The Topic of this Post is “Offensive”

[Note from Erich Vieth: Welcome to Bill Heath, our newest author at DI]

Greetings. I am, indeed, Bill Heath. I graduated Frostburg State University in 1970. I enjoyed the atmosphere of free exchange of ideas that the University promoted at the time. I have recently read the policy on posting at Lane University Center, and am disturbed. It appears unclear and and subject to abuse through capricious and arbitrary use. Specifically, " Postings that are deemed offensive, and/or that promote alcohol use, abuse, sale or distribution, will not be approved and are not permitted to be posted on LUC bulletin boards, with the exception of events approved by the University."

I have no problem with barring the alcohol-related content, nor the exception of University-approved events. I have a significant problem with "deemed offensive." The immediate questions are by whom, to whom, and under what standards?

I give a pass to postings and conduct that use a "reasonable person" standard, although I would prefer a "reasonable and prudent person" standard as that is better-defined in case law.

Under harassment policies, "Verbal/Written Assault includes verbal or written acts, including social media sites, which place a person in personal fear or which have the effect of harassing or intimidating a person...." authorizes the individual who believes he or she was offended, harassed or intimidated to set the standard, leaving the accused in a position of needing to prove his or her innocence. That policy cannot be reconciled with the University I attended, nor with my understanding of English Common Law and the U.S. legal practices descended from it. In short, without a revived office of the advocatus diaboli, or a Red Team with official sanction, the standards are clearly unconstitutional within a government entity such as FSU.A statement of policy is unlikely to be sufficient. Rather, action to affirm that the accuser's rights are not unlimited, nor are the accused's rights to be infringed.

I describe this example of a modern attempt to control speech to illustrate a wide and growing problem. For many additional examples courtesy of an organization that is willing to bring lawsuits against colleges and universities with over broad speech codes, see the website of FIRE, FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION.

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Babygate: Where People Allow Skin Color to Interfere with Basic Human Kindness

Have you heard about "Babygate"? The crux of the problem is that a white man affectionately held a Black friend's Black baby on his lap, at the friends's request during a meeting of the NYC Community Education Council. Members of the Council complained, indicating that this was "harmful" and that it "hurts people." The formal written accusation contained the following:

The letter characterized the lap incident as harmful: “Imagine the insult and emotional injury any thinking person, especially a person of color, suffered when they witnessed this scene and heard that comment,” it stated, calling them “shocking, disgusting, offensive, and racially incendiary.” It demanded that Wrocklage resign, claiming that allowing such incidents to continue without consequences “will only further empower the perpetuation of similar racist behaviors.

When the man who held the baby was called out, he challenged the accusers to state why this was racist. The accusers could not explain why this was racist. They told him that he needed to read Robin DiAngelo. This incident illustrates how crazed we are getting. "Anti-racist" ideology is has successfully turned innocent human kindness into a bad thing.

This recent incident and its aftermath were described in detail, then analyzed by Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic in an article titled "Anti-racist Arguments Are Tearing People Apart: What a viral story reveals about contemporary leftist discourse." An excerpt:

Folks who have different ideas about how to combat racism should engage one another. They might even attempt a reciprocal book exchange, in which everyone works to understand how others see the world. A more inclusive anti-racist canon would include Bayard Rustin, Albert Murray, Henry Louis Gates, Zadie Smith, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Danielle Allen, Randall Kennedy, Stephen Carter, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Barbara and Karen Fields, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Adolph Reed, Kmele Foster, Coleman Hughes, and others.

As long as sharp disagreements persist about what causes racial inequality and how best to remedy it, deliberations rooted in the specific costs and benefits of discrete policies will provide a better foundation for actual progress than meta-arguments about what “anti-racism” demands.

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Private Thought, Public Talk

Tweet from Bo Winegard:

This public/private divide in honest communications is ubiquitous in the outside world too. If only we could force everyone to install devices on their heads that would, at random times throughout the day, broadcast their actual thoughts. We would take extra pains to make all people wear these devices in churches, political gatherings and wherever people feel pressure to please their in-groups.  Doing this would be revolutionary in our hypocrisy-permeated world. Mind-blowingly revolutionary. If we made people wear these devices for even a month this would train us to say what we are actually thinking and to clearly admit when we don't actually know things.

OK, yes. It this would also cause serious chaos as our hidden romantic/sexual secrets are made public at inopportune random times. This thought experiment is a work in progress . . .

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