A new survey from FIRE shows one-third of college students are open to the use of violence to stop speech. That’s a crisis for higher ed — and for democracy.
As I said on Twitter, if the first person to hurl an insult instead of a stone birthed civilization, then anyone who resorts to violence instead of using their words is attempting to kill it.
Delighting in someone's death is not just morally repugnant, it's psychologically corrosive. It's a dehumanization of the other and of the self.
I would be cautous about assuming the politics of anyone unbalanced enough to do such a thing. They are as likely to be someone twisted up about Epstein Files as they are a devoted leftists. The most likely situation is that their politics makes no sense and Kirk was simply unlucky enough to be famous and nearby.
I'm surprised at the fact that this has been on the increase since 2022. I had thought (and hoped) that the retreat from the high point in 2019-2020 was continuing. I would be interested to know if there are particular types of speech the students were most interested in stopping (I could imagine many different sides of the Gaza protests having wanted to shut each other down).
I'm a bit disappointed in this bit of writing though:
> Our colleges and universities have clearly failed, and the results are all around us.
>The good news is that in this case, the problem points directly to the solution: We need to rekindle truth-seeking and independent thought and remind both our students and our society that without free speech, neither of those things is possible.
I don't know what you mean by colleges and universities having failed! And I don't understand the claimed solution. What institution do you propose to replace colleges and universities with if you think we have failed? And what methods do you think would be able to "rekindle truth-seeking and independent thought" if you don't think colleges and universities can do that? And how does reminding society that free speech is necessary for those things generate any interest in truth-seeking and independent thought, or for free speech?
If these universities improve their speech codes; emphasize the importance of free inquiry, open debate, and free expression on their campuses; stop punishing students for voicing their opinions; adopt institutional neutrality; and take a hard line against violence, we will see a lot change.
They have failed at promoting truth seeking and protecting free expression on their campuses, but they can change.
Yeah, it is weird that it has gotten higher than the peak "Speech is violence!" days. I'm curious if the pro-violence students share an ideological bent or issue focus? There are some issues today that feel more life-and-death - trans issues or Gaza, for example, where I could see supporters feeling like allowing the opposition to speak is directly contributing to real-world harm. Or maybe it is right-wing reactionaries?
The shooting of Charlie Kirk will lead to nothing good. This administration is just looking for examples of left-wing violence to justify martial law. Here comes the hammer.
I would be more interested in seeing this put in context with the rest of society. I’ve seen other surveys suggesting that about a third of all Americans support political violence under certain conditions. Unfortunately, those surveys ask their questions differently from FIRE so it’s hard to compare.
Putting all of this on students and campuses as a unique hotbed of violence wouldn’t make sense if it turns out that political violence is gaining traction in America at large.
Anecdotally you can even see this in events of campus violence where often it’s not even students engaging in it.
Unfortunately, we don't have survey data in this post from before 2021, so we can't actually be sure that current numbers are higher than they were in 2020, or the late 2010s!
This is a difficult day to have this discussion given the shooting of Charlie Kirk and the rest of my comment should not be taken as an endorsement of it. Condemn the shooting in the strongest possible terms.
Surely violent reactions to speech is sometimes (if very rarely) totally justified. In 1993 would it not be totally justified to use violent methods to shut down RTLM Radio in Rwanda. Given what would follow it does not seem that using force to stop it would be unjustified.
The next question is how should groups react to people hold and promote ideologies that are intrinsically harmful to that group. Should a black person hold no issues about taking a class (including a mandatory class) by a professor that holds Charles Murray's views on race. Should women (and men) not engage in cancellation or the heclers veto over a speaker that advocates sexual violence. Are we all meant to have polite debates with people who do not recognise us as full humans with equal dignity? For minority groups what do you do when such debates result in more people thinking you are in fact less then rather then equals.
To the question of cancellation and the hecklers veto. Does the fact that essentially every civil rights campaign has used such tactics to some degree give you pause to their denouncements? Was Anita Byrant the victim of gay rights campaigners? Were politician's targeted (sometimes violently) by suffragettes the victim of women fight for the right to vote.
Also, is there simply no role in social shame as a mechanism of signalling displeasure at a person ideas. How does freedom of speech and freedom of association interact?
No, violent reaction to speech is not justifiable. That's why we have speech. It's the antidote to violence. And retroactively saying "Well, if we had just shut down RTLM Radio with violence it would have been justified" is nonsensical. People don't have crystal balls, and you have no idea whether that would have had the desired effect or not. It may indeed have made things even worse. Look up the Weimar Fallacy for a potent example of this:
Groups of people should react to people who hold ugly, hateful, and harmful ideologies by countering their speech, criticizing their points, and providing alternatives to that speech. They can protest, they can complain, they can ignore, they can mock and ridicule. Violence is not an acceptable response to speech. The heckler's veto is not free speech. You are not required to speak or listen to anyone you don't want to, but you do not have the right to stop others from doing so if that's what they want. If you object to a professor who is imposing their views in a mandatory class, you can complain to the school, drop out of the class, etc. You don't get to decide for everyone else what is and is not appropriate for them to hear.
Cancellation and the heckler's veto are antithetical to civil discourse and free expression. Use your words. Destroy the ideas you oppose through argument, not censorial actions. You may protest, you may criticize and ridicule, you may ignore, but to silence is counterproductive and wrong.
And you don't have to associate with anybody you don't want to associate with. That's your right. The problem comes when you try to make it so nobody else can associate with them because you've decided that's what's right.
Just how well has the fight free speech with more speech work out for us? How about the sunlight of the truth being the best tool to fight the disease of misinformation and bad ideas. !/4 of the country want a dictator, and have been demonizing not just democratic politicians, but also voters, as degenerate undesirables. These are the people who have been clambering for a civil war my entire life.
As a trans person I'm suppose do debate my existence with people who want me dead, and constantly worry about being a good advocate so the crazies online don't define us as a group. Yet the public is more skeptical of trans people, partly from bad advocates on our side, but the GOP are the ones who made it their mission to legislate us out of existence with their hate filled rhetoric.
Political violence is 100% on the GOP, they are the ones who started this so until they start calling for calm when democrats get killed I'm not gonna worry about some cringe lefties who don't vote for democrats celebrate this like unhinged maniacs.
Nobody deserves to die for expressing their free speech, but this is the world conservatives led us into. Charlie kirk called for his supporters to bail out the guy who tried to kill Paul Pelosi to interview him and become a midterm hero. Charlie should still be with us today, but he 100% contributed to the climate of encouraging political violence that lead to his death.
Lies and despicable rhetoric are terrible and corrosive; I have said so many times myself, and dedicated my entire life to fighting against it.
You don't have to speak to anyone you don't want to speak to. No one has a right to your attention—and you don't have a right to anyone else's. I appreciate the frustration, difficulty, and pain that comes from seeing people behave hatefully and on bad information. You are only responsible for and in control of your own behavior, and it is best—ethically, psychologically, and practically—for you to live by your principles and remain the exception to whatever shitty and ugly idea people have in their minds about you and people like you.
No, counterspeech doesn't always "work." Misinformation remains prevalent. But the alternative is and has been proven to be worse. You are not better off for knowing less about what people actually think. You do not eliminate ideas by preventing people from voicing them. At best, you exacerbate and strengthen those ideas as forbidden fruit, and martyr those people as brave truth tellers who are being silenced by the powers that be. And any censorial policy or norm you utilize to silence your opposition, you are tacitly giving to them to use against you the moment they have the chance. This gets us nowhere.
