Free speech and academia, yet again

I will say this yet again, because it's important.

Academia is (among other things) a place where we separate good ideas from bad. This function requires that academics openly discuss questionable subjects and ideas with a as much dispassion and "objectivity" as we can manage.

However, at some point, academics should and actually do make some decisions: we find some ideas to be legitimately good, and promote those ideas, and we find some ideas legitimately bad, and we deprecate those ideas. And if you want to discuss a bad idea on a college campus, the burden of proof is on the claimant to show that there's something so novel and compelling about the idea that the previous judgement should be suspended.

The idea that women are in any way inherently inferior to or even very different from men (other than reproductive biology and trivial aspects of athletics and heavy manual labor) is one such legitimately Bad Idea. The idea that people of some races are inherently inferior to other races is another such Bad Idea. The idea that people with atypical sexual or gender orientation are in any way inferior to those with typical orientation is yet another. This list is not exhaustive: There are any number of completely discredited ideas that have no place in a university.

With apologies to Monty Python, sexism, racism, etc. are not pining for more critical investigation. They are dead. They've passed on. These ideas are no more. They have ceased to be. They've expired and gone to meet their maker. They are bereft of life, they rest in peace. If racists hadn't nailed these ideas to the perch they'd be pushing up the daisies. They're metabolic processes are now history. They're off the twig. Kicked the bucket, shuffled off their mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. They are ex-ideas.

Do I make myself clear?

No one gives a fuck if some dumbass student writes a stupid sexist paper in Comp I or if some mossbacked tenured professor publishes reactionary racist drivel in an obscure journal. De minimus non curat lex.

But it's an intolerable affront not just to the sensibilities of minority students but also to those who take seriously the academic pursuit of truth for an actual university to invite a dumbfuck racist like Charles Murray or a narcissistic poseur like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak, as if these morons could breathe any sort of intellectual life into long dead ideas. The only possible reason to invite people like this is that the university wishes to promote racism, sexism, or some other long-discredited idea.

The history of the most brutal violence to control and oppress women, people of color, etc. ad nauseam means that universities must take bullying and hostility with the utmost seriousness. A campus is not 8chan; it is a professional environment. It should require literally zero thought to hold that the right of Black students to fully participate in academia squashes the right of some Aryan Brotherhood frat-boy jerk to yell "n****r" in the quad.

Good fucking grief. Why is this still an issue?

Political correctness

In light of my previous post, I want to talk just a little bit about identity politics and political correctness.

Identity politics is the political struggle for formal and informal civil rights for women, people of color, and those with non-standard sexual and gender orientation, people who have historically been and presently are egregiously discriminated against and oppressed, often with the most frightful violence. Political correctness is the idea that we should resist speech that promotes or suborns discrimination and violent oppression of these groups, and we should especially resist legitimizing such speech, e.g. by giving proponents of sexism, racism, cis- and heteronormativity a legitimizing platform such as a college campus.

There is an unobjectionable controversy here: Where do we want to set the boundaries? What constitutes speech that that promotes, suborns, and legitimizes discrimination and oppression. And what is notable about opponents of identity politics is the absence of any discussion about where this border should lie; instead the argument is that there should be no border at all.

As I've long argued regarding atheism, the substantive issue is settled. Sexism, racism, and cis- and heteronormativity are completely without a factual basis. What remains is the political question: should we impose these norms without a factual basis or construct a "factual" basis to support them?

That's not a terrible argument: it has a long pedigree, going back to Plato's advocacy of the "noble lie" in The Republic, and continues at least through Leo Strauss. But we should recognize the argument for what it is, and avoid getting sucked into an argument about what it is not. The arguments against identity politics and political correctness are not about preserving freedom of speech, or indeed any kind of freedom other than the "freedom" to oppress. They are not about any kind of "truth" of the ordinary liberal variety. Indeed they are contrary to the liberal notion of truth, and intentionally so. The whole notion of the noble lie is contrary to the ordinary notion of truth: we must tell a lesser lie to preserve a greater truth. The liberal notion of truth is too rigid to encompass such a tension.

