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jan feb autonomy
Tournament: Any | Round: Finals | Opponent: Any | Judge: Any Free speech is a pre-requisite to any rational moral system- without it self-realization is impossible. Eberle 94 Eberle, Law @ Roger Williams, 94 (Wake Forest LR, Winter)
The Court's decision in R.A.V. reaffirms the preeminence of free speech in our constitutional value structure. n62 Theoretically, free speech is intrinsically valuable as a chief means by which we develop our faculties and control our destinies. n63 Free speech is also of instrumental value in facilitating other worthy ends such as democratic or personal self-government, n64 public and private decisionmaking, n65 and the advancement of knowledge and truth. n66 Ultimately, the value of free speech rests upon a complex set of justifications, as compared to reliance on any single foundation. n67 The majority of the Court in R.A.V. preferred a nonconsequentialist view, finding that speech is valuable as an end itself, independent of any consequences that it might produce. In this view, free speech is an essential part of a just and free society that treats all people as responsible moral agents. Accordingly, people are entrusted with the responsibility of making judgments about the use or abuse of speech. n68 From this vantage point, the majority saw a certain moral equivalency in all speech. Even hate speech merits protection under the First Amendment, because all speech has intrinsic value. This is so because all speech, even hate speech, is a communication to the world, and therefore implicates the speaker's autonomy or self-realization. Additionally, any information might be valuable to a listener who can then decide its importance or how best to use it. Accordingly, any suspicion or evidence of governmental censorship must be vigilantly investigated.
Free speech facilitates the development of moral reasoning- restrictions should be prima facie rejected. Dwyer 01 (Susan, Phil@Maryland, Nordic Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 2 ® Philosophia Press 2001)
Direct Nonconsequentialism Let us return to the central topic: free speech. From the perspective just sketched, the value of a marketplace of ideas – that notion so central to the consequentialist justification of free speech – lies not so much in its long-term all-things-considered good consequences (the avoidance of dogmatism, democracy, truth, etc.) Rather, free speech is seen as a necessary condition for the realization of any human goods. Constraints on inquiry and expression are constraints on humanity itself. Echoing this thought, Nagel (1995) writes: That the expression of what one thinks and feels should be overwhelmingly one's own business, subject to restriction only when clearly necessary to prevent serious harm distinct from the expression itself, is a condition of being an independent thinking being. It is a form of moral recognition that you have a mind of your own: even if you never want to say anything to which others would object, the idea that they could stop you if they did object is in itself a violation of your integrity (96). A simple yet powerful fact both explains why speech is valuable in and of itself and justifies its stringent protection: when speech is threatened, we are threatened. Direct nonconsequentialism stands in stark contrast to consequentialist approaches which, as we have seen, make the value of speech contingent on its effects. And unlike indirect nonconsequentialism, it makes our status as language users, not our autonomy, the ground for limiting the state's attempts to interfere with our liberty. To repeat: direct nonconsequentialism asserts that speech is valuable because linguistic capacities are the expression of the essence of creatures (us) to whom we attribute the highest moral status. The way in which the direct nonconsequentialist makes explicit what is special about speech helps to make sense of a commonly experienced wariness regarding restrictions on speech we hate. We worry equally when the state seeks to prohibit the speech of sexists or Flat-Earthers. The consequentialist thinks this reaction is explained by attributing to us the belief that any state restriction of speech is the thin end of a wedge: we are discomforted by the thought of the muzzled sexist or Flat-Earther because we think our speech may be next. This may well be the right account of human psychology in these matters. But it is hardly an explanation of the prima facie wrongness of restrictions on lunatics' and sexists’ speech. Our discomfort is a moral discomfort. In bringing out the idea that speech is the expression of our essence, the direct nonconsequentialist is able to capture the true nature of our reaction to state restrictions on others' speech we do not particularly care for. Direct nonconsequentialism also gives substance to a powerful idea that some influential critics – notably, Catharine Mackinnon (1987) – find hopelessly abstract. This is the thought that “every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere (164).” And seeing how direct nonconsequentialism does so will help illustrate some of the practical implications of this strategy for justifying free speech. Proponents of legislation designed to restrict or prohibit problematic speech and courts that rule on the constitutionality of such legislation, often reason in terms of how free speech interests are to be balanced with other interests. For example, proponents of speech codes argue that racist speech harms minorities’ interests in social and political equality; and in the United States, the constitutionality of restrictions on ‘fighting words’ is defended in light of the state’s interests in maintaining law and order. These arguments imply that the expressive rights of individual racists and troublemakers may sometimes be infringed in order to promote the good of some collective. But as the history of free speech debates reveal, once we admit that collective interests can trump individual rights, it is extremely difficult consistently to maintain the belief that a right to free speech imposes severe limits on what the state may do. The direct nonconsequentialist justification of free speech avoids this particular difficulty. Recall, we are working within the context of constitutional provisions – that is, we are thinking about rationales for stringent protections of speech, where these are understood as mechanisms for keeping the government out of some aspect of our lives. In this sense, such provisions express rights had by individuals against the state. But the direct nonconsequentialist’s account of the basis of these rights suggests that it is a mistake to think of them as radically individualistic. True, each of us has a right to free speech, but we have that right in virtue of our membership in a collective – the species H. sapiens – where every member has the same right for the same reason. Thus, in stressing that a universal feature of the species – language mastery – grounds protections on speech, the direct nonconsequentialist avoids individualizing the right to free speech in a way that makes it perpetually vulnerable to the assertion of some collective good. If we think of a person’s right to free speech as protecting just one aspect of his liberty among others, we run the risk of obscuring what is morally relevant about speech. The hatemonger and the pornographer each have a right to free speech, but this is not to be understood in terms of their being free to act on contingent desires they have. My occurrent desire to eat ice-cream holds no weight in the big scheme of things; even I would concede that it is permissible for the state to thwart my satisfying this desire, if doing so meant promoting some very important collective good. But speech is different. It is worthy of protection not because people want to say certain things, but (to repeat) because speech expresses our very nature. What someone wants to say is neither here nor there. Thus, in decoupling the value of free speech from individual desires, direct nonconsequentialism gives content to the idea that when we strengthen (protect) free speech in one place, we strengthen (protect) it everywhere.
In the absence of freedom of expression which includes a free and independent media, it is impossible to protect other rights, including the right to life. Once governments are able to draw a cloak of secrecy over their actions and to remain unaccountable for their actions then massive human rights violations can, and do, take place. For this reason alone the right to freedom of expression, specifically protected in the major international human rights treaties, must be considered to be a primary right. It is significant that one of the first indications of a government's intention to depart from democratic principles is the ever increasing control of information by means of gagging the media, and preventing the freeflow of information from abroad. At one end of the spectrum there are supposedly minor infringements of this fundamental right which occur daily in Western democracies and would include abuse of national security laws to prevent the publication of information which might be embarrassing to a given government: at the other end of the scale are the regimes of terror which employ the most brutal moves to suppress opposition, information and even the freedom to exercise religious beliefs. It has been argued, and will undoubtedly be discussed at this Hearing, that in the absence of free speech and an independent media, it is relatively easy for governments to capture, as it were, the media and to fashion them into instruments of propaganda, for the promotion of ethnic conflict, war and genocide. 2. Enshrining the right to freedom of expression The right to freedom of expression is formally protected in the major international treaties including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, it is enshrined in many national constitutions throughout the world, although this does not always guarantee its protection. Furthermore, freedom of expression is, amongst other human rights, upheld, even for those countries which are not signatories to the above international treaties through the concept of customary law which essentially requires that all states respect the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by virtue of the widespread or customary respect which has been built up in the post World War II years. 3. Is free speech absolute? While it is generally accepted that freedom of expression is, and remains the cornerstone of democracy, there are permitted restrictions encoded within the international treaties which in turn allow for a degree of interpretation of how free free speech should be. Thus, unlike the American First Amendment Rights which allow few, if any, checks on free speech or on the independence of the media, the international treaties are concerned that there should be a balance between competing rights: for example, limiting free speech or media freedom where it impinges on the individual's right to privacy; where free speech causes insult or injury to the rights and reputation of another; where speech is construed as incitement to violence or hatred, or where free speech would create a public disturbance. Given that these permitted restrictions are necessarily broad, the limits of free speech are consistently tested in national law courts and, perhaps even more importantly, in the regional courts such as the European Commission and Court of Human Rights. In recent years several landmark cases have helped to define more closely what restrictions may be imposed by government and under what circumstances. In particular, it has been emphasised by the European Court that any restriction must comply with a three-part test which requires that any such restriction should first of all be prescribed by law, and thus not arbitrarily imposed: proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued, and demonstrably necessary in a democratic society in order to protect the individual and/or the state. 4. Who censors what? Despite the rather strict rules which apply to restrictions on free speech that governments may wish to impose, many justifications are nevertheless sought by governments to suppress information which is inimical to their policies or their interests. These justifications include arguments in defence of national and/or state security, the public interst, including the need to protect public morals and public order and perfectly understandable attempts to prevent racism, violence, sexism, religious intolerance and damage to the indi-vidual's reputation or privacy. The mechanisms employed by governments to restrict the freeflow of information are almost endless and range from subtle economic pressures and devious methods of undermining political opponents and the independent media to the enactment of restrictive press laws and an insist-ence on licensing journalists and eventually to the illegal detention, torture and disappearances of journalists and others associated with the expression of independent views. 5. Examples of censorship To some the right to free speech may appear to be one of the fringe human rights, especially when compared to such violations as torture and extra-judicial killings. It is also sometimes difficult to dissuade the general public that censorship, generally assumed to be something to do with banning obscene books or magazines, is no bad thing! It requires a recognition of some of the fundamental principles of democracy to understand why censorship is so immensely dangerous. The conditon of democracy is that people are able to make choices about a wide variety of issues which affect their lives, including what they wish to see, read, hear or discuss. While this may seem a somewhat luxurious distinction preoccupying, perhaps, wealthy Western democracies, it is a comparatively short distance between government censorship of an offensive book to the silencing of political dissidents. And the distance between such silencing and the use of violence to suppress a growing political philosophy which a government finds inconvenient is even shorter. Censorship tends to have small beginnings and to grow rapidly. Allowing a government to have the power to deny people information, however trivial, not only sets in place laws and procedures which can and will be used by those in authority against those with less authority, but it also denies people the information which they must have in order to monitor their governments actions and to ensure accountability. There have been dramatic and terrible examples of the role that censorship has played in international politics in the last few years: to name but a few, the extent to which the media in the republics of former Yugoslavia were manipulated by government for purposes of propaganda; the violent role played by the government associated radio in Rwanda which incited citizens to kill each other in the name of ethnic purity and the continuing threat of murder issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran against a citizen of another country for having written a book which displeased them. 6. The link between poverty, war and denial of free speech There are undoubted connections between access to information, or rather the lack of it, and war, as indeed there are between poverty, the right to freedom of expression and development. One can argue that democracy aims to increase participation in political and other decision-making at all levels. In this sense democracy empowers people. The poor are denied access to information on decisions which deeply affect their lives, are thus powerless and have no voice; the poor are not able to have influence over their own lives, let alone other aspect of society. Because of this essential powerlessness, the poor are unable to influence the ruling elite in whose interests it may be to initiate conflict and wars in order to consolidate their own power and position. Of the 126 developing countries listed in the 1993 Human Development Report, war was ongoing in 30 countries and severe civil conflict in a further 33 countries. Of the total 63 countries in conflict, 55 are towards the bottom scale of the human development index which is an indicator of poverty. There seems to be no doubt that there is a clear association between poverty and war. It is reasonably safe to assume that the vast majority of people do not ever welcome war. They are normally coerced, more often than not by propaganda, into fear, extreme nationalist sentiments and war by their governments. If the majority of people had a democratic voice they would undoubtedly object to war. But voices are silenced. Thus, the freedom to express one's views and to challenge government decisions and to insist upon political rather than violent solutions, are necessary aspects of democracy which can, and do, avert war. Government sponsored propaganda in Rwanda, as in former Yugoslavia, succeeded because there weren't the means to challenge it. One has therefore to conclude that it is impossible for a particular government to wage war in the absence of a compliant media willing to indulge in government propaganda. This is because the government needs civilians to fight wars for them and also because the media is needed to re-inforce government policies and intentions at every turn.