There are no short cuts to dealing with the bad ideas people believe. Engagement and persuasion are the only real way we have besides violence, and violence is not something you want to make the norm.
Political violence knows no party affiliation. It is engaged in by everyone. Blinding yourself to that doesn't help your cause, or anyone else's. It needs to be condemned, on principle, emphatically, immediately, every single time.
Yes persuasion is the only answer, killing each other is not what we do in America when we disagree. But this is nowhere near a “both sides issue”. Do both liberals and conservatives engage in political violences; yes. But they’re nowhere in the same league as each other.
When a conservative gets killed, democrats unilaterally denounce it. The only people who cheer the murder of their opponents is weird lefties who don’t even vote for democrats anyway.
But when a democrat is killed, there is no GOP condemnation of violence, they laugh at it, Fox News anchors crack jokes about it live on air, memes flood conservative social media.
The president of the United States, and several congressmen blamed democrats for this when we don’t even have a suspect known publicly or in custody. Democrats are the only party with standards they abide by, they always have to be the adults in the room, while republicans engage in the most extreme rhetoric have an entire media apparatus that has primed their base to hate democrats.
And somehow it’s always on Democrats to change. The public has a lower opinion of us, in effect rewarding the unhinged behavior of republicans. Where is the Donald Trump on the left, or the MTG, the Tucker Carlson? The GOP leadership and the media that prompt them up are legitimately evil forces with values antithetical to those of this Nation.
I’ve been condemning this shooting over and over again, but it’s disgusting that we have Ezra Klein writing op Ed’s about how Charlie did politics the right way. No charlie was a gigantic grifting piece of shit who trafficked in the exact type of misinformation and extremist rhetoric that got us to the climate we are in now. It’s really telling that you chose to ignore how Charlie himself was urging his followers to bail out a guy who tried to kill Nancy Pelosi to be a hero for the mid terms. That doesn’t means he deserved to die but the media environment is for the better without Charlie Kirk to keep spouting his bullshit into.
Right now republicans have no incentive to change their disgusting behavior, so why the hell should the democrats be the ones to hyper-police our own? Where the hell does our country survive when 1/4 of the country lives in an alternative fact reality and support subhuman scumfuck leaders that destroy the economy, wreck our international standing, and make us less safe. They have for years been fanning the flames of this fire it’s not the lefts job to stop the fucking blaze.
One last everybody deserves the right to speak and we should not kill other Americans for disagreeing with us. Political violence is bad, but it’s on Republicans not us.
I mean pretty tough to argue that the Rwandan Genocide could have been worse. Maybe it would have been totally ineffectual but I think shutting down one of the primary communication networks inciting genocide may have helped on the margin. And sure, no one has a crystal ball but people were warning about the potential for devastating violence to erupt but those warnings did not themselves stop either the advocation or eventual eruption of violence. The arguments failed, sometimes correct arguments fail.
Under this framework what value would complaints to the university over the views held by a professor do? The professor is entitled to hold views including discriminatory views of some students. So a black student would simply need to accept that they have a racist professor who may or may not disadvantage them because they are black. And this goes for all groups, if there is a large, pervasive anti-gay campaign at a university - are gay students expected to remain unaffected by it - is there equal access to education not being denied implicitly.
Do you then agree with the statement that the Gay Rights Campaigners treatment of Anita Bryant was incorrect.
For your freedom of association assertion: you say that it's never OK that people feel the need to self-sensor but a big reason why people self-sensor is to maintain associations with other people. It is impossible to have no one self-censoring while not enforcing association on people. I do not willingly associate with people who hold terrible views, if you hold terrible views and wish to continue to associate with me you better make sure to self slcensor enough such that I remain uninformed on them.
No, none of what you're saying is a given. Just because *you* think shutting down someone's communication network would have been worth it doesn't give you the right to. And you're also talking about a completely different circumstance from the one the vast majority of us find ourselves in. Shutting down speech is how we end up with violence, because when people can no longer use their words that's the only option they feel they have. That's not good.
Complaints to the school have whatever the value they have. If a professor is actively discriminating against a student, there should be material proof of that which can be brought up, which will then be used against that professor. If gay students' ability to access their education is being denied or obstructed, they have material proof of that which they can use to bring charges against those people or the school itself. But the mere presence of ideas we find reprehensible does not constitute harassment or a denial of education. There are existing laws and rules in place for things like targeted harassment and obstruction of access, but we are not entitled to live or study in an environment where we agree with all the ideas that are expressed.
People are free to self-censor, but it is worth pointing out the prevalence of such a practice on campus—especially if it is being done out of fear of intolerance for differing opinions—because it speaks to a larger issue of diminishing acceptance of free expression and open debate.
You aren't better off or more informed by knowing less about what the people around you really think.
In some situations I am absolutely better off not knowing what people think. If someone at work believes that gay people are evil and should be killed. As a gay person, I do not want to know that. Unless such views are grounds for dismissal, I do not want to have to work and collaborate with someone who wishes me dead.
There are legal definitions for things like discrimination, and laws against them. That is the system we have in place and the structure we must use to handle situations like the ones you describe. If it meets the standard, the laws apply.
And if you were working with someone who secretly wished you dead, that's actually very useful information to have—at the very least, so you can stay the fuck away from them.
Yes, if someone had active murder plans - that I would want to know. But less immediately life threatening hatred. I really don't want to know. Especially if I can't really 'get away from them'.
Your example of shutting down RTLM Radio to save lives is great point. And just so you know, the authors counterpoint of the “Weimar Fallacy” is not a real term used by historians. It was made up by the founder of FIRE, Greg Lukianoff, and has been almost solely used in the context of free speech.
Just to provide the counterpoint, the “Weimar Fallacy” is a term invented by Greg Lukianoff, the founder of FIRE. It is not a term used in academic circles amongst people that actually study pre-war Germany.
I don’t think using that term as counterpoint to the logical question of “would shutting down RTLM radio during the Rwandan genocide save lives” is a good retort.
While I know Reddit is just another website, the info in this comment is accurate and delves into why the “Weimar Fallacy” is not a term used by Historians: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/QB20bisbdg
Congrats FIRE for sticking to the same byline that “college kids these days are awful and they’re getting worse.”
I’m glad you bring up the top-down authoritarian attack on our institutions. But it’s a strange pivot to then immediately say “and that’s why now, more than ever, kids need to respectfully listen to Charles Murray talk about race and IQ.”
I’m glad FIRE is doing laudable legal work, especially nowadays. I’m just skeptical of the research/promotional work. Especially since “The Coddling of the American Mind” which kind of started this whole thing, was mostly just a bunch of anecdotes, some of them misleading.
Sorry Ryan, I actually thought you were a different Ryan that, to put it mildly, tends to be an unproductive interlocutor.
I appreciate your skepticism, but there's way more data backing up the arguments in "Coddling" than you seem to think.
For now, though, I'll just point out that what you say here is a ludicrous straw man:
...it’s a strange pivot to then immediately say “and that’s why now, more than ever, kids need to respectfully listen to Charles Murray talk about race and IQ.”
First of all, kids can ignore Murray, they can criticize him, they can argue against his conclusions and data, they can protest outside his speaking engagements on campus, etc., and I am enthusiastically in favor of them doing so—without resorting to violence, shout downs, or disruptions of planned talks (because people have a right to hear him if that's what they want to do).
Second, it's not a pivot. The two issues are related. The Trump administration is using the chaos on campus of the last 10+ years to justify what it's doing right now, and part of the problem is that it has reams of examples of things happening on campus that would and should concern any reasonable person—and it has reams of examples of people refusing to acknowledge it even though everyone else can see it clear as day.
The more insanely people behave, the more people are going to think, "Man, somebody needs to do something about this," and if no sane, sensible, principled people take on that task, guess who's going to show up to do it?
It doesn’t seem like it was strawman, since you are saying in your response that that is what you believe. Maybe simplified but you are saying that being disrespectful to people like Charles Murray is why there is a government crackdown on speech it doesn’t like.
I don’t think that’s true. As we’ve seen with the poor justification for sending in the national guard to cities, there is no level of crime that would be low enough. Same with your assertion that the “chaos” of school environment invited authoritarianism. (1) Chaos is a wild characterization. (2) It feels very victim blaming. (3) Cracking down on speech they don’t like and forcing universities to accommodate their own has been a conservative goal for decades.
Like I said, I’m fine with FIRE’s legal goals. But your rhetoric seems off.
I think you're having trouble understanding the arguments here, because I did not say what you just interpreted me as saying. It's not simplified. It's wrong. You're completely misunderstanding the points being made.
Where am I misunderstanding? You say the government crackdown on universities is directly related to non-acceptance of contrarian speech on campus, are you not?
I'm curious to know whether this is a distinct/larger American phenomenon or a general trend in the West? A quick ChatGPT search wasn't very enlightening
FIRE is focused on free speech issues in America, but obviously there are many problems around the world—and increasingly in Europe as well. I'd recommend Jacob Mchangama and Sarah McLaughlin on the subject of international free speech.
I wasn't just asking because I'm interested in trends in other countries, but to identify whether this is an American phenomenon that should be solved through targeting uniquely Americans things (culture), or whether it's a worldwide phenomenon (e.g. social media) that requires different solutions
Unfortunately, the impulse and desire to silence speech we don't like is a deeply human one. That's why Greg Lukianoff calls free speech—and his Substack—The Eternally Radical Idea.
Jacob Mchangama's "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" is a great book that illuminates this very well. I highly recommend it.
28% of students say they often self-censor during classroom discussions.
This seems like a good thing no? As it implies a super majority of students feel like they can speak their minds freely in the class room. "Would be at least in rare circumstances be willing to shout someone down" is a hypothetical question, while "do you do this thing" is not. So even if in hypothetical scenarios people might support something bad, functionally in practice at least on a day to day basis they are not doing this (with rare exceptions) in their interactions with other students.
Would getting that number lower be good? Absolutely. We must tread carefully though. If someone is self censoring because they are afraid of confrontation, and they feel someone disagreeing with them is confrontation (which most people don't like!) we must ensure we are not censoring disagreement. For all the excesses of wokeness, it was not mandating state crackdowns on universities on the scale we are currently seeing or arresting students for opinion pieces.
Being screamed at for being "problematic", either in person or online sucks. We should discourage it and foster an environment where disagreement is appropriately expressed.
Being shot for your beliefs, being arrested by the state, having the institution you work for gutted is a utter nightmare. I fear we will soon long for the days where the greatest threat to free speech was college students protesting to loudly or calling people nasty names.
Finding it acceptable, even rarely, to shout down a speaker in order to prevent their speech, is bad. The correct answer is “never.”
Censoring yourself on college campuses because you’re afraid of what might happen to you—by students and administrators, by the way—is bad. College campuses are where ideas are supposed to be heard, where young people learn to engage with dissent, defend their perspectives, and grow into mature human beings who can handle being disagreed with. If they’re self-censoring out of fear, that doesn’t happen. That’s bad.
Yes, there are worse things going on. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. The purpose of this post was to highlight the data we just found. Other posts (and there have been and will be many) will focus on the other issues we’re facing.
I don't think we disagree here. Ideally it should be zero! Looking forward to more articles from yah exploring this.
My primary point in my post was, specifically when it comes to the concept of self censorship, how we accurately measure these things so we don't come away with incorrect conclusions on the best way to handle this problem. I'm old enough to remember how much criticism there was of safe spaces on college campuses, with the logic being that people should be allowed to critique you in the interests of free expression/inquiry.
My second point following from the first is that because its difficult to represent complex social interactions as stats we have to be careful in how we handle this. I'm sincerely interested in how you think we handle those that self-censor because they are afraid of disagreement? The right to dissent is as fundamental to the concept of free speech as the right to assent it.
When I was in college for my engineering undergrad degree most of my fellow students (including professors) were very rightwing when it came to economics. This resulted in me being particularly selective in how I expressed my views on things like socialism, redistribution, etc to avoid drowning in a 100 "But what about Venezuela???"'s. Does this count as self censorship? probably. Does this mean that those students right to say annoying things should be limited or curtailed? no
Also, to your example, if you were 1 out of 10 people in a class and you were the only liberal, the self-censorship rate in that class would be 10%. So paradoxically you would have a lower reported self censorship rate but only because of greater homogeneity of thought in the class.
I just don’t think this “self censorship” idea is that useful of metric to gauge quality/vibrancy of classroom discussion.
How does one have an honest debate or even conversation with a liar?
I'm aware of Lakoff's "truth sandwich" , but I have never seen it used in practice and it is certainly not something that I could ever hope to employ in a spontaneous conversation.
There's only so far you can get with someone who isn't being honest, but you can explicitly point out the dishonesty you're sensing—and there are ways to engage even in that scenario that allow for making progress in the long term.
This is another "limitations of polling" article. Saying yes to something on a poll does not necessarily mean that you actually believe it or would do it. It often just means that you think that the "yes" answer belongs to your tribe rather than the opposing tribe. (And then you have to subtract the Lizardman's constant.)
Yet, with presenters who offer provocation as their trade, it's understandable to expect audiences to become upset whenever they open their mouths — especially while in front of microphones, and standing on stages.
Provocateurs dare their audiences to react — they *goad* their audiences into reacting.
Are audience reactions not also free speech?
Jeering an offensive presenter off their stage is *absolutely* a right, although blocking entrances and using violence are not — these are Sturmabteilung tactics.
They are all disruptions, sure, but one of these actions should not be offered in context with the other two, as though they are all similarly intolerable…
No, violence is not free speech. It is the antithesis of free speech. I don't care how provocative, goading, or horrible someone's speech is, whoever responds to it with violence is absolutely wrong.
The heckler's veto is also not free speech. It is not your right to decide for everyone else what they may hear. If you don't like someone's speech, you're free to leave, to peacefully protest outside, to engage in counterspeech, etc. But you are not allowed to disrupt or prevent an event simply because you don't like its content. When you do so you are violating the rights of the speaker and all of those who came to hear them.
That's crossing the line, and it is on a continuum of severity with blocking entrances and using violence, which is why they are and should be mentioned together.
Did you read the part of my comment where I stated that "…blocking entrances and using violence are not [rights] — these are Sturmabteilung tactics"?
Of course I agree that violence is not free speech. That's what I stated.
I stated separately that audiences are *absolutely* allowed to practice free speech. They are entitled to the same extent of free speech as public speakers — speakers who enjoy the asymmetric benefits of stage visibility and voice amplification.
Why not remind us that public speakers have the freedom "to leave", to "peacefully protest outside", to "engage in counterspeech", etc.? These are their rights, of course, but not their obligations — just as leaving, protesting outside, "counterspeaking", etc. are the rights of an audience, but not their obligations.
Public speakers who want to avoid being jeered off their stages might do well to dial back their rhetoric. Speakers who are less offensive are more likely to be well received. This is as true in public as it is in private.
We need to be more civil with one another first, before demanding each other's attention and respect.
Yes, I saw what you wrote, but as I noted, the heckler's veto is on a continuum with that behavior because its purpose is the same: the stop disfavored speech.
And no, audiences are *absolutely NOT* allowed to heckle and disrupt a scheduled talk. It is not their right to decide for everyone else what they may hear. If they don't like the speaker or the speech, they can leave, they can protest peacefully outside, they can set up their own talk elsewhere, etc. But they are not entitled to take over or shut down a speech others planned and wanted to hear just because they've decided it's bad or offensive.
You are eliding the difference between someone who has been invited to a venue to give a planned speech for people who chose to attend, and people in the audience who decide for themselves that they have a right to take that event over and stop everyone else from hearing what the speaker came to say.
And no, this isn't conditional upon how you or anyone else feels about their rhetoric. They are allowed to be as offensive as they like, and you are allowed to be as offended as you like by it. That doesn't grant you the right to disrupt or stop a planned speaking event.
Just think about the dynamic you are setting up here. You're saying people in an audience have a right to shut a speech down by shouting and disrupting if they decide a speaker is offensive, and if the speaker doesn't like it they can either leave or "tone down their rhetoric" so that it is less offensive to those doing the heckling and shutting down. Is that the kind of power you want to give people who are offended by *your* preferred speakers at events *you* want to go to and hear what speakers came to say? You're advocating for a constantly escalating censorial tit-for-tat.
Civility is great. I spend most of my time advocating strongly for it. But you don't get to police the way other people communicate their ideas. You can't demand that people satisfy your personal preferences before granting them the ability to speak, because their ability to speak is not yours to give them.
Audiences have exactly the same speech rights as presenters. We are all equal in this regard. Speakers have benefits of visibility and amplification but they are not superbeings, entitled to authoritative privileges at the expense of everyone else. We're all responsible for our speech and our actions. Audiences who are judged to be out of line deserve the disrespect they're likely to earn for it — but this principle is (and must be) universal, if it's to be equitable and just, and this means that speakers who are judged to be out of line deserve the disrespect they earn for it, as well.
Consider the following example:
In 1996, the Ku Klux Klan applied for a public speaking permit in Ann Arbor, MI. Their request was denied. The Klan sued, and was awarded a judgment which mandated the production of their event. The city chose to stage the presentation on the roof of its police station, where maximum security could be enforced. The large audience which turned up was utterly horrified by what they heard, and expressed their displeasure very loudly. The Klansmen *refused to leave*, because it was their right to continue speaking, and they began using that right to curse at the audience. The Klan were hostile. They were the aggressors. No one in the audience left, and the aggressors got exactly the response which they deserved.
This is not a question of acknowledging the rights (or "power" as you say) which "…[I] want to give people who are offended by *[my]* preferred speakers at events *[I]* want to go to and hear what speakers came to say" — this is a universal right. Free speech is a universal right.
You state that "…[I] don't get to police the way other people communicate their ideas," and that "[I] can't demand that people satisfy [my] personal preferences before granting them the ability to speak, because their ability to speak is not [mine] to give them" — yet, the reverse of this is also true. It is universally true. We all have voices, and we are all allowed to speak.
Are you familiar with the concept of "winning over a crowd"? It involves reaching out to meet the sensibilities of an audience, on their level. It can't be done from a dictator's podium, in a venue where no one is allowed to react.
None of us should be allowed to say just whatever we like, with the expectation that those who overhear us won't be able to respond. If you respect the speaking rights of someone on a stage, then you must respect the speaking rights of those who face the stage — or those rights mean nothing.
You are continuing to elide the obvious difference here, which is that people put together an event with a speaker for the purposes of having an audience hear that speaker give their remarks. It is not two people on the street equally speaking their minds.
If you are heckling at that event, you are disrupting it and preventing others from hearing what they came to hear. They did not come to hear you or your opinions. You have the right to peacefully protest at the event, criticize it, post about it online, hold your own event to counter it, etc. You can even boo to show your displeasure while in the audience. But you can't hijack the event or disrupt it to the point where it can no longer go on. That is the heckler's veto, and it is not free speech.
I read the Perrino essay, but could not find a referral of the so-called "Heckler's Veto" as a violation of a criminal statute. The essay reads like an opinion piece, to be honest — an essay which was written in an authoritarian tone, but without reference to an authority.
To speculate a bit, I'd be concerned about a crime under this circumstance only in instances where an audience has gone so far in their reaction as to *criminally harass* a speaker. Criminal harassment is a misdemeanor on first offense, if I recall correctly, but harassers are subject to arrest. I suppose if heckling at a public event got so bad as to be criminal in this way, then audience members could be taken away.
In instances where talk-back from an audience grows to the proportion of a *civil peace disturbance*, there might also be grounds to make arrests for that, as well…
I mean — if people started vandalizing things, by breaking PA equipment or whatever, then they could be arrested and charged with that…
But these are not free speech issues, are they? These are crimes.
I'm afraid that it's clear, otherwise, that audiences who "talk back" to a speaker on a stage are well within their rights. By law.
For the sake of both credibility and clarity, I suggest it would be best to characterize disruptions which violate laws differently than instances where audiences jeer or talk back to a public speaker.
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Separately, "Heckler's Veto" reads like a jargon-y, made-up term. May I suggest that "Harassment", or "Disorderly Conduct", or some other *established* term — something with a real, legal definition — would be a far more credible and persuasive way to describe the concept…
I don't recall writing anywhere that college students are "currently among the biggest threat to freedom of speech in this country," only that the findings described above are, as you said, concerning.
However, we at FIRE have written quite extensively about how much of a threat the detention of college students by the state for their speech is. In fact, FIRE is currently suing Marco Rubio for that exact reason:
I'm not sure, but I have a feeling it's more of a "the kid is sitting too close to the TV because his eyes are bad" thing, rather than a "the kid's eyes are bad because he's sitting too close to the TV" thing.
Crazy coincidence that this article drops hours before Charlie Kirk is shot at a campus event...
Yeah, it's a horrible coincidence.
As I said on Twitter, if the first person to hurl an insult instead of a stone birthed civilization, then anyone who resorts to violence instead of using their words is attempting to kill it.
Delighting in someone's death is not just morally repugnant, it's psychologically corrosive. It's a dehumanization of the other and of the self.
And in a sense, it's two people who have died.
I would be cautous about assuming the politics of anyone unbalanced enough to do such a thing. They are as likely to be someone twisted up about Epstein Files as they are a devoted leftists. The most likely situation is that their politics makes no sense and Kirk was simply unlucky enough to be famous and nearby.
This is political violence, regardless of the politics or sanity of the shooter
I'm surprised at the fact that this has been on the increase since 2022. I had thought (and hoped) that the retreat from the high point in 2019-2020 was continuing. I would be interested to know if there are particular types of speech the students were most interested in stopping (I could imagine many different sides of the Gaza protests having wanted to shut each other down).
I'm a bit disappointed in this bit of writing though:
> Our colleges and universities have clearly failed, and the results are all around us.
>The good news is that in this case, the problem points directly to the solution: We need to rekindle truth-seeking and independent thought and remind both our students and our society that without free speech, neither of those things is possible.
I don't know what you mean by colleges and universities having failed! And I don't understand the claimed solution. What institution do you propose to replace colleges and universities with if you think we have failed? And what methods do you think would be able to "rekindle truth-seeking and independent thought" if you don't think colleges and universities can do that? And how does reminding society that free speech is necessary for those things generate any interest in truth-seeking and independent thought, or for free speech?
If these universities improve their speech codes; emphasize the importance of free inquiry, open debate, and free expression on their campuses; stop punishing students for voicing their opinions; adopt institutional neutrality; and take a hard line against violence, we will see a lot change.
They have failed at promoting truth seeking and protecting free expression on their campuses, but they can change.
I would be curious how many of the pro-violence students are getting radicalized more by social media than by anything happening on campus.
Yeah, it is weird that it has gotten higher than the peak "Speech is violence!" days. I'm curious if the pro-violence students share an ideological bent or issue focus? There are some issues today that feel more life-and-death - trans issues or Gaza, for example, where I could see supporters feeling like allowing the opposition to speak is directly contributing to real-world harm. Or maybe it is right-wing reactionaries?
The shooting of Charlie Kirk will lead to nothing good. This administration is just looking for examples of left-wing violence to justify martial law. Here comes the hammer.
I would be more interested in seeing this put in context with the rest of society. I’ve seen other surveys suggesting that about a third of all Americans support political violence under certain conditions. Unfortunately, those surveys ask their questions differently from FIRE so it’s hard to compare.
Putting all of this on students and campuses as a unique hotbed of violence wouldn’t make sense if it turns out that political violence is gaining traction in America at large.
Anecdotally you can even see this in events of campus violence where often it’s not even students engaging in it.
Unfortunately, we don't have survey data in this post from before 2021, so we can't actually be sure that current numbers are higher than they were in 2020, or the late 2010s!
This is a difficult day to have this discussion given the shooting of Charlie Kirk and the rest of my comment should not be taken as an endorsement of it. Condemn the shooting in the strongest possible terms.
Surely violent reactions to speech is sometimes (if very rarely) totally justified. In 1993 would it not be totally justified to use violent methods to shut down RTLM Radio in Rwanda. Given what would follow it does not seem that using force to stop it would be unjustified.
The next question is how should groups react to people hold and promote ideologies that are intrinsically harmful to that group. Should a black person hold no issues about taking a class (including a mandatory class) by a professor that holds Charles Murray's views on race. Should women (and men) not engage in cancellation or the heclers veto over a speaker that advocates sexual violence. Are we all meant to have polite debates with people who do not recognise us as full humans with equal dignity? For minority groups what do you do when such debates result in more people thinking you are in fact less then rather then equals.
To the question of cancellation and the hecklers veto. Does the fact that essentially every civil rights campaign has used such tactics to some degree give you pause to their denouncements? Was Anita Byrant the victim of gay rights campaigners? Were politician's targeted (sometimes violently) by suffragettes the victim of women fight for the right to vote.
Also, is there simply no role in social shame as a mechanism of signalling displeasure at a person ideas. How does freedom of speech and freedom of association interact?
No, violent reaction to speech is not justifiable. That's why we have speech. It's the antidote to violence. And retroactively saying "Well, if we had just shut down RTLM Radio with violence it would have been justified" is nonsensical. People don't have crystal balls, and you have no idea whether that would have had the desired effect or not. It may indeed have made things even worse. Look up the Weimar Fallacy for a potent example of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4xA00bGOCc
Groups of people should react to people who hold ugly, hateful, and harmful ideologies by countering their speech, criticizing their points, and providing alternatives to that speech. They can protest, they can complain, they can ignore, they can mock and ridicule. Violence is not an acceptable response to speech. The heckler's veto is not free speech. You are not required to speak or listen to anyone you don't want to, but you do not have the right to stop others from doing so if that's what they want. If you object to a professor who is imposing their views in a mandatory class, you can complain to the school, drop out of the class, etc. You don't get to decide for everyone else what is and is not appropriate for them to hear.
Cancellation and the heckler's veto are antithetical to civil discourse and free expression. Use your words. Destroy the ideas you oppose through argument, not censorial actions. You may protest, you may criticize and ridicule, you may ignore, but to silence is counterproductive and wrong.
And you don't have to associate with anybody you don't want to associate with. That's your right. The problem comes when you try to make it so nobody else can associate with them because you've decided that's what's right.
Just how well has the fight free speech with more speech work out for us? How about the sunlight of the truth being the best tool to fight the disease of misinformation and bad ideas. !/4 of the country want a dictator, and have been demonizing not just democratic politicians, but also voters, as degenerate undesirables. These are the people who have been clambering for a civil war my entire life.
As a trans person I'm suppose do debate my existence with people who want me dead, and constantly worry about being a good advocate so the crazies online don't define us as a group. Yet the public is more skeptical of trans people, partly from bad advocates on our side, but the GOP are the ones who made it their mission to legislate us out of existence with their hate filled rhetoric.
Political violence is 100% on the GOP, they are the ones who started this so until they start calling for calm when democrats get killed I'm not gonna worry about some cringe lefties who don't vote for democrats celebrate this like unhinged maniacs.
Nobody deserves to die for expressing their free speech, but this is the world conservatives led us into. Charlie kirk called for his supporters to bail out the guy who tried to kill Paul Pelosi to interview him and become a midterm hero. Charlie should still be with us today, but he 100% contributed to the climate of encouraging political violence that lead to his death.
Lies and despicable rhetoric are terrible and corrosive; I have said so many times myself, and dedicated my entire life to fighting against it.
You don't have to speak to anyone you don't want to speak to. No one has a right to your attention—and you don't have a right to anyone else's. I appreciate the frustration, difficulty, and pain that comes from seeing people behave hatefully and on bad information. You are only responsible for and in control of your own behavior, and it is best—ethically, psychologically, and practically—for you to live by your principles and remain the exception to whatever shitty and ugly idea people have in their minds about you and people like you.
No, counterspeech doesn't always "work." Misinformation remains prevalent. But the alternative is and has been proven to be worse. You are not better off for knowing less about what people actually think. You do not eliminate ideas by preventing people from voicing them. At best, you exacerbate and strengthen those ideas as forbidden fruit, and martyr those people as brave truth tellers who are being silenced by the powers that be. And any censorial policy or norm you utilize to silence your opposition, you are tacitly giving to them to use against you the moment they have the chance. This gets us nowhere.
There are no short cuts to dealing with the bad ideas people believe. Engagement and persuasion are the only real way we have besides violence, and violence is not something you want to make the norm.
Political violence knows no party affiliation. It is engaged in by everyone. Blinding yourself to that doesn't help your cause, or anyone else's. It needs to be condemned, on principle, emphatically, immediately, every single time.
Yes persuasion is the only answer, killing each other is not what we do in America when we disagree. But this is nowhere near a “both sides issue”. Do both liberals and conservatives engage in political violences; yes. But they’re nowhere in the same league as each other.
When a conservative gets killed, democrats unilaterally denounce it. The only people who cheer the murder of their opponents is weird lefties who don’t even vote for democrats anyway.
But when a democrat is killed, there is no GOP condemnation of violence, they laugh at it, Fox News anchors crack jokes about it live on air, memes flood conservative social media.
The president of the United States, and several congressmen blamed democrats for this when we don’t even have a suspect known publicly or in custody. Democrats are the only party with standards they abide by, they always have to be the adults in the room, while republicans engage in the most extreme rhetoric have an entire media apparatus that has primed their base to hate democrats.
And somehow it’s always on Democrats to change. The public has a lower opinion of us, in effect rewarding the unhinged behavior of republicans. Where is the Donald Trump on the left, or the MTG, the Tucker Carlson? The GOP leadership and the media that prompt them up are legitimately evil forces with values antithetical to those of this Nation.
I’ve been condemning this shooting over and over again, but it’s disgusting that we have Ezra Klein writing op Ed’s about how Charlie did politics the right way. No charlie was a gigantic grifting piece of shit who trafficked in the exact type of misinformation and extremist rhetoric that got us to the climate we are in now. It’s really telling that you chose to ignore how Charlie himself was urging his followers to bail out a guy who tried to kill Nancy Pelosi to be a hero for the mid terms. That doesn’t means he deserved to die but the media environment is for the better without Charlie Kirk to keep spouting his bullshit into.
Right now republicans have no incentive to change their disgusting behavior, so why the hell should the democrats be the ones to hyper-police our own? Where the hell does our country survive when 1/4 of the country lives in an alternative fact reality and support subhuman scumfuck leaders that destroy the economy, wreck our international standing, and make us less safe. They have for years been fanning the flames of this fire it’s not the lefts job to stop the fucking blaze.
One last everybody deserves the right to speak and we should not kill other Americans for disagreeing with us. Political violence is bad, but it’s on Republicans not us.
I mean pretty tough to argue that the Rwandan Genocide could have been worse. Maybe it would have been totally ineffectual but I think shutting down one of the primary communication networks inciting genocide may have helped on the margin. And sure, no one has a crystal ball but people were warning about the potential for devastating violence to erupt but those warnings did not themselves stop either the advocation or eventual eruption of violence. The arguments failed, sometimes correct arguments fail.
Under this framework what value would complaints to the university over the views held by a professor do? The professor is entitled to hold views including discriminatory views of some students. So a black student would simply need to accept that they have a racist professor who may or may not disadvantage them because they are black. And this goes for all groups, if there is a large, pervasive anti-gay campaign at a university - are gay students expected to remain unaffected by it - is there equal access to education not being denied implicitly.
Do you then agree with the statement that the Gay Rights Campaigners treatment of Anita Bryant was incorrect.
For your freedom of association assertion: you say that it's never OK that people feel the need to self-sensor but a big reason why people self-sensor is to maintain associations with other people. It is impossible to have no one self-censoring while not enforcing association on people. I do not willingly associate with people who hold terrible views, if you hold terrible views and wish to continue to associate with me you better make sure to self slcensor enough such that I remain uninformed on them.
No, none of what you're saying is a given. Just because *you* think shutting down someone's communication network would have been worth it doesn't give you the right to. And you're also talking about a completely different circumstance from the one the vast majority of us find ourselves in. Shutting down speech is how we end up with violence, because when people can no longer use their words that's the only option they feel they have. That's not good.
Complaints to the school have whatever the value they have. If a professor is actively discriminating against a student, there should be material proof of that which can be brought up, which will then be used against that professor. If gay students' ability to access their education is being denied or obstructed, they have material proof of that which they can use to bring charges against those people or the school itself. But the mere presence of ideas we find reprehensible does not constitute harassment or a denial of education. There are existing laws and rules in place for things like targeted harassment and obstruction of access, but we are not entitled to live or study in an environment where we agree with all the ideas that are expressed.
People are free to self-censor, but it is worth pointing out the prevalence of such a practice on campus—especially if it is being done out of fear of intolerance for differing opinions—because it speaks to a larger issue of diminishing acceptance of free expression and open debate.
You aren't better off or more informed by knowing less about what the people around you really think.
In some situations I am absolutely better off not knowing what people think. If someone at work believes that gay people are evil and should be killed. As a gay person, I do not want to know that. Unless such views are grounds for dismissal, I do not want to have to work and collaborate with someone who wishes me dead.
There are legal definitions for things like discrimination, and laws against them. That is the system we have in place and the structure we must use to handle situations like the ones you describe. If it meets the standard, the laws apply.
And if you were working with someone who secretly wished you dead, that's actually very useful information to have—at the very least, so you can stay the fuck away from them.
Yes, if someone had active murder plans - that I would want to know. But less immediately life threatening hatred. I really don't want to know. Especially if I can't really 'get away from them'.
What would count as discrimination? Is there no speech act that would qualify as discrimination?
Your example of shutting down RTLM Radio to save lives is great point. And just so you know, the authors counterpoint of the “Weimar Fallacy” is not a real term used by historians. It was made up by the founder of FIRE, Greg Lukianoff, and has been almost solely used in the context of free speech.
Just to provide the counterpoint, the “Weimar Fallacy” is a term invented by Greg Lukianoff, the founder of FIRE. It is not a term used in academic circles amongst people that actually study pre-war Germany.
I don’t think using that term as counterpoint to the logical question of “would shutting down RTLM radio during the Rwandan genocide save lives” is a good retort.
While I know Reddit is just another website, the info in this comment is accurate and delves into why the “Weimar Fallacy” is not a term used by Historians: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/QB20bisbdg
Congrats FIRE for sticking to the same byline that “college kids these days are awful and they’re getting worse.”
I’m glad you bring up the top-down authoritarian attack on our institutions. But it’s a strange pivot to then immediately say “and that’s why now, more than ever, kids need to respectfully listen to Charles Murray talk about race and IQ.”
Oh, Ryan!
I’m glad FIRE is doing laudable legal work, especially nowadays. I’m just skeptical of the research/promotional work. Especially since “The Coddling of the American Mind” which kind of started this whole thing, was mostly just a bunch of anecdotes, some of them misleading.
Sorry Ryan, I actually thought you were a different Ryan that, to put it mildly, tends to be an unproductive interlocutor.
I appreciate your skepticism, but there's way more data backing up the arguments in "Coddling" than you seem to think.
For now, though, I'll just point out that what you say here is a ludicrous straw man:
...it’s a strange pivot to then immediately say “and that’s why now, more than ever, kids need to respectfully listen to Charles Murray talk about race and IQ.”
First of all, kids can ignore Murray, they can criticize him, they can argue against his conclusions and data, they can protest outside his speaking engagements on campus, etc., and I am enthusiastically in favor of them doing so—without resorting to violence, shout downs, or disruptions of planned talks (because people have a right to hear him if that's what they want to do).
Second, it's not a pivot. The two issues are related. The Trump administration is using the chaos on campus of the last 10+ years to justify what it's doing right now, and part of the problem is that it has reams of examples of things happening on campus that would and should concern any reasonable person—and it has reams of examples of people refusing to acknowledge it even though everyone else can see it clear as day.
