Academic and Workplace Freedom – Open Thread

Whoops….that was supposed to link to this: http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/159920/

You know, the only reason I ever started writing online– the only reason– was because I realized how many otherwise decent and intelligent people failed to see that there is no divide between an idea and its expression, and that as long as someone else’s definition of what is or is not legitimate discourse holds sway, freedom of expression has no meaning. So it bums me right the fuck out to see you follow a post calling for academic freedom with one saying “no trolling.” There’s no difference between saying “no trolling” and saying “no saying things I don’t like.” None at all.

Well, I guess as my previous post was deleted, I’ll re-post:

http://twitchy.com/2012/12/18/university-of-rhode-island-professors-retweet-murder-anyone-who-thinks-teachers-should-be-armed/

Someone purposely (?) left out his more offensive comments. Intellectual honesty please.

Jeff: do the same standards apply to, say, Reynolds? Just curious – because the literal minded could come up with a mountain of quotes from him that would be more offensive.

” The left doesn’t launch campaigns to have relatively powerless people on the other side fired”

No, they just call swat teams on right wing bloggers.

I accidentally posted this in the other thread, having opened it before the update:
Reporting Loomis to the FBI was wrong and possibly even illegal, but he should not be defended against the social consequences of his twitter posts.
He chose to write a profanity-laden rant that got downright creepy (beating people to death, really?), and he chose to publish it under his own name. That means his reputation rightly suffers for it.
If he wasn’t comfortable with that he could have used a throwaway account for angry outbursts, like sensible internet users do.

He retweeted it as part of his screed, which by my understanding of twitter is “saying the same thing somebody else just said”.

ecurb, that’s not my understanding of retweeting, or of quotation in general. We quote people to associate ourselves with their utterance, but not to identify ourselves with it.

Coulter @15 — you’re having a conversation entirely inside your own head. You believe that an untenured professor who did X would not get tenure — and that confirms your opinion about political discourse. More firmly grounded generalities, please.

Henry @5 is absolutely right. There is a difference between speech and things that look like speech but aren’t, though the “looks like” thing makes that difference hard to pin down in many particular cases.

You think X, I think not-X, so I say not-X: not trolling. You think X, and I want to provoke and annoy you, so I say not-X: trolling. One is a speech act, one is the online equivalent of pushing someone, or spitting in their face. Though, again, they can be hard to distinguish in particular cases.

Not getting the concept of trolling is a lot like not getting why white people can’t use the n-word. Speech isn’t always speech.

Coulter @ 15:

Do you have any basis whatsoever for your claim that an untenured professor who said teachers should be armed would be denied tenure? Who do you imagine standing in his or her way (assuming that is that s/he met the actual tenure requirements of his or her department)? I think you’d find that the vast majority of academics believe that professors should never be punished professionally for expressing political opinions, however idiotic.

“I think you’d find that the vast majority of academics believe that professors should never be punished professionally for expressing political opinions, however idiotic.”

I think you are correct – which is why the vast majority of academics believe conservatives means they don’t meet actual tenure requirements. Just like country clubs that excluded blacks didn’t exclude them because they were black, but merely because “they didn’t meet the admission requirements”. If you think anyone who believes in certain “idiotic” beliefs is an idiot, what follows …

Basis for my claims? Too much time in academia and too many off the cuff comments like Loomis’ directed towards: christians in general, catholics specifically, republicans, but never till this debate started, NRA members, but I can add it to the list.

The fooferaw over Erik Loomis reminded me of the key moment in the novel “The Human Stain” — anyone else?

Coulter @21:

I think you are correct – which is why the vast majority of academics believe conservatives means they don’t meet actual tenure requirements. Just like country clubs that excluded blacks didn’t exclude them because they were black, but merely because “they didn’t meet the admission requirements”.

Again: care to offer even a single, actual example of this phenomenon, i.e. someone being denied tenure because s/he expressed a conservative view? Or evidence that most academics believe that conservatives “don’t meet tenure requirements” (which incidentally have to do with scholarship and teaching, not one’s political views)?

(Excellent working in of the “liberals-are-the-real-racists” / “we are the Jews of liberal fascism” meme, btw!)

I tire of the reactionaries’ feigned outrage. The stuff they routinely spout , and now their sensitive souls have been troubled ? Stop.

JW Mason #29: I’m going to steal this from you in the future. Perfect.

Henry, will try to look at that. I guess what I am trying to do is to challenge the hierarchy of argument here. This post does mention “academic and workplace freedom,” which is why I thought I was writing responsively, and the prior post soliciting signatures situates this in the broader context of rights to speak publicly. But it also fairly unambiguously emphasizes the need to “stand[] behind a member of their faculty” and “the importance of academic freedom and of scholars’ freedom independently to express views (even intemperate ones) on topics of public importance.” I view the speech as so tangentially related to his scholarly functions as to flip the order of emphasis, recognizing that this does require some ability to distinguish reprisals based on scholarship and reprisals based on “ordinary speech” — but tending to feel that a scholar’s protections in that latter regard should be little if any greater than anyone else’s.

#29:

“You’re the guy who, stung by the line “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges,” thinks the problem is that we’re not being strict enough insisting that everyone has to sleep out in the rain.”

That *is* a really good line, and I guess that alone justifies it. Still, I think you’re mistakenly assuming that I think the hypothetical tire dealer should be fired, and I’m not sure why. If you care, my view is actually that neither should suffer any job-related reprisals, nor should anyone think they can make headway by bellyaching at the employers. I also think that academics tend to lose their commitment to the rights of others by associating ancillary rights with the privileges of the academy, and I also think that same mentality tends to attract criticism from those who resent that artificial privileging and rightly detect it has less of a differentiable functional case than is pretended. But don’t let that deter you.

“It sounds like a professor made some dumb comments over twitter.”

Dumb in the sense of “provoking the wrath of far-right bullies in a way that might have been foreseen”, yes. Dumb in the absolute sense, no.

I thoroughly endorse his comments, all of which *were* a reasonable reaction to the events of last Friday, which *was* made possible by the evil bastards at the NRA, and *could not* have happened in any of the dozens of developed countries with sane firearms policies.

if I started tweeting about a Homosexual Conspiracy to Corrupt Our Youth, I would not be surprised if a lot of gay people took offense and decided to mess with me.

And if there was conclusive evidence accepted by every reasonable scholar on the topic who wasn’t part of the Gay Conspiracy that such a conspiracy existed, then you would nonetheless be right to publicise and tweet about it.

As CS Lewis noted, if witchcraft were real, then the mediaeval reaction to witchcraft would not have been at all unreasonable. The NRA really is a conspiracy that systematically corrupts the government and whose efforts lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths every year.

^ I can see we’re not going to make any progress here. People like you can’t be reasoned with, so I guess Congressional Subcommittee Hearings at dawn are the only way to settle it.

I wonder if a chilling effect will be a consequence of this series of events centered on Professor Loomis.

