This will not end well - Yale U.

You know what makes me laugh heartily. I know a family friend who was a dirty hippy protesting Vietnam, peace and love. The type of folks that are like the Keatons from Family Ties. I caught him getting angry at these kids, “these damned kids!” My response, I’ve seen the pictures my man, you were once one of those “damned kids” protesting. He shut up really quick. I read about what was going on at the Plaza of the Americas at my Alma mater and folks all up in a huff. I remember my undergrad days walking through there being yelled at by those lovely preachers brother Jed and Sister Cindy. “y’all gonna burn in a lake of FIIIIIIRE” and calling me a fornicator. I always responded with “well how did you know?” So some kids protesting, meh probably not as loud as those two preachers

 

Block him...

 

In the early, early 80’s there was a guy who brought a penis water pistol out there. He put milk(I think) in it and sprayed sister Cindy when her and Jed got going. Jed went after him but didn’t catch him. I posted about this several years ago and the late, great gatorknights said he was out there that afternoon as well.

 

Surprise, GatorKnights was that guy.

 

This is what I would love to see with some of the student protestors because I think the thought process is similar for many…i.e. I heard it so I’m taking it as fact. Credit to the student too for being open to a real conversation.

And oh by the way…This teacher actually got fired after this went viral, though how much it impacted his school’s decision is unclear.

 

Oh and the floodgates on the lawsuits have started to open.
Berkeley is up first but expect dozens of these.

 

And I will continue to say that using civil lawsuits to try and shut down free speech is a repulsive tactic. As far as I know, Berkeley isn't shielding the people who committed crimes. Neither are the police there. The university cannot stop bad actors from breaking the law. To my knowledge, they have sought the arrest and prosecution of the people who committed property damage during the riot.

What these people are doing is counterproductive, illiberal, and could end up undermining important anti-discrimination laws. It will be unfortunate if selfish decisions from privileged people harm those who most need these laws.

EDIT: Looked up the two groups involved. Shocker, one group is affiliated with the other. And the main group (the Brandeis Center) is a right-wing org led by a guy who worked for Trump. These are exactly the type of people I'd expect to do this shit.

 

When Jews aren’t allowed in certain parts of campus for example and the school does nothing, it’s not free speech that’s the issue. Nor is it the simple idea of rounding up the vandals and saying problem solved. It’s a deeper problem.
But even if it were purely free speech, you and I agree I think that absolute free speech doesn’t apply on campus anyway. It might be perfectly legal to say I’m a Jew hater or support hamas’s actions on Oct 7 on a public street, but not on a campus as an example. Unless we think that students can publicly demonstrate for sending AAs back to Africa on campus, ot that the thousands of AAs dying each year via guns is a good thing because AAs are bad for America. Or that someone could call for the deaths of everyone in Gaza. No campus in the country would permit that and no one would fight it, not even the ACLU probably. Schools are allows to have rules to maintain order and safety. These protests blew right past that line in myriad of ways.

 

Are Jews not allowed, or are supporters of Israel not allowed? And is it "certain parts of campus" or the specific place where a group is demonstrating against Israel?

Absolute free speech doesn't apply anywhere. But your examples are not accurate. College campuses are a mishmash of forums, including designated, traditional, and limited public forums. You can't engage in viewpoint discrimination in those forums. So yes, students could advocate for appalling viewpoints in those public forums. Public universities can have rules to maintain order and safety. But those rules do not trump the First Amendment. Nor are public universities required to enforce those rules in a way that silences expression because a group of people doesn't like the demonstrations or protests.

These right-wing groups don't care about those ideals. They are happy to try and use the legal system to silence the opposition. If they win, they will force universities to crack down on ideas they disfavor. If they lose, they may end up weakening anti-discrimination laws they don't like in other contexts. Win-win for their personal politics.

EDIT: And let's be clear here, this right-wing group filed this lawsuit BEFORE the encampments started. This has always been about targeting pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel speech.
Jewish group sues Berkeley for ‘longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism’ (Campus Reform) - Brandeis Center

 

School’s rules absolutely can trump first amendment rights. I have the first amendment right to call my teacher an ahole and not go to jail, but the school has the right to kick me out of school, or that class at a minimum for being disruptive or not meeting the code of conduct.
I have the first amendment right to call for the killing of all gazans, a school would have the right to call that disruptive.

I think we all agree protests are and should be allowed. But different rules can apply for students on a campus than someone on the national mall.