Thus I value morality because it is our moral obligation to protect liberty. Crane 96 Edward Crane, President of the Cato Institute, VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY, September 15-17, 1996, p. 597
Those are words that we need to hear more of. It's true, freedom and morality do, ultimately, depend on each other for their existence. But as government grows year in and year out, under Democratic and Republican administrations, as regulations multiply, politically correct public education expands, and our tax burden gets ever greater, I can't help but think the reservoir of morality in America is much deeper than our reservoir of political liberty. The crisis we confront is a political crisis - one that merits our immediate attention. We have, it seems to me, a moral imperative to challenge the political status quo and to roll back the 20th century's legacy of statism. It is our heritage as Americans to live in a civil society - not a society that is increasingly politicized. If we want a more moral society, then, as Barry Goldwater said, liberty must be our main interest. Thank you.
And my value criterion is autonomy Text: The United States ought to allow for total free speech on public university and college campuses
Issues with free speech that the neg will bring up can be solved better through total free speech than anything other than that. ACLU 16 ACLU 16 (American Civil Liberties Union, 2016, “Hate Speech on Campus”, https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus) DK
The ACLU believes that hate speech stops being just speech and becomes conduct when it targets a particular individual, and when it forms a pattern of behavior that interferes with a student's ability to exercise his or her right to participate fully in the life of the university. The ACLU isn't opposed to regulations that penalize acts of violence, harassment or intimidation, and invasions of privacy. On the contrary, we believe that kind of conduct should be punished. Furthermore, the ACLU recognizes that the mere presence of speech as one element in an act of violence, harassment, intimidation or privacy invasion doesn't immunize that act from punishment. For example, threatening, bias-inspired phone calls to a student's dorm room, or white students shouting racist epithets at a woman of color as they follow her across campus -- these are clearly punishable acts. Several universities have initiated policies that both support free speech and counter discriminatory conduct. Arizona State, for example, formed a "Campus Environment Team" that acts as an education, information and referral service. The team of specially trained faculty, students and administrators works to foster an environment in which discriminatory harassment is less likely to occur, while also safeguarding academic freedom and freedom of speech.
Strossen 1 cooperates that increasing speech is a better strategy for combating racism that censorship Nadine Strossen Professor of Law, New York Law School, “Regulating Racist Speech on Campus: A Modest Proposal?” Duke Law Journal, 1990. In the context of countering racism on campus, the strategy of increasing speech-rather than decreasing it-not only would be consistent with first amendment principles, but also would be more effective in advancing equality goals. All government agencies and officers, including state universitiesy officials, should condemn slavery, de jure segregation, and other racist institutions that the government formerly supported. State universitiesy and other government officials also should affirmatively endorse equality principles. Furthermore, these government representatives should condemn racist ideas ex- pressed by private speakers.400 In the same vein, private individuals and groups should exercise their first amendment rights by speaking out against racism. Traditional civil libertarians have exercised their own speech rights in this fashion401 and also have de- fended the first amendment freedoms of others who have done so.402 In addition to the preceding measures, which could be implemented on a society-wide basis, other measures would be especially suited to the academic setting. First, regardless of the legal limitations on rules bar- ring hate speech, universities should encourage members of their com- munities voluntarily to restrain the form of their expression in light of the feelings and concerns of various minority groups.403 Universities could facilitate voluntary self-restraint by providing training in communications, information about diverse cultural perspectives, and other education designed to promote intergroup understanding. Members of both minority and majority groups should be encouraged to be mutually respectful. Individuals who violate these norms of civility should not be subject to any disciplinary action, but instead should be counseled.404 These educational efforts should be extended to members of the faculty and administration, as well as students. Of course, universities must vigilantly ensure that even voluntary limits on the manner of academic dis- course do not chill its content.
Racist speech increases public consciousness about underlying societal racism. The aff solves for the root problem rather than putting a bandage over the real issue. Strossen 2 Nadine Strossen Professor of Law, New York Law School, “Regulating Racist Speech on Campus: A Modest Proposal?” Duke Law Journal, 1990. The positive effect of racist speech-in terms of making society aware of and mobiliz- ing its opposition to the evils of racism-are illus- trated by the wave of campus racist incidents now under discussion. Ugly and abominable as these expressions are, they undoubtedly have had the beneficial result of raising public consciousness about the under- lying societal problem of racism. If these expressions had been chilled by virtue of university sanctions, then it is doubtful that there would be such widespread dis- cussion on campuses, let alone more generally, about the real problem of racism.394 Consequently, society would be less mobilized to attack this problem. Past experience confirms that the public airing of racist and other forms of hate speech catalyzes com- munal efforts to re- dress the bigotry that underlies such expression and to stave off any dis- criminatory conduct that might follow from it.395
Free speech is the single best method to combat offensive and harmful perspectives. Dessayer 91 Kathryn Marie Dessayer JD, University of Michigan and Arthur J. Burke JD, Univer- sity of Michigan, “Leaving Them Speechless: A Critique on Speech Restrictions on Campus,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 1991. While revisionist proposals are likely to provide obvious advantages, they are not the most efficient means of combatting offensive speech. Public discussion and discourse serve better in opposing racism, sexism, and other forms of intolerance than rigid re- strictions on speech. The traditional “marketplace of ideas” should discourage the pur- veyors of ignorance and faslehood. As Justice Holmes wrote: When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is bet- ter reached by free trade in ideas-that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.57 According to Dean Lee Bollinger, this statement by Justice Holmes “stands as one of the central organizing pronouncements for our contemporary vision of free speech.”5” Open exchange and discussion play a particularly vital role in the truth-seeking mission of colleges and universities. By forc- ing students to confront and address differing views, free campus debate ultimately advances the goals of toleration and understanding. As the Supreme Court stated in Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of New York: 59 “The classroom is peculiarly the ‘marketplace of ideas.’ The Nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that ro- bust exchange of ideas which discovers truth ‘out of a multitude of tongues, rather than through any kind of authoritative selection.’ Free speech is key to protect individual autonomy. Badmachi 15 Badamchi, Devrim Kabasakal Badamchi (Izmir University, Turkey). “Justifications of freedom of speech: Towards a double-grounded non-consequentialist approach.” Philosophy and Social Criticism. 2015, Vol. 41(9) 907–927. In On Liberty, Mill argues that, even if the received opinions is are the whole truth, it is in need of contestation and criticism (Mill, 1986: 60–1). Otherwise, the held opinion would be no more than a prejudice with little comprehension of rational grounds. Moreover, he adds that without the contestation of counter-opinions, the meaning of the doctrine will be lost and the dogmas will prevent the growth of real convictions from reason or personal experience (ibid.). Without the challenge of contestation and criticism, the opinions and doctrines will be left lacking any real justification and rational grounds. Why is being justified in one’s criticism significant for autonomy and free speech? I think what Mill wants to argue is that, as autonomous and rational beings, individuals are required to hear all the opinions, regardless of the nature of these opinions, in order to develop justified criticisms as part of whatever conception of good they want to follow in life. Censorship of certain opinions would prevent those persons who would criticize these opinions from fully justifying their claims, and justified claims are signif- icant for choosing and following a conception of good freely. In this sense, as Daniel Jacobson rightly argues, Mill’s argument is not straightforwardly consequentialist in the sense that a marketplace of ideas maximizes true belief and that Mill’s argument con- cerns justification rather than truth (Jacobson, 2007: 89). It is a requirement of autonomy to experience all sorts of counter-opinions and arguments freely, both as a speaker and a listener, and therefore to be justified in one’s opinions and criticisms. As autonomous individuals, we should be able to develop freely whatever conception of good we want to follow in life, and this is only possible without an external intervention on opinions that we need to hear. We encounter a similar listener-based argument in Scanlon, which will be be taken up later in this section of the article.
The ability to express is intricately connected to the concept of autonomy, restrictions of freedom threaten freedom. Briston 1 Brison, Susan. "The Autonomy Defense Of Free Speech." Ethics Vol. 108, No. 2, pp. 312-339. January 01, 1998. Web. December 05, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/233807?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Joshua Cohen has recently presented an objection to the autonomy defense (which he dubs the ‘‘maximalist view’’ of free speech on account of the high, indeed trumping, value it places on the right to free speech). Cohen points out that the view that ‘‘expression always trumps other values because of its connection with autonomy ... suggests that a commitment to freedom of expression turns on embracing the supreme value of autonomy’’ which ‘‘threatens to turn freedom of expression into a sectarian political position.’’49 Cohen asks, ‘‘Is a strong commitment to expressive liberties really available only to those who endorse the idea that autonomy is the fundamental human good—an idea about which there is much reasonable controversy?’’ In reply, Cohen states, ‘‘I am not doubting that such a strong commitment is available to those whose ethical views are of this kind, but I reject the claim that such views are really necessary.’’50 I want to make it clear that I am doubting, and am in fact rejecting, precisely this: that the acceptance of any theory of autonomy yields a defense of free speech that precludes restrictions on hate speech. This makes my critique of the autonomy approach more decisive and in one important way less controversial than Cohen’s, since the liberal theorists who advocate the autonomy defense of free speech argue, contrary to Cohen, that they do not ‘‘endorse the idea that autonomy is the fundamental human good’’ (my emphases). Rather, they claim that respect for autonomy is required by the correct view of right.51 The importance of free speech presupposes the protection of free speech even in the face of harmful speech. Brison 2 Brison, Susan. "The Autonomy Defense Of Free Speech." Ethics Vol. 108, No. 2, pp. 312-339. January 01, 1998. Web. December 05, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/233807?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. A free speech principle does not imply that speech can never be restricted. Rather, it generates a presumption against restricting speech, even harmful speech. A showing of harm will not, by itself, be sufficient to justify restriction. As Scanlon notes, ‘‘On any strong version of the doctrine of freedom of expression there will be have cases where protected acts are held to be immune from restriction despite the fact that they have as consequences harms which would normally be sufficient to justify the imposition of legal sanctions.’’37 On Scanlon’s view, any theory of free speech which counts as a ‘‘significant’’ one—including his own— has this consequence, namely, that it considers immune from restriction not only offensive or morally repugnant speech, but also genuinely harmful speech, even where the resulting harms are so serious that the government would normally be justified in restricting individual liberties in order to prevent them. But why should speech be considered so special as to be worthy of protection, even when it is conceded to cause real harms—harms which, if brought about by any other means, would be considered unjust and legitimately preventable by governmental intervention?
Valdosta State and University of Delaware show how schools crush conversation and thus free exchange of ideas before they even occur. Trama, Zachary. "Keeping The Marketplace Of Ideas Open In Schools." Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. December 16, 2011. Web. December 05, 2016. https://www.thefire.org/keeping-the-marketplace-of-ideas-open-in-schools/. When faced with this test, Valdosta State University failed. Student Hayden Barnes only wanted the school to make decisions that were friendlier to the environment. When he shared this idea, he was hit with the difficult realization that it could only be shared on one small section of the campus labeled as the school’s “free-speech zone.” When the idea caused tension between Barnes and the university’s president, Barnes was removed from the university. Protest speech at Valdosta was relegated to a free speech zone for a clear reason. It is in the nature of protests that their message may be one of controversy, one that not everybody wants to hear. Wishing to cleanse the campus of unpopular messages, Valdosta State put free speech in a vice, turning it as tightly as they could without eliminating it altogether. As proved in the case of Hayden Barnes, even the expression that takes place within the free speech zone may be subject to more content- based restriction. The Hayden Barnes incident showed just how far the school’s president, Ronald Zaccari, was willing to go to silence a lone dissenter. The University of Delaware failed its incoming classes as well. These new students weren’t even given a chance to form ideas before they were bombarded with a concisely stated and often repeated set of beliefs that they were all expected to share. The idea for this was indoctrination came straight from the school’s top Residence Life directors, with an obvious goal in mind: Make every student’s views the same. Proactively eliminateeing diverse ideas about controversial subjects is an abhorrent practice. The University of Delaware Residence Life program sought to systematically weed out touchy conversations before they were even had. Those who may have had different views than the ones being dictated soon realized that they were in the minority. By the end of orientation, the point was hammered home, and their ideas were flushed down the spiral of silence. While the policies of Delaware and Valdosta State were different, the effect was the same. New or unpopular ideas were crushed. Whether they were pushed out of sight or overpowered by indoctrination, they were removed from the marketplace. Students felt less free to explore their educational boundaries, and scholarship stayed inside the box. Exploratory thinking was discouraged.
