NY Times: What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right About Free Speech

In The New York Times, Ulrich Baer, the Vice Provost of Diversity at New York University, advocates restricting our free speech in order to protect the feelings of snowflakes:

“This exchange, conveyed to me by the Russian literature scholar Victor Erlich some years ago, has stayed with me, and it has taken on renewed significance as the struggles on American campuses to negotiate issues of free speech have intensified — most recently in protests at Auburn University against a visit by the white nationalist Richard Spencer. …

The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community. Free-speech protections — not only but especially in universities, which aim to educate students in how to belong to various communities — should not mean that someone’s humanity, or their right to participate in political speech as political agents, can be freely attacked, demeaned or questioned. …

We should recognize that the current generation of students, roundly ridiculed by an unholy alliance of so-called alt-right demagogues and campus liberals as coddled snowflakes, realized something important about this country before the pundits and professors figured it out. …

Freedom of expression is not an unchanging absolute. When its proponents forget that it requires the vigilant and continuing examination of its parameters, and instead invoke a pure model of free speech that has never existed, the dangers to our democracy are clear and present. …”

WATCH HERE.

The exchange captured in the media and alluded to in The New York Times was about sexual assault on college campuses. The topic was raised by several of the female student protesters.

Naturally, I brought up the case of Lauren Burk who was abducted on the Auburn University campus and who was brutally murdered by Courtney Lockhart in 2008. I repeatedly asked the crowd of snowflakes if they were familiar with that story. None of them had ever heard of Lauren Burk.

The snowflakes wanted to scream at us about “racism” and “sexual assault,” but none of them showed any interest in debating specific incidents of sexual assault on Auburn’s campus. They weren’t familiar with ACJIC statistics on interracial rape in Alabama either. Later in the evening, I brought up the fact that several Auburn University football players had been murdered in recent years and that many others had been suspended from the team for criminal behavior. That was a sore subject too.

Instead of challenging students with uncomfortable facts, some in the media and academica would prefer to strip us of our constitutional rights and banish our voices from public spaces. The ignorance and sensitivity that we saw in Auburn as well as the questions which were raised in the Q&A session was a reminder of just how long a single point of view has prevailed there.

About Hunter Wallace 12378 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

9 Comments

  1. “Naturally, I brought up the case of Lauren Burk who was abducted on the Auburn University campus and who was brutally murdered by Courtney Lockhart in 2008.”

    It doesn’t matter because she was White, it’s Alabama, and White people can’t be blamed for it. Therefore, it’s of no political value to the Judeo-Yankee establishment.

    “The snowflakes wanted to scream at us about “racism” and “sexual assault,” but none of them showed any interest in debating specific incidents of sexual assault on Auburn’s campus”

    That’s because they’re tools. Their function is to expand the power of the Judeo-Yankee establishment and to destroy it’s political enemies. Not to advance the social justice causes they espouse. Which are nothing more than cardboard, paper and hot air.

    How many “anti-Racists” perform voluntary community service in Black neighbourhoods?
    I bet they contribute to help starving Jews in Russia, or else.But not for niggers or their “Fellow Americans®.”

  2. “[Freedom of speech] means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.”

    Read that slowly, and then ask yourself if it even makes sense? On one hand, the “value” of a “view” (notice the perspectivalist contextual frame) is held to be contingent or arbitrary, in spite of the use of the word “inherent” modifying the word “value.” That is because the word “view” implies no fixed reference. If something has an inherent, intrinsic, or essential value, it is not held valuable simply as one’s “view,” but is known as truth.

    In place of this mumbo-jumbo, it would be better to substitute “truth” as the arbiter of value, but even that wouldn’t work, because in these folks’ view truth is relative, socially constructed, and hence fails as a standard.

    Next, what “other members of a given community” are denied participation in order to respond to whatever [implied minority] community is being criticized by the Right? In fact, on a college campus no leftists are ever denied a chance to participate in speaking against the Right. It is really the other way around.

    Diversity Czar is simply using big words and convoluted incoherent phrases as a lame justification to suppress criticism of his ideology. At first I supposed he was a minority, and didn’t know how to use words. But evidently he’s a majority member. Pathetic.

  3. Ordered Liberty vs Political Correctness; we’ll win this battle handily as long as we don’t (intentionally?) foul things up with childish fascist rhetoric.

    We are yeomen, liberty is how we defend ourselves against the elite.

  4. “The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.”

    In other words, there is no right to free speech.

    “Inherent value”… “obligation to ensure”…fully recognized.” All of these Progressive buzz words are highly subjective. They mean whatever the Diversity Czar says they mean.

  5. Selective free speech is what they support, meaning free speech only for their side.
    Also, ignoring white victim’s of crime is racist. Failure to talk about it is racist. Their ignorant, anti – white racism is obscene, and worse than any I’ve ever witnessed.

  6. There is no separate right to free speech. Free speech is built into property rights. The owner of a university determines what goes on. The students and faculty can do what is IN THE CONTRACT THEY SIGN WITH THE OWNER OF THE UNIVERSITY. [Of course, all schools should be private. Who is the “owner” of the government universities? Everyone and no one].

    A private school can limit free speech all over the place- this has nothing to do with “violating the first amendment” as the first amendment can be violated only with government coercion, which would not pertain to private control of behavior, including speech unauthorized the the school’s PRIVATE owners.

  7. @ Joseph: The owner of a university determines what goes on.

    Your legalizing misses the point. First, it is helpful to ask yourself about the purpose of a university. It should be, primarily, the pursuit of truth. In order to attain truth, open and informed discussion is necessary. Now, if you read their arguments, these folks are ostensibly arguing for “free” speech. But then they turn their argument over in order to deny it. They know exactly what they are doing, but are attempting to move the envelope in order to criminalize open debate. It is a tactic, and not merely some ancillary point of constitutional law, as you argue. Word of advice: you really need to get away from the whole idea of “rights,” and start working from the premise of what is beneficial for you and your kind–like every other group does.

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