Joe Rogan and Glenn Greenwald Comment on Julian Assange
Update on Julian Assange. This is how the U.S. government treats people (Assange and Edward Snowden) who expose government wrongdoing:
The Best Kind of Free Speech is Antithetical to Cancel Culture
"FIRE is a free-speech organization, but we’ve always interpreted “free speech” to mean something larger, older, and bolder than just your legal rights. Given that we are also concerned with academic freedom, I’ve also focused on how to make discussions productive, and how to promote tolerance for people you disagree with. Of particular importance in higher education is determining how to keep an atmosphere of robust debate, thought experimentation, and innovation alive and healthy.
From a very early stage, FIRE advocated for what could roughly be called a “culture of free speech,” where we seriously consider the ideas most opposed to our own, debate and persuade those who disagree with us, consider people’s intentions, and give space for error and forgiveness when faced with mistakes. This is the antithesis of cancel culture, which attempts to reduce individuals to a singular offensive statement or action, remove them from mainstream society, and inflict grave social costs on anyone who might defend them."
What can you do to promote these ideas? Read "What you can do right now to help protect you or your campus from cancel culture." at the same website.
Defending Free Speech versus Suppressing Free Speech
Excellent Tweets from Paul Graham:
Thus, we should guard the right to free speech like we should guard (though we often don't) against restraining competition. Everyone is free to speech and to be heard it is not often easy. The temptation is to gag the competition rather than to prevail on the merits in the marketplace of ideas. Putting undue pressure on an organization to fire someone from their job to deplatform them is not having one's ideas prevail in the marketplace of ideas. The only type of fair fight is ideas versus ideas, and these days anyone with a computer and an internet connection has a right to compete.
There is no better Time Than Right Now to Make Certain that Colleges and Universities Affirm Their Commitment to Free Speech
Free speech is increasingly being attacked at colleges as university. It it claimed by many the vigorous and free speech is a bad idea in that it allegedly harms students and faculty. This is a critical time to push back hard on such claims. Muzzled speech and censorship conflict with the main purpose of colleges, which is to expose students to many diverse ideas and to train them to deal with the ideas they find objectionable by discussing them civilly.
Greg Lukianoff of FIRE (FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION) warns:
Threats to free speech and academic freedom on campus constantly change: One year, it’s speech codes and federal government overreach that present the greatest danger. The next, it could be speaker disinvitations and heckler’s vetoes.In this video, Lukianoff asserts that the presidents of colleges and universities need to hear these five things loud and clear:With the targets constantly shifting, what are some effective steps college presidents can take right now to fight censorship, regardless of where it originates? Presidents like to say they are in favor of free speech, but few have presented a plan of action that would improve the state of free speech for their students and faculty members.
1. Stop violating the law.
2. Pre-commit / recommit to free speech and inquiry.
3. Defend the free speech rights of your students and faculty loudly, clearly, and early.
4. Teach free speech from day one.
5. Be scholars: Collect data.
Lukianoff urges everyone concerned with these issues to take action today:
Share this list with your college or university president to let them know that you want them to lead the way in protecting free speech and academic freedom on campus.Lukianoff urges everyone concerned with these issues to take action today:
Share this list with your college or university president to let them know that you want them to lead the way in protecting free speech and academic freedom on campus.
FIRE’s mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates students, faculty, alumni, trustees, and the public about the threats to these rights on our campuses, and provides the means to preserve them.
Mob behavior and threats to free speech described and discussed by Nicholas Christakis
I recommend this excellent discussion by Nicholas Christakis on the topics of mob behavior, moral panics, and current threats to free speech. Illiberal behavior is destroying our ability to talk with each other, notably on the places where we would most expect vigorous exchanges of ideas: college campuses. Christakis is a sociologist and physician who conducts research in the area of biosocial science, investigating the biological predicates and consequences of social phenomena. He directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University. Sam Harris presents this discussion on his Waking Up podcast. At the tail end of the podcast, Christakis and Harris mention the work of Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
The mission of FIRE is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE’s core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.
FIRE has achieved long successful string of legal victories through its Speech Litigation Project.