The larger question that has come out of all of this is how much Zionism is attached to Judaism. I posted it somewhere here, but someone made a good point, every other group is rightfully allowed to define what is offensive to them. A majority of Jews consider Zionism as an important part of their faith. So to Jews it’s largely antisemitic to call Zionism evil or wrong. And here is where nuance is lost, it’s fine to think criticize Israel’s actions. But to question their right to a homeland is antisemitic to most Jews. If AA’s can rightfully declare than use of the N word should be verboten, if women can say calling them girls is offensive, why can’t Jews define what’s offensive or harmful to them? Jews have lived in that part of the world for thousands of years, to say they don’t have a right to be there with some form of self rule is at its core a way of dismissing them as a people. Same with the Palestinians by the way, if israel were to completely annex the West Bank and Gaza there would be rightful outrage. Not that they would want to. But even that’s different, Arabs have a dozen countries, Jews have one, which is why the concern is so high, especially coming out of the last century and a half. Between the pogroms in Russia, the Holocaust etc.

 

That's a massive misunderstanding of the First Amendment. The Constitution always trumps inferior sources of government authority, including rules at public universities. If your university can expel you for calling your professor an a-hole, it's because you don't have a First Amendment right to do it under those circumstances. The First Amendment permits universities to restrict speech in classrooms due to the nature of the forum. They have less authority to do that in public areas on campus, such as a plaza or quad.

And no, a public university does not have the right or authority to designate certain categories or speech as inherently disruptive because of its message and punish students for the mere expression of that idea anywhere on campus.

The rules that apply depend on the nature of the forum. A student in a traditional public forum at a university will have the same rights as a person in a traditional public forum on the national mall. I'm not saying everything the student protesters have done is protected by the First Amendment, but the goal of the Berkeley lawsuit was to punish the expression of ideas that those organizations disliked, which is why they filed the lawsuit well before the encampments ever happened.

1. Any individual can determine what they do and don't find offensive and act on that in their own ways. But free speech exists to protect minority views, even offensive ones, and the right to dissent. The nature of the forum may allow the government to create certain rules, but viewpoint discrimination is almost never permitted.
2. Using anti-discrimination laws to try and enforce your view of the world on others is not what they're designed to do. DeSantis tried to do this with the Stop WOKE Act. He tried to make it discrimination to advocate for an approach to racial issues that was different than the one he and his Republican allies prefer (colorblindness). That is unconstitutional. Similarly, you cannot use anti-discrimination law to enforce the idea that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, regardless of one's views on the merits of that issue.
3. If you think an idea is intolerable, use social consequences. White people don't use the n-word because there's a social price to it. It's not because the government can severely punish them merely for using the n-word.

 

BTW, the encampment at Harvard ended voluntarily when the university negotiated with them and allowed them to make their case on divestment to the board:
Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine Ends Harvard Yard Encampment | News | The Harvard Crimson
The decision to peacefully end the encampment came after University President Alan M. Garber ’76 and HOOP organizers negotiated a peaceful end to the protest. Garber’s administration agreed to promptly begin reinstating at least 22 students from involuntary leaves of absence and offered protesters a meeting with members of the University’s governing boards about divestment.
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That looks to be the direction things are going at Princeton too. It's almost like all of the stupid stunts with police could have been avoided by the universities making token gestures, but the universities still chose chaos because they wanted to look tough for donors and politicians.

 

Or they let a tiny minority of students drive policy via actions, some illegal, that harmed the reputation of the university, and just encouraged the next small group to do the same thing.
So it depends on your POV.

 

Yes, the horror of students at universities caring about causes and protesting. It is so horrible that we shouldn't enable them by allowing them to make their case to the board that oversees the school. Instead, we must call in the cops. We have to discourage any future students from thinking they can make any difference. Those aren't the type of people we want at Elite U.

 

Again, some of these schools went way beyond feee speech, that isn’t the debate. I don’t know enough to speak about what happened at Harvard, but at other places…Widespread Vandalism, illegal encampments, taking over buildings so students and faculty couldn’t use them, taking over parts of campus and excluding fellow students, hateful rhetoric (technically legal but shouldn’t be rewarded), even precipitating violence in some cases, protests so disruptive they were forcing classes to go online at some schools or even be cancelled til fall (Humboldt as one example) Hillel at one school having to meet at a secret location out of fear for their safety, causing millions in damage, cancelled or ruined graduations, among other things. That’s who they were supposed to negotiate with? None of that should be rewarded with their “demands” being met. Solid majorities of other college students don’t think so either.

MSN

 

Second school president in trouble.

University president in California on leave after agreeing to campus protesters’ demands

 

All these schools coulda done this stuff a month ago and avoided the awful pub.

 

The presidents of UCLA, NW and Rutgers are being hauled before congress tomorrow to testify on antisemitism. Granted it’s Virginia Foxx so it will be a circus, but it’s still awful pub.

 

The House Un-American Activities Committee is at it again.