The exceptional heroism of Jordan Peterson

The Atlantic makes the annals of The Stupid! It Burns!, a notable accomplishment. Usually such publications have people like editors and fact checkers to filter out the more egregious stupidity. In "Why the Left Is So Afraid of Jordan Peterson," Caitlin Flanagan praises Jordan Peterson's heroism in saying what the Big Bad Left Does Not Want You to Hear.

Flanagan heaps abuse on "identity politics" and "political correctness". She doesn't really tell us what they really mean beyond a few ambiguous anecdotes, but that's all right, because we all know they're evil. We can forgive that she doesn't tell us much about what Peterson actually says, because if you're standing up to "identity politics" and "political correctness", you must be a hero, nest ce pas?, but Flanagan cuts right to the quick in her closing paragraph:

Perhaps, then, the most dangerous piece of “common sense” in Peterson’s new book comes at the very beginning, when he imparts the essential piece of wisdom for anyone interested in fighting a powerful, existing order. “Stand up straight,” begins Rule No. 1, “with your shoulders back.”

Argh! As a long-time Marxist, I'm dismayed that she's found us out! Central to Marxist thought is the idea that ordinary people should slouch. Take out the slouching, and the whole leftist project collapses. We might as well just all go home now, buy factories, and exploit the working class.

Don't be a d-ck

Brad DeLong gets it right: (Early) Monday Smackdown: Bard College Has a Quality Control Problem Here: Roger Berkowitz Needs to Learn to Quote Fairly and Accurately

I think that almost every discussion about "cultural appropriation" should be, instead, a discussion about: "don't be a d-ck". Clarifies matters immeasurably.

The brilliant national treasure Roxane Gay is, in my opinion, 100% correct when she writes: "stay in your lane.... The great thing about writing is that you can develop new lanes through research, immersion and effort..." That is not "being a d-ck". But When I read these exchanges (and Jennifer Schuessler's piece), I think Jennifer, Nina, and Burleigh are all being d-cks—especially Roger Berkowitz, who I think is being a major a--hole here, and doing so while claiming to be the heir and channeler of Hannah Arendt. . . .


[I]t is distinctly odd that [Roxanne Gay] is being accused of being too confident about her opinions, and is being held up as some authority over what is and is not legitimate to publish. It is (still) a free country. People can do what they want. People need to understand how their work is going to be read, to be able to handle those readings and the responses they generate, and to think about whether all of that together is moving the ball downfield.

Cultural boxes

In his comment to my post We can't just take what we want, Dustin Vinland Jarl writes,

So you don't think it should be the law, but that it should be angry online mobs that ensure that nobody strays from their prescribed "cultural box" into another "cultural box" for which they don't have "ownership"?

I will repeat my first response: "Mobs? This is the usual characterization of the people by anti-democratic elitists," but I want to add more.

We literally live in boxes — houses, apartments, etc. — about which we assert all sorts of ownership rights. The point is not to make sure that you never leave your own box and enter mine; the point is that you have to respect my ownership rights, and I yours. It's not that you can't come over and visit, it's that you need to ask permission or be invited: you need to respect my ownership. And if you have a history of breaking in by unannounced, and worse yet shitting all over my bed, I'm going to refuse permission for what I might otherwise grant it: I'm sorry you've become homeless, but no, you can't crash on my couch. Why? Because you've shown yourself to be a jackass.

So yes, I'm asserting that people in these "cultural box[es]" — boxes that I yet again note were constructed by white colonialists to dehumanize and exploit those they put in those boxes — are asserting ownership and demanding that we respect that ownership.

Do I think cultural exchange important? Of course I do. Should we engage in cultural exchange in a respectful manner, cognizant of the abominable history of colonialism? Absolutely.

If you disagree with the latter, why? Why should cultural exchange necessarily require abandonment of notions of ordinary respect and consideration?