Free speech is necessary for the moral agency of people. It allows people the ability to express their thoughts which is a hallmark of agency. Brown, Rebecca. "THE HARM PRINCIPLE AND FREE SPEECH." 89 Southern California Law Review 953 (2016) USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 15-11. September 27, 2016. Web. December 05, 2016. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2584080. Other justifications for protecting speech are more “constitutive,” as Ronald Dworkin called them.258 These theories value freedom of speech because it protects the dignity and moral agency of the people. The constitutive value is implicated both for potential speakers and for potential audiences. Dworkin explained that government denies the moral responsibility of its people when it withholds from them the opportunity to “hear opinions that might persuade them to dangerous or offensive convictions.”259 Being subject to influence from a wide range of ideas, good and bad, is critically important. T.M. Scanlon clarified that these interests of the audience are not served, however, when expression “influences us in ways that are unrelated to relevant reasons, or in ways that bypass our ability to consider these reasons.”260 This is the kind of operation upon us that expression can have, and the suppression of which I am calling non-censorial. Scanlon offered subliminal advertising as an example. “What is objectionable about subliminal advertising, if it works, is that it causes us to act—to buy popcorn, say, or to read Dostoevsky—by making us think we have a good reason for so acting, even though we probably have no such reason.”261 He went on to affirm an important truth relevant to the assessment of governmental restrictions on speech. “The central audience interest in expression,” he wrote, “is the interest in having a good environment for the formation of one’s beliefs and desires.”262 Government can contribute to that environment by protecting against some kinds of speech harms. Indeed, the autonomy interests of an audience could be enhanced by regulation of speech that causes a harmful impact that may not be obvious on the surface. Scanlon’s view speaks favorably to the idea of a non-censorial First Amendment theory.
Speech regulations have the potential to chill speech beyond their intentions. Strossen, Nadine. "Regulating RACIST SPEECH ON CAMPUS: A MODEST PROPOSAL?." Duke Law Journal 484-573. 1990. Web. December 05, 2016. http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol39/iss3/3/. Second, there is an inescapable risk that any hate speech regulation, no matter how narrowly drawn, will chill speech beyond its literal scope. Members of the university community may well err on the side of caution to avoid being charged with a violation. For example, there is evidence that the rule which the University of Wisconsin implemented in 1989 has had this effect, even though it has not yet been directly enforced. 8 3 A third problem inherent in any campus hate speech policy, as Professor Lawrence concedes,18 4 is that such rules constitute a precedent that can be used to restrict other types of speech. As the Supreme Court has recognized, the long-range precedential impact of any challenged governmental action should be a factor in evaluating its lawfulness.185
Open dialogue allows people to come to a place of mutual understanding. Rostbøll, Christian. "Freedom Of Expression, Deliberation, Autonomy And Respect." European Journal of Political Theory. January 2011. Web. December 07, 2016. http://ept.sagepub.com/content/10/1/5.full.pdf+html. Constraints on public expression should ideally be products of learning processes and self- imposed – and not legally imposed or products of fear. Everyone ought to express him- or herself in ways that he or she, following his or her best judgement, believes does not discourage others from participating in public deliberation. The latter constraint might, however, lead to timidity and so much fear of offending others that important issues are not discussed, and particularly in a society in which people from different cultural or religious backgrounds tend to misunderstand and distrust each other this can be inhibiting for public deliberation and its epistemic aims. Under such conditions, it is essential that citizens also give each other some leeway for making errors and do not take any mistake or small provocation as a sign of disrespect. The condition for this is that people generally regard each other as being committed both to common deliberation and to promoting the degree of self-reflection required for living together on equal terms. If what we might refer to as an overall public culture of mutual respect exists, then minor instances of disrespectful expression should be tolerated. The aim of creating a public culture of mutual respect imposes obligations on both speakers and listeners. Listeners (or viewers) can only be expected to give speakers some leeway for making errors if they have reason to think that the latter were actually attempting to promote common deliberation and mutual respect. Conversely, listeners must give speakers reason to think that they, in general, are committed to participating in common learning processes, to speaking and listening as equals, and not merely interested in creating antagonism with speakers.
Censoring speech on campuses risks politically polarizing the speech on campus. Welch, Benjamin. "An Examination Of University Speech Codes’ Constitutionality And Eir Impact On High-Level Discourse." DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska–Lincoln. August 01, 2014. Web. December 07, 2016. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/journalismdiss/40 . The consequences of censoring opinions more typical of one side of the political spectrum is a great cause for concern – though not exactly surprising – in today’s political climate. Extensive studies have shown that the weight of America’s growing political polarization is more increased than in eras past, as technology has advanced to the point where individuals are able to intake content through cyber environments wherein likeminded people confirm pre-existing opinions, causing an echo chamber that leaves no room for new thoughts and ideas.12 Sociologist Diana C. Mutz has confirmed this in her studies, writing that those with the highest level of education have the lowest levels of exposure to people with viewpoints in opposition to their own. Conversely, those who have not even graduated from high school are subjected to the largest amount of differing viewpoints and diverse discussion.13 To restrict this political eco chamber, we must allow for the circulation of ideas in a public space to limit the increasing levels of political polarization that would skyrocket due to the neg.
Free Speech is essential to personal dignity and autonomy – Protecting communication is the way to ensure agency. Tsesis, Alexander. "FREE SPEECH CONSTITUTIONALISM." UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW. May 21, 2015. Web. December 07, 2016. https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.phpID=102065004071020074093008015067029077054008067084052039088087093121110001072071010065097018031059009044096 126006072028005111005031069088002093028094096071070112067027083041066004064093012127121006030103080069066117031080031017089016112082007121007001 andEXT=pdf. One of the most often stated rationales for protecting free speech is society’s obligation to safeguard the right of thoughtful and articulate persons to communicatively exercise their intellectual capacities.52 This view gets at the important truth that speech is a dignitary interest of each autonomous human being. Revealing one’s ideas to others is a factor for anyone, which is to say every cognizant person, wishing to relate and convey facts, views, commands, and inquiries to others.53 Personal identity is tied to the ability to formulate opinions and ascertain facts. Freedom of speech enables everyone to explore the innermost workings of his or her mind and to spread knowledge. All humans engage in the construction of semantical and syntactic combinations of words, symbols, or other forms of categorization meant to interact with others and to gain their attention.54 Communication allows us to share what we have learned, our preferences, criticisms, pains, joys, and all the various experiences contained within our personal senses that would remain purely phenomenological without language, signs, and sometimes even grunts and gestures. The speaker may be seeking change, catharsis, or intimacy. As accurate as the personal autonomy perspective is in recognizing the agency aspect of free speech,55 scholars, whose views I parse later in this Section, are mistaken to isolate it as the only reason behind First Amendment protection. As Justice Brennan pointed out in one of his dissents, free expression fosters self-government, and is “intrinsic to individual liberty and dignity,” and advances “society’s search for truth.”56
2/24/17
jan feb journalism
Tournament: Any | Round: Finals | Opponent: Any | Judge: Any Free speech is a pre-requisite to any rational moral system- without it self-realization is impossible. Eberle 94 Eberle, Law @ Roger Williams, 94 (Wake Forest LR, Winter)
The Court's decision in R.A.V. reaffirms the preeminence of free speech in our constitutional value structure. n62 Theoretically, free speech is intrinsically valuable as a chief means by which we develop our faculties and control our destinies. n63 Free speech is also of instrumental value in facilitating other worthy ends such as democratic or personal self-government, n64 public and private decisionmaking, n65 and the advancement of knowledge and truth. n66 Ultimately, the value of free speech rests upon a complex set of justifications, as compared to reliance on any single foundation. n67 The majority of the Court in R.A.V. preferred a nonconsequentialist view, finding that speech is valuable as an end itself, independent of any consequences that it might produce. In this view, free speech is an essential part of a just and free society that treats all people as responsible moral agents. Accordingly, people are entrusted with the responsibility of making judgments about the use or abuse of speech. n68 From this vantage point, the majority saw a certain moral equivalency in all speech. Even hate speech merits protection under the First Amendment, because all speech has intrinsic value. This is so because all speech, even hate speech, is a communication to the world, and therefore implicates the speaker's autonomy or self-realization. Additionally, any information might be valuable to a listener who can then decide its importance or how best to use it. Accordingly, any suspicion or evidence of governmental censorship must be vigilantly investigated.
Free speech facilitates the development of moral reasoning- restrictions should be prima facie rejected. Dwyer 01 (Susan, Phil@Maryland, Nordic Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 2 ® Philosophia Press 2001)
Direct Nonconsequentialism Let us return to the central topic: free speech. From the perspective just sketched, the value of a marketplace of ideas – that notion so central to the consequentialist justification of free speech – lies not so much in its long-term all-things-considered good consequences (the avoidance of dogmatism, democracy, truth, etc.) Rather, free speech is seen as a necessary condition for the realization of any human goods. Constraints on inquiry and expression are constraints on humanity itself. Echoing this thought, Nagel (1995) writes: That the expression of what one thinks and feels should be overwhelmingly one's own business, subject to restriction only when clearly necessary to prevent serious harm distinct from the expression itself, is a condition of being an independent thinking being. It is a form of moral recognition that you have a mind of your own: even if you never want to say anything to which others would object, the idea that they could stop you if they did object is in itself a violation of your integrity (96). A simple yet powerful fact both explains why speech is valuable in and of itself and justifies its stringent protection: when speech is threatened, we are threatened. Direct nonconsequentialism stands in stark contrast to consequentialist approaches which, as we have seen, make the value of speech contingent on its effects. And unlike indirect nonconsequentialism, it makes our status as language users, not our autonomy, the ground for limiting the state's attempts to interfere with our liberty. To repeat: direct nonconsequentialism asserts that speech is valuable because linguistic capacities are the expression of the essence of creatures (us) to whom we attribute the highest moral status. The way in which the direct nonconsequentialist makes explicit what is special about speech helps to make sense of a commonly experienced wariness regarding restrictions on speech we hate. We worry equally when the state seeks to prohibit the speech of sexists or Flat-Earthers. The consequentialist thinks this reaction is explained by attributing to us the belief that any state restriction of speech is the thin end of a wedge: we are discomforted by the thought of the muzzled sexist or Flat-Earther because we think our speech may be next. This may well be the right account of human psychology in these matters. But it is hardly an explanation of the prima facie wrongness of restrictions on lunatics' and sexists’ speech. Our discomfort is a moral discomfort. In bringing out the idea that speech is the expression of our essence, the direct nonconsequentialist is able to capture the true nature of our reaction to state restrictions on others' speech we do not particularly care for. Direct nonconsequentialism also gives substance to a powerful idea that some influential critics – notably, Catharine Mackinnon (1987) – find hopelessly abstract. This is the thought that “every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere (164).” And seeing how direct nonconsequentialism does so will help illustrate some of the practical implications of this strategy for justifying free speech. Proponents of legislation designed to restrict or prohibit problematic speech and courts that rule on the constitutionality of such legislation, often reason in terms of how free speech interests are to be balanced with other interests. For example, proponents of speech codes argue that racist speech harms minorities’ interests in social and political equality; and in the United States, the constitutionality of restrictions on ‘fighting words’ is defended in light of the state’s interests in maintaining law and order. These arguments imply that the expressive rights of individual racists and troublemakers may sometimes be infringed in order to promote the good of some collective. But as the history of free speech debates reveal, once we admit that collective interests can trump individual rights, it is extremely difficult consistently to maintain the belief that a right to free speech imposes severe limits on what the state may do. The direct nonconsequentialist justification of free speech avoids this particular difficulty. Recall, we are working within the context of constitutional provisions – that is, we are thinking about rationales for stringent protections of speech, where these are understood as mechanisms for keeping the government out of some aspect of our lives. In this sense, such provisions express rights had by individuals against the state. But the direct nonconsequentialist’s account of the basis of these rights suggests that it is a mistake to think of them as radically individualistic. True, each of us has a right to free speech, but we have that right in virtue of our membership in a collective – the species H. sapiens – where every member has the same right for the same reason. Thus, in stressing that a universal feature of the species – language mastery – grounds protections on speech, the direct nonconsequentialist avoids individualizing the right to free speech in a way that makes it perpetually vulnerable to the assertion of some collective good. If we think of a person’s right to free speech as protecting just one aspect of his liberty among others, we run the risk of obscuring what is morally relevant about speech. The hatemonger and the pornographer each have a right to free speech, but this is not to be understood in terms of their being free to act on contingent desires they have. My occurrent desire to eat ice-cream holds no weight in the big scheme of things; even I would concede that it is permissible for the state to thwart my satisfying this desire, if doing so meant promoting some very important collective good. But speech is different. It is worthy of protection not because people want to say certain things, but (to repeat) because speech expresses our very nature. What someone wants to say is neither here nor there. Thus, in decoupling the value of free speech from individual desires, direct nonconsequentialism gives content to the idea that when we strengthen (protect) free speech in one place, we strengthen (protect) it everywhere.
