Free Speech at UCLA - The Atlantic: "A half-century ago, student activists at the University of California clashed with administrators during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, a series of events that would greatly expand free-speech rights of people at public colleges and universities.
Today, activists at UCLA are demanding that administrators punish some of their fellow students for expressive behavior that is clearly protected by the First Amendment.
In the past, free-speech clashes have turned on whether Americans have the right to criticize their own government during wartime, to march as neo-Nazis past the homes of Holocaust survivors, to submerge a crucifix in urine, or to burn the United States flag. All of those things, the courts have ruled, are protected speech. What did UCLA students find so outrageous as to warrant the violation of the fundamental right to free expression? A “Kanye Western” theme party where students wore costumes that parodied rap superstar Kanye West and his celebrity wife, Kim Kardashian. For this, UC student activists would squander their inheritance.
Last week, when this controversy began, many news outlets reported that some of the fraternity and sorority members who attended the “Kanye Western” theme party wore blackface. While that offensive behavior would not change the First Amendment analysis to come, there is no evidence for the claim: The Greek organizations deny it and no published photographs from the party depict anyone in blackface. “We have been asked to respond specifically to rumors that some guests attended the event in blackface,” the fraternity said in a statement. “It is important that we put this rumor to rest. Some of our guests attended the event dressed as miners in reference to the Kanye West song ‘Gold Digger,’ but their attire had nothing to do with race.”The Huffington Post has published a photograph that seems to confirm this explanation: a group of girls pose with a bit of soot smudged on their faces, but not covering it, and there can be no doubt that they are attempting to dress as miners, or “gold diggers,” because they are all holding plates of “gold” as if panning for it. Others who objected to the theme party deemed it an example of cultural appropriation, a “microaggression” against black students, or deeply insensitive and hurtful."
...substantive debates are healthy and both sides raise plausible points. It is salutary for collegians to contest such matters in the student newspaper, on campus, and on social media... What’s unhealthy is the movement to suppress free speech at UCLA. University administrators bear the most culpability. After hearing objections to the theme party, but before finishing an investigation into it, UCLA officials suspended the social activities of the fraternity and sorority, effectively punishing them without due process even as these same officials publicly acknowledged that they didn’t have all the facts. Moreover, university officials are abusing their authority merely by investigating protected speech in the first place. And the student newspaper is cheering them on, demanding in an editorial that the office of UCLA Fraternity and Sorority Relations take a more active role in preemptively clearing all party themes...
As the ACLU once explained in answer to the question of why it sometimes mounts defenses of speech that is racist or promotes intolerance: Free speech rights are indivisible. Restricting the speech of one group or individual jeopardizes everyone's rights because the same laws or regulations used to silence bigots can be used to silence you. Conversely, laws that defend free speech for bigots can be used to defend the rights of civil rights workers, anti-war protesters, lesbian and gay activists and others fighting for justice. For example, in the 1949 case of Terminiello v. Chicago, the ACLU successfully defended an ex-Catholic priest who had delivered a racist and anti-semitic speech. The precedent set in that case became the basis for the ACLU's successful defense of civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s and '70s. The indivisibility principle was also illustrated in the case of Neo-Nazis whose right to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1979 was successfully defended by the ACLU. At the time, then ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier, whose relatives died in Hitler's concentration camps during World War II, commented: "Keeping a few Nazis off the streets of Skokie will serve Jews poorly if it means that the freedoms to speak, publish or assemble any place in the United States are thereby weakened.""
...The notion that university money is best spent paying someone to sit in an office vetting the themes of fraternity parties sounds like the premise of a SNL skit. To deflect criticisms like these, defenders of the student activists are using the increasingly common tactic of treating the fringe position of a small number of ideologically homogeneous progressives as if it were equivalent to the opinion of all black people. “When black students share their hurt and disappointment with something like the ‘Kanye Western’ party, too often we respond with the way we see things, and it’s usually accompanied with criticism about how incorrect we think the black point of view is,” Chris Tang, who is not black, writes in another op-ed in The Daily Bruin. “But there’s an issue with this because we are implicitly saying that we understand the black point of view, when in reality, many of us don’t.”"
...There is nothing wrong with a black student being offended by a theme party, and attempts to articulate such grievances ought to be met with open-mindedness and compassion. And frats and sororities should be more sensitive to how their actions will be received. But there is no “black point of view,” a prejudicial notion that is so easily refuted that it’s a wonder anyone invokes it. There are plenty of black people––a majority, I would wager––who understand better than many other Americans the importance of the First Amendment to the history of the civil-rights movement and the future of other civil-rights causes. As if to underscore that point, the Los Angeles Times highlighted an open letter sent to UCLA by Michael Meyers, president of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. He said that “as an African American civil rights leader” he had to speak out. “We are increasingly alarmed—and distressed—by the failure of public university officials to support free speech and diversity of opinion on campus,” he wrote in the letter to UCLA’s chancellor. “Diversity of opinion surely includes the right of students to contest orthodoxy and to poke fun at popular culture and celebrities.” That is exactly right, and UCLA administrators should publicly apologize for acting to the contrary rather than caving to the illegal demands of student activists."
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