MIT President Endorses Faculty's Statement on Freedom of Expression

Besides the linked article, this was also emailed out to the entire MIT community. And here's the prior discussion on HN when the faculty first endorsed this statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34132152

The actual statement: https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/default/files/report...

> We cannot have a truly free community of expression if some perspectives can be heard and others cannot... MIT does not protect direct threats, harassment, plagiarism, or other speech that falls outside the boundaries of the First Amendment

They're trying to have it both ways. "You can say absolutely, positively anything you want because that's the only way... except for these obvious exceptions that we're not going to define rigorously." It reads like that XKCD about physicists encountering other fields: https://xkcd.com/793/

Free-speech absolutism has a nice, simple, declarative ring to it. But it's not practical, anybody who tries to discuss the exceptions gets shouted down: perspectives that can't be heard.

It's disappointing to see MIT present a wishy-washy, vacuous stand as if they were actually saying something. If you want a free-speech absolutist stance, then take it, and deal with the consequences (which will include threats, harassment, and many other problems). Or take a stance that actually tries to boost voices that don't get heard because louder voices make it impossible to hear them -- and suffer the consequences of that, too.

Instead, they're trying to say both things at the same time, which doesn't actually say anything at all.