Henry, I did read the post (your original link worked better, but no need to correct). I don’t understand the “very deliberately” snark. I actually had acknowledged, equally deliberately, that your prior post situates this complaint in that broader context, so I wasn’t exactly suggesting that it was missing (see #32). I was explicitly querying the hierarchy of claims, which strike me as eliciting academic support for a (relative) academic privilege, and then explained why I thought that was bad. I don’t expect you to lavish any particular attention on that query, but it’d be nice not to be read so dismissively. Thanks, though, for the earlier book suggestion, and for responding.

Go away and stop trolling, john b. We know that case is seriously wrong, and it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. You’ve just run out of cheap jabs.

I am new to academia; as one who has worked in the private sector for much of my career, I view social media as professional tools. I do not think it is appropriate to use a public forum like twitter to “call for the head” of anyone, nor do I think it appropriate to use the “f” bomb on social media (as it appears Erik Loomis has done) – it’s simply not professional language to use in any way, shape or form. It most certainly does not elevate the level of discourse.

When one uses public forums to say unpopular things in a “personal capacity,” there is a risk that employers may not like it – this is found in the private sector as well (http://huff.to/T8MhmT), and not isolated to the issue of academic freedom. I warn my students that they need to be very, very careful with what they post on social media. It seems from that twitchy site noted above that Erik has been intemperate (to put it mildly) on occasion in his tweets. He has posted tweets that are not at all professional in their tone or language. He’s not just saying “unpopular things” – he’s saying them in a rather ugly and angry manner. Does he talk like that in his class? Is this what academic freedom is for? I don’t know his situation at all, so cannot comment on that.

That said, I am extremely concerned about the violent rhetoric raging at a continual boil within the conservative faction of our most conservative party. When Obama won, Mary Matalin defined our president as a “political narcissistic sociopath [who] leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform.” (http://bit.ly/YneF9z) It is astonishing to me that a high-profile conservative would label our president a “narcissistic sociopath.” And for that, I’m sure she’s been applauded by her audience for such phrasing.

That Erik’s tweet has been elevated to a threat on someone’s life – reported to the FBI – the focus of enormous attention for now (until the beast gets bored, as it always does) – seems an extreme reaction to his tweet. But we live in a society where, to protect the right of gun owners, we have people recommending that teachers get a gun to go with their gradebook and attendance sheets. And where a slew of conservatives seem to think the nation is being run by a “sociopath.” And where a major corporation like HSBC can pay a hefty fine for money laundering, and yet no one person is charged with the actual crime of money laundering. And yet Erik’s tweet has been reported to the FBI.

It is alarming, actually. And it isn’t just academic freedom that is at stake.

In this case, Loomis said gun rights advocates should be put in jail

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of “hyperbole,” I suppose.

Loomis said gun rights advocates should be…“beaten to death.”

He did not.

@Scott —

Sorry, he “retweeted” a tweet that said “First fucker to say the solution is for elementary school teachers to carry guns needs to get beaten to death.”

As for the jail part, he posted multiple comments urging the imprisonment of gun rights advocates, treating such advocacy as tantamount to terrorism, and repeated such things even several days later, e.g. “Dear rightwingers, to be clear, I don’t want to see Wayne LaPierre dead. I want to see him in prison for the rest of his life. #nraterrorism”

If it was just hyperbole, why continue to repeat it even after being called on it. Again, his speech should be protected and he doesn’t deserve all the consequences his comments unleashed, but his comments are still worthy of condemnation.

I’m not sure this hyperbolically violent speech is as harmless as people seem willing to assume. Sure it’s cartoon stuff, not reality, but in times of stress, or in overstressed people, I don’t believe the human brain is nice about the distinction. A matter of mental hygiene. At best it’s a nasty speech habit, like coprolalia, and should be similarly offensive. Ie, not in itself a disqualification from academia.

The left doesn’t launch campaigns to have relatively powerless people on the other side fired.

I find it interesting that the ruggedly self-reliant (with the help of $150k from Tennessee taxpayers) Glenn Reynolds reacted in the manner one associates with a four-year-old running to his mummy.

If it was just hyperbole, why continue to repeat it even after being called on it.

Perhaps it’s akin to continuing one’s role as Eugene Volokh’s water-carrier when he spouts something typically sociopathic? Note that nobody in that thread suggested that he be subject to academic sanction.

This is seriously fucking ridiculous. Just for example, has Adler even attempted to account for all the times a conservative writers have used wording that, were it taken literally, would obviously be calling for murder? Has he, or anyone else, tried to account for the fact that they have done this over and over again. (And no, you fucking google it.)

It’s also remarkably frustrating to see other well-minded people getting all, “oh that was in bad taste”, etc. Seriously, you’re trying to be nice to people who wouldn’t know a good-faith argument if it shot them in the fucking head.

N.B.: Yes, I am recommending kinky sex acts with google, and that arguments should have 2nd amendment rights. (Also, I did sign the statement; under my real name.)

Dave –

It certainly matters if Loomis wanted him dead and wrote to that effect; that’s potentially an incitement or threat (it isn’t necessarily one those, but it potentially could be). Except in an already-charged environment in which a metaphorical statement could be taken as an incitement such as an angry crowd (which did not exist regardless of fevered onlookers’ desire to turn the metaphorical one his their head into a literal one), a recognizably metaphorical statement couldn’t be one of those things. So it matters. And disregard Urban Dictionary: just consult your own familiarity with the English language. If that doesn’t extend to recognizing that statement as metaphorical, then it’s you who don’t matter, not the question. The question matters. And the question’s answer to “If Loomis wants Watne LaPierre dead” is: no, he doesn’t.

Their “touchiness” speaks volumes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/opinion/the-nra-protection-racket.html?hp&gwh

So Jonathan Adler wants to claim that Loomis’ statements show he’s in favor of jailing his political opponents for petitioning the government in favor of policies Loomis doesn’t like.

‘Sfunny, because I thought Loomis’ statements show he’s in favor of things like returning the ability for people to sue guns manufacturers by holding them liable for negligence when their products are used in crimes. Which was taken away in a 2005 law. Or allowing RICO prosecutions for violations of federal firearms laws, which has been kicking around Washington since at least 1968. Y’know, measures “that would mean real accountability for causing immeasurable harm,” in Loomis’ words, for both gun manufacturers and the NRA. Measures that have been bog-standard policy components of gun control debates. That’s what I thought Loomis was talking about. And not jailing people for disagreeing with him. ‘Sfunny.

Maybe it’s not so funny. Because this is the second time in two goddamn days that Adler’s unfamiliarity with liberal/left/Democratic proposals to reduce gun violence has lead him to claim that members of the left are being irresponsible and more concerned with scorched-earth partisanship than being serious.

Whether done consciously or unconsciously, it’s a great rhetorical tactic. It demonizes people to the left of him while allowing him to claim the moral high ground, and re-orients discussion around people to his left proving to his satisfaction they can be taken seriously and away from the atrocious behavior of his political allies.

It’s also good ol’ bullshit in the Frankfurt sense, and perhaps he should stop commenting on this issue until he can figure out how to stop doing it (if it’s unconscious) or that it’s wrong to do (if it’s conscious).

First, I apologize for adding an inappropriate comment to petition: I think you added the update before I refreshed the page.

