and to model what openness to different ideas looks like.

Imperfect Virtue

Gettysburg College did the right thing by ensuring an invited speaker’s right to be heard. Riggs is to be commended for not surrendering to the many who pressured her to turn Spencer away. But her declaration of her hope that no one would attend considerably weakened her position. Students need to see examples of gutsy defenses of intellectual freedom. Riggs falls short of that….

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Filed Under: academia, Featured, free speech Tagged With: Gettysburg College, University at Buffalo


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    May 10, 2017 at 11:54 am

    An academic leader has a MORAL DUTY and a PROFESSIONAL DUTY to dispassionately and impartially PURSUE, INVESTIGATE, OBSERVE, EXAMINE, PROBE, RESEARCH, HUNT FOR, and CHALLENGE the truth.

    The fact that so many academic leaders DISCOURAGE examination, questioning and challenging, shows that they have ABANDONED THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD and have adopt a new DOGMATISM and a new ORTHODOXY based on POLITICAL IDEOLOGY.

    By claiming to know more than Robert Spencer, an author of 16 books on jihad, these unworthy academic leaders have shown themselves to be merely arrogant. None of them have studied the ISLAMIC PRIMARY SOURCE TEXTS and none of them are prepared to DEBATE ROBERT SPENCER in a formal debate… since they all know they would be beaten like a drum.

    These academic CHARLATANS and PONTIFICATORS thus demonstrate that they NO INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENT against the FACTS EXPOSED by Robert Spencer. Their ad hominem SMEARS against Spencer are fallacies of illogic… They have NO ARGUMENT.

  2. Ciudadano says

    May 10, 2017 at 12:47 pm

    The way apostates and critics of Islam are punished in Islamic countries resembles a lot the way communist countries used to silence disidents. Marxism and Islamism both have in common they want to supress discident opinions, even using violence and death. Both are totalitarian idiologies opposed to freedom of concience and freedom of expression.

    Thirteen Muslim-majority countries punish apostasy (abandoning Islam) or “blasphemy” (ie the least criticism of Islam or mahoma) with death http://tinyurl.com/ld6vjkh For example in Saudi Arabia recently a Man was’ Condemned to death by atheism ‘http://tinyurl.com/m2a92tl.

    Most islamic countries haven’t signed off the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, instead they come up with their own Cairo Declaration of Human Rights which explicitly rejects freedom of conscience and religion and establishes superiority of Islam over other religions. It is not coincidente that Islamic and communist countries consistently get the worse human rights scores.

    According to Aid for the Church in Need there are “334 million persecuted Christians in the world”, mainly in Islamic countries (http://tinyurl.com/j8ygyus).

    In Indonesia, allegedly the most moderate Islamic country, Ahok, the Christian governor of Jakarta, was convicted in a blasphemy trial http://tinyurl.com/mskvm4w The “blasphemy” he committed was “interpreting” verse 5:51 Of the Koran “Oh, you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies! … “to defend themselves against the fundamentalist Muslims who used this verse to convince people not to vote for him.

    It’s kind of sad to see America, once the champion of democracy, human rights and liberal ideals, being slowly infested by marxism and islamism.

  3. RationalVoice says

    May 10, 2017 at 1:01 pm

    An excellent speech by Robert at Gettysburg College and only unreasonable people who don’t believe in free speech at all could have any issue with it . A more gentlemanly non-inflammatory, factual talk I have never seen !!
    I think some people confuse racism with an objection to a dogmatic, intolerant, and cruel belief system as set out in the Qur’an, Hadith and Sunnah which inspires not only Daesch and Al Qaeda but all of the Islamic governments of the world which like Pakistan look both ways to fool the West of their true desires, intentions and allegiances.
    Why he was banned from the UK I do not know! Perhaps we should ask Theresa May during her current election campaign.
    We are lucky to have people like Robert to take the time and effort to study in detail what Islam really means. I have a feeling that most Muslims don’t really know themselves but those who do and fervently believe are causing terrible death and destruction across the world

  4. jewdog says

    May 10, 2017 at 2:34 pm

    The Islamo-sympathetic viewpoint usually comes from a totalitarian hippie who considers any criticism of Islam to be a violation of the love ethos of the counter-culture, which is the established culture on campus nowadays. Love, alright, as in Love me or I’ll punch you in the mouth.

    • mortimer says

      May 10, 2017 at 4:53 pm

      JD wrote: “Islamo-sympathetic viewpoint …from a totalitarian hippie”.

      A hipster’s view of Islam.

      They are Islamo-therorists, their theories being based on what they recently smoked, rather than Islamic books that they actually read. They actually ‘read’ only their navel.

  5. Custos Custodum says

    May 10, 2017 at 3:41 pm

    Colleges are NOT TRULY PRIVATE ENTITIES.

    Colleges are given special tax privileges, essentially on the promise that they will uphold higher standards of free speech than, say, McDonald’s.

  6. Bill says

    May 10, 2017 at 5:23 pm

    The conversion of Gettysburg College into a virtual intellectual “Andersonville” for conservatives can only happen because the likes of Janet Morgan Riggs, her administration and, most of all, the Board of Trustees want it that way. If they did not, then true free speech and intellectual inquiry would simply happen without all the fuss..

    In some cases, Boards are really handmaidens of University Presidents who work hard at managing the process of getting like-minded leftists appointed to assure that the Administration will not be held accountable. But in institutions where Boards are more independent, they are the ones designing the indoctrination center and the President is hired to carry out the plan.

    While it is easy to focus on the abusive faculty and their antics, the real problem starts at the top. Look there for answers.

  7. mgoldberg says

    May 10, 2017 at 9:12 pm

    The president of the college was not there. I imagine she had no comment in regards to R Spencers presentation. Which says quite a bit…..

  8. Norger says

    May 11, 2017 at 11:29 pm

    Excellent article.

    When speech is offensive (“hateful”) to a preferred identity group, free speech always loses out on today’s college campuses. It doesn’t matter that most non-Muslim American college students don’t know jacksh*t about Islam, and that Robert Spencer is just unflinchingly honest about what Islam in fact teaches. If Spencer’s speech is offensive to Muslims (who are inexplicably at or near the top of today’s preferred victimhood pyramid on college campuses) that’s enough to stop him from speaking. Or perhaps more accurately, to make sure the viewpoint that Spencer represents is never heard or examined by impressionable young minds. Heaven forbid, he might actually convince a student or two that maybe there’s a kernel of truth in what he’s saying. And we can’t have THAT.

    The author is 100% right, college campuses are anything but “inclusive” when it comes to tolerance of views that don’t conform to the progressive narrative.

  9. Matthieu Baudin says

    May 12, 2017 at 2:22 am

    Many of these ‘left over’ student radicals from the early ’70’s are proud to have taken over the reins and systematically gutted and trashed these institutions of higher learning.

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