PENsplaining Away The First Amendment

Free speech on campus is doing fine. Wait, better than fine. Great. You didn’t know that? Well, that’s why the august writers’ organization, PEN America, is here to explain it to you.

The conventional wisdom surrounding American college life these days views campuses as hotbeds of intolerance for free speech, with students themselves leading the charge.

But a new report by PEN America, to be released on Monday, questions that story line while warning of a different danger: a growing perception among young people that cries of “free speech” are too often used as a cudgel against them.

The report, titled “And Campus for All: Diversity, Inclusion and Freedom of Speech at U.S. Universities,” covers a broad range of hot-button topics, including trigger warnings, microaggressions, safe spaces and controversial campus speakers. While it cites “troubling incidents of speech curtailed,” it finds no “pervasive” crisis.

The organization, which purports to exist to “fight for freedom of expression,” tells us to chill out about all the wild and crazy things the kids are doing on campus. It’s all good.

But Suzanne Nossel, the group’s executive director, said the report was consistent with PEN’s broad mission, which includes promoting more diverse voices through projects like its annual World Voices Festival of International Literature.

It is also, she said, a departure from the “doctrinaire ‘free speech or bust’ position.”

You wouldn’t want to be one of those “doctrinaire” types, would you? After all, isn’t promoting more diverse voices a worthy cause, enough so that silencing speech in the name of diversity is the new freedom of expression?

As the United States becomes increasingly diverse, with racial minority groups to account for a majority of the U.S. population in the coming decades, a series of pressing debates have opened about how to guarantee the rights, and enable the participation in society, of all regardless of race, religion, gender, LGBT identities and myriad other personal attributes, while at the same time holding steadfast to the principles of free speech, freedom of assembly and academic freedom.

One might assume that free speech for all serves the interests of free speech for the marginalized. But never assume.

These attitudes pose a risk that among student bodies of private and public universities, free speech rights may get a bad name. The danger is hardly just that free speech is not considered a cool slogan or cause on campus. If free speech protections come to be seen as ossified and irrelevant—or even inimical—to the concerns of a rising generation, core freedoms that have been vigilantly guarded throughout American history could be in peril.

Do you want free speech to be in peril? Of course not. That would be terrible. So how does PEN America’s executive director, Suzanne Nossel, plan to preserve and protect free speech?

Though they do pose dangers, the controversies we examined have the potential to end well: to unleash and amplify new and important voices that can enrich debates on campus, expanding the range of ideas in the discourse. But the drive to make the university more open to full participation and expression by previously marginalized groups must not come at the expense of free speech protections. If it does, the marketplace of ideas that new groups of students are increasingly empowered to partake in will be stripped of some of the breadth and bounty that made them want to enter it in the first place.

A beautifully written word salad of meaningless jargon. After all, what can be more important than enabling new voices to be heard?

In PEN America’s view, the drive for greater equality and inclusion on campus is to be strongly encouraged; at its best it represents a new phase of the civil rights, feminist and other valiant rights struggles ongoing for decades. Enabling new voices to be heard will help campuses better reflect American society and render them a more interesting environment for expression all.

If reduced to something reflecting actual meaning, Nossel’s gibberish translates to any voice that doesn’t sing hallelujah to the marginalized darlings should be censored in the name of “greater equality and inclusion,” which means the marginalized get to speak without fear of anyone responding that they’re ugly, dress funny and have shit for brains.

Nossel doesn’t quite say that, of course, and Gertrudes her way through the obvious, until she runs head first into the facial hypocrisy of spewing utter bullshit.  It’s not that the “wrong” sort of speech should be subject to punishment, she says, but then what?

Such calls for punishment, of course, themselves are protected forms of speech; any of us is free to suggest that someone else ought to be punished for what they’ve said. In some cases, the contested speech reflects views or attitudes that genuinely impair the speaker’s credibility in carrying out their work as a member of the university community; professors who champion racist or sexist views in the classroom no longer have a place in the academy.