Second, I fully agree with the content of that petition.
However, I have a quibble about it.
It seems to me you make 3 arguments in favor of Erik
1) His comments were grossly misinterpreted
2) A university has a duty to protect academic freedom and foster debate
3) “It also speaks to a broader set of rights to speak freely without the fear of being fired for controversial views that many of us have been flagging for years.” and ” the protections of the First Amendment require our collective enforcement, and that all employers—particularly, in this kind of case, university employers—have a special obligation to see that freedom of speech become a reality of everyday life.”

Now, I agree with all 3 points: but I don’t think bloggers at CR and LGM have much standing claiming 3) after the John Derbyshire affaire.
I find it difficult to claim “rights to speak freely without the fear of being fired for controversial views” after pushing for the firing of Derby and cheering after it.
The time to show support for such rights is when someone is fired for expressing views we don’t like and we find abhorrent.

It must be disconcerting to find yourself hassled by the police, and harassed by overindulged, mean spirited halfwits, so best of luck to Loomis. No one (ideally) should have to live with these sorts of random threats to their financial, and physical, security.

But it would be something if Loomis took this time to reflect on his ‘civil liberties for certain types of people at certain times’ stance. I guess he’s lucky there’s not a Presidential election coming up. (fwiw, I really dont think the left are better on this than the (not insane) right. Loomis’ tweets alone show a (pretty common) indifference towards protecting speech he disagrees with)

Tim, you have a main job as a commodities trader, right? You should not be at risk for being fired from that job for your political opinions, even though I would say your political are about 95.2% completely wrong. Maybe someone can concoct some extreme scenario where you managed to drive all of your clients away, but short of that on your own time you should get to be Wrongstall to your heart’s content.

Brad is criticizing journalists for failing to do their jobs. They have a job, and they should do it. If they decline to do it, they should be fired, like anyone else. Walmart greeters who don’t like saying hello to strangers should be fired, and journalists who don’t like uncovering the truth because it means they get worse party invitations should be as well.

Walt,

I am not sure, if Derbyshire is a good example here – but then I am not sure if he’s a bad one, either. After all, talking about workplace freedom cannot mean that you are free to do a bad job without any consequences. But as for an opinion writer, I am not sure what doing a “bad job” is. One must not forget in Derbyshire’s case – as Ta-Nehisi Coates duly noted – that his racism was overt and obvious for years before that column that led to his firing from NRO. The right question here is to ask why he was hired in the first place. The case tells more about NRO than about Derbysihre whose blatant racism has been known before. So while I cannot bring myself to feel sorry for him (especially as he does have a job, now) I think targeting Derbyshire as the one who did the “bad job” is the wrong thing to do.

Is it really possible that someone cannot see the difference between calling for firing a political commentator for his political comments made as art of his job as political commentator, and firing a history professor for his political comments made outside his job? Or between suggesting a journalist who misrepresents facts in her writing be Fred, and suggesting a history professor displaying bad manners on twitter be fired?

Seriously, I don’t think we would complain if some academic was let go who spent his lectures on medieval farming practices cursing out the NRA – because that would be not doing their job. But this is not what happened.

In general I really want to support what shah posted way up the thread, regarding the social construction of free speech vs. an absolutist take. And I want to add that this suggests to me defending our freedom from employer harassment through union organization rather than academy specific legal protections would ultimately be preferable.

Yes of course the racist anthropologist shoud go. Racist theories are simply wrong. Espousing them in anthropology is like teaching creationism in the biology department.

@64 – My point is that if you’re going to defend someone’s speech, you should acknowledge the whole of what they said that others find objectionable. As for what Loomis said, if someone says people should be jailed for advocating their political beliefs, and then repeats that express position — and even reiterates that position when trying to explain away the use ofviolent rhetoric — I take them at their word.

Thanks for your answer, christian: at least now I see our disagreement is not something superficial, but quite fundamental; I wonder if the bloggers at CT and LGM share your view.

Further, it is only completely outrageous to suggest that some political beliefs are intolerable if you are an unusually doctrinaire libertarian. It is not, actually, incumbent on all US citizens to agree with Jonathan Adler.

Also, I fail to see how it is both utterly unacceptable for Erik Loomis to say that Wayne LaPierre’s political beliefs are unacceptable, and also acceptable to use the forces of the state (the FBI) and the private forces of capital (Erik Loomis’s boss) to force him to shut up.

I am in full solidarity, as they say, with Daniel Davies’s call for you to wind your neck in.

I have tried to endorse the statement, only to have my comment get sent to moderation, andc then not get posted. I suspect that this is because my comment looks like that of an imposter–because I tried to use my real name (and my usual e-mail address) rather than my usual pseudonym. A couple of other people told me in comments at LGM that something similar happened to them. Given what happened to Prof. Loomis, I’m not quite prepared to abandon my pseudonym completely. Whether or not this is fixable, I want to express my appreciation for CT taking the considerable time and effort to post this statement and allow others to sign on.

The attacks on Loomis are disgusting and hypocritical. The only “threats” that should ever be subject to the criminal law are those that are genuinely credible and intended.

I also see a more general development that I think tracks technological development more than anything else, which has allowed for much more mediated speech. We have always had quite authoritarian civic polities but before everything was recorded and easily copied and kept, there wasn’t THAT much content to parse to use in partisan attacks. Now there is loads, intemperate language coming from any direction has become a battleground. I hope that this might lead everyone to chill out a little bit more over mere words, but I don’t see that happening yet.

In the UK, we have loads of stupid twitter cases with people ending up in prison for what, in the US, would probably be protected speech.

I don’t think you can make general rules about freedom of speech and the workplace. If part of your job, for example, is being the public face of a company, then you might be doing a bad job if you are willing to express (subjectively) offensive personal opinions in public. The same goes more generally for expressing offensive opinions to co-workers.

I think that if your personal views don’t have any bearing on your employers, then there should be a presumption that you should not be disciplined or fired for holding those views. I think academics also require a greater presumption of liberty because, as researchers, they are always testing the limits of whats true and false. Potentially true, but previously unconsidered ideas, are often perceived as offensive when first heard. But thats not so much a priviledge that academics deserve, its just good practice for universities that want to produce interesting research.

A hearty “fuck you, asshole” to Trader Joe. and his clutched pearls.

Ooh, let me just say, having now seen the Trader Joe comment, that I’m really not with the just deserts crowd. My view is that that Loomis should be left alone for the very same reason that a tire dealer’s employee should be. We don’t need here to confront the question whether the tire dealer could fire that employee for vitriolic tweets against its customers, particular manufacturers, or even car culture in general.

Context and audience make differences. If we had a recent context of angry lefty mobs beating rightwing politicians to death, and/or parading their heads on sticks, then comments like those made or attributed to Prof. Loomis would indeed be troubling–but we don’t. Compare, for example, posting pictures and home addresses of abortion providers online, with crosshairs superimposed over the pictures of those still alive.

And, if you are a US rightwing politician or political commentor, you know from recent history that you audience contains some violent extremists, and you should exercise some care not to incite them. Since the late 60s–early 70s, that’s not so much true on the left.

