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Comment by dpkonofa | Hacker News Reader

It is a hard question to answer because the school has a policy of allowing and supporting free speech. The question isn’t black and white. If you support free speech, you have to support objectionable speech that you disagree with, unless it moves from being speech to being targeted or actionable. That was the whole crux of her answer and why it was a completely dishonest question. Harvard allows the Westboro Church to say “God hates f*s” and “death to queers” despite many not liking it because it’s free speech until someone takes action on that.

It’s even more ludicrous considering that the people attempting to push the question dishonestly are the same ones who like to cry about free speech on Twitter, a private platform, while saying free speech should be curbed if it’s objectionable in this case at a university that takes public funding.

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> It is a hard question to answer because the school has a policy of allowing and supporting free speech. The question isn’t black and white. If you support free speech, you have to support objectionable speech that you disagree with, unless it moves from being speech to being targeted or actionable.

This is a great philosophy. I only wish Harvard had thought to embrace it prior to last October, instead of coming in dead last on FIRE's free speech index: https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...

I hope that this experience will lead Harvard to actually commit to a free speech culture across the board. But I am admittedly pessimistic that any kind of consistent application of these principles will result.

FIRE's free speech index is hardly definitive. It asks students about how they feel, not about actual, verifiable support from the school. The survey uses questions like "Would you be opposed to a speaker with x view coming to campus to speak" and then base the results on how the students responded, not based on whether or not the school actually restricted students' speech. Additionally, disinvitations are measured as well despite not being examples of student speech being censored.

Harvard clearly scored poorly but it seems like they only scored poorly because the students aren't ok with viewpoints that are non-inclusive or borderline hate speech. It has nothing to do with the school's policies or positions on free speech and what is or isn't allowed.

The survey does not ask "Would you be opposed...?" It asks:

> Student groups often invite speakers to campus to express their views on a range of topics. Regardless of your own views on the topic, should your school ALLOW or NOT ALLOW a speaker on campus who promotes the following idea?

Someone who truly supports free speech would say "ALLOW" even if they themselves personally disagree with the speech. Students at Harvard apparently do not.

Additionally, the survey asks students whether they support suppressing speech via deplatforming or violence, and whether they believe that the administration would defend the rights of speakers when controversy arises.

The questions can be found on page 76 of this PDF: https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/2023/09/CFSR%202...

> Additionally, disinvitations are measured as well despite not being examples of student speech being censored.

A second ago you said that free speech covers the Westboro Baptist Church coming on campus. Now it only applies to students? If someone is being disinvited, presumably someone invited them to begin with, whether students or faculty.

How is that in any way materially different from my point? The survey still isn't about what actions any of the schools have taken or whether the schools' policies allow for free speech. That makes it completely irrelevant in a discussion about whether the President of the school was committed to free speech. The survey asks students their opinions. FIRE actually has a separate tracker for disinvitations and, based on population sizes and breakdowns by political lean, conservatives request more disinvitations than should be expected for the population of students that consider themselves conservatives.

>A second ago you said that

Yes... and I also said that, as someone else pointed out also, it was irrelevant to a private university that is allowed to remove anyone from campus that it wants. Allowing Westboro to stay on campus shows that their policies on free speech extend to objectionable speech regardless of what ideology is stating it. That's not the same thing as students choosing not to invite or hear views from people whose views are readily available on the internet nor is it the same thing as student opinions overriding the actual actions of schools.

>The survey still isn't about what actions any of the schools have taken or whether the schools' policies allow for free speech. That makes it completely irrelevant in a discussion about whether the President of the school was committed to free speech. The survey asks students their opinions.

In cases like this though, perception is probably closer to reality than actual activity. For instance, I think it's pretty fair to say that society is pretty against robberies. If you did a survey asking how comfortable people are with robbing people[1], I think most people would answer "Very uncomfortable". However, if you look at FBI crime statistics[2], you see that majority of robberies don't result in arrests. If we were applying your logic, we'd conclude that clearly society/the police don't have a policy of catching robbers.

[1] For the purposes of this argument, we can further presume we're robbing a Bad Person (eg. anti-abortion protesters if you're a liberal) to get past any ethical considerations

[2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

>If we were applying your logic, we'd conclude that clearly society/the police don't have a policy of catching robbers.

No we wouldn't. My logic is that we'd have stats regarding how many crimes were documented, whether they were solved or not. And, as you've shown, we do.

No police department will have a 100% closure rate but that doesn't mean at all what you're claiming should be the conclusion based on that fact. The conclusion would be to look at how many cases of free speech issues were reported and what was done as a result. Transparency is what's needed, not misleading and inappropriately applied surveys.

If there is a climate where people expect that exercise of free speech will result in retaliation, then people will self-censor before there can even be an incident to report. This phenomenon is known as a Chilling Effect.

This is why people's beliefs about whether speech is properly protected or not are relevant. If people don't believe that free speech is protected, speech can effectively be curtailed even with few actual incidents.

The complaint is that liberals are reporting conservative viewpoints they disagree with. If the school was doing that, why would the liberals be self-censoring? You’re not making any sense.