We can't just take what we want

I think non-Hispanics wearing sombreros at a tequila party is a maybe little bit racist, but not really a big deal: it was certainly not intended to be disrespectful, intended not as mockery but as homage. I think a young white woman wearing a Chinese-style dress to her prom is completely fine: it's literally just a dress.

But the whole point of cultural appropriation is that it's pretty much irrelevant what I think: I drew a straight flush of cultural and economic privilege.

A long time ago, I was negotiating with a family member (the details are unimportant). I said that I wanted thus-and-such. The other person said that I should not want that. I was furious. Maybe I couldn't get what I wanted, but how dare they tell me I shouldn't want it.

I suspect Yassmin Abdel-Magied objects to Lionel Shriver for much the same reason. Shriver is saying to people of oppressed cultures that they shouldn't want to protect the integrity of their cultures from white expropriation. I agree with Abdel-Magied: Fuck you, and fuck your artistic white privilege.

It was not women, black people, brown people, Asian people, Muslims, gay people, trans people, etc. who drew boundaries around themselves and said, "None shall pass." It was straight white European wealthy men who drew those boundaries and said, "Everyone in those boundaries is not human, so we can take from them, and do to them, whatever we want."

Surprise, surprise, surprise! people in those boundaries are taking ownership: "You made the boundaries, but we're taking them back, and you can't have anything inside them without our permission." Sometimes permission is denied for what seems to li'l ol' privileged me to be petty or arbitrary reasons. So what? The whole point of you owning something is that absent exceptional circumstances, I must ask your permission, and I don't get to judge your reasons for refusing.

The intent of objections to cultural appropriation is not, I think, to maintain some mythical cultural purity. It is simply to start to take power away from European colonialism and imperialism, to say, "We are actual human beings, and we have the right to own this thing, our own culture. You cannot simply take what you want."

Cultural appropriation

I'm almost completely unsympathetic to Claire Lehmann's argument in The Evils of Cultural Appropriation. Lehmann mentions two cases, the furor over a young white woman's Chinese-themed prom dress and Yassmin Abdel-Magied's outrage over Lionel Shriver’s defense of cultural appropriation. The boundaries of cultural appropriation are fuzzy, but just because they're fuzzy doesn't mean they don't exist.

We — white people, men, straight people, cis people — made this bed, and we seem shocked! shocked I say! to have to lie in it. For centuries, white people have been colossal dicks to people of color, men have been colossal dicks to women, straight people colossal dicks to gay people, and cis people colossal dicks to trans people. Ok, history, yadda yadda, but the thing is that we're still being colossal dicks. We have been literally victimizing people of color, etc., and now we're surprised that they're using their victimization? Seriously: grow up. Actions have consequences. We've been bullying the world for the better part of a millennium (and women for several millennia); we have no business complaining that they're fighting back in ways we disapprove of. You can't bully someone, and when they fight back, say, "Hey! Why can't we all just get along?"

I don't always agree with how people of color, women, gay people, trans people, etc. fight their oppression. But so what? I don't have to live with what they have to live with. I'm a straight white cis middle-class man. I don't have to fight any kind of oppression. All I can do is try not to be a colossal dick.

When people of color start getting their share of the awards and book deals, maybe then we can start talking about whether or not white writers get to write about people of color. Until then, let's stop trying to be colossal dicks about the whole thing.

Sturgeon's law

Theodore Sturgeon famously noted that "ninety percent of everything is crap."

I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms. [emphasis added]

The Wikipedia article observes that philosopher Daniel Dennett has reintroduced the observation as an important tool for critical thinking.

Hence I am usually unimpressed by people offering anecdotes about any group doing stupid stuff. Stupidity is interesting, and I appreciate a good laugh at some doofus doing or saying something stupid, but such anecdotes are, as Sturgeon notes, "ultimately uninformative." Thus too with free speech issues on college campuses.

I would add, however, to Sturgeon's law that 90 percent is a lower bound; some topics reach 100 percent crap.

