Resolved That colleges and universities have a mo Essay Example For Students

Resolved: That colleges and universities have a mo Essay Joeral obligation to prohibitthe public expression of hate speech on their campuses. Alexander, Larry. BANNING HATE SPEECH AND THE STICKS AND STONES DEFENSE. Constitutional Commentary. Spring, 1996In addressing this issue, I, like most of the scholars, shall take hate speech to mean epithets conventionally understood to be insulting references to characteristics such as race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference. First, it is insulting, and insults are psychologically wounding and cause emotional distress. Second, it creates unequal opportunity in the school and workplace environments. Third, it silences those who are its targets, depriving them of their freedom of speech. Fourth, it offends by flouting social norms regarding proper verbal behavior. And, fifth, its expression is a speech act that shows disrespect for or even subordinates its targets. Look, labling something as subjective is not the same as saying it does not exist or is not important. There are documented studies, I assume, where the psychological effects of hate speech are shown. That may be subjective in so far as it will not effect everyone in the same way, but if you were to go around hitting people, it would hurt them each a little differently (the strong guys wouldnt be hurt, the old ladies might die). People are not alawys able to think perfectly rationally I know hes just an idiot if he calls me some bad name which Im not, but I still feel upset and I think an interesting angle to this is, how much different is hate crime from ordinary insults? If i call someone a stupid ignorant jerk is that really categorically different than calling someone a racial slur?I think the intent behind the speech is worth examining. For the stupid ignorant jerk i might just have been upset at them or clash with their personality. It is an individually directed attack (which I suppose is better?). But hate speech is taken from false stereotypical ideas about groups of people and intended to harm, opress, or in some way damage the targets simply because of their birth. Allright, thats all I will ramble about for now Challenging is different from banning. Banning merely allowsopinions to smolder and gain force over time. Banning also serves those who are in power. It so happens that today universityadministrations are typically liberal. The books or opinions that arebanned are called hate speech. Hate speech is defined asspeaking derogatorily against minorities. The danger, however, is thatuniversities may not always be dominated by this type of thinking. Perhaps speaking badly of capitalists will in the future be called hatespeech. Speaking in behalf of Marx will not only earn disdain, it maycall for punishment. Since opinions about revolution, class warfare,and the incorrigibe vices of capitalists have become banned opinions. The danger is not in what people say, or how they say it. The problem is the culture it helps to create. It becomes part of our socialization. For example, my mom has never seen a commercial or read a magazine article that said You should be afraid of all black people, yet, if shes walking down the street and a black person is coming in the other direction, her gut reaction is going to be to reach for her purse and hold on to it just a little tighter. Theres no logical reason for this, but she does it anyway. The danger with hate messages are the subliminal ones. Its the stereotypes that we learn and internalize without even realizing that were doing it. Then again, for some, there is still danger in the explicit hate speech as well. Take for instance, the attacks in Central Park.several of the attackers were video taped chanting lyrics to songs such as Like, woah, The Thong Song and Gangsta B. Try telling one of the over 50 women who were assualted that day that hate speech doesnt hurt anyone. Its just talk, NO one with any intelligence is advocating that the fact that somone is offended is the jutsifying condition for the limitation of hate speechFurthermore, theres no independent impact to the arguement: the affirmative is using pretty bright line standards of harm (working on the narrow assumption that oppression is a BAD THING) and the kind of subjective standards you decry are already employed in virtually every sexual harasment and discrimination case, all of which measue subjective mental states by reasonable man standards. Furthermore, its!become an almost incredibly stupid dogma among debaters that the marketplace of ideas is simply beyond reproach, requiring no kinds of outside conditions in order to be sustained. Try actually READING On Liberty. Mill says himself that the greatest danger to the free expression of ideas isnt censorship, but the way cultural conditions prevent us from listening to certain segments of our population. By defining censorship in the hopelessly narrow manner ofdirect suppression, we provide a linguistic mask for the very real patterns of exlusion that effectively remove minorities from our deliberation(i smell some discursive impacts, rights talk and critical race theory not being the least among them) . Im going to quickly tire of negatives devoting almost no critical thought to thier side of the debate, because they can simply regurgitate existing liberal doctrine. Since the posting