I do not get the “It’s just some tweets” as compared to allegedly more serious forms of expressing one’s opinion. Dan Davies hade a discussion with Nassim Taleb via twitter. Following a negative response by Acemoglu/Robinson to his equally negative review of their book, Jeff Sachs had a discussion with various people on the topic via twitter. Maybe some years ago “It’s just tweets” was an excuse. But it is a platform for serious, yet pointed remarks for some time now.

And true, I am with several commenters here that his other tweets considered, the post in support of Loomis gave a very one-sided impression of the issue. I doubt that a lot of right-wingers would get the benefit of the doubt to this extent. Rather the attempt to justify an expression via the urban dictionary and the non-excuse excuse (the “sorry if you felt offended”) would have been ridiculed. At least from my part.

But Martin, no-one is saying “sorry if” NRA types are offended, Loomis is saying he’s sorry they aren’t in jail.

The defence is not that he’s sorry he said offensive stuff, it’s that he’s allowed to say offensive stuff and not get fired.

Niall McAuley,

I was referring to Loomis defence on LGM. He uses the same excuse for the head on a stick quote that is mentioned here, but he does not talk about all the other tweets and retweets.

Of course, I stand by my support for the statement in support, this is not a question of my feelings with regard to the appropriateness of his tweets. But readers here or at LGM have not been provided with the full picture that constitutes a backdrop against which you can interpret his comments much more negatively than just as “He didn’t mean it, really”, and reasonably so. This, IMHO, weakens the actual case here in a perverse sense in that it kind of gives the impression that really, this was just one slip, the outcry therefore an inapproproate attack of crazy right-wingers, and consequently he must be defended against their distortions of his comments.

Martin @63 “the other side …” You seem to be under the impression that there are two (permanently entrenched) sides here and that I’m on the same “side” as Brad DeLong. That would come as news to both of us.

The president of the University of Rhode Island could have issued a statement dissociating the university from Loomis’s remarks while at the same time reaffirming a commitment to free speech and making absolutely clear that no professor at the university would face adverse consequences as a result of exercising his or her right to free expression.

That is not what URI did. Instead, the president issued a statement that distanced the university from Loomis’s remarks and from Loomis himself, implicitly treated a figure of speech as a literal threat, and concluded with banal, boilerplate, platitudinous stuff about creating a climate of positive, constructive change and so forth.

No one doubts that the president of URI is committed to a positive, equitable climate of reasoned discourse etc etc. To issue this kind of routine bureaucratic boilerplate instead of a thoughtful statement, and to fail to support your staff’s right to free expression, is offensive and casts a very bad light on the URI administrators. A university president should do more than parrot platitudes in this kind of situation.

I have not read Loomis’s full twitter remarks. If he called for, or even suggested that he might be in favor of, jailing so-called ‘gun-rights advocates’, I think that was, at a minimum, very ill-considered. But the focus on his “head on a stick” remark is clearly just hypocritical posturing by the right wing.

In sum, a main reason I signed the CT statement (and under my full name) is that I was offended by the URI president’s letter and what I would characterize as its cowardice, banality, and stupidity.

@ Chris Bertram

True, I did not account for your not-so-pleasant experiences with Delong. But reading this comment thread, I think the two-sides issue is indeed there, if permanently entrenched or not. And as far as there is a principled concern here to argue for (and I think there is), the impression that in fact we have a case of revealed groupthink hidden behind this expressed concern is not helpful.

Just like to remind everyone here that Tim Worstall has written for the National Review and cannot be considered to be anything like an “honest broker”.

Coulter, I actually quite like a good troll. Someone who can recognize prejudices of a particular group, and push the right buttons. There’s a skill to that.

You’re not good. You’re piss poor in fact. Find another hobby. Macrame, knitting gun targets. Something that doesn’t involve the use of words.

#109 – As its written, I think she’s saying that the price of civilization is that you have to accept that a disagreement at work may cost you your life. At least in the US.

I guess the price of civilization in the UK is that psychotics have to put up with the fact that they can’t just shoot annoying faculty members. Which just sounds awful.

“I imagine you’d have some trouble in the US if you went about advocating the political beliefs of Osama bin Laden, say. And very few people would disagree for a moment.”

But people should be allowed to advocate waging holy war against the West without being prosecuted for it, imho

Was there some evidence that Amy Bishop is or was a political liberal or Democrat?

Steve LaBonne @ #88:
A hearty “fuck you, asshole” to Trader Joe. and his clutched pearls.

NOW we see the hypocrisy of the Left! Steve LaBonne is telling Trader Joe to…have anal sex with himself…I think….and to clutch pearls! What does it mean that Steve asserts that the presumably male T. Joe has pearls? He is also saying T. Joe is an anus rather than a human being. Violent, demeaning speech. Fo shame.

What I don’t understand is why the nation’s religious leader aren’t waging a holy war against La Pierre and company? Where are they?

it’s an impossible task to tell people that when a right-winger superimposes cross-hairs on someone’s picture, that’s bad, but when a left-winger says they want a head on a stick, it’s OK.

It’s quite easy. Rightwingers are actually shooting people. Leftwingers are not actually decapitating people and parading their heads on sticks. Most people can grasp that–I’m not sure why you have difficulty with it.

This is a link to a non-profit that focuses on defending students first amendment rights at University. According to them over 3/5ths of colleges unconstitutionally limit their students free speech on campus. http://thefire.org/article/15257.html

The issue with Loomis under sanction for saying something unpopular is hardly new, and hardly limited to Loomis’ viewpoints.

“And in fact they are allowed to advocate holy war against the West without being prosecuted for it.”

Depends how adamant you are

TW @ 65 —

you’re missing a couple points, there.

BDL/the whole left-liberal blogosphere version of calling for people to be fired usually focuses on people a) being simply misinformed or dishonest (thus are not doing their job as journalists) or b) being racist/sexist/etc — views which advocate for the systematic mistreatment of other human beings. people are calling for Loomis to be fired for an entirely different reason, viz. that what he said constitutes an incitement to violence, not on the actual political content of what he said.

this distinction is important because what Loomis said is neither spreading disinformation nor (realistically) advocating for systematic mistreatment of people based on their identity. those are reasonable causes for people in journalistic or academic roles to be fired. in fact, the people calling for his firing implicitly acknowledge that by construing the problem as one of public order (or at least that’s the only reason they could give for calling the FBI) because of its effects, not its actual content, which is obviously specious. or in other words, even the right is implicitly acknowledging the distinction between hate speech and hypberbole because if Loomis’ speech because of its political content were a reason for his being fired, they’d make that point. his speech’s narrowly political content simply calls for strong gun regulation in a hyperbolic tone. that’s not comparable to speech (which BDL and others call out — how about that CHE thing recently??) whose political content states or implies that we should systematically mistreat people based on racial, sexual, ethnic, etc. identity.

“Just like to remind everyone here that Tim Worstall has written for the National Review and cannot be considered to be anything like an “honest broker”.”

Who in hell ever thought I was, is, or could be? I’m just me I’m afraid.

““But people should be allowed to advocate waging holy war against the West without being prosecuted for it, imho”

And in fact they are allowed to advocate holy war against the West without being prosecuted for it. ”

I agree with the first statement. The second, coming from the UK as I do, I have certain problems with. For there have most certainly been lynch mobs insisting (Abu Hookhand, Belmarsh prisoners etc) some should have been jailed on the basis that they’ve not actually done anything illegal, but should be jailed just because. You know, their views, speech etc.