In the absence of freedom of expression which includes a free and independent media, it is impossible to protect other rights, including the right to life. Once governments are able to draw a cloak of secrecy over their actions and to remain unaccountable for their actions then massive human rights violations can, and do, take place. For this reason alone the right to freedom of expression, specifically protected in the major international human rights treaties, must be considered to be a primary right. It is significant that one of the first indications of a government's intention to depart from democratic principles is the ever increasing control of information by means of gagging the media, and preventing the freeflow of information from abroad. At one end of the spectrum there are supposedly minor infringements of this fundamental right which occur daily in Western democracies and would include abuse of national security laws to prevent the publication of information which might be embarrassing to a given government: at the other end of the scale are the regimes of terror which employ the most brutal moves to suppress opposition, information and even the freedom to exercise religious beliefs. It has been argued, and will undoubtedly be discussed at this Hearing, that in the absence of free speech and an independent media, it is relatively easy for governments to capture, as it were, the media and to fashion them into instruments of propaganda, for the promotion of ethnic conflict, war and genocide. 2. Enshrining the right to freedom of expression The right to freedom of expression is formally protected in the major international treaties including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, it is enshrined in many national constitutions throughout the world, although this does not always guarantee its protection. Furthermore, freedom of expression is, amongst other human rights, upheld, even for those countries which are not signatories to the above international treaties through the concept of customary law which essentially requires that all states respect the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by virtue of the widespread or customary respect which has been built up in the post World War II years. 3. Is free speech absolute? While it is generally accepted that freedom of expression is, and remains the cornerstone of democracy, there are permitted restrictions encoded within the international treaties which in turn allow for a degree of interpretation of how free free speech should be. Thus, unlike the American First Amendment Rights which allow few, if any, checks on free speech or on the independence of the media, the international treaties are concerned that there should be a balance between competing rights: for example, limiting free speech or media freedom where it impinges on the individual's right to privacy; where free speech causes insult or injury to the rights and reputation of another; where speech is construed as incitement to violence or hatred, or where free speech would create a public disturbance. Given that these permitted restrictions are necessarily broad, the limits of free speech are consistently tested in national law courts and, perhaps even more importantly, in the regional courts such as the European Commission and Court of Human Rights. In recent years several landmark cases have helped to define more closely what restrictions may be imposed by government and under what circumstances. In particular, it has been emphasised by the European Court that any restriction must comply with a three-part test which requires that any such restriction should first of all be prescribed by law, and thus not arbitrarily imposed: proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued, and demonstrably necessary in a democratic society in order to protect the individual and/or the state. 4. Who censors what? Despite the rather strict rules which apply to restrictions on free speech that governments may wish to impose, many justifications are nevertheless sought by governments to suppress information which is inimical to their policies or their interests. These justifications include arguments in defence of national and/or state security, the public interst, including the need to protect public morals and public order and perfectly understandable attempts to prevent racism, violence, sexism, religious intolerance and damage to the indi-vidual's reputation or privacy. The mechanisms employed by governments to restrict the freeflow of information are almost endless and range from subtle economic pressures and devious methods of undermining political opponents and the independent media to the enactment of restrictive press laws and an insist-ence on licensing journalists and eventually to the illegal detention, torture and disappearances of journalists and others associated with the expression of independent views. 5. Examples of censorship To some the right to free speech may appear to be one of the fringe human rights, especially when compared to such violations as torture and extra-judicial killings. It is also sometimes difficult to dissuade the general public that censorship, generally assumed to be something to do with banning obscene books or magazines, is no bad thing! It requires a recognition of some of the fundamental principles of democracy to understand why censorship is so immensely dangerous. The conditon of democracy is that people are able to make choices about a wide variety of issues which affect their lives, including what they wish to see, read, hear or discuss. While this may seem a somewhat luxurious distinction preoccupying, perhaps, wealthy Western democracies, it is a comparatively short distance between government censorship of an offensive book to the silencing of political dissidents. And the distance between such silencing and the use of violence to suppress a growing political philosophy which a government finds inconvenient is even shorter. Censorship tends to have small beginnings and to grow rapidly. Allowing a government to have the power to deny people information, however trivial, not only sets in place laws and procedures which can and will be used by those in authority against those with less authority, but it also denies people the information which they must have in order to monitor their governments actions and to ensure accountability. There have been dramatic and terrible examples of the role that censorship has played in international politics in the last few years: to name but a few, the extent to which the media in the republics of former Yugoslavia were manipulated by government for purposes of propaganda; the violent role played by the government associated radio in Rwanda which incited citizens to kill each other in the name of ethnic purity and the continuing threat of murder issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran against a citizen of another country for having written a book which displeased them. 6. The link between poverty, war and denial of free speech There are undoubted connections between access to information, or rather the lack of it, and war, as indeed there are between poverty, the right to freedom of expression and development. One can argue that democracy aims to increase participation in political and other decision-making at all levels. In this sense democracy empowers people. The poor are denied access to information on decisions which deeply affect their lives, are thus powerless and have no voice; the poor are not able to have influence over their own lives, let alone other aspect of society. Because of this essential powerlessness, the poor are unable to influence the ruling elite in whose interests it may be to initiate conflict and wars in order to consolidate their own power and position. Of the 126 developing countries listed in the 1993 Human Development Report, war was ongoing in 30 countries and severe civil conflict in a further 33 countries. Of the total 63 countries in conflict, 55 are towards the bottom scale of the human development index which is an indicator of poverty. There seems to be no doubt that there is a clear association between poverty and war. It is reasonably safe to assume that the vast majority of people do not ever welcome war. They are normally coerced, more often than not by propaganda, into fear, extreme nationalist sentiments and war by their governments. If the majority of people had a democratic voice they would undoubtedly object to war. But voices are silenced. Thus, the freedom to express one's views and to challenge government decisions and to insist upon political rather than violent solutions, are necessary aspects of democracy which can, and do, avert war. Government sponsored propaganda in Rwanda, as in former Yugoslavia, succeeded because there weren't the means to challenge it. One has therefore to conclude that it is impossible for a particular government to wage war in the absence of a compliant media willing to indulge in government propaganda. This is because the government needs civilians to fight wars for them and also because the media is needed to re-inforce government policies and intentions at every turn.
Plan Text: Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not restrict constitutionally protected journalist speech.
Censorship of student journalism is increasing at the worst possible time. Censorship discourages questioning the government. Schuman 12-8 (Rebecca, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2016/12/student_journalists_are_under_threat.html) Well, here’s some great news to cheer you up: The American student press is under siege! Apparently, we’ve been too busy blowing gaskets over professor watch lists and “safe spaces” to recognize the actual biggest threat to free speech on college campuses today. According to a new report by the American Association of University Professors, in conjunction with three other nonpartisan free-speech advocacy organizations, a disquieting trend of administrative censorship of student-run media has been spreading quietly across the country—quietly, of course, because according to the report, those censorship efforts have so far been successful. The report finds that recent headlines out of Mount St. Mary’s University, for example, may be “just the tip of a much larger iceberg.” Indeed, “it has become disturbingly routine for student journalists and their advisers to experience overt hostility that threatens their ability to inform the campus community and, in some instances, imperils their careers or the survival of their publications.” The report chronicles more than 20 previously unreported cases of media advisers “suffering some degree of administrative pressure to control, edit, or censor student journalistic content.” Furthermore, this pressure came “from every segment of higher education and from every institutional type: public and private, four-year and two-year, religious and secular.” It gets worse. In many of the cases in the report, administration officials “threatened retaliation against students and advisers not only for coverage critical of the administration but also for otherwise frivolous coverage that the administrators believed placed the institution in an unflattering light,” including an innocuous listicle of the best places to hook up on campus. In many cases, the student publications were subject to prior review from either an adviser who reported directly to the administration or the administration itself. Prior review means getting what’s in your newspaper signed off on by someone up top before it can be published. It is—to use the parlance of my years of professional journalistic training that began with my time as features editor of the Vassar College Miscellany News in the mid-’90s—absolute bullshit. (At public universities, it’s also illegal.) First, and most obviously, this is because a free student press is a hallmark of the American higher education system, and any threat to that freedom is on its face worrying. But there’s also this: The last thing we need right now, in the creeping shadow of American authoritarianism, is an entire generation of fledgling journalists who’ve come up thinking censorship is acceptable.
The legal justification for newspaper censorship is a 7th circuit decision that applied Hazelwood to universities-this allows unchecked arbitrary censorship by administrators. Goodman 05 ( S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center 2005 WL 2736314 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba, Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 20, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief of Amici Curiae Student Press Law Center, Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Advisers, Community College Journalism Association, Society for Collegiate Journalists, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, American Society of Newspaper Editors, National Newspaper Association, Newspaper Association of America, Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors, College Newspaper Business and Advertising Managers, National Federation of Press Women, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the Independent Press Association/Campus Journalism Project in Support of Petition of Margaret L. Hosty, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba for Writ of Certiorari Of Counsel: S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Ste 1100, Arlington, VA 22209-2211, (703) 807-1904. Richard M. Goehler, (Counsel of Record), Frost Brown Todd LLC, 2200 PNC Center, 201 East Fifth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, (513) 651-6800, Counsel for Amici Curiae.) In contrast to many high school censorship incidents, public college administrators today are less likely to be successful in their efforts to restrict the student press. This is usually (and perhaps only) because of the First Amendment protections that courts have consistently accorded college journalists. That circumstance would surely change were Hazelwood extended to limit the rights of college student journalists. Among some of the stories in college student publications that could be subject to censorship under the Hazelwood standard: • An opinion piece opposing an upcoming referendum that would have provided the college with revenue collected from property taxes. University officials, claiming the paper contained typographical and grammatical errors, confiscated and destroyed 10,000 copies of the paper. After students threatened legal action, the school agreed to reprint the newspaper.14 • An article detailing the incoming university president’s expenditure of state funds, including more than $100,000 spent to remodel the president’s home and pay for *17 his inauguration. Following publication, the president transferred the newspaper’s adviser to another position at the school, an act that generated considerable public attention. The president later resigned after being questioned by state legislators regarding the spending that had been reported in the student newspaper. The adviser was remstated.15 • A yearbook story reporting that members of the school’s volleyball team were removed for bringing alcohol on a team trip and a feature spread on sex and relationships. Following publication, the yearbook editor lost his job. After the editor sued, the school agreed to a settlement in which it paid the editor $10,000 and agreed to a publications policy that prohibited administrative interference with the content of student publications.16 • An editorial cartoon, featuring cartoon figures as university officials, commenting on a U.S. Department of Education report that found the school had misused public funds when it paid for a trip to Disney World by students and school officials. One of those portrayed, the vice president of student affairs, temporarily halted printing of the issue - but released them after students objected.17 If Hazelwood is allowed to determine the level of First Amendment protection to which America’s college student media are entitled, there is no doubt university administrators are poised to take advantage of their new *18 censorship powers. Word has already begun to spread that the standard “hands-off student media” policies recognized by college officials in the past may no longer be required. In California, for example - 2,000 miles west of the Governors State University campus and far beyond the jurisdiction of the Seventh Circuit - administrators at California State University system schools received a memo from the system’s legal counsel on June 30, 2005 - ten days after the Seventh Circuit handed down its decision - informing them that “Hosty appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers….”18 Extending Hazelwood to the university setting is a recipe for encouraging censorship that would dramatically hinder the production of good journalism and the training of good journalists. Amici do not believe this Court intended the censorship of college and university student newspapers to be the legacy of Hazelwood.
