Thursday, August 24, 2017

"UC Berkeley chancellor’s message on free speech"

Via Instapundit: This fall, the issue of free speech will once more engage our community in powerful and complex ways. Events in Charlottesville, with their racism, bigotry, violence and mayhem, make the issue of free speech even more tense. The law is very clear; public institutions like UC Berkeley must permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view. The United States has the strongest free speech protections of any liberal democracy; the First Amendment protects even speech that most of us would find hateful, abhorrent and odious, and the courts have consistently upheld these protections.

But the most powerful argument for free speech is not one of legal constraint — that we’re required to allow it — but of value. The public expression of many sharply divergent points of view is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a university. The philosophical justification underlying free speech, most powerfully articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book, On Liberty, rests on two basic assumptions. The first is that truth is of such power that it will always ultimately prevail; any abridgement of argument therefore compromises the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. The second is an extreme skepticism about the right of any authority to determine which opinions are noxious or abhorrent. Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it. . . .

We all desire safe space, where we can be ourselves and find support for our identities. You have the right at Berkeley to expect the university to keep you physically safe. But we would be providing students with a less valuable education, preparing them less well for the world after graduation, if we tried to shelter them from ideas that many find wrong, even dangerous. We must show that we can choose what to listen to, that we can cultivate our own arguments and that we can develop inner resilience, which is the surest form of safe space.

(link to source)

5 comments:

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Or in the words of that great philosopher...

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Link fixed

Amartel said...

Actions would speak louder.
Apparently, she's new in this office, and this is one of her first forays. She has been around academia since forever, thought, in various positions at Berkeley then was president of Smith College 2002-13 then back to Berzerk.

Methadras said...

Berkely Chancellor can say anything it wants, but it also know that it has no power since the student body mob has been completey co-opted and could give two shits what the Chancellor has to say. Any students mobs have been arrested, censured, suspended, or expelled? Answer: no.

That is the impact of the Chancellors flowery bullshit words. Useless and worthless.

edutcher said...

Meth may well be right, but at least the guy gets it. There is such a thing as giving a good example.

Whoda thunk?