Is it okay to shout down speakers on campus?

Wondering how many people like the following are on this forum:

According to a 45,000-participant College Plus survey on respect, tolerance and open-mindedness on American campuses – the largest ever conducted – an appalling 62 per cent of students said it’s “at least sometimes acceptable” to shout down a speaker, and one in five students said that using violence to stop a campus speech is “sometimes acceptable.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/28/frank-luntz-american-democracy-is-in-peril/

20% believe violence to stop a campus speech is “sometimes acceptable"? I knew it was bad out there, but I didn't think it was THAT bad.

Doesn't it make you want to go back to college?

 

They have the right to speak.

You have the right to speak louder.

Freedom of speech runs both ways.

 

wrong, you do not have the right to disrupt a speech or meeting and students who do so should be expelled-like those silly ******bags at Stanford Law who prevented a well respected federal judge from speaking. I find it hilarious that the left hates free speech

 

This in the only interesting fact I will take away from this story. It is just another example that the heart of America's "violent" issues are not because of things like guns or video games or movies or mental illness, etc... It is because in our culture, there is a significant percentage of the population that believe violence is an acceptable option of response against something that they fear or dislike.

 

Furthermore, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from criticism or consequences.

 

Also, if the speaker in question is being openly racist or trying to incite violence, then I’m not faulting the students if they shout them down.

 

Damn right.

 

Re: racist,

See, if someone says "Islam is a dangerous religion" or even "most acts of terrorism are committed by muslims," Ben Affleck and people like him will say that that's racist, and the speaker accordingly deserves to be shouted down.

Or how about "most young black men in Chicago who are murdered are being murdered by other young black men."?
Even that is statistically inaccurate, it isn't racist, but someone could think that it is and therefore feel entitled to shout down the speaker.

There are people who believe that it's racist to say, "We shouldn't shout down this speaker." Should we shout them down too?

 

Depends on the crowd you’re talking to, but for the “Islam is a dangerous religion” example, I see it as a perfectly acceptable reason for why someone would and frankly should shout them down

 

The survey was actually by College Pulse (an error which doesn't lend much confidence to that writer and also made it a nightmare to track down the actual survey - can't help wondering if that kind of thing is intentional).

The question they apparently asked was if those actions are never acceptable, and it seems like certain "news" sources extrapolated the reverse (or just blindly copied other "news" sources which had, which I expect was the case for this article). There doesn't appear to have been any follow-up in the initial survey in to which circumstances those who replied "no" felt the relevant action could be justified. Now I can't personally think of many scenarios where such actions could be justified (especially the violence) but I'd also resist answering any open question like that as never, so I think there is a limit to how much you can actually read in to it.

I think this is still reflective of wider issues around free speech (after all, why else would they feel the need to ask in the first place) but it is important to be aware of the actual data and facts, without it passing through multiple levels of filters and biases before being used as a basis to support a pre-determined opinion.

https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2022-college-free-speech-rankings (This question is covered on page 25 in the document there)

 

If you don’t like what they are saying, you have a perfect right to ignore them. That is my attitude toward CNN, CNBC, Steven Colbert and most of the rest of the main stream media. I don’t have a right to shut them down unless they are calling for violence.

 

It is rude. We don't need to be promoting bad manners.

 

No, you don’t have the right to should them down. It’s only a small step from that to violence.

 

Thank you, I didn't catch that. "Speaking louder" while someone else is speaking is just uncivilized.

What if everyone felt that way? A big pro life guy shouting down a 90 pound pro choice woman? Nobody wants that who values civilization.

 

Come on guy, you've seen the videos of college and now even Stanford Law School mobs shouting down and cursing conservatives who appear as guest speakers. The poll seems in line with the videos. It maybe even understates the problem.

(BTW, Do you ever see conservative students in Oklahoma, Utah, or the Deep South behaving like this towards speakers they don't agree with?)

Anyway this is genetic fallacy:

"College Pulse said it, so it's of dubious reliability."

 

Shouting should be legal in public spaces, unless people need to sleep nearby (residential night time noise ordinances are reasonable to keep the peace). Whether that shouting is to drown out someones speech or not is immaterial. Most rights are only legitimately enforcible in public spaces.

Universities are businesses, and businesses are not public spaces. If businesses want to silence (or allow to be silenced) certain forms of speech on their property, that should be their right. However it would be beneficial in a free society to mandate that such rules be made public in an obvious manner, both so that people know how they are expected to behave on the property, and so that the market has ample opportunity to know whether to support such rules or to boycott them as unacceptable.

If a university posted at its entrances and on its website 'conservative speech not allowed', they would lose so much business that they would quickly stop doing that. Instead they get away with it by claiming to be inclusive and open and welcoming of all opinions, then sensor (or allow to be censored) anything they don't like after the fact, usually by claiming 'incitement' when no one is being 'incited'. That's just a loophole for false advertising. Some might call it fraud.

 

I don't know about that. They might actually get an increase in business from other sources sufficient to offset the loss.

Presumably, though, college boards might be savvy enough to recognize that liberal Democrats won't always be in power.

 

I explicitly said it is a real problem, I was just pointing out the facts of the actual survey. I'm not sure that individual incidents can tell us anything about the overall trend across hundreds of thousands of students, the vast majority of whom won't be involved in these kind of events on any side..

I don't know, but other questions in the survey suggested the attitudes in that direction were less common but do exist.

You misunderstand. I was supporting College Pulse as a source (if nothing else because they're the primary source). My issue was the writer of the Telegraph opinion piece, who wrongly reported that the data came from College Plus and didn't make any effort to reference his own source, making it very difficult to confirm and investigate further.

 

So?

 

"So" bad manners aren't bad? They're called bad manners because they're bad.

 

Okay sport.

Still agreeing with the other poster though: freedom of speech goes both ways.

 

No civilized person disputes that.

But can I at least finish my speech and then let you give yours? Or do you have to give yours at the same time as I give mine so that neither of us, or only the louder of us, is heard?

 

Depends on the speech. I alluded to this earlier in the thread but if your speech is racist or inciting violence then I don’t particularly care how or if you finish it.

 

Do you trust yourself to always and inerrantly determine when speech is "racist"? And with such confidence that you would, without hesitation, pick up a bullhorn, start screaming, and deprive others, who may in good faith disagree with you, or perhaps be not quite convinced, from hearing my opinion? That's what's happening.

Or what if a speaker is known to have said something racially insensitive in the distant past? Does he forfeit his right to ever be heard from again? Can J.K. Rowling give a master class in storytelling? Ever? Many would disrupt that class.

 

Absolutely. And I’m not talking about just a simple disagreement, I’m talking about actual racist, bigoted stuff, to which I have no issue with anyone interrupting or otherwise being rude or disrespectful to them.