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As you may have seen, earlier this week, I participated in a @reason debate with the inimitable @Popehat. 1/27 https://reason.com/2020/08/04/whats-the-best-way-to-protect-free-speech-ken-white-and-greg-lukianoff-debate-cancel-culture/
If you’d like to see my initial points, here they are in a twitter thread, but I also wrote an additional short piece to respond to some of Ken’s points. 2/27 https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1290691291777507328
Where Ken & I most disagree is that I think culture & law are almost inextricable. We interpret law through the lens of culture, & culture is what makes our law possible & effective. 3/27
We are extremely lucky that our Supreme Court is populated by attorneys educated or coming up during the 1970s, arguably the best decade for BOTH free speech culture on campus & free speech law. 4/27
However, I've seen a stark decline in student respect for or understanding of speech norms over the past decade. I believe this will inevitably lead to an eventual decline in law. And students were once the best constituency for free speech on campus! 5/27 https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/state-free-speech-tolerance-america
In the 2013–14 school year, students started to demand new campus speech codes & disinvitations, claiming that the presence of people with certain views was medically harmful.
Check out this illustrative & outrageous disinvitation reported today: 6/27 https://reason.com/2020/08/06/tulane-cancels-life-of-a-klansman-edward-ball-students-racist/
Check out this illustrative & outrageous disinvitation reported today: 6/27 https://reason.com/2020/08/06/tulane-cancels-life-of-a-klansman-edward-ball-students-racist/
Conservatives had railed against campus narrow-mindedness for years, but starting in 2014, more & more liberals grew concerned about the trend as well. Researchers found the population hitting campuses around 2013–2014 less tolerant of free speech. 7/27
https://amzn.to/39rCvt8
https://amzn.to/39rCvt8
Because FIRE works exclusively on campus, I saw this change in real time & on the ground. In 2015, I filmed @NAChristakis when he was encircled by Yale students calling for him to lose his job. 8/27 https://www.thefire.org/resources/spotlight/yale-university-school-feature/halloween-costume-controversy/
As more members of Generation Z hit the real world, #freespeech norms like tolerance for political differences will erode. 9/27
E.g., a 2020 @CatoInstitute survey found that 27 percent of Americans under 30 would support firing a business executive who donates to Biden's campaign; 44 percent support firing a similar Donald Trump donor. 10/27 https://www.cato.org/publications/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-they-have-political-views-theyre-afraid-share#liberals-are-divided-political-expression
Ken warned me about grifters, charlatans, & Trump tainting my argument. But this is the kind of guilt-by-association argument I am fighting: "Bad people make argument, therefore argument bad!" 11/27
Never mind that I was speaking about this phenomenon years before anyone imagined a President Trump. Yes, Trump pointed out a rising intolerance on the left, but former President Obama has ALSO made similar arguments, several times over. 12/27
So have former presidential candidates Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren. 13/27
. @Popehat is a friend who I love, admire, & respect, but to vent some frustration: I've seen a lot of hostility to the idea of free speech culture coming from people who defer to Ken's point of view. 14/27
If Ken is concerned about free speech cynicism, he's fortuitously positioned to help stop it.
So, I have some requests of Ken, but, more importantly, of his fans, & for many others. 15/27
So, I have some requests of Ken, but, more importantly, of his fans, & for many others. 15/27
1. *Please don’t be so quick to call people hypocrites.* Not everybody who cares about free speech is as well-versed in its nuances as Ken & me. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, & expect them to be inconsistent, because that's part of human nature. 16/27
Sometimes #freespeech defenders can disagree about what should be protected, may still be learning, or just make a bad call once. If the price of chiming in to say "I believe in free speech" is to be called out as a presumptive hypocrite, why wouldn't people become cynical? 17/27
2. *Welcome even temporary allies.* If someone usually disagrees with you, but actually agrees with you on a particular free speech incident, welcome their help rather than fixate on what you consider to be their previous hypocrisy (which sometimes isn't even there). 18/27
3. *Stop lumping actual #freespeech defenders with partisan pundits.* @jon_rauch, Nadine Strossen & many others actually work in this profession defending free speech; 19/27
(Side note: Check out Jon’s excellent article on cancel culture from today:
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-cancel-culture-checklist)
(Side note: Check out Jon’s excellent article on cancel culture from today:
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-cancel-culture-checklist)
Meanwhile many others (like Milo Yiannopolous & Charlie Kirk for example) are explicitly partisan & only care about free speech for ideological allies. The fact that they mention “free speech” shouldn’t tar those of us who have made it our life’s work to defend free speech. 20/27
4. *First ask “How can I help this student or professor who is in trouble?”* Many people follow Ken's example by tweeting something about how people on the right "don't care about these cases—in your face, conservative!" 21/27
But few realize what else he does: Send the cases our way & actually support our work. Be more like Ken & do more than dunk on your opponents: Spread the word, contact the school, & urge other influential people to join the pro–free speech side. 22/27 http://thefire.org/alarm
Ken & I don't have to agree on the value of free speech culture. But when people are fostering contempt & cynicism about free speech, it makes the job of actual free speech fighters, including both Ken & me, much harder. 23/27
If we preoccupy ourselves with distancing ourselves from the "bad" folks, we will eventually cede free speech to the grifters. 24/27
It's okay that people deemed "bad" by internet mobs agree with me about cancel culture. Indeed, I would like MORE people to come out against cancel culture; most Americans are against it but may be afraid to say so. 25/27 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/22/americans-cancel-culture-377412
I’m greedy, but I'd like BOTH strong free speech law & a strong culture. Therefore, I would like more people to return to the idioms of a free society: How about "everyone's entitled to their opinion," "it's a free country," & "address the argument, not the person." 26/27
And finally, I propose a new idiom: "Even people I hate have to make a living." 27/27