of the new resolution there have been various definitions of the term hate speech. There seem to be two arguments emerging:1) The stock arguments that hate speech is hard to define., and2) The argumentation of lets define hate speech absurdly and critique the Like most LD debaters, I hate definitional debates. Therefore, I think that we should look to contextual definitons. Mari Matsuda, in Words that Wound, defines racist speech through three criteria: 1) the message itself suggests racial inferiority; 2) it is directed against a historically oppressed group; 3) the message is hateful, degrading, and persecutory in nature. Andrew Altman, in Campus Speech Codes, also defines hate speech as meeting three conditions: first, the speaker must intend to harm another individual based on specific characteristics (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation); second, the speech must be directly addressed to the individual; and finally, the speech must convey hate or contempt for the individual at whom Id also like to note here that the resolution is limited to the public expression of hate speech, which means that overly broad definitions of The two of you are both right the a slippery slope argument is a fallacyand all that. And so with the understanding that Im not in disagreement,let me add that I think a modification to slippery slope arguments oftenmakes them plenty reasonable. The fallacy of the argument is that because Xhappens, Z must also happen (often assuming no middle ground- Y- or notrecognizing a step ladder of varying levels and extremes upon which tobuild a rational understanding of whatever the topi c may be). That said, inarguments regarding hate speech, censorship, and the hypothetical effectthese concepts may have on protection of free speech, it doesnt seemunreasonable at all to show how one decision establishes a certainprecident, and that combined with human error and social imperfection, oneprecident may happen to lead to the undesirable outcome of Z, or at least astate of affairs that closely resembles Z. In other words, I think therecan logically be some truth to a similar line of argumentation, so long asit goes beyond pointing out shallow correlations or assuming some ungodlyseries of events will just happen to occur. Sometimes taking a little doesresult in taking a lot, and so on. Proving a link or showing a highprobability of a link is the catch, but such is debate. I found a great book on this.. its called campus Hate speech on trial by It provides arguments on both sides, and substantial evidence 4 both I will admit that the issue of whether accessing such hate speech via theweb constitutes public expression is arguable, but your argument here isthat even posting hate speech doesnt involve public expression. Is thistrue even if the poster is sending this hate speech to a listserv or webciteintending it to be seen by many others?The reason you would maybe even want to bring up the fact that you can use the internet as a type of public expression is to make the affs job harder. If you can prove that the internet can be used as a type of hate speech then that means the aff would have to defend prohibiting hate speech even on the internet on college campuses and thats just more trouble than its worht. Its a little petty but hey whatever wins. Regardless of where servers are located (and it really doesnt matter), Greg was right about why internet speech isnt topical: its avoidable. if you dont like messages, dont visit the web site. hate speech on campus isnt avoidable to those around; theyre forced to hear the hate groups messages and are affected by the speech without their consent. thats why hate I think that if public expression is defined to include the internet,good arguments are made to support this contention, and the judge isconvinced that this is the case, then this demonstrates good debatingskills and there is nothing unfair about it.However, if I was Aff, andI did not want the internet included, then I would use arguments that thisis not how public expression is understood in this context, or at least by most people. You could even point out that it would be *unfair* toinclude the internet in this debate (not that this is true). Who knows,this may be compelling enough for the judge to throw out the internet as* * I think that if public expression is defined to include the internet, **No it isnt because on the internet you have a choice if you want to view it or not. Whereas in public expression you have no choice in your listening. Deforestation Essay* Understand that while almost everyone will run the marketplace of ideas on the negative, that such a justification for freedom of speech is probably weakest in the hate speech context. First, the marketplace of ideas reduces speech to mere instrumental value, rather than intrinsic worth, and exposes the debater to criticism that the link is empirically false Second, the marketplace of ideas rests upon an analogy which may prove tenuous in the campus context. And third, the marketplace of ideas is subject to inherent limitations and restrictions which may encompass hate speech. Know your John Stuart Mill!