The errant word, or unintended microaggression, should never be punished because  of free speech. But speech that “genuinely impairs” the safe space? Burn the witches. Such speech “no longer [has] a place in the academy.” Nossel tries to pull off the voice of reason, that free speech isn’t absolute, and puts herself and her organization as the arbiter of good speech and bad speech.  Free speech is wonderful to an organization dedicated to free speech, unless it’s not their kind of free speech, in which case you should hang.

It would be unfair to call PEN America the worst censor around, but only because there are so many to choose from. But hidden in Nossel’s jargonized gibberish is the evisceration of freedom of expression in the name of diversity and sad feez, much like the ACLU has given away its concern for constitutional rights in favor of the same.

No, you didn’t get to vote on these advocacy organizations deciding that your rights should be compromised for the benefit of their politics, but when the media keep turning to organizations that once advocated for a cause, and have since decided they like a different cause better, it becomes difficult to appreciate that the gravest threat to civil rights are the voices who claim to exist for their support. After all, if PEN America says censorship is the future, who are we to argue? More to the point, they want the argument to be censored, because it’s “doctrinaire.”

43 thoughts on “PENsplaining Away The First Amendment

  1. Scott Jacobs

    I know that my libertarianism means I’m supposed to be against initiating violence, but damnit if these people don’t make be wanna hug them in the face with a chair…

    1. Agammamon

      Libertarianism recognizes that not all aggression is physical and that sometimes the only response to someone trying to impose their will on you (no matter how nominally non-violently) is a chairleg to the face – some people don’t know what the rattlesnake’s rattle is for or why the skunk stamps his feet.

  2. delurking

    PEN is the organization that gave Charlie Hebdo an award, and stuck to their guns when a bunch of their own members revolted. I think the blame goes to the NY Times writer, who may have overlaid her own perspective on the report. Here are some statements from the PEN report itself, which PEN bolded for emphasis:

    “While free speech is alive and well on campus, it is not free from threats, and must be vigilantly guarded if its continued strength is to be assured.”

    “PEN America’s view, as of October 2016, is that while the current controversies merit attention and there have been some troubling incidences of speech curtailed, there is not, as some accounts have
    suggested, a pervasive “crisis” for free speech on campus. Unfortunately, respect for divergent viewpoints has not been a consistent hallmark of recent debates on matters of diversity and inclusion on campus. Though sometimes overblown or oversimplified, there have been many instances where free speech has been suppressed or chilled, a pattern that is at risk of escalating absent concerted action. ”

    “Free expression should be recognized as a principle that will overwhelmingly serve not to exclude or marginalize minority voices but rather to amplify them. Where principles of free expression have been subordinated inappropriately, as has happened on certain campuses—impinging on openness, dissent, or intellectual freedom—calling out and fighting these encroachments are essential to ensuring that the core value of free speech remains intact even as the campus evolves to better reflect a changing America. But cries of “free speech” have on occasion been used to refute or delegitimize protest and outrage—to dismiss the forms that speech takes and thereby avoid considering its substance. Yet protest and outrage, however infelicitously or unfamiliarly it may be expressed, must also be protected as free speech. “

    1. SHG Post author

      Had you bothered to click on the links (or just hover over them) before deciding to conclusively prove you’re the village idiot, you would have noticed that I went from the New York Times article to Nossel’s post at Huffington Post. Those were her words. You’ve succumbed to the meaningless jargon. Nice hat.

      1. delurking

        Indeed, I did not click the HuffPo link, just the NYT and actual PEN report. The PEN report is fully in support of free speech. The only thing a free-speech supporter might quibble with is how many incidents of official speech suppression on campuses constitute a crisis. PEN’s opinion is that it hasn’t risen to crisis levels, but they condemn all such suppression.

        1. SHG Post author

          PEN: Free speech is really important. Really, really important. Critically important.

          You: PEN is fully in support of free speech.

