Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Universities are not governed by Constitutional freedom of speech?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

On Saturdays (not the usual day science news is broken), the News desk sometimes focuses on public trends that impact our issues, including the ongoing campus war on freedom of speech—in the United States, it typically surfaces as the war of the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It’s no secret that the governing classes today don’t like the First Amendment and want to chip away at it.

One recent new tool has been “trigger warnings”—the notion that the content of university courses should be eliminated or modified to protect the interests of fragile persons for whom it would “create distress.”

The obvious question of whether such persons are best accommodated at a university is, of course, not up for discussion in elite circles because their own actual target is all the rest of us.

A friend sent this example:

Students Attack ‘Triggering’ Anti-Abortion Sign, Cop Says Free Speech Has Limits on Campus

‘What I’m here to tell you is that on campus we have additional rules other than just freedom of speech,’ said the cop.

Students at the University of Oregon clashed with an adult anti-abortion preacher earlier this week, eventually grabbing his graphic sign, tearing it, and stomping on it. One student told him, “this is not part of your First Amendment right.”

Yes, actually, it is part of his First Amendment right, just as it was part of the First Amendment right of a 19th century figure to similarly portray graphically the dreadful suffering of black people under slavery (floggings, mutilations, separations of families, etc.).

Did those who benefited financially from these practices appreciate being told how much harm they inflicted on the victims? One somehow doubts, just as one doubts below.

The protesters’ argument amounts to saying that a campus is a high class psych ward that offers degrees (and the right to sponge off those who earn their skills honestly, learning useful things?).

Look at those cops, too. Get a load of them. They may be a big part of our future.

Along these lines, see also: “Trigger warning” on Immanuel Kant (yes, that Immanuel Kant)

and Massimo Pigliucci gets something right, at least for now.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments
one must be careful with the rights and law here. Does a freedom of speech exist in america or just the official government can't stop speech? Its poorly worded as usual. We don't have freedom of speech in our fathers home.! NO the gov can't rule the people but can everyone rule everyone? The spirit of the freedom of speech clearly is a free people are and mist be free in speech. the gov just is the biggest power but every power is to allow this freedom. the freedom exists not for talking but for ideas that matter. The people are today oppressed by the attack on our ideas/speech etc. We must fight again for the truth and the freedom to speak the truth in our homa and native land. porn can be censored but not speech of important ideas. The old ones never anticipated such problems for such a needed and good concept .Robert Byers
March 14, 2015
March
03
Mar
14
14
2015
05:46 PM
5
05
46
PM
PDT
The right to free speech is no more an untrammeled right than any other. Inciting others to commit murder, for example, is not protected speech. That said, there was no reason to prevent that man from expressing his views unless there was reason to think it was liable to occasion public disorder which could cause injury or worse. Or unless the university grounds are private property or government property.Seversky
March 14, 2015
March
03
Mar
14
14
2015
11:26 AM
11
11
26
AM
PDT
The more I think about it the more I conclude that abortion is the single greatest atrocity of our time. We're killing babies! We're killing our own babies! And we claim this as a "right"? Abortion is pure evil.bFast
March 14, 2015
March
03
Mar
14
14
2015
10:23 AM
10
10
23
AM
PDT
Students attack someone trying to defend against the slaughter of defenceless unborn babies? Wow. The anti human propaganda must already have taken hold, at such a young age as well, disgraceful.humbled
March 14, 2015
March
03
Mar
14
14
2015
05:30 AM
5
05
30
AM
PDT
Is the University of Oregon an arm of the US government?Bob O'H
March 14, 2015
March
03
Mar
14
14
2015
05:30 AM
5
05
30
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply