This is actually the first constructive idea I've heard that seems at all likely to address this issue in a just way without infringing on the free speech rights of the people protesting campus speakers. Well done.
The one question I have here is whether the average member of MIT faculty would now thing that an anti-affirmative action essay would be beyond the pale. It doesn't seem too surprising to me if 50%+1 members of such a committee would still vote to withdraw an invitation from this guy. But at least you would be defocusing the external outrage campaign a little, which does not seem like a bad thing.
That may work in theory, but it depends on people being rational actors when they aren't. This being politics, it's driven a lot more by emotions and what's fashionable than it is reason, which ought to be the primary domain of a university. And the boundaries of what is or isn't acceptable is being determined by people who as a group have significant biases. That is detrimental to an open debate and exchange of ideas.
I would much rather have a system where even the most offensive people are encouraged to speak, and there can be a debate over their bad ideas. Right now, speakers who have already been invited are being shut down with violent protests which are met with little to no disciplinary action from the school.
There's little chance this will ever be supported by the administrative class at MIT or any other institution. By expanding protected speech it limits their power. They have fewer punitive options and less dominion over campus activities.
There's some concern in some circles in the United States that universities have gotten into the habit of stifling speech on controversial topics.
The reality is a bit more complicated, but MIT is choosing to go out of its way to confirm that such stifling is not part of its principles.
The proof will be in the pudding... At the end of the day, a declaration of this sort only has value in so much as it shapes what the school practically chooses to do when one group on campus hosts a speaker and another group sets up a picket line to shut them down.
>This means that violators must be officially sanctioned by administrators, who are often their peers.
There is a bit of a paradox here, because you could argue that cancelling a professor for having an unfashionable opinion is itself an exercise of student free speech.
The statement says "MIT does not protect direct threats, harassment, plagiarism, or other speech that falls outside the boundaries of the First Amendment." It seems to me that certain forms of cancellation could be argued to constitute "harassment" and therefore violate the policy.
Those are indeed some extreme policy proposals. Perhaps you could argue against them anonymously on the MIT subreddit or something like that? (Posting through Tor/VPN on a burner account)
>If, though, I am wrong in my assessment and most academics and students, rather than a dominant minority, wholly believe that offensive utterances must be punished and unsavory research banned, I think there isn't much left to do. Any official action, let alone the posted public statement, will only galvanize people to seek out more aggressive policies and oust those that oppose them.
This suggests an alternative measure: Instead of focusing on freedom of expression, focus on providing a means by which students/faculty/etc. can be polled on these proposals in a way that is robustly anonymous. Sounds like you believe that if the poll favors the extreme measures, there's nothing to be done anyways.
>[1] For clarity, these two relate to first-hand examples of professors making statements solely out of fear of not being able to attract students their labs/departments.
I'm surprised that professors at MIT of all places need to grovel this way to attract students?
It's also a way to compel action across all professors, not just professors from historically-underrepresented groups, who would likely be bearing the brunt of the work.
I realize the problem is complex, partly because it has been allowed to devolve into what it looks like today.
Silly idea: Each group gets to pick one speaker to invite. They all have to accept what other groups picked. If group A wants to boycott group B's choice then both speakers are eliminated and they both have to choose new speakers. Yes, it will be carnage at first, but very soon everyone is going to realize they have to play nice with each other or nobody gets a speaker, ever.
Then there's education. Each group has to publish a one page summary profiling the speaker and what he/she will discuss. This will serve to allow others to decide whether they want to go listen or not.
Finally, occupancy. If a speaker can't attract a certain audience size, say, 25% of available seats, the group's rating is reduced which means other groups have priority over them.
It's a complicated mish-mash of stuff. I know. And probably impossible to implement. The point is that there must be a way to game-ify this business of speakers on campus in order to avoid conflicts and operate under a set of well understood rules. Prohibit all demonstrations in the name of tolerance.
The idea is to support free speech while having some kind of a self-regulating system that does not require yelling and screaming at each other or worst. There's also a degree of forced tolerance, which, sad to say, is necessary. Universities have become almost the worst example of intolerance and bigotry in our society. They have to force themselves to peacefully allow other ideology to have a stage. This is important.