          PEN: Unless speech is racist or sexist, or impairs the voices of diversity and inclusion, in which case it’s not free speech and must be punished and silenced.

          You: PEN is fully in support of free speech.

          Got it. Thanks for your deep insight.

          1. delurking

            Neither the report nor the HuffPo piece suggests that any speech should be punished or silenced. It appears that all of your criticism is based on this sentence: “In some cases, the contested speech reflects views or attitudes that genuinely impair the speaker’s credibility in carrying out their work as a member of the university community; professors who champion racist or sexist views in the classroom no longer have a place in the academy. ” But there is nothing objectionable about this sentence, especially in its context within the paragraph. When people say stupid things, their credibility is impaired. You seem to be reading a call for punishment into “…no longer have a place in the academy”, but it is you that are shoehorning that where it doesn’t fit. It is simply an observation that those views are not welcome. Over and over again in both the HuffPo piece and the report, there are calls for unfettered free speech.

            1. SHG Post author

              As fascinated as I am with every person whose comments aren’t received with love and applause writing yet another comment to stamp their feet and insist they’re right like a 3 year old, it puts me in the annoying position of explaining that the content and your earlier comments are already there for everyone to read. If others agree with you, that’s great. But behaving like a butthurt infant by writing yet another comment doesn’t make you right, just a butthurt infant.

              I’ve posted your comments. You’ve had your say. I’m unpersuaded. Grow up already. Your butthurt is not my problem. Now you’re done wasting my space and time.

            2. Odder

              @delurking: Shush! Don’t make noise in the echo chamber!

              Disagreement — especially the factual kind — will be dealt with swiftly with derision, scorn, and namecalling (but no substance!)

            3. SHG Post author

              I’m thinking about starting a lonely hearts club for commenters who didn’t get their desperately needed tummy rub. You want to be president?

            4. David

              @Odder. I was thinking that Delurking’s comments were pretty foolish, until I read your comment. Now I completely changed my mind because you write “— especially the factual kind —”.

              Because I can’t read for myself, so your saying so was really important. You are now my thought leader.

            5. SHG Post author

              Odder, whatever makes you feel better about yourself is good by me. You do realize that other people can read this, right?

            6. delurking

              Robby Soave has his opinion up at Reason Hit&Run.

              There aren’t a lot of organizations that support free speech. PEN is one of them. It is a shame to castigate them by seizing on nits and reading them in a tortured manner, while ignoring strong statements in support of free speech, because you are predisposed to view writers as anti-free speech.

            7. SHG Post author

              I’ve added in the link to Robby’s post (because I can) to your comment since you brought it up.

              “PEN America’s view, as of October 2016, is that while the current controversies merit attention and there have been some troubling incidences of speech curtailed, there is not, as some accounts have suggested, a pervasive ‘crisis’ for free speech on campus,” the authors note.

              It’s a verdict more than a little at odds with the rest of the report, which exhaustively details a number of beyond troubling incidents. As First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told The New York Times, “I find it hard to read [the report’s] extraordinarily powerful depiction of things that have happened on campus without concluding there is a crisis of great magnitude.”

              You see this as strong support of free speech, because they say they are out of one side while saying the opposite out of the other. I see this as far more harmful than advocates who are facially anti-free speech. This is the knife that stabs you in the back.

              You disagree. You’ve made that clear. I give you the opportunity to comment. It does not obligate me to change my view and cry, “oh yes, you are sooooooo right.”

            8. delurking

              Thank you for re-engaging. My opinion is close to Will Creeley’s. He lays it out in the section titled “Crisis” in his review at theFIRE.org.

              I agree with you that public perception damage has been done by the report, because of their very high bar for “crisis”. Nevertheless, PEN will stand up publicly to support those whose free speech rights have been curtailed, and they have more influence than I do when they do that.