Regulation of newspapers is a crucial precedent used to justify widespread campus censorship-it uniquely empowers and protects administrators to censor. Lukianoff 05 (George, Samantha Harris, Foundation for Individual, Rights in Education, 2005 WL 2736313 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY et al., Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 19, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief Amici Curiae of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; The Coalition for Student and Academic Rights; Feminists for Free Expression; The First Amendment Project; Ifeminists.Net; National Association of Scholars; Accuracy in Academia; Leadership Institute; The Individual Rights Foundation; The American Council of Trustees and Alumni; and Students for Academic Freedom in Support of Petitioners) Commentators from across the political spectrum, while often disagreeing on the source, the scale, and the cause of the chilling of free speech on campus, have described the current campus environment as one where the “marketplace of ideas” is under siege.13 Whether in the name of “ tolerance,” *17 risk management, or merely peace and quiet, hundreds (if not thousands) of universities have enacted policies and engaged in practices hostile to free and open discourse over the past few decades.14 Starting in the 1980s, colleges enacted “speech codes” under a variety of creative legal theories. Despite numerous decisions ruling these codes unconstitutional15 and this Court's decision in R.A. E v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), which indicated that viewpoint-based speech codes would be unconstitutional, the number of university speech codes actually increased through the 1990s, see Jon Gould, The Precedent that Wasn't, 35 Law and Soc'y Rev. 345 (2001). Over the past twenty years, numerous books have been written alleging an illiberal, intolerant, and/or partisan atmosphere on campus16 in which dissenting viewpoints and unpopular groups are repressed through a variety of measures. More recently, universities have adopted highly restrictive, and sometimes absurd “speech *18 zone” policies restricting speech from all but small comers of the university.17 Thus far, the law has served to protect the collegiate marketplace of ideas from overreaching administrations, requiring policies and practices in keeping with the First Amendment and academic freedom. For example, in Rosenberger, this Court granted religious student groups equal access to student fee funding. In Bait v. Shippensburg University, 280 F. Supp. 2d 357 (M.D. Pa. 2003), a federal court in Pennsylvania ruled Shippensburg University's speech code was unconstitutionally overbroad, and in Roberts v. Haragan, 346 F. Supp. 2d 853 (N.D. Tex. 2004), a federal court in Texas dismissed a speech zone policy as unconstitutionally overbroad. The Hosty decision, however, is a step in the opposite direction. College administrators have already demonstrated a tenacious will to censor even when the law clearly limited their ability to do so. The legal ambiguity that Hosty creates, the unparalleled discretion it grants college administrators, and the legal protection it provides to administrators who censor all threaten to dramatically worsen the campus free speech crisis. If allowed to stand, Hosty will have numerous, specific, predictable, and far reaching negative consequences for free speech and robust debate on America's college campuses. It is no exaggeration to say that the Hosty opinion threatens the existence of the independent collegiate media. Universities have not shown great tolerance for the free press. If there is no longer a presumption of independence or of public forum status when a public university establishes a student newspaper, *19 there should be no doubt that administrators who wish to censor will take advantage of this ambiguity. Public universities will be able to argue that any paper that receives any kind of benefit - whether financial support or simply the use of office space - from the university is subject to administrative control. If past experience is any guide, colleges will pay lip service to the importance of student press freedom, but they will quickly take advantage of any legal means available to punish or control student newspapers that anger or offend students or administrators. For example, in a memorandum to all California State University presidents written only ten days after the Hosty decision, California State University General Counsel Christine Helwick wrote that: while the Hosty decision is from another jurisdiction and, as such, does not directly impact the CSU, the case appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers, provided that there is an established practice of regularized content review and approval for pedagogical purposes.18 In this same way, Hosty threatens the existence of independent student groups. If the primary question under Hosty is whether a student group is in some way “subsidized,” any group that receives any sort of benefit or student fees could be threatened with administrative control. The possibility that a court might later determine that the student group or publication was entitled to some form of public forum status would hardly protect the overwhelming majority of these groups that are neither willing nor affluent enough to mount a legal defense. *20 This case also re-opens issues relating to collegiate liability for student media and student groups formerly considered settled. It also allows administrators virtually unlimited freedom to experiment with censorship above and beyond even the broad discretion granted to them under Hosty. Finally, there is no reason to believe this holding will remain limited to public colleges - private colleges that promise free speech to their students tend to base their own speech policies on First Amendment standards.19 Hosty v. Carter will have reverberations from the community college to the Ivy League. Administrators will impose the “intellectual strait jacket” that this Court has long feared, and the consequences will be profound. As FIRE co-founder Alan Charles Kors once said, “A nation that does not educate in freedom will not survive in freedom, and will not even know when it is lost.”20
Universities are the most important site of first amendment activity- ignore negative evidence written about other contexts. Goodman 05 ( S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center 2005 WL 2736314 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba, Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 20, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief of Amici Curiae Student Press Law Center, Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Advisers, Community College Journalism Association, Society for Collegiate Journalists, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, American Society of Newspaper Editors, National Newspaper Association, Newspaper Association of America, Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors, College Newspaper Business and Advertising Managers, National Federation of Press Women, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the Independent Press Association/Campus Journalism Project in Support of Petition of Margaret L. Hosty, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba for Writ of Certiorari Of Counsel: S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Ste 1100, Arlington, VA 22209-2211, (703) 807-1904. Richard M. Goehler, (Counsel of Record), Frost Brown Todd LLC, 2200 PNC Center, 201 East Fifth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, (513) 651-6800, Counsel for Amici Curiae.) The University is the paradigmatic “marketplace of ideas,” rendering “the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms…nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.” Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169, 180 (1972) (citation omitted). This Court has specifically recognized there is “no doubt that the First Amendment rights of speech and association extend to the campuses of state universities.” Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 268-69. This Court’s restrictive First Amendment standard in Hazelwood sprung from the premise that the special circumstances of the secondary and elementary school environment permit school authorities to exercise more control over school-sponsored student expression than the First Amendment would otherwise permit. However, the judicial deference necessary in the high school setting and below - and in the factual context of Hazelwood - is inappropriate for a university setting. A high school is an entirely different environment from a university. This Court acknowledged such a difference when it explicitly reserved the question of whether the same level of deference to school officials expressed in Hazelwood would be “appropriate with respect to school-sponsored expressive activity at the college and university level.” Hazelwood, Id. at 273, n.7. In fact, every effort to justify censorship of college student media under Hazelwood has been rejected by the lower courts except by the Seventh Circuit in Hosty. As Justice Souter has noted, the “cases dealing with the right of teaching institutions to limit expressive freedom of students have been *8 confined to high schools, whose students and their school’s relation to them are different and at least arguably distinguishable from their counterparts in college education.” Board of Regents of the Univ. of Wisconsin System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000) (Sourer, J., concurring in the judgment) (citations omitted). This Court has explicitly recognized that where the “vital” principles of the First Amendment are at stake, “the first danger to liberty lies in granting the State the power to examine publications to determine whether or not they are based on some ultimate idea and, if so, for the State to classify them. The second, and corollary, danger to speech is from the chilling of individual thought and expression.” Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819, 835-36 (1995). These dangers are especially threatening in the university setting, where “the quality and creative power of student intellectual life to this day remains a vital measure of a school’s influence and attainment.” Id. Yet that right to review and censor a student publication is precisely what the Seventh Circuit has approved in Hosty. Such restrictions have no place at a public college or university. “For the University, by regulation, to cast disapproval on particular viewpoints of its students risks the suppression of free speech and creative inquiry in one of the vital centers for the Nation’s intellectual life.” Id. Lower courts have consistently struck down administrative attempts to limit free and robust student expression at the postsecondary level. Joyner v. Whiting, 477 F.2d 456 (4th Cir. 1973) (university withdrawal of funding to student publication at North Carolina State University based on editorial condemning integration rejected); Stanley v. Magrath, 719 F.2d 279 (8th Cir. 1983) (attempt by *9 University of Minnesota to change student newspaper funding mechanism after publication of controversial humor issue rejected); Bazaar v. Fortune, 476 F.2d 570 (5th Cir. 1973), aff’d with modification, 489 F.2d 255 (en banc per curiam) (University of Mississippi’s censorship of student magazine because of “coarse language” and story about interracial love affair rejected). In fact, two appellate courts have explicitly refused to apply Hazelwood to college student media. Student Government Association v. Board of Trustees of the University of Massachusetts, 868 F. 2d 473, 480 n. 6 (1st Cir. 1989); Kincaid v. Gibson, 236 F.3d 342, 346 n. 4-5 (6th Cir. 2001) (en banc). College student expression should be subject to no greater restrictions than those applicable to the public at large. Healy, 408 U.S. at 180. The driving force prompting the enactment of the First Amendment was the founders’ unwavering commitment to the freedom of the mind. Nowhere is the mind more provoked, more nurtured, more challenged to new levels of enlightenment than on the university campus. Hazelwood did not, and should not be interpreted to have taken these fundamental precepts of college education into account when it diluted high school students’ First Amendment rights. Nothing in Hazelwood or its progeny should be read to alter the venerated balance favoring free and independent thought on America’s college and university campuses.
Campus free speech solves extinction. Lukianoff 05 (George, Samantha Harris, Foundation for Individual, Rights in Education, 2005 WL 2736313 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY et al., Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 19, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief Amici Curiae of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; The Coalition for Student and Academic Rights; Feminists for Free Expression; The First Amendment Project; Ifeminists.Net; National Association of Scholars; Accuracy in Academia; Leadership Institute; The Individual Rights Foundation; The American Council of Trustees and Alumni; and Students for Academic Freedom in Support of Petitioners) This Court has long emphasized and understood the importance of free and open expression on campus: The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation … Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957). *6 In the nearly fifty years since Sweezy, this Court and lower courts have repeatedly reaffirmed the special importance of robust free expression in higher education.3 In Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972), this Court made clear that students are an important part of the collegiate marketplace of ideas when it ruled that a college, acting “as the instrumentality of the State, may not restrict speech … simply because it finds the views expressed by any group to be abhorrent.” Healy at 187-88. See also Papish v. Bd. of Curators of the Univ. of Mo., 410 U.S. 667, 670 (1973) (“the mere dissemination of ideas - no matter how offensive to good taste - on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’ ”). Censorship of college journalism guts civic engagement. LoMonte 12-1 (Frank D., http://www.splc.org/article/2016/12/college-media-threats-report-2016) Frank D. LoMonte, executive director of the SPLC, said, “It is hypocritical for colleges to claim they support civic engagement while defunding student news organizations, removing well-qualified faculty advisers, and otherwise intimidating journalists into compliance. Colleges are more obsessed with promoting a favorable public image than ever before, but a college that retaliates against students and faculty for unflattering journalism doesn't just look bad—it is bad. We need a top-level commitment from the presidents of America's colleges and universities to support editorially independent student-run news coverage, including secure funding and retaliation protection for students and their advisers.” Joan Bertin, NCAC executive director, said, “This report exposes restrictions on press and speech freedoms on campus and exhorts college and university administrators to educate students in the operation of our constitutional system by allowing students to engage in its most critical functions: seeking information, becoming engaged and informed, and speaking out on matters of importance.” Kelley Lash, president of CMA, said, “This issue impacts millions of educators and students. College Media Association emphatically supports the First Amendment freedoms of all student media at all institutions, both public and private, and agrees that these media must be free from all forms of external interference designed to influence content. Student media participants, and their advisers, should not be threatened or punished due to the content of the student media. Their rights of free speech and free press must always be guaranteed.”
