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Free Speech Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 19, 2017 5 Comments
A series of high profile attacks on conservative speakers on campus has created great controversy, even among many academics on the left. The scenes of physical assaults, incendiary projectiles fired at the student center, and bonfires lit at UC-Berkeley to stop an appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos’ gained media attention and raised questions about free speech on campuses. When a mob shouted down Charles Murray at Middlebury, physically assaulted his faculty host, and then jumped on and blockaded their getaway car, there was a howl of condemnation. The Middlebury incident in particular sparked much soul-searching in academia. The scenes at UC-Berkeley and Middlebury may have been shocking to many people, but not to those of us who support Israel. We have seen this movie many times before.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 09, 2017 8 Comments
A conservative student group at the University of Lincoln in the UK criticized their students' union over a lack of free speech over criticism of an online magazine. In response, the students' union shut down the group's social media accounts, thus proving their point. A student paper called The Linc reported:
Conservative Society suspended from Twitter by SU after criticising their record on freedom of speech The University of Lincoln Conservative Society has been forced to hand over control of their twitter account to the Students’ Union. It follows a tweet sharing a report which said the University of Lincoln had a bad record on freedom of speech.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 07, 2017 4 Comments
Two violent attacks campus speakers have gained widespread media attention in recent months -- the attack on Milo Yiannopoulos' appearance at UC-Berkeley, and Charles Murray at Middlebury. Less violent, but still disruptive, attempts were made to shut down Rick Santorum and Michael Johns at Cornell, Christina Hoff Sommers at Oberlin, Georgetown and elsewhere. and other conservative speakers. Finally, there is widespread condemnation even from the left, particularly after Middlebury.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 04, 2017 4 Comments
This is the direction things are headed in, folks. The left thinks it's OK to punch a Nazi but they also think anyone they disagree with is a Nazi. It's inevitable that someone's going to get hurt. At Middlebury College this week no one got punched, but a mob of left wing protesters got so out of control that a professor ended up in the hospital. Harry Zieve Cohen reports at The American Interest:
College Protestors Send Professor to the ER On Thursday, hundreds of students at Middlebury College shouted down political scientist Charles Murray, forcing him to deliver his remarks in a private room via a live web stream.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 23, 2017 13 Comments
Of all the free speech problems we have on college campuses, one of the most chilling ones comes in the form of "Bias Response Teams." Under such a policy, a student can be anonymously reported for saying or doing something deemed offensive, and then get visited by the bias response team. Adam Steinbaugh of the Washington Examiner wrote about this recently:
Hundreds of campuses encourage students to turn in fellow students for offensive speech Universities are the cradle of free speech, where ideologies and ideas clash, where academics and activists can agree, disagree, or be disagreeable. This is particularly true in the United States, where the First Amendment zealously guards against government surveillance and intrusion into free speech.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 19, 2017 25 Comments
It's not popular to be politically conservative at Cornell University, where I teach at the law school. A recent study by The Cornell Sun student newspaper documented that 97% of faculty donations at Cornell Univ. went to Democrats, while an analysis by The College Fix showed that eleven departments at Cornell have ZERO Republican professors. While Cornell is nowhere near as political or radical as many other Ivy League schools, such as Columbia, at the student level there is an overwhelmingly liberal and far-left bent among those students who are politically active.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 14, 2017 57 Comments
Tucker Carlson had on a guest last night who proudly took credit for helping to organize the mob that shut down Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley. Yvette Felarca is part of a left wing group called By Any Means Necessary, and she advocates the use of violence to stop fascism. Oh and by the way, she's a middle school teacher. Isn't that great? Here's some background on the segment from the FOX News Insider:
Berkeley Protest Organizer Proud of Shutting Down 'Fascist' Milo Felarca, who helped organize the protests at UC-Berkeley two weeks ago, is calling for similar protests at universities across the country when there are guest speakers she believes are "fascists."
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