            9. SHG Post author

              Creeley is mostly concerned with FIRE’s appearance and relationships here. It is, unfortunately, how NGOs tend to function, kissing each other’s ass a bit to get along because they never know when they may need an ally in the future. I have no such need to be passive aggressive and “get along” with others on the team.

  3. REvers

    Censors exist merely to give child molesters someone to look down on. I might think differently if I’d ever heard a single rational reason for censoring something.

  4. Nigel Declan

    The suggestion by anti-free-speech crusaders that they want to “enrich debates” by “expanding the range of ideas in the discourse” is the biggest crock of excrement. Silencing or punishing dissenting voices does not foster or improve debate; it unequivocally ends debate. As the not-quite-quote of Sir Joshua Reynolds asserts, “[t]here is no expedient to which man will not resort to evade the real labor of thinking.”

    The non-doctrinaire “defense of free speech” is to outright censorship of unpopular speech as intelligent design is to creationism: a fancy new bonnet on the same ugly baby.

    1. SHG Post author

      But for the simpletons, it’s doing the trick. See my commenters, Delurking and possibly Odder (who may agree with Delurking, or may just be vindicating his butthurt), above. They think they’re all free-speechy, having no clue that they’ve been led down the garden path.

      1. Patrick Maupin

        You’re obviously against free speech, because you posted their comments and then disagreed with them.

        1. SHG Post author

          What? Are you trying to give it all away? It’s not like this begins with my writing a whole post about my position.

    1. Patrick Maupin

      To figure out what FIRE really thinks of what PEN really thinks, just skip all the incidental areas of agreement, and carefully read the first sixteen words of the last paragraph. (The rest of the paragraph is one long gertrude.)

      Scott’s right — NGOs (and academics) that want funding have rules they have to play by. FIRE has explained their opinion about as loudly as they can without violating those rules.

      Whether or not PEN America deems the extensive threats to free speech on campus a “crisis,” the organization believes, like FIRE, that serious problems exist and that there is important work to be done. PEN America’s report performs a valuable service by thoroughly presenting the problems’ contours and offering thoughtful, well-informed recommendations about how to solve them.

      1. delurking

        I am honestly trying to understand how those 16 words could mean what I think you are implying they mean: that FIRE doesn’t really agree with PEN. I see FIRE saying that PEN should have called it a crisis, but other than that they are in agreement. I agree that PEN shouldn’t have said that it doesn’t reach crisis levels, but I see that as reflecting their naivete about how the press would report on it. They are, after all, a group of writers used longer-form writing.

          1. delurking

            Those are not mutually exclusive. Regardless, I thought the discussion was about whether or not they are free speech supporters.

            You and SHG may not like this, but hopefully you will think about it. I see parallels between your response to PEN here and the very SJW behavior SHG points out for our amusement: when one attacks another as an enemy for using the “wrong” phrase somewhere, while ignoring the all of the positions on which they agree.

            1. SHG Post author

              Yes, expert and naive are mutually exclusive. And just because you see parallels does not mean there are parallels. I don’t attack PEN for using the “wrong” phrase, but because I believe them to be doing exactly what I wrote in the post they’re doing. You are allowed to disagree. As I said before, you have failed to change my mind. Not even close.

            2. Patrick Maupin

              … when one attacks another as an enemy for using the “wrong” phrase somewhere…

              It’s not just one wrong phrase, and it’s not just one place. A year ago in the NYT, Suzanne Nossel wrote “free speech proponents need to advance alternatives that resonate with the students they want to reach.” She hasn’t changed her tune since.

              I’m sorry, but there are no polite words for this. Suzanne Nossel is the enemy, and you’re a collaborator.

            3. Charles

              Ironically, “Nossel” is “lesson” spelled backwards. Or maybe I just am seeing parallels where none exist.

        1. the other rob

          Might it be that you don’t take the same meaning as Patrick does, because you’re unfamiliar with the nuances of the accepted forms in those circles?