Civic engagement is the vital internal link to solving every existential problem- its try or die for the affirmative. Small 06 (Jonathan, former Americorps VISTA for the Human Services Coalition, “Moving Forward,” The Journal for Civic Commitment, Spring, http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/Journal/Issue7/Small.jsp) What will be the challenges of the new millennium? And how should we equip young people to face these challenges? While we cannot be sure of the exact nature of the challenges, we can say unequivocally that humankind will face them together. If the end of the twentieth century marked the triumph of the capitalists, individualism, and personal responsibility, the new century will present challenges that require collective action, unity, and enlightened self-interest. Confronting global warming, depleted natural resources, global super viruses, global crime syndicates, and multinational corporations with no conscience and no accountability will require cooperation, openness, honesty, compromise, and most of all solidarity – ideals not exactly cultivated in the twentieth century. We can no longer suffer to see life through the tiny lens of our own existence. Never in the history of the world has our collective fate been so intricately interwoven. Our very existence depends upon our ability to adapt to this new paradigm, to envision a more cohesive society. With humankind’s next great challenge comes also great opportunity. Ironically, modern individualism backed us into a corner. We have two choices, work together in solidarity or perish together in alienation. Unlike any other crisis before, the noose is truly around the neck of the whole world at once. Global super viruses will ravage rich and poor alike, developed and developing nations, white and black, woman, man, and child. Global warming and damage to the environment will affect climate change and destroy ecosystems across the globe. Air pollution will force gas masks on our faces, our depleted atmosphere will make a predator of the sun, and chemicals will invade and corrupt our water supplies. Every single day we are presented the opportunity to change our current course, to survive modernity in a manner befitting our better nature. Through zealous cooperation and radical solidarity we can alter the course of human events. Regarding the practical matter of equipping young people to face the challenges of a global, interconnected world, we need to teach cooperation, community, solidarity, balance and tolerance in schools. We need to take a holistic approach to education. Standardized test scores alone will not begin to prepare young people for the world they will inherit. The three staples of traditional education (reading, writing, and arithmetic) need to be supplemented by three cornerstones of a modern education, exposure, exposure, and more exposure. How can we teach solidarity? How can we teach community in the age of rugged individualism? How can we counterbalance crass commercialism and materialism? How can we impart the true meaning of power? These are the educational challenges we face in the new century. It will require a radical transformation of our conception of education. We’ll need to trust a bit more, control a bit less, and put our faith in the potential of youth to make sense of their world. In addition to a declaration of the gauntlet set before educators in the twenty-first century, this paper is a proposal and a case study of sorts toward a new paradigm of social justice and civic engagement education. Unfortunately, the current pedagogical climate of public K-12 education does not lend itself well to an exploratory study and trial of holistic education. Consequently, this proposal and case study targets a higher education model. Specifically, we will look at some possibilities for a large community college in an urban setting with a diverse student body. Our guides through this process are specifically identified by the journal Equity and Excellence in Education. The dynamic interplay between ideas of social justice, civic engagement, and service learning in education will be the lantern in the dark cave of uncertainty. As such, a simple and straightforward explanation of the three terms is helpful to direct this inquiry. Before we look at a proposal and case study and the possible consequences contained therein, this paper will draw out a clear understanding of how we should characterize these ubiquitous terms and how their relationship to each other affects our study. Social Justice, Civic Engagement, Service Learning and Other Commie Crap Social justice is often ascribed long, complicated, and convoluted definitions. In fact, one could fill a good-sized library with treatises on this subject alone. Here we do not wish to belabor the issue or argue over fine points. For our purposes, it will suffice to have a general characterization of the term, focusing instead on the dynamics of its interaction with civic engagement and service learning. Social justice refers quite simply to a community vision and a community conscience that values inclusion, fairness, tolerance, and equality. The idea of social justice in America has been around since the Revolution and is intimately linked to the idea of a social contract. The Declaration of Independence is the best example of the prominence of social contract theory in the US. It states quite emphatically that the government has a contract with its citizens, from which we get the famous lines about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Social contract theory and specifically the Declaration of Independence are concrete expressions of the spirit of social justice. Similar clamor has been made over the appropriate definitions of civic engagement and service learning, respectively. Once again, let’s not get bogged down on subtleties. Civic engagement is a measure or degree of the interest and/or involvement an individual and a community demonstrate around community issues. There is a longstanding dispute over how to properly quantify civic engagement. Some will say that today’s youth are less involved politically and hence demonstrate a lower degree of civic engagement. Others cite high volunteer rates among the youth and claim it demonstrates a high exhibition of civic engagement. And there are about a hundred other theories put forward on the subject of civic engagement and today’s youth. But one thing is for sure; today’s youth no longer see government and politics as an effective or valuable tool for affecting positive change in the world. Instead of criticizing this judgment, perhaps we should come to sympathize and even admire it. Author Kurt Vonnegut said, “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president.” Maybe the youth’s rejection of American politics isn’t a shortcoming but rather a rational and appropriate response to their experience. Consequently, the term civic engagement takes on new meaning for us today. In order to foster fundamental change on the systemic level, which we have already said is necessary for our survival in the twenty-first century, we need to fundamentally change our systems. Therefore, part of our challenge becomes convincing the youth that these systems, and by systems we mean government and commerce, have the potential for positive change. Civic engagement consequently takes on a more specific and political meaning in this context. Service learning is a methodology and a tool for teaching social justice, encouraging civic engagement, and deepening practical understanding of a subject. Since it is a relatively new field, at least in the structured sense, service learning is only beginning to define itself. Through service learning students learn by experiencing things firsthand and by exposing themselves to new points of view. Instead of merely reading about government, for instance, a student might experience it by working in a legislative office. Rather than just studying global warming out of a textbook, a student might volunteer time at an environmental group. If service learning develops and evolves into a discipline with the honest goal of making better citizens, teaching social justice, encouraging civic engagement, and most importantly, exposing students to different and alternative experiences, it could be a major feature of a modern education. Service learning is the natural counterbalance to our current overemphasis on standardized testing. Social justice, civic engagement, and service learning are caught in a symbiotic cycle. The more we have of one of them; the more we have of all of them. However, until we get momentum behind them, we are stalled. Service learning may be our best chance to jumpstart our democracy. In the rest of this paper, we will look at the beginning stages of a project that seeks to do just that.
Trump victory proves the case is a disad to every K- failure to prioritize civic engagement causes rightwing takeover. Rorty 98 (Richard, Stanford Philosophy Professor, Achieving Our Country, pp. 87-94) If the formation of hereditary castes continues unimpeded, and if the pressures of globalization create such castes not only in the United States but in all the old democracies, we shall end up in an Orwellian world. In such a world, there may be no supernational analogue of Big Brother, or any official creed analogous to Ingsoc. But there will be an analogue of the Inner Party—namely, the international, cosmopolitan super-rich. They will make all the important decisions. The analogue of Orwell’s Outer Party will be educated, comfortably off, cosmopolitan professionals—Lind’s “overclass,” the people like you and me. The job of people like us will be to make sure that the decisions made by the Inner Party are carried out smoothly and efficiently. It will be in the interest of the international super-rich to keep our class relatively prosperous and happy. For they need people who can pretend to be the political class of each of the individual nation-states. For the sake of keeping the proles quiet, the super-rich will have to keep up the pretense that national politics might someday make a difference. Since economic decisions are their prerogative, they will encourage politicians, of both the Left and the Right, to specialize in cultural issues.7 The aim will be to keep the minds of the proles elsewhere—to keep the bottom 75 percent of Americans and the bottom 95 percent of the world’s population busy with ethnic and religious hostilities, and with debates about sexual mores. If the proles can be distracted from their own despair by media-created psuedo-events, including the occasional brief and bloody war, the super-rich will have little to fear. Contemplation of this possible world invites two responses from the Left. The first is to insist that the inequalities between nations need to be mitigated—and, in particular, that the Northern Hemisphere must share its wealth with the Southern. The second is to insist that the primary responsibility of each democratic nation-state is to its own least advantaged citizens. These two responses obviously conflict with each other. In particular, the first response suggests that the old democracies should open their borders, whereas the second suggests that they should close them.8 The first response comes naturally to academic leftists, who have always been internationally minded. The second response comes naturally to members of trade unions, and to the marginally employed people who can most easily be recruited into right-wing populist movements. Union members in the United States have watched factory after factory close, only to reopen in Slovenia, Thailand, or Mexico. It is no wonder that they see the result of international free trade as prosperity for managers and stockholders, a better standard of living for workers in developing countries, and a very much worse standard of living for American workers. It would be no wonder if they saw the American leftist intelligentsia as on the same side of the managers and stockholders—as sharing the same class interests. For we intellectuals, who are mostly academics, are ourselves quite well insulated, at least in the short run, from the effects of globalization. To make things worse, we often seem more interested in the workers of the developing world than in the fate of our fellow citizens. Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone will assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salemen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic. One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words “nigger” and “kike” will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet. But such a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of selfishness. For after my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make peace with the international superrich, just as Hitler made with the German industrialists. He will invoke the glorious memory of the Gulf War to provoke military adventures which will generate short-term prosperity. He will be a disaster for the country and the world. People will wonder why there was so little resistance to his evitable rise. Where, they will ask, was the American Left? Why was it only rightists like Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the consequences of globalization? Why could not the Left channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossesed? It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the twentieth century, no longer have a Left. Since nobody denies the existence of what I have called the cultural Left, this amounts to an admission that that Left is unable to engage in national politics. It is not the sort of the Left which can be asked to deal with the consequences of globalization. To get the country to deal with those consequences, the present cultural Left would have to transform itself by opening relations with the residue of the old reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions. It would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of talking less about stigma. I have two suggestions about how to effect this transition. The first is that the Left should put a moratorium on theory. It should try to kick its philosophy habit. The second is that the Left should try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans. It should ask the public to consider how the country of Lincoln and Whitman might be achieved. In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy in which he expresses his exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the rubric of “individualism versus communitarianism.” Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a common defect. They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific situations are to be brought. What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or that concrete human being, this or that special institution or social arrangement. For such a logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts and their dialectical relationships with one another. Dewey was right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction. He was wrong when he went on to say that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one which supplies “the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the established order.”9 For such ascents are now more common on the Left than on the Right. The contemporary academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the established order you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique. When one of today’s academic leftists says that some topic has been “inadequately theorized,” you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. Theorists of the Left think that dissolving political agents into plays of differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan’s impossible object of desire, helps to subvert the established order. Such subversion, they say, is accomplished by “problematizing familiar concepts.” Recent attempts to subvert social institutitons by problematizing concepts have produced a few very good books. They have also produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its worts. The authors of these purportedly “subversive” books honestly believe that the are serving human liberty. But it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a candidate or a political strategy. Even though what these authors “theorize” is often something very concrete and near at hand—a curent TV show, a media celebrity, a recent scandal—they offer the most absract and barren explanations imaginable. These futile attempts to philosophize one’s way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations. These result in an intellec- tual environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which is called "power." This is the name of what Edmund- son calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook."10 Censorship is based in PR/funding concerns, not student wellbeing. Protest solves NC offense. Schuman 12/8 (Rebecca, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2016/12/student_journalists_are_under_threat.html) My three years on the editorial board of Vassar’s weekly surely ran this gamut. There was the feature on heroin use on campus, complete with a diagram showing how to sterilize a syringe; there was the junior who stormed our meeting incensed that the headline “Student Convicted of Rape and Expelled” was not sufficient trigger warning for details of a sexual assault (and of a victim’s name, which was used with her explicit permission). We never heard a single word from the higher-ups. Then as now, in fact, it was students, rather than the administration, with demands to change our content. Indeed, as the result of the odd ill-conceived op-ed, or the accidental inclusion of a paid advertisement by an ovum donation company (whoops), the Misc., as we called it, was subject to outraged student “speak-outs.” But that was exactly the point—everyone got to speak out. Indeed, none of the five former editors in chief I worked with remembered a single instance when then-President Frances Daly “Fran” Fergusson subjected the Misc. to administrative reprimand, much less something as draconian as prior review. The closest thing we got came in the form of a letter “from” Fran’s two omnipresent dogs—on the dogs’ personalized letterhead—gently reprimanding us for misidentifying their breed. (Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, not Cocker Spaniels.) And plenty of what we published made the school look bad either because the news itself was bad—rape, suicide, drugs—or because we’d written it badly (ahem). We had no faculty adviser, received no course credit, and certainly enjoyed a mixed reputation on campus, but we loved every second of it, and some of us even grew up to be (more or less) journalists. The difference between then and now, of course, is the internet. Viral outrage—and chances are at least one of our foibles would have brought it—translates to fewer alumni donations, and that can pique the attention of the front office in a way nothing else can. It’s entirely possible that the shenanigans we got away with on our insular, 2,400-person campus in the ’90s were indeed only possible in a less-connected world. However, when I emailed Rhys Johnson, the Misc.’s current editor, he assured me the paper’s present-day relationship with the administration is still “quite peaceful,” and while he sometimes has to endure uncomfortable post-publication meetings with administrators, the newspaper under his leadership has never been subject to prior review or administrative censorship. I’d like to think that the Misc. represents the norm, and the disturbing cases the AAUP report chronicles the outliers. But as more universities gain success quashing poor PR from their student-run outlets—success that, by its nature, goes unnoticed by the public—the outliers may easily creep toward normalcy. I understand that many American institutions are in constant funding crises, and all it takes are a few scandalized alums to halt construction of the new rock climbing wall. But if our universities are not instructing students in both the power and responsibility of a free press, they are putting not only the next generation of journalists at risk, but all of us. There is little more frightening in a liberal democracy than a press under constant, vague threat of censorship by an authoritarian power figure. There is little more frightening, but there is something: a generation of journalists trained to submit to censorship without question. If the trend toward restricting the American university press continues, that is what will happen, at exactly the hour in the American experiment when democracy—and dissent—need vigorous protection. When more than half of the people who voted for the president-elect already do not believe the media when we uncover that individual’s blatant, terrifying lies—when Nazi terminology for the press returns to use in his supporters, when those supporters wear T-shirts suggesting journalists be hanged—the idea of a new generation of journalists trained in simpering acquiescence to the powerful is among the more worrying in a litany of worrying ideas about the direction of the United States. It’s not too late. American university administrations still have the power to put their own PR behind the survival of the republic and stop meddling in the student press. But it remains to be seen whether, in the coming years, universities will seek to distinguish themselves from a presidential administration that wants to destroy the free press—or act more in its image.