The more insanely people behave, the more people are going to think, "Man, somebody needs to do something about this," and if no sane, sensible, principled people take on that task, guess who's going to show up to do it?
It doesn’t seem like it was strawman, since you are saying in your response that that is what you believe. Maybe simplified but you are saying that being disrespectful to people like Charles Murray is why there is a government crackdown on speech it doesn’t like.
I don’t think that’s true. As we’ve seen with the poor justification for sending in the national guard to cities, there is no level of crime that would be low enough. Same with your assertion that the “chaos” of school environment invited authoritarianism. (1) Chaos is a wild characterization. (2) It feels very victim blaming. (3) Cracking down on speech they don’t like and forcing universities to accommodate their own has been a conservative goal for decades.
Like I said, I’m fine with FIRE’s legal goals. But your rhetoric seems off.
I think you're having trouble understanding the arguments here, because I did not say what you just interpreted me as saying. It's not simplified. It's wrong. You're completely misunderstanding the points being made.
Where am I misunderstanding? You say the government crackdown on universities is directly related to non-acceptance of contrarian speech on campus, are you not?
I'm curious to know whether this is a distinct/larger American phenomenon or a general trend in the West? A quick ChatGPT search wasn't very enlightening
FIRE is focused on free speech issues in America, but obviously there are many problems around the world—and increasingly in Europe as well. I'd recommend Jacob Mchangama and Sarah McLaughlin on the subject of international free speech.
I wasn't just asking because I'm interested in trends in other countries, but to identify whether this is an American phenomenon that should be solved through targeting uniquely Americans things (culture), or whether it's a worldwide phenomenon (e.g. social media) that requires different solutions
Unfortunately, the impulse and desire to silence speech we don't like is a deeply human one. That's why Greg Lukianoff calls free speech—and his Substack—The Eternally Radical Idea.
Jacob Mchangama's "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" is a great book that illuminates this very well. I highly recommend it.
Self-Censoring in the Classroom
28% of students say they often self-censor during classroom discussions.
This seems like a good thing no? As it implies a super majority of students feel like they can speak their minds freely in the class room. "Would be at least in rare circumstances be willing to shout someone down" is a hypothetical question, while "do you do this thing" is not. So even if in hypothetical scenarios people might support something bad, functionally in practice at least on a day to day basis they are not doing this (with rare exceptions) in their interactions with other students.
Would getting that number lower be good? Absolutely. We must tread carefully though. If someone is self censoring because they are afraid of confrontation, and they feel someone disagreeing with them is confrontation (which most people don't like!) we must ensure we are not censoring disagreement. For all the excesses of wokeness, it was not mandating state crackdowns on universities on the scale we are currently seeing or arresting students for opinion pieces.
Being screamed at for being "problematic", either in person or online sucks. We should discourage it and foster an environment where disagreement is appropriately expressed.
Being shot for your beliefs, being arrested by the state, having the institution you work for gutted is a utter nightmare. I fear we will soon long for the days where the greatest threat to free speech was college students protesting to loudly or calling people nasty names.
28% is too many. It should be zero.
Finding it acceptable, even rarely, to shout down a speaker in order to prevent their speech, is bad. The correct answer is “never.”
Censoring yourself on college campuses because you’re afraid of what might happen to you—by students and administrators, by the way—is bad. College campuses are where ideas are supposed to be heard, where young people learn to engage with dissent, defend their perspectives, and grow into mature human beings who can handle being disagreed with. If they’re self-censoring out of fear, that doesn’t happen. That’s bad.
Yes, there are worse things going on. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. The purpose of this post was to highlight the data we just found. Other posts (and there have been and will be many) will focus on the other issues we’re facing.
I don't think we disagree here. Ideally it should be zero! Looking forward to more articles from yah exploring this.
My primary point in my post was, specifically when it comes to the concept of self censorship, how we accurately measure these things so we don't come away with incorrect conclusions on the best way to handle this problem. I'm old enough to remember how much criticism there was of safe spaces on college campuses, with the logic being that people should be allowed to critique you in the interests of free expression/inquiry.
My second point following from the first is that because its difficult to represent complex social interactions as stats we have to be careful in how we handle this. I'm sincerely interested in how you think we handle those that self-censor because they are afraid of disagreement? The right to dissent is as fundamental to the concept of free speech as the right to assent it.
You can dig into the methodology we used, as well as how and why the questions were formulated as they were, in more detail:
https://rankings.thefire.org
Self-censoring is such a vaguely defined term. Survey also relies on one’s perceptions/memory and not necessarily what you’ve actually done.
Self-censorship could include just not wanting to get into a political argument because it would derail the rest of class.
When I was in college for my engineering undergrad degree most of my fellow students (including professors) were very rightwing when it came to economics. This resulted in me being particularly selective in how I expressed my views on things like socialism, redistribution, etc to avoid drowning in a 100 "But what about Venezuela???"'s. Does this count as self censorship? probably. Does this mean that those students right to say annoying things should be limited or curtailed? no
Also, to your example, if you were 1 out of 10 people in a class and you were the only liberal, the self-censorship rate in that class would be 10%. So paradoxically you would have a lower reported self censorship rate but only because of greater homogeneity of thought in the class.
I just don’t think this “self censorship” idea is that useful of metric to gauge quality/vibrancy of classroom discussion.
Do you consider lying to be free speech?
Yes. As much as I loathe lying, liars, and lies, I believe that most lies are and should remain protected speech. More here:
https://www.thefire.org/news/why-most-lies-are-protected-speech-and-why-they-should-stay-way
How does one have an honest debate or even conversation with a liar?
I'm aware of Lakoff's "truth sandwich" , but I have never seen it used in practice and it is certainly not something that I could ever hope to employ in a spontaneous conversation.
There's only so far you can get with someone who isn't being honest, but you can explicitly point out the dishonesty you're sensing—and there are ways to engage even in that scenario that allow for making progress in the long term.
www.starmanning.com
Perhaps fewer college students would deem violence to be acceptable if there was a better option than just "grin and bear it".
Thanks for the links. I will read through them.
There are plenty of options besides “grin and bear it”:
Engage in counterspeech (but not the heckler’s veto)
Walk out/ignore it.
Peacefully protest outside the event/speech/etc.
The idea that violence is the only option they have is absolutely absurd.
This is another "limitations of polling" article. Saying yes to something on a poll does not necessarily mean that you actually believe it or would do it. It often just means that you think that the "yes" answer belongs to your tribe rather than the opposing tribe. (And then you have to subtract the Lizardman's constant.)
Violence is a gesture of the inarticulate.
Yet, with presenters who offer provocation as their trade, it's understandable to expect audiences to become upset whenever they open their mouths — especially while in front of microphones, and standing on stages.
Provocateurs dare their audiences to react — they *goad* their audiences into reacting.
Are audience reactions not also free speech?
Jeering an offensive presenter off their stage is *absolutely* a right, although blocking entrances and using violence are not — these are Sturmabteilung tactics.
They are all disruptions, sure, but one of these actions should not be offered in context with the other two, as though they are all similarly intolerable…
No, violence is not free speech. It is the antithesis of free speech. I don't care how provocative, goading, or horrible someone's speech is, whoever responds to it with violence is absolutely wrong.