It is not enough to to draw conclusions about a broad topic to dredge up any number of examples of egregiously stupid shit. Sturgeon's law guarantees that there will be no shortage of such examples. We should really try to analyze the best 10 percent.

Furthermore, I think there we can usefully analyze even the stupid stuff. Individual analysis always useful: if so-and-so (<cough> Sam Harris) says something stupid, it's an intellectual virtue to point out that that specific said that specific stupid, and to show how it's stupid. Additionally, not all crap is the same. The ordinary kind of crap is just lazy: the author has simply not thought their position through. In contrast, in some topics, the crap is egregiously lying, completely contrary to actual facts. Generally, when I see a huge percentage of flat-out lies in the crap of some topic, I feel like I can draw conclusions about the topic.

We can also look at the general moral stance of the crap. If most of the crap seems generally morally reprehensible, I'm going to draw the conclusion that even the good stuff is contributing to the moral failure seen in the crap.

While I usually like Fredrik deBoer, his recent essay, "There’s no pro-campus censorship theory for me to debate", is a little frustrating. deBoer offers anecdotes, unsourced, of people failing to make good arguments on consistent principles for campus actions that seem to (maybe) impinge on free speech. I assume they're accurate (deBoer seems scrupulously honest), but veracity isn't the important thing here; I want to know whether deBoer is just plumbing the depths of the 90 percent of crap. And the anecdotes that deBoer offers just show ordinary laziness that is not facially reprehensible. So, while I take his point that academics should construct good arguments for whom they do and do not invite to campus, that he has given us examples of bad arguments doesn't tell us anything new.

I think a good principled argument is actually relatively easy to construct. deBoer complains, "Why do these controversies so often fall along predictable partisan lines?" Well, why shouldn't they? If the struggle is actually partisan, then of course these

I'm neither a liberal nor a conservative, but liberals consider conservatives to be not mistaken but actually evil; likewise, conservatives consider liberals to be evil.* I think both positions are, in a sense, "legitimate," in that they might be wrong, but they're not incoherent. If you think some group is actually evil, you have to fight them, and it's impossible to insist on absolute moral purity for everyone opposing them. Hence the liberal students are fighting against conservatism, and so what that people like the Clinton's are not morally pure; at least they're on the right side... or at least not obviously on the wrong side. In a struggle you fight, and as long as the person next to you is aiming in the correct direction, you don't need to ask too many questions. The campus "free speech" issues deBoer points out might not be not a debate on universal values, but rather what it appears to be: a partisan struggle. I think that's a position coherent and principled enough to be worth debating. but an actual partisan fight.

*My personal opinion is that conservatives are indeed completely evil (or completely deluded), and liberals slightly less evil; they mean well, but they're mostly... not exactly stupid, but they're missing too many important points.

Supposing that it is a partisan fight, I don't think deBoer's substantive criticism holds water. deBoer writes,

[Pro-censorship leftist]: What, you want to give “mainstream conservatives” a place to speak on campus? Any conservative contributes to racism, war, and poverty!

Me: Considering we’ve been arguing for decades against the perception that campus is a left-wing indoctrination center, and that the GOP has used that perception to massively defund public universities, this seems like a suicidal stance.

First, of course, I think his labeling of advocates he disagrees with as "pro-censorship" — an obviously value-laden term — poisons the well; he employs the term to label the position, not the argument. I think it might be possible to argue the position that actions such as protesting the invitation of speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, or Condoleeza Rice constitutes "censorship," but it's not so obvious that deBoer can simply assume it.

More importantly, no matter what campus liberals do, as long as educated people and people in academia struggle in any way against conservatives, the GOP will itself create the perception that "campus is a left-wing indoctrination center." This whole line started, as best I can tell, when students started protesting the Vietnam war. Furthermore, the conservative war against academia has little to do with students protesting conservatives; the conservatives are struggling against the professional-managerial class, and academia is the foundation of their legitimacy. Even if students passively accept whatever speakers their administrators deem acceptable, conservatives will not rest until academia is either destroyed or brought completely under the control of the "free market."

deBoer continues, "But anyway — you think the average Democrat doesn’t contribute to racism, war, and poverty?" I completely understand his frustration here, and I feel much the same. Still, commies like deBoer and I are completely marginal in the actual struggle against conservatism. The Bolsheviks welcomed the Kadets in the struggle against the Tsar, so too could we communists at least not complain too loudly and too generally at the struggles of those who do not share our proletarian purity.