Those lynch mobs at times seemingly including the government and the junior judiciary. In the Belmarsh cases almost as bad as the Birmingham and Guildford cases. Being guilty of being Irish in the vicinity of an IRA atrocity.

I may or may not be an “honest broker” but I am, as the mere individual I am, an absolutist on matters like free speech and fair trials. Which means that not only does everyone deserve that fiar trial, everyone exercising their free speech gets to hear (umm, sorry, cannot prevent) everyone else exercising that same right.

From abroad (yeah, I know, France -that sure won’t help. Actually, a French academic. So sue me), a few quick remarks

a) I have read with neither surprise nor shock the entire series of posts by Loomis. I would not have tweeted them, not because I necessarily disagree with his feelings or analysis, but because I never write something which could be used against me if I can avoid it, being solidly paranoid (and also because I don’t have either a Tweeter or a Facebook account). But Loomis’ oral violence is absolutely not worse than your average set of, say, anti-Obama tweets on the evening of the last election -and I have a few spectacular ones at the disposal of anybody interested. And of course calling for jailing political opponents because they threaten the Republic is about as standard today on the right as the Pledge of Allegiance, in fact crazy Republican politician Bill Chumley is trying to turn it into law in South Carolina, so no outrage whatsoever there.

b) While undoubtedly both sides “do it”, i.e. use extremely violent language on tweets or the internet, NOT both sides change the meaning of a sentence to turn it into a spurious motive for police intervention, and above all NOT both sides write headlines such as:
“University of Rhode Island professor’s retweet: Murder anyone who thinks teachers should be armed”
This is pure witch-hunting at two levels
– First because the name AND JOB POSITION of the opponent is given prominently, which is tantamount to a demand that that person be fired (in fact in my book this should be grounds for a lawsuit for intimidation). And don’t give me parallels with Derbyshire and the like: Loomis’ tweeted rant was not a course he gave to students on University time. I am not a First Amendment absolutist myself, being French, but no firing by an employer for opinions expressed is acceptable if it’s not related to a problem observed on the job, and the case has to be made pretty strongly. Here we are very, very far from that, so it’s not even an issue of academic freedom, in my view.
– Second, because the really retweeted sentence “First fucker to say the solution is for elementary school teachers to carry guns needs to get beaten to death” is NOT the same thing as the purportedly retweeted sentence “Murder anyone who thinks teachers should be armed”. The second statement is an unequivocal call for assassination, in the imperative mood, the first is not, and what seems to be a tiny difference is actually a big one. “Needs to”, “should be”, “deserves”, the passive voice, and the like, are qualifiers. With such qualifiers one is being outrageous, without them one is being murderous. Modifying Loomis’ quote so that he will look murderous rather than outrageous can only be read as a dishonest ploy to get him fired (and I am not even considering the less serious difference between “First fucker to say” and “anyone”).

c) I totally disagree with people arguing this is a sideshow. Part of the success of the U.S. left in pushing back against Fox News and the Tea Party is based on the new social media. It is absolutely no coincidence that in the wake of their lack of success in November, they start attacking internet opponents. If they succeed in enforcing a gag rule against over-the-top commentary on the left, they will be able to keep a corner on righteous outrage, an important tool in delegitimizing any pushback against them. While I think the low-road righteous outrage is less efficient than the high-road one, there is no reason to entirely leave the former to the other side, since they use it with such abandon.

d) most importantly: the University of Rhode Island reaction is worse than disgraceful. I agree with #102 LFC that this is where there are serious grounds for protest, and am circulating a protest mail to European colleagues. Employers aligning with extreme-right-wing bullies is bad enough, and remember that during the end of 1940s witch-hunt, employer retaliation was the main tool used against “radicals”. A University doing so is downright frightening: academics are supposed to be protected against this kind of pressure, so if they are not safe, nobody is.

Incidentally, University employers do face special freedom of speech requirements, not because academics are nicer, or more fragile, or more deserving, or whatever, but because the possibility for an academic to say stuff which sounds asinine must be highly protected in order to ensure free, fruitful research. The problem is that really asinine stuff and really new stuff tend to sound equally asinine to aging bosses and cranky trustees, or even the general public, which is a very good reason to severely limit the ability of said bosses and trustees to negatively react when contents they don’t like is offered, or to blindly follow the whims of the general public. Unfortunately, there is much more really asinine stuff than really new stuff produced on any given day. So the price to pay for having really new stuff once in a while is wave after wave of, well, the rest, year in and year out. Yes, being an academic is nice, but there are downsides.

PG, Paris, France

I’d like to propose the rule of the blogger’s two bodies. The stranger to you who argues as a public figure in public forums can be engaged, attacked, demeaned, shat upon*, and generally heaped with scorn in public forums, as a public figure. You can call for a blogger’s head on a stake*, write on your blog that that horrible bastard Niall Ferguson/Juan Cole/Daniel Drezner/Erik Loomis should be fired, and whatever other degree of name-calling and hair-pulling* expressions of rage you feel like indulging. Stop with the public person. Don’t call, write, visit, stalk, call the employer of, call the police on, or otherwise fuck with the human being behind the public figure, who you don’t know and have no business with.

Regarding the above discussion, I would expect that this rule would apply to a tire shop employee to precisely the same degree as a professor. I would not try to get the cashier at my supermarket or a Starbucks employee or whoever fired because he or she tweeted bad stuff about Wayne LaPierre or Tim Geithner or Blake Lively from home the night before.

(* Metaphorically!)

Writing on a blog that you by god wish Harvard would fire that one total jerkface guy is a different act than calling Harvard, asking for someone who can fire him, and presenting them with an argument that he should be fired.

URI’s stupid response came not as a result of blog posts, but as a result of phone calls to the URI administration.

I think brad DeLong was seriously in the wrong w/r/t Ferguson, but I think the example is distinguishable.

“I think brad DeLong was seriously in the wrong w/r/t Ferguson”

Don’t tell me you didn’t have a chuckle at Brad DeLongs ‘fire his ass now’ campaign? Great bit of banter.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror.”

Well that’s mere description, for crying out loud.

Chris Bray: “Writing on a blog that you by god wish Harvard would fire that one total jerkface guy is a different act than calling Harvard, asking for someone who can fire him, and presenting them with an argument that he should be fired.”

The only distinction I can see is something like, blogposts should be regarded as non-operative hot air, but phone calls should be regarded as real. I completely understood the distinction previously offered, concerning figures of speech, such as metaphors, not being confused with operative literalisms, and that seems tenable enough. But, you, apparently think a fence should be erected around blogging (and tweeting, I presume) with a sign, saying, nothing serious said here, nothing written anyone need pay any attention to.

Maybe the problem is that I think Brad DeLong was completely right about Niall Ferguson. (And, John Yoo, too. Why is that guy a law professor at a state school?) Our discourse, especially about economics, is complete crap, because corrupt hacks, with the prestige of expertise and employment with supposedly discriminating institutions (Harvard! Oxford!), pollute it, constantly. Harvard should fire people, who abuse their brand. And, if you don’t think people are hired and promoted for their conservative bona fides, you haven’t hung around ruling class schools much. Ditto, for the prestige outlets for journalism. It is perfectly sensible to criticize who peoples the opinion pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post, and to advocate (for real) firing, say, Tom Friedman for being an untalented, uninsightful, hack.