The heckler's veto is also not free speech. It is not your right to decide for everyone else what they may hear. If you don't like someone's speech, you're free to leave, to peacefully protest outside, to engage in counterspeech, etc. But you are not allowed to disrupt or prevent an event simply because you don't like its content. When you do so you are violating the rights of the speaker and all of those who came to hear them.
That's crossing the line, and it is on a continuum of severity with blocking entrances and using violence, which is why they are and should be mentioned together.
Did you read the part of my comment where I stated that "…blocking entrances and using violence are not [rights] — these are Sturmabteilung tactics"?
Of course I agree that violence is not free speech. That's what I stated.
I stated separately that audiences are *absolutely* allowed to practice free speech. They are entitled to the same extent of free speech as public speakers — speakers who enjoy the asymmetric benefits of stage visibility and voice amplification.
Why not remind us that public speakers have the freedom "to leave", to "peacefully protest outside", to "engage in counterspeech", etc.? These are their rights, of course, but not their obligations — just as leaving, protesting outside, "counterspeaking", etc. are the rights of an audience, but not their obligations.
Public speakers who want to avoid being jeered off their stages might do well to dial back their rhetoric. Speakers who are less offensive are more likely to be well received. This is as true in public as it is in private.
We need to be more civil with one another first, before demanding each other's attention and respect.
Yes, I saw what you wrote, but as I noted, the heckler's veto is on a continuum with that behavior because its purpose is the same: the stop disfavored speech.
And no, audiences are *absolutely NOT* allowed to heckle and disrupt a scheduled talk. It is not their right to decide for everyone else what they may hear. If they don't like the speaker or the speech, they can leave, they can protest peacefully outside, they can set up their own talk elsewhere, etc. But they are not entitled to take over or shut down a speech others planned and wanted to hear just because they've decided it's bad or offensive.
You are eliding the difference between someone who has been invited to a venue to give a planned speech for people who chose to attend, and people in the audience who decide for themselves that they have a right to take that event over and stop everyone else from hearing what the speaker came to say.
And no, this isn't conditional upon how you or anyone else feels about their rhetoric. They are allowed to be as offensive as they like, and you are allowed to be as offended as you like by it. That doesn't grant you the right to disrupt or stop a planned speaking event.
Just think about the dynamic you are setting up here. You're saying people in an audience have a right to shut a speech down by shouting and disrupting if they decide a speaker is offensive, and if the speaker doesn't like it they can either leave or "tone down their rhetoric" so that it is less offensive to those doing the heckling and shutting down. Is that the kind of power you want to give people who are offended by *your* preferred speakers at events *you* want to go to and hear what speakers came to say? You're advocating for a constantly escalating censorial tit-for-tat.
Civility is great. I spend most of my time advocating strongly for it. But you don't get to police the way other people communicate their ideas. You can't demand that people satisfy your personal preferences before granting them the ability to speak, because their ability to speak is not yours to give them.
Audiences have exactly the same speech rights as presenters. We are all equal in this regard. Speakers have benefits of visibility and amplification but they are not superbeings, entitled to authoritative privileges at the expense of everyone else. We're all responsible for our speech and our actions. Audiences who are judged to be out of line deserve the disrespect they're likely to earn for it — but this principle is (and must be) universal, if it's to be equitable and just, and this means that speakers who are judged to be out of line deserve the disrespect they earn for it, as well.
Consider the following example:
In 1996, the Ku Klux Klan applied for a public speaking permit in Ann Arbor, MI. Their request was denied. The Klan sued, and was awarded a judgment which mandated the production of their event. The city chose to stage the presentation on the roof of its police station, where maximum security could be enforced. The large audience which turned up was utterly horrified by what they heard, and expressed their displeasure very loudly. The Klansmen *refused to leave*, because it was their right to continue speaking, and they began using that right to curse at the audience. The Klan were hostile. They were the aggressors. No one in the audience left, and the aggressors got exactly the response which they deserved.
This is not a question of acknowledging the rights (or "power" as you say) which "…[I] want to give people who are offended by *[my]* preferred speakers at events *[I]* want to go to and hear what speakers came to say" — this is a universal right. Free speech is a universal right.
You state that "…[I] don't get to police the way other people communicate their ideas," and that "[I] can't demand that people satisfy [my] personal preferences before granting them the ability to speak, because their ability to speak is not [mine] to give them" — yet, the reverse of this is also true. It is universally true. We all have voices, and we are all allowed to speak.
Are you familiar with the concept of "winning over a crowd"? It involves reaching out to meet the sensibilities of an audience, on their level. It can't be done from a dictator's podium, in a venue where no one is allowed to react.
None of us should be allowed to say just whatever we like, with the expectation that those who overhear us won't be able to respond. If you respect the speaking rights of someone on a stage, then you must respect the speaking rights of those who face the stage — or those rights mean nothing.
You are continuing to elide the obvious difference here, which is that people put together an event with a speaker for the purposes of having an audience hear that speaker give their remarks. It is not two people on the street equally speaking their minds.
If you are heckling at that event, you are disrupting it and preventing others from hearing what they came to hear. They did not come to hear you or your opinions. You have the right to peacefully protest at the event, criticize it, post about it online, hold your own event to counter it, etc. You can even boo to show your displeasure while in the audience. But you can't hijack the event or disrupt it to the point where it can no longer go on. That is the heckler's veto, and it is not free speech.
https://www.thefire.org/news/no-hecklers-veto-not-more-speech
Thank you for the link.
I read the Perrino essay, but could not find a referral of the so-called "Heckler's Veto" as a violation of a criminal statute. The essay reads like an opinion piece, to be honest — an essay which was written in an authoritarian tone, but without reference to an authority.
To speculate a bit, I'd be concerned about a crime under this circumstance only in instances where an audience has gone so far in their reaction as to *criminally harass* a speaker. Criminal harassment is a misdemeanor on first offense, if I recall correctly, but harassers are subject to arrest. I suppose if heckling at a public event got so bad as to be criminal in this way, then audience members could be taken away.
In instances where talk-back from an audience grows to the proportion of a *civil peace disturbance*, there might also be grounds to make arrests for that, as well…
I mean — if people started vandalizing things, by breaking PA equipment or whatever, then they could be arrested and charged with that…
But these are not free speech issues, are they? These are crimes.
I'm afraid that it's clear, otherwise, that audiences who "talk back" to a speaker on a stage are well within their rights. By law.
For the sake of both credibility and clarity, I suggest it would be best to characterize disruptions which violate laws differently than instances where audiences jeer or talk back to a public speaker.
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Separately, "Heckler's Veto" reads like a jargon-y, made-up term. May I suggest that "Harassment", or "Disorderly Conduct", or some other *established* term — something with a real, legal definition — would be a far more credible and persuasive way to describe the concept…
I don't recall writing anywhere that college students are "currently among the biggest threat to freedom of speech in this country," only that the findings described above are, as you said, concerning.
However, we at FIRE have written quite extensively about how much of a threat the detention of college students by the state for their speech is. In fact, FIRE is currently suing Marco Rubio for that exact reason:
https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-fire-challenges-unconstitutional-provisions-rubio-uses-crusade-deport-legal-immigrants
How much of the hostility towards free speech from students do you think is because of the effects of social media?
I'm not sure, but I have a feeling it's more of a "the kid is sitting too close to the TV because his eyes are bad" thing, rather than a "the kid's eyes are bad because he's sitting too close to the TV" thing.