* Critical race theory is obviously a fertile ground for many advanced affirmatives on this topic. Know the best ways to critique the Enlightenment philosophies and the racist assumptions underlying those philosophies. Dont be afraid to offer a kritik-style position in the round which urges the judge to take a brave stand against racism. * Watch for the paradox: the more entrenched racism is in our society, and thus the worse the harms, the more the negative will contend that the affirmative cant solve for those harms. Be sure to tell why the judges vote matters. A quick online search for hate speech or campus speech codes will turn up literally thousands of web pages. Good luck, and well be back with more in a week. Thats the whole flaw in this resolution. really there is no way to establish hate speech, because what is hate speech to one person is just speech or expression to another person. hate speech, morality they are both subjective which makes the neg so easy but the aff so difficult unless of course you get The slippery slope is a fallacy because it occurs when the conclusion of an argument rests upon an alleged chain reaction and there is not sufficient reason to think that the chain reaction will actually take place. Basically, when someone commits the slippery slope fallacy they depend on the supposition that X causes Y, whereas X probably will not cause Y at all. The link between the premise and conclusion depends on some imagined causal connection that probably doesnt existOk, back out of round. If this debater tells us that we set a dangerousprecedent, OK. If he/she says that we begin to grant authorities too muchpower with regards to our speech (for whatever reason), this is also OK. Ifthe debater argues that one restriction to speech encourages risky actionsamongst those who gots all the megapowers (and then explains), this wouldalso be fantabulicious. The problem stems from the suggestion that there issomehow a direct causal relationship between saying NO to Backstreet Boydeath threats, and saying NO to any other unrelated speech. The debaterassumes a slippery slope from policy A to policy B (which would undoubtedlybe horrid and fascist policy that might lead to nuclear holocaust). that is not true at all. Any speech that makes derogatory generalizationsabout people of particular colors, religions, and whatnot is hate speechto everybody. The Neo Nazis know just as well as everyone else that theirmessage is rooted in hate, and whats more, they are the first to say so,Over the past couple days, Ive finally gotten to do quite a bit of readingon the topic. It seems to me that the aff has quite a burden toovercomehate speech codes on college campuses have in many instances beenrejected because of two key reasons(1) hate speech codes can be viewed asparticularly suspect because they restrict speech due to content. It isparticularly difficult to maintain a strong value of freedom of speech whileallowing the content of the speech to be regulated. Many Supreme Courtjustices, as divergent in political philosophy as William Douglas to AntoninScalia, have written powerfully concerning this, and they make a lot ofsense. (2) many speech codes have also been overturned judici ally because ofoverbreadth and vagueness, two tendencies which seem almostintrinsically linked with any attempt to (a) define exactly what can berestricted because it is overly hateful, or (b) let victimized groups defineI know everybody and their novices will be running critical race theoristson this topic, talking about psychological harm and silencing, etc. Thispretty much means, I think, that if you want to advocate from this position,you also must agree with CRT folks that personal experience and narrativesof the oppressed ought to carry heavy weight in defining what is and isnthate speech. Additionally, most CRT folks recommend that only historicallyoppressed groups ought to be defended from hateful expression. All ofthis, it seems to me, causes great problems in crafting regulations whicharent at once likely to be very subjectively defined as well as verydebatable. Who has been or hasnt been historically oppressed is a matterof considerable difference of opinion. Second, this idea of vagueness can plausibly apply to any restriction. The way that we look at the vagueness of a rule is two-fold: 1) How uncertain or vague is the idea of the law? And 2) How significant is the harm that the restriction is working against? I think that a good aff will cover that ground or at least be able to do so. If we live in a society in which hate speech codes are being considered for college campuses, then it is a given that hate speech exists in other places within the society. Keeping that in mind, all the Neg. would have to prove is that it is better not to shelter the students from the real world. *In my mind, one of the most applicable Supreme Court cases to *regulating speech based upon content is that of Chaplinksy v. New*Hampshire. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the First *Amendment did not protect fighting words.1) Minor point: Has anyone else noticed how often New Hampshire shows up in landmark free speech cases? (In addition to Chaplinsky, one also finds Cox v. New Hampshire 1941, Poulos v. New Hampshire 1953, Wooley v. Maynard 1977this is the case about the Live Free or Die license plates, etc.) Weird. 2) Major point: Chaplinsky was a unanimous 1942 decision, but the court began eroding it almost before the ink was dry. There have been any number of subsequent decisions which all but killed the so-called fighting words doctrine. Take a look at Cohen v. California 1971, for instance, or Gooding v. WilBibliography: