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Comment by Latty | Hacker News Reader

Someone having a right to say something doesn't mean they are entitled to every platform to broadcast it.

Not everyone can go and speak at a University, there is not enough time and space for that to be viable, just as not everyone can demand to be broadcast on TV.

If you can't get enough support at a University to speak, the public square and the soapbox are always at your disposal. The government can't arrest you. That is the freedom of expression that is protected.

You are talking about enforced speech, where private individuals must listen to a speaker, and/or use their platform to amplify the speaker's words. It is a violation of their freedom of expression to tell them they cannot refuse or protest against what someone else wishes to say.

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The person in the article was invited by the university. This isn't a random person demanding to be heard. This is the university succumbing to pressure from a small group to ban a guest from sharing their ideas with the student body that choose to attend.

The students have a right to freedom of expression in protest.

The University should absolutely be providing speakers that challenge the student's views and offer ideas they may not agree with, but that's an educational decision, not a free speech one.

If the student body wants to lobby the University not to accept you as a speaker, that's their freedom of the speech, and it is up to the University to weigh that against the potential educational value.

For example, to start somewhere obvious, someone coming in to talk about how your friends are subhuman doesn't provide a lot of educational value, and students rightly don't want their tuition spent enabling it.

Don't like it, use your freedom of speech to demonstrate enough value to your ideas the University and student body are willing to listen. Students are at University for an education, and they have a right to say what they find valuable and demand value from the University. Denying them that is limiting their freedom of expression.

I think another point of the article is the masses of silent people are starting become less silent. Their politeness has been mistaken for agreement.

The university should only allow speakers that the students agree with? That’s sort of ridiculous and an abdication of the university’s responsibility to expose their students to challenging and possibly hurtful intellectual thought. I listened to no shortage of intellectuals that criticized white men in western society in many ways for example. And that’s Ok if it’s thoughtful and with a point, however idiotic I might think it is.

The university has the job of determining what this level is. This speaker wasn’t claiming anyone was subhuman. And you don’t have to attend - it’s simple.

> The university should only allow speakers that the students agree with?

I was very clear that was not what I was saying, I said literally the opposite, so it seems like you didn't even bother reading my post.

> The university has the job of determining what this level is.

Exactly, and they decided that it wasn't valuable enough. I think they were right, you may well disagree. Either way, it isn't "academic freedom" under attack—as this is framed.

There will always be people pissed they don't get that platform for their idea—more people want a platform than there is time and budget to offer. It is a decision about the value of exposing students to the idea weighed against the cost of doing so.

If other students feel they are being denied value, they are free to go to the University and push back. Of course, we all know where this is going, just as with the reactionary response to homosexuality, it will become increasingly unpopular because the cat is out of the bag: people have trans loved ones and don't want them to be discriminated against.

You have cognitive dissonance in your thoughts then. On one hand you claim the students should be able to protest the speakers that the administration invites and on the other hand you suggest the administration should decide which intellectuals are educationally valuable. But yet, after the administration picked a speaker a minority of students protested and that same administration revoked the invitation under pressure. This suggests the minority of students, not the administration, decided what was of value.

This is a problem akin to letting a spoiled child instructing their parent just what’s for dinner. An abdication of duty.

There’s a difference from wanting discrimination against people and having a forum on very real issues regarding an ideology that claims a special access to a certain Knowledge. In a scientific liberal institution, no one is irrefutable and no one has the final say pending new evidence.

Of course the current motif is to dismiss scientific liberalism as racist and suspicious. You only have to read critical theory literature (race, queer, colonial, etc) , which oddly is not receptive to criticism itself.

That was my perception of that person's posts as well.

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