I think "death to queers" doesn't fall under freedom of speech because it seems to directly call for violence- speech doesn't need to lead to actions to be considered uncovered by free speech rules.

The other example you gave is free speech, because it's not a call to violence.

(I am applying my own interpretation of free speech laws, as well as the general understanding of legitimate free speech in the US; please assume I have a reasonable level of education on this).

It’s already been ruled that “death to queers” is allowed as long as it doesn’t target individuals or amount to a “true threat” which exactly what Gay’s point was during the hearing. The speech itself is protected unless it’s targeted (which “from the river to the sea” or whatever it is and the word “intifada” likely wouldn’t be) and actionable which it definitely isn’t. It would need to be proven that the people making the speech had the intent of directly or indirectly harming the people they had targeted.

All this discussion does is prove that there’s nuance to the question and that it’s not black and white which is exactly why I believe it was a dishonest question to begin with.

Can you point to the ruling? It looks like Google searches don't uncover any useful writing about a specific legal ruling allowing direct calls to violence against a group, but as usual, I am always best convinced by specific links to articles referencing case decisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_the_president_of_t...

It needs to something that a reasonable person who directly heard the speech would interpret as a “true threat” to a person or group. In the case above, the defendant made a claim that he was going to “set his sights on LBJ” if he was drafted and they “ever gave [him] a rifle”. He threatened to shoot a President of the US and his speech was found to be protected because of the qualification mentioned above. Two prior courts found him guilty and the Supreme Court reversed the decisions.

Look up the true threats doctrine. There won't be any specific case law on the phrase you mentioned. Here's one summary of the doctrine:

> The U.S. Supreme Court defined true threats in Virginia v. Black (2003) as “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” According to the Supreme Court, true threats include when a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death. [1]

https://uwm.edu/free-speech-rights-responsibilities/faqs/wha...

I don't agree that applies in this case- in terms of Westboro, they very clearly advocate actual direct violence. In the case of the protesters at Harvard their intent is much less clear - I suspect even the people calling for intifada aren't attempts to elicit immediate violence.

I broke my cardinal rule- never get involved in an internet discussion of free speech. Also, and this is purely opinion- I think the Supreme Court made an error in their ruling.

It does apply. Westboro has already argued the “true threat” position and won.

https://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-hurtful-speech-westboro...

Clearly, the justices and I have a difference of opinion about what a direct threat looks like (in the case of Westboro).

Yes but, as someone else pointed out, Harvard is a private school that takes federal funding. The Supreme Court’s decision wouldn’t affect them either way.

> I don't agree that applies in this case

You don't think the doctrine applies, or you don't think it is satisfied?

I think the bigger issue here is that Harvard does not guarantee First Amendment levels of free speech protection. They caution students about all sorts of protected speech, so what the First Amendment does or doesn't protect isn't really relevant.

> in terms of Westboro, they very clearly advocate actual direct violence.

They did? When I learned about them in law school, we only covered their unsavory protesting at military funerals, which did not involve advocating violence. What did they do that advocated direct violence?

Sorry, I was working on the assumption that "Death to gays" was considered a direct call to violence, but it does not seem to be.

(All of this was a misunderstanding caused by me misparsing a statement above suggesting Westboro was protesting at Harvard)

> speech itself is protected unless it’s targeted

It's First Amendment protected. Universities have a long track record of having policies more restrictive than that.

Yes and that’s a direct quote from Gay during the hearing - “Gay, in her testimony, said such speech can be a violation of the school’s policies “depending on the context” if it is “targeted at an individual.””

Which is mincemeat of an answer. Plenty of hate speech is banned on university campuses even when not targeted at an indi vidual.

That’s irrelevant unless you have examples of this being the case at Harvard.

Harvard is notorious in its modern history of censorship [1].

[1] https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...

None of those things are examples of students being censored. Disinvitation and protesting are themselves protected activities. This doesn’t say what you’re claiming it says.

It doesn't have such policy. It's the lowest ranking university with a free speech score of 0. ZERO.

It does. FIRE asks students how they feel about free speech. It has nothing to do with what actions schools have actually taken and what their policies are.

> the school has a policy of allowing and supporting free speech.

No they don't!

They literally have a policy that allows students to say things that are considered objectionable and, unless you have examples where they've violated that (disinvitations are not censorship of student speech as the invites are external), you'll need to do better than just "No they don't!".

> It’s even more ludicrous considering that the people attempting to push the question dishonestly are the same ones who like to cry about free speech on Twitter

How do you know they are the same people?

Because Elise Stefanik, the Congresswoman in question, cosponsored the “Protecting Free Speech” Act and the “Restoring Academic Freedom on Campus” Act which are supposedly meant to “prevent colleges and universities from stifling the free expression of diverse viewpoints”. As usual, it’s only to prevent stifling the viewpoints they agree with.

What do you mean "Harvard allows the Westboro Church"? Harvard has no power over the church.

Westboro Baptist is allowed to protest at Harvard graduations based on the university’s policies. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/12/2/harvard-protest...

Based on that article, it doesn't sound like Harvard is allowing them, it sounds like they have no power to stop them, since they're protesting near Harvard.

They are allowed on campus. Harvard is a private school and can ask anyone to leave the campus for any reason.

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