This doesn't mean endorsing anyone at all.
With regards to the funding available to pay for travel for speakers, I think the regrettable reality is that if we are going to respect the concept of free speech we need to accept the idea that we have to listen to those we might consider to be repugnant. At least for a little bit.
Free speech does not guarantee an audience. If we invite and pay for a white supremacist to give a speech, applaud them at the start of the speech and just walk out without saying a word...well, these people need an audience. They'd catch on pretty quickly that you made complete fools out of them with this move.
The university might waste some money the first year this approach is taken. Very soon the crazies are going to come back and say "no thanks, not interested in giving a talk". In other words, invite them, house them, feed them, even embrace them and take a picture with them...and then give them an empty room to talk about anything they want to talk about.
Simple, peaceful and, I think, very powerful. The crazies would have no audiences but intelligent contrasting ideas would and that's exactly what you want.
You want students to not live in an echo chamber yet you want a degree of control of the quality of the material they are exposed to.
Also, another quick point: The empty hall treatment completely disarms the crazies. In sharp contrast to that, rioting in the streets, burning cars and vandalizing businesses generates huge media attention and elevates the crazies. In other words, the protest is actually great marketing for the nut-case whereas the empty hall treatment ridicules them and makes them irrelevant, nobody will be interested in covering them at all.
I think that, with modifications, this is a good strategy.
You have cognitive dissonance in your thoughts then. On one hand you claim the students should be able to protest the speakers that the administration invites and on the other hand you suggest the administration should decide which intellectuals are educationally valuable. But yet, after the administration picked a speaker a minority of students protested and that same administration revoked the invitation under pressure. This suggests the minority of students, not the administration, decided what was of value.
This is a problem akin to letting a spoiled child instructing their parent just what’s for dinner. An abdication of duty.
There’s a difference from wanting discrimination against people and having a forum on very real issues regarding an ideology that claims a special access to a certain Knowledge. In a scientific liberal institution, no one is irrefutable and no one has the final say pending new evidence.
Of course the current motif is to dismiss scientific liberalism as racist and suspicious. You only have to read critical theory literature (race, queer, colonial, etc) , which oddly is not receptive to criticism itself.
Of course not. I am not actually sure how to solve this problem. I think a good start would be to move back towards encouraging freedom of speech on campus and dialog between people with different opinions.
Maybe instead of resigning, malicious compliance would be better.
Have the Berkeley website and brochures clearly state "Students and faculty are not allowed to express the opinion that merit-based admissions are preferable to current diversity efforts, on- or off- campus." Once there are more cancellations, a list of specific* ideas that are disallowed, prominently featured in all of the university's marketing materials and official communications. Force the censorship out into the open - that is what the censor fears most.
*I.e. not how the activists characterized the statements (usually some flavor of "Is opposed to diversity"), but what the cancelled person really said, or an honest summary thereof, ideally with links to exact quotes in full context.
The original statement was proposed in a September report by the Ad Hoc working group on free expression. The report is much more interesting since goes into quite a bit of detail on MIT's current de facto policies and proposes real steps for moving forward. The cancelled 2021 lecture by Dorian Abbot is discussed. Their recommendation #6 explicitly says that "Rescinding an invitation to deliver protected speech, as defined and explained in this report, conflicts with freedom of expression." . Their full report, including the original proposed statement and their recommendations, is here: https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/default/files/report...
> He (Abbot) proposed instead an alternative framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE) whereby university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone
I am in full support with this, though it seems to me this is too idealized to be practical in practice. How can one reach a fair judgement of a student only based on a 1000-word essay in his/her application (which might not even be written by him/herself)?
However, I'm still saddened by that the MIT response to this incident is simply "it is Abbot's right of free expression to say whatever he wants", but nothing about what he actually said, or whether it at least makes some sense. It's as if MIT treated Abbot as an unknowing child whose nonsense words shall be tolerated, which is disturbing. Below is part of the mail list letter I received:
> Freedom of expression is a fundamental value of the Institute.