When I took our son to visit prospective colleges in the Northeast nearly every one had a huge student union prominently sponsored by the Olin Corporation, a major manufacturer of bullets and ammunition (now located in Missouri but which got its start as Winchester Ammunition in Connecticut). So perhaps Mr. LaPierre really does have some clout when it comes to the hiring and firing of New England college professors.

And again, “Harvard should fire people, who abuse their brand.”

Should the University of Rhode Island?

Harvard shouldn’t fire Ferguson if they were foolish enough to give him tenure (I assume) But Delong should be celebrated for putting it on record how incompetent the man is.
Who amongst us hasn’t been told they’re grossly incompetent at one stage in their career? And who amongst us hasn’t grown from the experience?

SEK, thank you for standing up to say that. I wish more people were willing to defend the people they oppose from harassment and stalking.

I apologize to the authors of the blog for questioning their motivations for not posting or linking to the rest of Loomis’s tweets. The fact that he’s a jerk shouldn’t factor in to our decision to support his right to be one. And how we or “the other side” handled any other case shouldn’t come into it either.
All that’s important is doing the right thing.

Although you must admit that a lot of people you see posting on the internet make it very tempting not to defend them…

Let’s not get carried away with demands for civility. LaPierre and the NRA have been described, accurately, by Dem Congressman Nadler, as enablers of mass murder (interesting that no one on the right has taken Nadler on, AFAIK). That doesn’t justify a literal call for his death, and it doesn’t mean that he has committed a crime for which he can legally be convicted and imprisoned. But the view that, as regards moral deserts, he deserves to be locked up (along with many of his supporters in the enabling of mass murder) is perfectly reasonable.

144: That’s a good question; but, what is URI’s brand? What are they selling?

Main Street Muse @141

Loomis has a post at LGM where he says he regrets having been the cause of diverting attention from the central issues. He admits he used intemperate language and thus helped, in effect, create an opening for Malkin et al. to attack him and change the conversation from where it should have been.

I see this as being more a question of free speech in general rather than ‘academic freedom’ — clearly Erik Loomis’s tweets were not scholarly analysis or anything close to it, and he would be the first to concede that I’m sure. But the point is that he had every right to say intemperate, even somewhat silly things in the heat of the moment on Twitter, however unwise (especially in retrospect) that decision was, and his employer should not have issued a craven statement when hypocritical ideologues tried to twist his statements into something worse than they were.

URI could have said: “What Prof. Loomis writes on Twitter or in the blogosphere, or anywhere else, represents his own views and not those of the university. We do not agree with or endorse the statements he made on Twitter or the language he used but we recognize he has the right to make those statements, which properly interpreted did not incite violence or other illegal activity. We will not tolerate attempts to intimidate members of our faculty who are exercising their right to speak freely on matters of public concern.” And that pretty much would have been that. This all happened, afaics, because URI did not do what it should have done, or at least what I think it should have done.

Related, academia will host the return of a bunch of former Obama administration officials — e.g. Harold Koh — who have written the legal justifications for kill lists, drone assassinations, and an undeclared war in (at the very least) Libya. They should be despised and argued against, but I don’t see a way to fire them from their jobs as professors without entering dangerous territory.

@ecurb Absolutely. I have no desire for “a decent conversation” with LaPierre and his supporters. Should I?

I think that one can legitimately argue that enough direct evidence exists to indict John Yoo for some of the same crimes for which members of the Nazi Volksgericht were tried and convicted in 1947. Whether any academic institution should have taken that into account when hiring him, or granting him tenure, is moot at this point, but I think it’s fair to say that ignoring it hasn’t reflected great credit on the institution which did.

That Yoo’s academic reputation survives more or less intact despite what everyone by now should know about him, the moral insensitivity reflected in the pursuit of Erik Loomis for what amounts at worst to incivility should be evident to all. What, if anything, does good moral character mean to university administrators? The answer to that question is unlikely to be anything but shameful to anyone still capable of feeling shame.

I don’t care to unpack why we are back to Yoo and what bearing it has on the subject of the post. But this — “Yoo’s academic reputation survives more or less intact despite what everyone by now should know about him” — ain’t right. I doubt that Loomis has done his own academic reputation any good in this episode, but its impact will be trivial by comparison. Which is as it should be.

“And he gifted the right wing with a perfect opportunity to divert attention onto him, and away from the issue of gun control.”

This sentiment is misguided. People being intemperate on the Internet is a matter of large numbers. No individual tweeter “gifted” the right wing with anything. If it hadn’t been them who the right wing seized on, it would have been someone else with just as good a rant. If some small percentage of a population is going to send angry tweets around any particular issue, there’s always going to be someone around for the right wing to seize on, because the Internet lets you see everyone. The point is not that the individual is to blame for the overall situation, the point is that we have to change the overall situation. Finding a different way to react to these predictable and repeated incidents is better than telling someone that they gave the right wing a gift.

William, you’ve got me — upon reflection, I *can* speculate about why Yoo re-enters this and many related discussions, but when I ask why, I really mean to be seeking a compelling reason. I also meant to say that you are wrong that Yoo’s academic reputation hadn’t suffered; talk to anyone in his field, and the only dissent you might hear is that his reputation couldn’t really drop below its prior level.

There’s so much of “which side are you on” flavor to this discourse. Personally, I think Yoo’s analysis was shoddy, that prosecution or disbarment were reasonably considered, but I was persuaded by Leiter that he should not lose his tenure; I think Cole was abused; I think Loomis’s rants were just that, and that he did no credit to his reputation, but I also think they had nothing to do with his day job and that he shouldn’t be fired or otherwise threatened or for that matter, subject to more criticism than anyone else blathering and swearing on Twitter. Does that soupcon of judgment, though, put me among the “self-appointed arbiters of academic elegance” just dishing out “self-serving justifications”? Dunno, but at least I can take comfort that your labels aren’t merely pomposity masquerading as moral judgment.

On behalf of academics everywhere, Main Street Muse, I apologize that one of us was so upset by the murder of 26 people that he wrote several cuss words on twitter.

Ani @ 167

Are you a university administrator? If not, my characterizations didn’t refer to you. I wasn’t persuaded by Leiter as you were, true, and Loomis’ twitter comments persuaded me only that he was a flesh and blood human being, which I don’t think should have done his reputation any harm whatsoever except among those who rate civility above outrage on the moral scale. As for Yoo’s reputation amongst law professors, are we allowed to ask we ask Marty Lederman, Richard Posner John Bolton or Orin Kerr what they think?

“Bob is at it again. Doesn’t he realize that when he criticizes ‘The One’ he makes himself out to be ‘Demon Spawn From Hell’ and stupid to boot?”

Dear Horowitz Forum,

I am an academic from a small Midwestern academic department….

We have become aware of a statement by js: “The word is fuck. f-u-c-k. Fuck!”