I'm not on the side of the liberals or the professional-managerial class. However, the only universal value I see at stake here is that even a completely socialist government should not imprison Yiannopoulos, Spencer, or Rice just for their views. Other than that, fuck them. I don't care who does it, if the pressure of public opinion can stuff these assholes under the rocks they crawled out of, I'm not going to waste my breath defending them.

What is free speech?

Free speech is impossible.

To be genuinely free, free speech must be free of all coercion, not just of coercion exercised directly by the state. If some non-state institution uses coercion, then either the state itself legitimizes the coercion, it which case the coercion is still state coercion, or the state does not have a monopoly on the exercise of coercion, and is not a state at all. Thus, if I say, "The sky is blue," and vigilantes beat me up without fear of state reprisal, then the state has coercively restricted my speech, so I do not have free speech.

But! Speech may itself be coercive. If I walk up to a bank teller and say, "Give me all your money, or I'll shoot you," I am coercing the teller (and the bank, its depositors, and its owners). There is a contradiction: if the state regulates this coercion-by-speech, we lack free speech; if it cannot, it is not a state at all. Worse yet, if I say, "Do not say that the sky is blue, or I'll shoot you," someone's free speech will be violated: either my own — I am prohibited for speaking thus — or the person I'm threatening, who fears to say that the sky is blue.

Indeed, we have broadened the definition of "speech" to communicative acts: if burning a flag is a speech act, then pointing a loaded pistol at someone — so long as I do not pull the trigger — is objectively a speech act. One might argue (sensibly) that threats are substantively different than other speech acts, but to restrict any speech for any reason, however sensible and reasonable, is still infringing on someone's freedom of speech.

The point of the above exercise is to emphasize that we are arguing not about whether or not we should have "free speech" but about the limits and boundaries of permissible and impermissible speech, what institutions actually set those limits, and how they go about setting them.

The question then becomes on what basis are we to determine the limits? As I work through the sources, I'm going to try and determine both where each source advocates the limits should be, and, more importantly, why those limits should be as they advocate.

Free speech, political correctness, and higher education - first bibliography

Fine. I'm going to bite the bullet and do a scholarly investigation of the topic of free speech, political correctness, and higher education. This post will contain a first pass at a non-annotated bibliography. If you have any suggestions for additional sources, please let me know in comments.

My working research question is: are the values of political correctness and free speech in substantial conflict in the context of higher (postsecondary) education? I will define both terms, and investigate where and to what degree they do in fact conflict. I will judge the merits of both sides, and come to a conclusion about the degree we should support each value.

Scholarly sources
Wilson, John K. (1995) The myth of political correctness: The conservative attack on higher education. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Rychlak, Ronald J. (1992-1992). Civil rights, Confederate flags, and political correctness: Free speech and race Relations on Campus. 66 Tul. L. Rev. 1411
Cheney, Lynne V. (September 1992). Telling the Truth. A Report on the State of the Humanities in Higher Education. National Endowment for the Humanities.
Scott, Peter. (2016). "Free speech" and "political correctness." European Journal of Higher Education 6.4: 417-420. doi:10.1080/21568235.2016.1227666.
Pujol, Jordi. (2016). The United States safe space campus controversy and the paradox of freedom of speech. Church, Communication and Culture 1.1: 240-254. doi:10.1080/23753234.2016.1234124.
Kitrosser, Heidi. (2016-2017). Free Speech, Higher Education, and the PC Narrative. 101 Minn. L. Rev. 1987
Robbins, Susan P. (January 19 2016). From the Editor—Sticks and stones: Trigger warnings, microaggressions, and political correctness. [editorial] Journal of Social Work Education 52.1: 1-5. doi:10.1080/10437797.2016.1116850.