          By way of an off-topic, yet accessible, example: a tourist, visiting the UK, might watch a snippet of a Parliamentary debate on the TV news. He’d hear Members using words such as “with respect” and “with the greatest respect” and think “My, how unfailingly polite these folks are!” Never grasping that those words, in that context, actually mean “you ****” and “you ******* ****”, respectively.

  5. Patrick Maupin

    PEN’s position is altogether elitist. By carefully explaining that only careful speech should be freely protected, they are declaring war on all those who don’t have the education or patience to put up with their bullshit.

    This carefulness is increasingly grating lately — that segment of the population which is difficult to persuade using stark apocalyptic language is now constantly bombarded with specious “nuance.”

    Maybe this is a good sign? Maybe it means that an increasing number of people are demanding nuance in their arguments? I don’t know, but it seems to be getting worse, because the “articulate bastards” (a favorite term of my father-in-law, may he RIP) are misleading ever more subtly.

    You see it in the original report and articles that prompted this post, and in many of the comments here. You see it in the push for “intelligent design” rather than the bible.

    And you see it in all the “boys-will-be-boys” articles about businesses, e.g. the recent widespread explanations that Wells Fargo’s “toxic sales culture” could happen to any sort of business and that “metrics” are inherently bad. (Obviously, nobody could ever get away with anything bad if there were no metrics, amirite?)

    Nobody ever seems to ask the obvious questions about that last one. What if the metrics aren’t bogus? What if Wells Fargo’s sales metrics accurately correlate the value that employees provide to Wells Fargo with the value that Wells Fargo provides to its customers?

    (Apologies for veering off-topic; but I know you know where the “delete” key is.)

  6. Richard G. Kopf

    SHG,

    In the Huff post article, Nossel writes “professors who champion racist or sexist views in the classroom no longer have a place in the academy.”

    As you know, I believe that as an empirical matter race is a statistical predictor of reoffense.* Many criminology studies on that question support that conclusion.

    I have argued in the Federal Sentencing Reporter, and in other places, that we should use empirical tools to help us protect the public from future crimes of a defendant when properly used at sentencing. Those tools, I argue, could reasonably include race along with many other statistically predictive factors.

    If I were a law teacher teaching a course on sentencing in the federal courts and I proposed the foregoing, would I “champion racist . . . views in the classroom[?]” In other words, would I have forfeited my place in the academy?

    While the PEN study itself is, in my opinion, quite good, Ms. Nossel’s articulation of it in the Huff Post article regarding “racist and sexist views” would be laughable if it were not so potentially harmful to the First Amendment.

    All the best.

    RGK

    *My writings also make clear that correlation is not causation.

    1. SHG Post author

      You wouldn’t stand a chance, Judge.

      I’m a little less sanguine than you about the report. It’s rather value laden, and I’m not a fan of other people’s values being presented as objective fact. But that’s just me. I don’t like chocolate either, so what do I know?

        1. SHG Post author

          You thought wrong, and it has nothing to do with chocolate (which I consider to be one of my foremost virtues).

  7. Charles

    “a series of pressing debates have opened about how to guarantee the rights…”
    A fascinating line because it has no subject, no actor. The “debates” apparently sprang up from nowhere, spontaneously.

    It’s also part 1 in a 3 part rhetorical series I’ve been seeing recently. (1) I’m not saying we should do X, but we should at least start a conversation. *wait a few months* (2) There is an ongoing conversation about X, which shows that it is an important issue. *wait a few months* (3) X is an important issue, so we need to do something about it.

    1. SHG Post author

      I think you’ve made a mistake in number 3: X is an important issue, so someone needs to do something about it.

  8. Mark M.

    The commentary on this matter is Exhibit 967 in support of the high regard I hold for this site. It’s gratifying to be in the (interwebs) company of those who aren’t frightened of intellectual rigor. Thanks.

    1. SHG Post author

      It will come as no surprise that more people hate rigor than like it. “Can’t we all just say nice things about each other and hug?”

Comments are closed.