We deplore this statement, and we wish to distance the university from it, from him, from the words, and from the letters k, u, f, and c, in any order.

John Quiggin, you may have wanted one with people like me. But alienating everyone who isn’t on your side already seems to be working fine for you, so keep going.

@ecurb, main street muse

I believe you are not addressing properly the idea that what is worth protesting is URI’s statement. It was a direct, nominal attack on one of their own employees, on behalf of an extreme-right-wing campaign which had no merit, was significantly dishonest, and was not even bearing on a job-related incident. Both part of this sentence are important, by the way: nobody asked URI to condone Loomis’ rant (which does not count as « really new stuff » — was that a joke?), but they sure as heck had an obligation to protest strongly against the campaign aimed at Loomis, rather than adding to it. Once they had clearly done that, they could distance themselves all they wanted. LFC #154 wrote a statement which was perfect — I wish he was URI President… URI’s attack, which is an attack, and which is an attempt at intimidating Loomis, is the issue, not tweeter rants.

As for civility on this forum, try posting as a liberal on a Tea Party blog, and see what you get (I post too long, so I won’t get into that, but the same argument could be made for trying to be a liberal academic at Liberty University, and there is no Karl Marx college in the U.S. that I know of). Again, both sides do not do it, and I believe even implying it is just wrong.

PG

PS @main street muse: there is implicit analysis underpinning every rant, IMHO. Actually looking for that is part of my job, which is maybe why the packaging does not bother me all that much -and I do work on Tea Party ideology, among other topics. I can assure you there is an analysis of how the world works even in mere tweeter calls for Obama’s assassination. Free tip: hashtags are often very enlightening.

@126

Yes, I get the distinction between hyperbole and actual advocacy of violence. I even mention it. But this bit:

“TW @ 65 –

you’re missing a couple points, there.

BDL/the whole left-liberal blogosphere version of calling for people to be fired usually focuses on people a) being simply misinformed or dishonest (thus are not doing their job as journalists) or b) being racist/sexist/etc — views which advocate for the systematic mistreatment of other human beings.”

It’s that second I worry about. To flip this over into something absurd for a moment. Imagine someone calling for the immediate imposition of communism. That would rather worry me: as a bourgeois I might well be one of the first up against the wall. Rhetoric and historical experience seem to indicate that I would be certainly.

That would certainly, at least in my opinion, qualify as the systematic mistreatment of other human beings (namely me).

So would I be justified in calling for the firing of someone who advocated the immediate transition to communism?

No, I don’t think I would be. On the same grounds that I don’t think you get to call for someone to be fired for racism/sexism whatever.

For if we are to have free speech then we cannot be distinguishing whether you get to enjoy it or not on the content of your speech. It’s not free if we do that.

Inceitement to violence, yes (and Loomis didn’t do this). So “Kill Tim Worstall so that we can have communism” is verboeten. Calling for communism is just fine: it’s political speech. As, indeed, is calling for racism, sexism and all the rest. for if only certain views are allowed as speech then it’s not free speech, is it?

I thought we tried to maintain a higher standard.

We do! Liberals win the Civilympics! Yay! We refrained wonderfully from saying “fuck” on Twitter and now suddenly everyone agreed that insanely deadly rifles should not be as easily obtained as Snickers bars.

Huzzah!

I’ve seen your blog. Reductio ad asshole should be the title.

It seems to me that Loomis could have been a target for a takedown as much for his tweet as for his position as professor of labor relations. No matter how obscure, those connected with unionized labor are fair game to the right and to institutional administrators.

#161 “And he gifted the right wing with a perfect opportunity to divert attention onto him, and away from the issue of gun control.”

Just as the victims of rape were asking for it with their short skirts. Always with blaming the victim.

I would like to make a short response to those calling for greater civility. Civilty is well, good, proper, and desirable in faculty meetings, scholarly discourse, at dinner and cocktail parties, and even, occasionally, in politics. This, however, is not the place for it. The Merchants of Death, their lackeys, and allies are not bounded by civility, nor even decency, as witnessed by the unfounded and unprovoked vicious attack on Dr. Loomis. Make no mistake, the interests that the NRA and Wayne LaPierre serve are not those of the membership, but of their corporate sponsors, the arms merchants. They are moral monsters who put corporate profits above the lives of innocent children. This is a situation which calls for powerful, compelling, and sometimes violent imagery to oppose these forces and the very real violence they inflict on the American people.

We should not resort to violence nor should we speak in ways likely to incite it and Loomis did not do so. It is very important to recognize a profound and important political asymmetry between the right and left in this country. Despite weak parallels to the incident regarding Ferguson, Limbaugh, or others on the right, you simply do not see the same kinds of massive, coordinated personal attacks like that directed at Dr. Loomis, with death threats, calls to the police, and emails to his employer, waged by the left. They are routine for the right, however. Likewise there has been no significant history of leftwing violence in the US for the past 35-40 years. By contrast violence by rightwing extremists has been increasing over that period and continues to do so. The result of this is that there have been more terrorist attacks in the US by rightwing groups in the past 305 years than by everyone else combined in the past 50 years. This matters when we talk about political rhetoric and its consequences.

As Gramsci, Foucault, and Bourdieu have all observed, civility is a tool by which the hegemons seek to mute dissent and effectively silence their critics. Politics is not a drawing room discussion. It is a bare knuckle fight for power with life and death consequences for many people. Do not enter the fray unless you are willing to get bloody and dirty. This is not a time nor a context for civility. We must not silence ourselves, but rather speak out forcefully and loudly about the issues facing our country today.

Since we’re abandoning civility, I could mention that you also need a “does this sound hilarious and silly” button.

Sorry, that was flippant.
What I mean to say is that you’ve managed to convince yourself that I am a monster worthy of the thrashing you’ve worked up your rabid anger enough to brag about handing out.
It’s just… kind of sad to see, really. Abandoning civility doesn’t free you to confront us inhuman savages on our own level. It blinds you to the thoughts and positions of everyone around you, makes people hesitant to discuss anything with you for fear of invoking your wrath, and gradually loses you political allies as they take your impoliteness as a sign of instability and unreliability.
The only time you can get away with it is when you’ve got a great big mob on your side, and only for very simple and destructive purposes that won’t require discussion or negotiation before, during, or after you unleash your rage.

Anyone concerned that Wayne LaPierre’s feelings were hurt by a mean tweet might want to take a look at this train wreck of a NRA news conference ….

There’s a great bit of performative speech going on in this thread. Shorter version: “Think the right’s attack on Loomis is a sideshow? No, this here’s a sideshow.”

Maybe the right’s master plan is this:
1. Attack potentially vulnerable lefty critics.
2. Withdraw.
3. Observe defensive maneuvers, overreactions, squabbling, paroxysms, dissension and friendly fire among left, while sacking Washington.
4. Repeat.

I am glad Loomis is peeking his head above the (metaphorical) bunker again. Credit is due the original post here. Now maybe everybody should try to actually engage on the substance of gun control legislation or its advocacy?