Using the state doesn’t ethically legitimate it – the state is inevitably a unit of analysis given that it exists now even if we want to move beyond it. Frost 96 Mervyn Frost, U of Kent, 1996, Ethics in Int’l Relations, p. 90-1. NS
A first objection which seems inherent in Donelan’s approach is that utilizing the modern state domain of discourse in effect sanctifies the state: it assumes that people will always live in states and that it is not possible within such a language to consider alternatives to the system. This objection is not well founded, by having recourse to the ordinary language of international relations I am not thereby committed to argue that the state system as it exists is the best mode of human political organization or that people ought always to live in states as we know them. As I have said, my argument is that whatever proposals for piecemeal or large-scale reform of the state system are made, they must of necessity be made in the language of the modern state. Whatever proposals are made, whether in justification or in criticism of the state system, will have to make use of concepts which are at present part and parcel of the theory of states. Thus,for example. any proposal for a new global institutional arrangement superseding the state system will itself have to be justified, and that justification will have to include within it reference to a new and good form of individual citizenship, reference to a new legislative machinery equipped with satisfactory checks and balances, reference to satisfactory law enforcement procedures, reference to a satisfactory arrangement for distributing the goods produced in the world, and so on. All of these notions are notions which have been developed and finely honed within the theory of the modern state. It is not possible to imagine a justification of a new world order succeeding which used, for example, feudal, or traditional/tribal, discourse. More generally there is no worldwide language of political morality which is not completely shot through with state-related notions such as citizenship, rights under law, representative government and so on.
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Tournament: Any | Round: Finals | Opponent: Any | Judge: Any I affirm and value morality as ought implies a moral obligation.
Morality is best realized through intersubjective deliberation. Habermas 03: Habermas, Jurgen, “Truth and Justification”, translated by Barbara Fultner, 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This performatively established relation to objects that actors can affect is connected to the semantic relation to objects that interlocutors establish in asserting facts about them. In negotiating practical challenges, actors have to make the same pragmatic presuppositionas language users in communicating about states of affairs. They presuppose a shared objective world as the totality of objects to be dealt with and judged. Whether they are acting instrumentally or communicatively, participants must formally presuppose one and the same world. This is what makes it possible to preserve reference and to transform practical certainties about what is “ready to hand” that have become problematic into explicit assertions about what is “present at hand.” Once the transition from communicative action to discursive practice has been made, the truth claims raised in assertions can be treated hypothetically and evaluated in the light of reasons. We can learn from the performative experience of reality and its resistance to us only to the extent that we thematize the beliefs that are implicitly challenged by such experiences and learn from the objections raised by other participants in discourse. The “ascent” from action to discourse means that the full range of resources available in the lifeworld for cognitively processing problems we encounter in our practical coping with the world can be mobilized. In both our practical and our semantic relationship to objects, we are confronted with “the” world, whereas in claiming that the statements we make about objects are true, we are confronted with the opposition of “others.” The vertical view of the objective world is interconnected with the horizontal relationship among members of an intersubjectively shared life world. The objectivity of the world and the intersubjectivity of communication mutually refer to one another. This changes the picture of the transcendental subject standing, as it were, opposite to objects that appear to it in a world it has constituted. Subjects engaged in their practices refer to something in the objective world, which they suppose as existing independently and as the same for everyone, from within the horizon of their lifeworld. This presupposition also gives expression to the facticity of all challenges and contingencies that simultaneously provoke and limit our routine understandings and actions. Hence, I have the best epistemology, since all can participate in the process and discuss it. This means the norm is more probable and complete.
Thus, the standard is respecting discursive deliberation, defined as the right for everyone to choose to participate and argue in discussion. The standard is about preservation of free speech so its means based.
Moreover, discursive deliberation is most consistent with the linguistic structure of ethics as second-personal. We don’t justify moral actions to talk to ourselves, but rather in the hope that other people will recognize our guide. Darwall: Stephen Darwall, “Contractualism, Root, and Branch: A Review Essay”, http://www.yale.edu/darwall/contractualism.pdf Blackwell: Philosophy and Public Affairs 34:2 p. 204:
To justify oneself to someone is to give her a kind of second-personal authority.11 It is to regard and treat her as having a standing to claim a justification from one (and hence to address claims to others at all). Second-personal authority of this kind is essentially tied to accountability. Justifying oneself to someone is part of holding oneself responsible or accountable to her. So justification to one another is what constitutes mutual accountability. When I justify myself to you, I hold myself answerable to you, and treat you as having the standing to claim this from me. You reciprocate and accord me the same standing when you justify yourself to me. As I understand it, therefore, the root contractualist idea is that this standing is one that you and I share. We have an equal (second-personal) authority to make claims of one another, which we respect in seeing each other as beings to whom we should be able to justify ourselves. Understanding morality in terms of mutual accountability which illuminates why Scanlon can say in “Contractualism” that agreement (of this sort) is what “morality is all about.” If moral self-regulation essentially involves making ourselves answerable to one another, then agreement on fundamental principles is not simply a collective epistemic achievement, or a standard of our each doing what is right individually; it is an essential element of the fundamental moral relation (responsibility to one another). This idea is suggested also by the passages from “Preference” and “Process” quoted above. Urgency or importance of interests is justificatory weight in warranting claims on others. The question of when practices or institutions are legitimate in light of their “power to control or intervene” turns on when this is consistent with individuals’ legitimate claims.
And, it’s self-refuting to deny one’s right to engage in the deliberation. Hoppe ‘13: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy. Springer Science and Business Media, Mar 14, 2013.
First, it should be noted that such a position assumes that at least the question of whether or not value judgments or normative statements can be justified is itself a cognitive problem. If this were not assumed, Mises could not even say what he evidently says and claims to be the case. His position simply could not exist as an arguable intellectual position. At first glance this does not seem to take one very far. It still seems to be a far cry from this insight to the actual proof that normative statements can be justified and, moreover that it is only the libertarian ethic which can be defended. This impression is wrong, however, and there is already much more won here than might be suspected. The argument shows us that any truth claim, the claim connected with any proposition that it is true, objective or valid (all terms used synonymously here), is and must be raised and decided upon in the course of an argumentation. And since it cannot be disputed that this is so (since one cannot communicate and argue that one cannot communicate and argue), and it must be assumed that everyone knows what it means to claim something to be true (since one cannot deny this statement without claiming its negation to be true), this very fact has been aptly called "the a priori of communication and argumentation." 16 Now arguing never consists of just free-floating propositions claiming to be true. Rather, argumentation is always an activity, too. But then, given that truth claims are raised and decided upon in argumentation and that argumentation, aside from whatever it is that is said in its course, is a practical affair, then it follows that intersubjectively meaningful norms must exist—precisely those which make some action an argumentation—which have a special cognitive status in that they are the practical preconditions of objectivity and truth. Hence, one reaches the conclusion that norms must indeed be assumed to be justifiable as valid. It is simply impossible to x the ability to argue so would in fact already presuppose the validity of those norms which underlie any argumentation whatever. In contradistinction to the natural rights theorists, though, one sees that the answer to the question of which ends can or cannot be justified is not to be read off from the wider concept of human nature but from the narrower one of argumentation. And with this, then, the peculiar role of reason in determining the contents of ethics can be given a precise description; in clear contrast to the role of reason in establishing empirical laws of nature, in determining moral laws reason can claim to yield results which can be shown to be valid a priori. It only makes explicit what is already implied in the concept of argumentation itself; and in analyzing any actual norm proposal its task is merely confined to analyzing whether or not it is logically consistent with the very ethics which the proponent must presuppose as valid insofar as he is able to make his proposal at all.
This functions pre-fiat as debate is a forum of argumentation that assumes basic rights in order to engage in it. Ordered speech times and lack of violence only show we’ve implicitly accepted these norms in the round. Don’t claim you don’t endorse it as you implicitly do as it’s a preformative contradiction not to.
Part 2 is the Harms:
A large percent of schools are rated to not uphold its students 1st amendment right FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, “Spotlights on Speech Codes, 2017. Executive Report. Acessed 16 December 15. https://www.thefire.org/spotlight-on-speech-codes-2017/
The percentage of public schools with a red light rating fell dramatically. Nine years ago, 79 percent of public schools received a red light rating. Last year, the figure stood at 45.8 percent. This year, 33.9 percent of public schools received a red light rating. This dramatic change owes in significant part to the fact that in August 2015, the Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Representative Bob Goodlatte, sent letters to the presidents of red light public schools, demanding answers about those universities’ unconstitutional policies.6 The letters followed FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff’s testimony about speech codes before members of the judiciary committee in the summer of 2015. In his letter, Rep. Goodlatte wrote: vIn FIRE’s Spotlight on Speech Codes 2015, your institution received a “red light” rating. … We write to ask what steps your institution plans to take to promote free and open expression on its campus(es), including any steps toward bringing your speech policies in accordance with the First Amendment.7 Since public colleges and universities are legally bound to protect their students’ First Amendment rights, any percentage above zero is unacceptable, so much work remains to be done. This ongoing positive trend, however, is encouraging. With continued efforts by free speech advocates on and off campus, we expect this percentage will continue to drop.
Red light ratings are schools where “at least one policy both clearly and substantially restricting freedom of speech.”
This is not an isolated incident—this precedent is going to continue and restrict speech more and more. Hentoff 91: Nat Hentoff, “‘Speech Codes’ On The Campus and Problems of Free Speech.” Dissent, v. 38. P. 546-9. Fall 1991.
A precedent has been set at, of all places, colleges and universities, that the principle of free speech is merely situational. As college administrators change, so will the extent of free speech on campus. And invariably, permissible speech will become more and more narrowly defined. Once speech can be limited in such subjective ways, more and more expression will be included in what is forbidden. One of the exceedingly few college presidents who speaks out on the consequences of the anti-free-speech movement is Yale University’s Benno Schmidt: Freedom of thought must be Yale’s central commitment. It is not easy to embrace. It is, indeed, the effort of a lifetime. . . . Much expression that is free may deserve our contempt. We may well be moved to exercise our own freedom to counter it or to ignore it. But universities cannot censor or suppress speech, no matter how obnoxious in content, without violating their justification for existence. . . .On some other campuses in this country, values of civility and community have been offered by some as paramount values of the university, even to the extent of superseding freedom of expression. Such a view is wrong in principle and, if extended, is disastrous to freedom of thought.. . . The chilling effects on speech of the vagueness and open- ended nature of many universities’ prohibitions . . . are compounded by the fact that these codes are typically enforced by faculty and students who commonly assert that vague notions of community are more important to the academy than freedom of thought and expression. . . . This is a flabby and uncertain time for freedom in the United States.
Part 3 is the Plan Text:
Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not restrict any Constitutionally protected speech.
The Congressional Research Service defines protected and unprotected speech. Ruane, Kathleen Ann. Legislative Attorney, Congressional Research Service. CRS Report for Congress, 8 Sept 2014.
This report provides an overview of the major exceptions to the First Amendment—of the ways that the Supreme Court has interpreted the guarantee of freedom of speech and press to provide no protection or only limited protection for some types of speech.1 For example, the Court has decided that the First Amendment provides no protection for obscenity, child pornography, or speech that constitutes what has become widely known as “fighting words.” The Court has also decided that the First Amendment provides less than full protection to commercial speech, defamation (libel and slander), speech that may be harmful to children, speech broadcast on radio and television (as opposed to speech transmitted via cable or the Internet), and public employees’ speech. Even speech that enjoys the most extensive First Amendment protection may be subject to “regulations of the time, place, and manner of expression which are content-neutral, are narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and leave open ample alternative channels of communication.” Furthermore, even speech that enjoys the most extensive First Amendment protection may be restricted on the basis of its content if the restriction passes “strict scrutiny” (i.e., if the government shows that the restriction serves “to promote a compelling interest” and is “the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest”).
Continues: All other types of speech are protected by the First Amendment. In general, the government may not prohibit the citizenry from engaging in speech. However, that does not mean that speech may not be subjected to regulation. The following subsections address different ways in which the government constitutionally may place burdens upon speech that is protected, to varying degrees, by the First Amendment.
Part 4 is the Advantages: The right to speech is indivisible, needs constant protection. ACLU 1: American Civil Liberties Union, “Hate Speech on Campus.” Accessed 3 December 2016. https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus
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 and, 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."