Non-scholarly sources
Google "free speech political correctness and higher education"

Roth, Michael S. (August 31, 2016). Free speech, political correctness and higher education. Huffington Post.
Lukianoff, Greg, and Jonathan Haidt. (September 2015). The coddling of the American mind. The Atlantic.
Schapiro, Morton. (January 15, 2016). I’m Northwestern’s president. Here’s why safe spaces for students are important. The Washington Post
Cobb, Jelani. (November 10, 2015). Race and the Free-Speech Diversion. The New Yorker.
Strauss, Valerie, (November 20, 2015). Sick of hearing about pampered students with coddled minds? This university president is. The Washington Post
Zimmer, Robert J. (August 26, 2016). Free speech is the basis of a true education. The Wall Street Journal.
Stone, Geoffrey R. (August 26, 2016). Free expression in peril. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Friedersdorf, Conor. (June 30, 2016). Should any ideas Be 'off the table' in campus debates? The Atlantic.
Roth, Michael. (September 19, 2015). Black lives matter and so does free speech. Wesleyan University.
Gersen, Jeannie Suk. (December 15, 2014). The trouble with teaching rape law. The New Yorker.
Kipnis, Laura (February 27, 2015). Sexual paranoia strikes academe. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Cooke, Rachel. (April 2, 2017). Sexual paranoia on campus – and the professor at the eye of the storm. The Guardian.
Schlosser, Edward [pseudonym]. (June 3, 2015). I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me. Vox.
McCormick, Jason . (December 1, 2016). I’m a liberal professor and my conservative students terrify me. The Coffeelicious.
Berlatsky, Noah. (June 11, 2015). Professors do live in fear—but not of liberal students. The New Republic.
Griswold, Alex. (June 3, 2015). Liberal professor vilified As racist for accurately quoting activist. The Daily Caller.
Flaherty, Colleen. (January 30, 2015). Going after the donors. Inside Higher Ed.
Steinhauer, Jillian. (June 20, 2014). South Carolina legislature penalizes colleges for teaching gay-themed books. Hyperallergic.
Kendall, Nancy. (June 9, 2015). Scott Walker is undermining academic freedom at the University of Wisconsin. New Republic
Hentoff, Nat. (Fall 1991). "Speech Codes" on the campus and problems of free speech. Dissent 38: 546-9.
Chait, Jonathan. (January 27, 2015). Not a very P.C. thing to say. New York Magazine, Daily Intelligencer.
Goldberg, Jonah. (February 16, 2015). The University of Michigan's tolerance problem. Los Angeles Times.
Mahmood, Omar. (November 19,2014). Do the left thing. Michigan Review.
Fields, Suzanne. (May 20, 2015). The slow death of free speech. The Washington Post.
Barone, Michael. (Jun 22, 2013). Why does the left want to suppress free speech?
Quintana, Chris, and Brock Read. (June 22, 2017). The Chronicle of Higher Education.
deBoer, Freddie. (June 26, 2017). There’s no pro-campus censorship theory for me to debate. Medium.

I have not yet carefully evaluated any of the sources. Some sources may be dodgy; hopefully, I'll be able to replace them later with more reliable sources.

Damn. I am barely scratching the surface. More later.

Jackasses

On the advice of Michael Bérubé, I'm retiring the words "retard", "moron", and other similar words used to deprecate another person's intellectual character. Instead, again on his advice, I will use the term "jackass". (When and if I refer directly to animal-rights activists, I will use the term "jackass-American".)

While I don't agree wholeheartedly with Bérubé's argument, the new term adequately expresses my dislike and contempt of people whose intellectual and moral character I strongly disapprove of, and it avoids offending those who I do not wish to offend and (justly or unjustly) who do take offense at the retired words. It's much easier to switch terms than to continue to argue the point, and I don't sacrifice the clear and direct expression of my indignation.