Of course, the right’s attack on Loomis is a sideshow — or rather, a skirmish in a one of a succession of battles, in a much wider war. So, yes, the deliberate “misunderstanding” in literal terms, of Loomis’ metaphor is a familiar tactic. Yes, a new battle over the long-running contest over gun control has erupted. And, yes LaPierre’s NRA is a major force, not just on this issue, but, generally, in partisan politics, where those corralled by the Right are fed all kinds of non-factual, nonsensical propaganda (in the NRA’s alternative reality, Obama has been extremely hostile to gun rights, when just the opposite has been factually true), moving the Overton window to the point where arming kidnergarten teachers with semi-automatics makes sense to law professors at prestigious universities.

And, yes, the Right has been engaged in a thirty-year offensive against public education as an investment in a necessary public good and as an institution supportive of liberal standards and ideas.

I see a number of people on this thread, who, apparently have been dead asleep for the last thirty or forty years. Or, who think “free speech” means without cost or consequence. Or, simply think that the tribal politics, which has taken over American discourse, is just the way things should be, and the task before us is simply to rally the Tribe for melee.

Ani’s master plan might not be that far from the strategic truth. Tribal politics has been bought and paid-for by the plutocracy, and noisy eruptions of melee are predictably lame and impotent.

I like Loomis. Of the denizens of LGM, his posts are my favorites, his sensibility the least offensive. I wish him well. That doesn’t mean that I will be stampeded by tribal loyalties into trying to defend his Twitter feed, which was nothing, but a public temper tantrum. (Absolutely understandable, as others have said, as a human, all-too-human reaction, and deserving of a sympathetic response.)

And, I certainly do not think any sensible doctrine of “academic freedom” should be construed to “protect” such a display. The Right wants “academic freedom” to be defined down into terms, which erase any consideration of quality. The problem that the Right has always had with the “liberal media” or the “liberal academy” has never been that the media or the academy, on the whole, has been “liberal” (which was only briefly true during the Liberal Consensus of the 1950s and 1960s), but that the rank order hierarchy of quality has put liberalism on top, and rightly so. They want a doctrine of “academic freedom” which puts creationists in biology classrooms, climate-change denialists into the most important discussion we are having, and the worst sort of liars and hacks into control of economic policy.

And, no Leiter did not convince me that Yoo deserves protection. Leiter is a damn fool. Leiter’s argument that Yoo’s scholarship qualifies him sets no bottom bar whatsoever on the content of Yoo’s doctrines, and there has to be a bottom bar. Yoo’s doctrine of law and the constitutional power of the Presidency is an assault on the rule of law, itself. If we were to accept his standard of scholarship, we would be saying that there is no point, whatsoever, in even having a law school, let alone a law school as a public institution. And, Yoo’s service in government is absolutely fair game for evaluation. Academic institutions exist to support scholars and make them, and their scholarship, available for public service as public goods. When someone does as much damage as Yoo has done to his country and to the law and the Constitution, (which Yoo is required to swear an oath to protect), institutional professional integrity requires public sanction. Its absence is symptomatic of a serious failing, of the far advance that the Right has made on this front as on so many others, in building the fascist state.

I brought up Yoo, because there’s a context and a history of many battles, in what is now a decades-long fight, and there are still too many well-intentioned liberals, whose views on tenure and academic freedom, generally, are prefaced by, “I don’t recall . . . ” When administrators really want to dump someone (or a group), tenure doesn’t get in the way, and it probably shouldn’t. The problem is that administrators don’t want to get rid of even the extreme right-wing hacks, in the present political context, and, sometimes, they do want to get right of some non-hacks because of right-wing hostility.

It seems to me that Pierre Gervais understands the nature of the issue, which ought to be our central concern. URI has not behaved well. I am not surprised, of course. But, their behavior ought to alert us to the urgent need to get real about the great deficit in liberal institutions in the United States, and not inspire an ill-considered debasement of standards or a silly tribal melee. I hope CT’s effort does encourage URI’s leadership to act more responsibly and deliberately.

I do not know if anyone saw LaPierre’s speech today (I read the prepared text, as I cannot afford a new TV), but I defy anyone to tell me how we are supposed to constructively engage that in a civil manner.

#203 – You can’t. The only response is ridicule. Monomania has driven him and his like insane – unfortunately it looks like they’ll take the rest of us with them.

“F*ck”, “f**k”, etc., are all options. Or you can work around it with a paraphrase (“Loomis’ use of expletives,” etc.) “F-bombs” just sounds ridiculous, at least to my ears.

Cian, please actually read my posts. I have never used the term “F-bomb”. I think it sounds stupid.
Perhaps you’re just lumping together everyone you disagree with?

“The line has been drawn, MPA”

Ha!

So I can say Tim Worstall is a dishonest pratt who cheerfully associates with racists, sexists and homophobes and that I wish him nothing but misfortune and despair in the new year?

Gah “when a person says something objectionable” should be “when a person says something that you find objectionable”

#209 – you’re right. It was others. I remembered ““profanity laden screed” and lumped you in with the others. You’re a bit more highbrow than them.

And its not so much disagreement as bemusement quite honestly.

Sometimes I think it is more important to Liberals to feel like “good people” than it is for them to actually win any measure of political influence.

Indeed, that’s been duly noted on the Right, as both a criticism & a rhetorical point of vulnerability.

“Particularly harsh if you’re a maiden art. Exception duly granted.”

Yes, “fuck” has traditionally been regarded as a very harsh word, hence the old designation of “F-word.” But as previously noted, you are plainly oblivious to such distinctions (and, judging by your posts, most others).

Since this whole discussion was precipitated by Glenn Reynolds acting as a speech referee, it may be worth noting one of his recent publications

It Takes a Militia: A Communitarian Case for Compulsory Arms Bearing

P O’Neill #221,

That “recent” publication is from 1996, and the fact that you don’t know that means that you also didn’t read it and don’t know the basis of the argument it makes.

185 I’m sorry you don’t like my blog. Though I understand! Nobody likes poor Thersites.

“I appreciate that as a person of privilege yourself it might be difficult for you to get the difference.”

So our definition of what is “allowable free speech” now moves to who is doing the saying, not what is being said then? Or even who is being talked about?

“So I can say Tim Worstall is a dishonest pratt who cheerfully associates with racists, sexists and homophobes and that I wish him nothing but misfortune and despair in the new year?”

Yes, apparently you can MPA. For I am a person of privilege. But if I were not a person of privilege (you know, female, racial minority, working class, the majority of the species in fact) you couldn’t.

So we seem to be being told.

Have to admit it doesn’t meet my definition of free speech, which is that freedom for thee is freedom for me too.

Hey now. I think we should be reasonable about this, the way Erik has always been reasonable about the use of military force in the service of corporatism. Really mull over both sides of the issue, fairly and carefully, before coming to any conclusions. I mean who’s to say both sides don’t really have some salient arguments that might resonate if we would just be reasonable. I mean look, I’m on Erik’s side, I think we all are, but let’s not rush into anything as rash or impudent as going out of our way to support him. The important thing is we continue a reasonable and informed dialogue and understand that justice sometimes moves slowly and in mysterious ways.

To be fair, administrators have to spend a lot of time kissing the ass of rich and powerful people these days, with the collapse of public funding. Being a weasel sort of comes with the job.