> I believe that, as an institution of higher learning, we must ensure that different points of view – even views that some or all of us may reject – are allowed to be heard and debated at MIT. Open dialogue is how we make each other wiser and smarter.
> This commitment to free expression can carry a human cost. The speech of those we strongly disagree with can anger us. It can disgust us. It can even make members of our own community feel unwelcome and illegitimate on our campus or in their field of study.
> I am convinced that, as an institution, we must be prepared to endure such painful outcomes as the price of protecting free expression – the principle is that important.
Dorian Abbot is a perfect example of why you're wrong.
He opposes affirmative action and as a result got cancelled at MIT for a _completely_ unrelated talk about climate and life on other planets.
If you yourself disagree with him and do not want to participate in the talk, fine. don't watch it, don't listen to it, don't attend it, and use YOUR speech to recommend others do the same.
What happened here is that he got cancelled so that those who _WANTED_ to associate no longer could. This is not about association, and it's not about speech, it's about preventing others from hearing and it's about harming him for daring to have that opinion.
When the cancel culture stops happening, THEN I'll start believing when people say the things you're trying to say here. Not before.
For one, it would further erode society's respect for academia. People already widely suspect that social-justice minded academics see their position to be more like a soapbox from which to preach rather than an means to carry out an objective pursuit of understanding. A deliberate campaign of exclusion of people they don't like would only serve to confirm this view.
For instance, MIT recently had a bunch of hate speech (against LGBTQ people) posted around campus. In response, MIT... defended the actions and encouraged students to post their own countermessages rather than take down the hateful posters: https://orgchart.mit.edu/letters/recent-postering
If anything, MIT has been more forceful in setting limits on pro-Palestinian demonstrations than on anti-LGBTQ speech.
First of all, the posters were not obviously satirical (as evidenced by the letter I linked). The intent of the posters only matters if you think MIT left the posters up because they had a leftward intent but a rightward message. But MIT made their decision before knowing the identity or politics behind the posters.
This isn't the only example, but it is one that straightforwardly shows that MIT is consistent with regards to its free speech policies.
You accuse me of arguing dishonestly. Instead, why don't you present your evidence that MIT has acted against its policy in an official capacity?
And right now the entire university education industry is colluding to suppress certain types of speech; an incident like this could happen at most universities, not just Harvard. So why doesn't freedom of speech also deserve specific legal protection? You still haven't justified treating freedom of speech differently from freedom from discrimination.
> I'm interested in hearing how the process for selecting speakers currently works, as well as how the signatories would like it to be changed.
I think any student or faculty member can invite a speaker. The policy is about when it’s acceptable for the university to step in and say that an event (or protest) can’t happen.
> If a single faculty member wishes to invite a speaker, does that give that speaker the right to talk in an official capacity?
I think that currently a speaking event can be canceled on the basis that the speaker promotes harmful ideas. The signatories want to remove this from the list of acceptable reasons for cancelling an event that someone wants to happen.
I'm arguing that Harvard should be able to use reasonable measures to affect campus discourse, up to and including an outright speech ban if that's necessary, given of course that it is appropriate with existing limitations on such speech bans. (time, place and manner restrictions)
You are asking about specific policy that I think Harvard should be able to or not be able to enact. The thing about policy is that it necessarily has a chilling effect. But symbolic actions like this one can send messages without making everyone feel like they're under the gun. Properly tailored, it scares the people that need to be scared and lets everyone else feel safe and protected.
I have no problems with the action that Harvard took. They did not rescind all of the invitations of those involved, and exercised good judgment. It was a nuanced and appropriate response to the situation.
If you remove the ability of school administrators to exercise judgment, then you're basically tying their hands together and things can rapidly devolve into a cesspool.
The one question I have here is whether the average member of MIT faculty would now thing that an anti-affirmative action essay would be beyond the pale. It doesn't seem too surprising to me if 50%+1 members of such a committee would still vote to withdraw an invitation from this guy. But at least you would be defocusing the external outrage campaign a little, which does not seem like a bad thing.
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