Many universities, under pressure to respond to the concerns of those who are the objects of hate, have adopted codes or policies prohibiting speech that offends any group based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. That's is the wrong response, well-meaning or not. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content. Speech codes adopted by government-financed state colleges and universities amount to government censorship, in violation of the Constitution. And the ACLU believes that all campuses should adhere to First Amendment principles because academic freedom is a bedrock of education in a free society. How much we value the right of free speech is put to its severest test when the speaker is someone we disagree with most. Speech that deeply offends our morality or is hostile to our way of life warrants the same constitutional protection as other speech because the right of free speech is indivisible: When one of us is denied this right, all of us are denied. Since its founding in 1920, the ACLU has fought for the free expression of all ideas, popular or unpopular. That's the constitutional mandate. Where racist, sexist and homophobic speech is concerned, the ACLU believes that more speech -- not less -- is the best revenge. This is particularly true at universities, whose mission is to facilitate learning through open debate and study, and to enlighten. Speech codes are not the way to go on campuses, where all views are entitled to be heard, explored, supported or refuted. Besides, when hate is out in the open, people can see the problem. Then they can organize effectively to counter bad attitudes, possibly change them, and forge solidarity against the forces of intolerance. College administrators may find speech codes attractive as a quick fix, but as one critic put it: "Verbal purity is not social change." Codes that punish bigoted speech treat only the symptom: The problem itself is bigotry. The ACLU believes that instead of opting for gestures that only appear to cure the disease, universities have to do the hard work of recruitment to increase faculty and student diversity; counseling to raise awareness about bigotry and its history, and changing curricula to institutionalize more inclusive approaches to all subject matter.
Speech isn’t the problem in the first place – restricting worsens bigotry. ACLU 3: American Civil Liberties Union, “Hate Speech on Campus.” Accessed 3 December 2016. https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus
Bigoted speech is symptomatic of a huge problem in our country; it is not the problem itself. Everybody, when they come to college, brings with them the values, biases and assumptions they learned while growing up in society to college, so it's unrealistic to think that punishing speech is going to rid campuses of the attitudes that gave rise to the speech in the first place. Banning bigoted speech won't end bigotry, even if it might chill some of the crudest expressions. The mindset that produced the speech lives on and may even reassert itself in more virulent forms. Speech codes, by simply deterring students from saying out loud what they will continue to think in private, merely drive biases underground where they can't be addressed. In 1990, when Brown University expelled a student for shouting racist epithets one night on the campus, the institution accomplished nothing in the way of exposing the bankruptcy of racist ideas.
The most effective counter to languages ability to hurt is to recognize that language doesn’t do what it says. Exploiting the gap between language and reality opens the possibility to subvert injurious language. Restricting this language only reifies the effects of language.
Butler, 97 (Judith American philosopher and gender theorist; Full-time Unicorn Excitable Speech. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997. Print) Thus a statement may be made that, on the basis of a grammatical analysis alone, appears to be no threat. But the threat emerges precisely through the act that the body performs in the speaking the act. Or the threat emerges as the apparent effect of a performative act only to be rendered harmless through the bodily demeanor of the act {any theory of acting knows this). The threat prefigures or, indeed, promises a bodily act, and yet is already a bodily act, thus• establishing in its very gesture the contours of the act to come. The act of threat and the threatened act are, of course, distinct, but they are related as a chiasmus. Although not identical, they are both bodily acts: the first act, the threat, only makes sense in terms of the act that it prefigures. The threat begins a temporal horizon within which the organizing aim is the act that is threatened; the threat begins the action by which the fulfillment of the threatened act might be achieved. And yet, a threat can be derailed, defused, can fail to furnish the act that it threatens. The threat states the impending certitude of another, forthcoming act, but the statement itself cannot produce that forthcoming act as one of its necessary effects. This failure to deliver on the threat does not call into question the status of the speech act as a threat-it merely questions its efficacy. The self-conceit that empowers the threat, however, is that the speech act that is the threat will fully materialize that act threatened by the speech. Such speech is, however, vulnerable to failure, and it is that vulnerability that must be exploited to counter the threat. For the threat to work, it requires certain kinds of circumstances, and it requires a venue of power by which its performative effects might be materialized. The teleology of action conjured by the threat is disruptible by various kinds of infelicities. Nevertheless, the fantasy of sovereign action that structures the threat is that a certain kind of saying is at once the performance of the act referred to in that saying; this would be an illocutionary performative, in Austin's view, one that immediately does what it says. The threat may well solicit a response, however, that it never anticipated, losing its own sovereign sense of expectation in the face of a resistance it advertently helped to produce. Instead of obliterating the possibility of response, paralyzing the addressee with fear, the threat may well be countered by a different kind of performative act, one that exploits the redoubled action of the threat (what is intentionally and non-intentionally performed in any speaking), to turn one part of that speaking against the other, confounding the performative power of the threat.
Part 5 is the Underview:
1) If the neg drops an AC argument that interacts with some argument in the NC, the argument from the AC wins since you have the first opportunity and 13 minutes to explain the interaction, whereas I only have 7.
2) Presume aff because a) 7 neg bias found in a sample of thirty thousand rounds, b) I have to extend arguments twice while the neg only has to do so once, and c) the neg has 7-4, 6-3 time skew. Ignore substantive reasons to presume because they are just unwarranted contention level arguments.
3) There are infinite interpretations of every word and phrase in the resolution but the only possible aff burden is for me to prove it true for a single set of interpretations. Otherwise I’d be forced to defend infinite contradictory claims to affirm. Therefore, even if the neg shows that another possible interpretation exists, that does not deny that I proved the resolution true.
4) The neg may read one theory shell maximum; this includes all neg theory, neg paragraph theory, neg T, and neg meta-theory. Key to aff strat because the neg reading multiple shells forces the aff to cover on theory, which gives the neg an easy win on substance but if I overcover on substance then it’s an easy win on theory if they collapse and I undercover. Reading an RVI or my own theory and weighing doesn't solve because the neg can dump on the RVI for 6 minutes or dump on my shell(s) and do a ton of weighing. The 2AR can never cover.
5) neg abuse o/w aff abuse – only a four minute 1ar means I cannot recover if my capacity to engage your advocacy is skewed since I’ve already made strategic investments by that speech from the AC which I read cold, but you get to craft the optimal strategy against every aff and alter your strategy in relation to possible aff abuse.
6) Denying a term or assumption in the resolution renders the sentence nonsensical meaning we don’t have the necessary preconditions for the debate to occur
7) Drop the arg and re-evaluate on theory—best for education because we bring the debate back to substance and best for fairness because I’m always open to theory on both sides of every issue so it’s a no risk issue for the neg. If drop the debater, theory is an RVIs with competing interps since they’re 100 nonreciprocal – 1ar theory forces me to underinvest on substance, leading to an easy 2n collapse from which I cannot recover. But use reasonability - no interp is perfect since there’s always a slight modification to a topical rule on debate which outweighs since competing interps means I can never choose an interpretation. Further, even if my aff is slightly unfair that’s justified since I need the ability to frame the debate and establish constructive ground, which outweighs judge intervention since I can’t even read an aff to begin with if competing interps is true. Defamation laws don’t work – empower majorities to hurt minorities. ACLU 4: American Civil Liberties Union, “Hate Speech on Campus.” Accessed 3 December 2016. https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus
Historically, defamation laws or codes have proven ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst. For one thing, depending on how they're interpreted and enforced, they can actually work against the interests of the people they were ostensibly created to protect. Why? Because the ultimate power to decide what speech is offensive and to whom rests with the authorities -- the government or a college administration -- not with those who are the alleged victims of hate speech. Empower majorities to hurt minorities. ACLU 5: American Civil Liberties Union, “Hate Speech on Campus.” Accessed 3 December 2016. https://www.aclu.org/other/hate-speech-campus
As one African American educator observed: "I have always felt as a minority person that we have to protect the rights of all because if we infringe on the rights of any persons, we'll be next."
Assuming minorities need speech codes is offensive. Hentoff 91: Nat Hentoff, “‘Speech Codes’ On The Campus and Problems of Free Speech.” Dissent, v. 38. P. 546-9. Fall 1991.
A vigorous exception was at a black Harvard law school student during a debate on whether the law school should start punishing speech. A white student got up and said that the codes are necessary because without them, black students would be driven away from colleges and thereby deprived of the equal opportunity to get an education. A black student rose and said that the white student had a hell of a nerve to assume that he-in the face of racist speech-would pack up his books and go home. He’s been familiar with that kind of speech all his life, and he had never felt the need to run away from it. He’d handled it before and he could again. The black student then looked at his white colleague and said that it was condescending to say that blacks have to be “protected” from racist speech. “It is more racist and insulting,” he emphasized, “to say that to me than to call me a nigger.”
2/24/17
jan feb wilderson rage
Tournament: Any | Round: Finals | Opponent: Any | Judge: Any Debate is a university – these spaces silences our voices and invests in the most privileged bodies, we must carve out a space within this institution and radically shape it to rupture the violence that the space perpetuates through maintenance of oppressive structures and the disruption of white supremacy. Nguyen 14 Nicole Nguyen and R. Tina Catania The Feminist Wire August 5 2014 "On Feeling Depleted: Naming, Confronting, and Surviving Oppression in the Academy" thefeministwire.com/2014/08/feeling-depleted-naming-confronting-surviving-oppression-academy/ We write because we cannot remain silent. And the “we” that we envision is more than our own impulses. It is a collective we that cannot be and will not be silent in the face of oppression. As Audre Lorde writes, “Your silence will not protect you.” The silence7 of individuals who are “waiting to get a job” or “waiting to get tenure” or “keeping their heads down and doing their own thing” does not protect them from microaggressions, from oppression, from depletion.8 What it does do is continue to reify and entrench the oppressive nature of the academy; it disciplines us to stay silent, to reinforce oppression, and to participate in its reproduction. Thus, we urge every-body, but especially those in positions of power (i.e., tenure-track and tenured faculty) to name oppression. To name sexism. To name ableism. To name racism. To be cognizant of how these -isms intersect to violently oppress and privilege particular bodies and identities. We must name instances, call attention to the ways that the academy’s daily practices are multiply oppressive. And we should do so whether we experience them through someone like Stuart, a prototypical, privileged, white male, or through anyone else whether white feminists, able-bodied people of color, or male “allies.” These violences, from whomever they come and through whatever structures make such encounters possible, must be named. They must be resisted. And they must be transformed. We recognize that, as Sara Ahmed warns, “exposing a problem is to become a problem.”9 Yet, we refuse to be disciplined. We refuse to have our words, actions, and experiences foreclosed for fear of being read as the “problem,” always “stirring up trouble.” Fuck the fear that the discipline, field, department, administration, university, society tries to instill in us so that we do not speak up, so that we do not name our oppressions. We recognize the academic institution and its practices for what they are: inherently oppressive. We recognize that many have no desire to critique the academy because they do not want to jeopardize their privilege within it. We recognize that critiques of academia are necessarily limited by those who make them when they are invested in maintaining its structure, a structure that works for them. We seek to radically reshape and remake the institution in more equitable ways. True solidarity cannot pay lip service to feminist, de-colonial, anti-racist projects while maintaining individual investments in a system that works for only the most privileged bodies. Marginalized individuals cannot but participate in the oppression of other marginalized people if they are invested in academia’s current structure. Increased “representation” merely reifies the system rather than expands the possibilities for solidarity, for change. We see our colleagues, our cohorts, our faculty, our peers, and even ourselves as colluding in these oppressions when they (we) ignore them, when they ignore us, when they remain silent at their occurrence, when they are oblivious to their daily repetition. When your colleague does not plan an accessible, inclusive event from the beginning, they actively reproduce ableism and create exclusionary spaces. And our naming that problem, and therefore your collusion in ableist oppression, makes us the problem, rather than you or the institution. When the violent actions of white, male students not only go unpunished, but undiscussed and unrecognized by faculty, you actively participate in our racialized and gendered oppression. Within a deeply inequitable institution, we strive to navigate a space for ourselves, for understanding. We understand that we are a part of the academy and that our actions can also work to sustain it. Yet we strive for a different academy. We seek to transform the institution. For us, this includes naming the violences of those like Stuart and rejecting the common call to discipline ourselves into not writing or voicing radical critiques of the academy. So we begin here, with a naming of sorts. We write to name what we should not name. Yet writing also serves as a way to carve out alternative spaces. Spaces that contribute to our survivability and to our resistance against these structural and everyday forms of oppression. These spaces are where we “recognize each other, find each other, create spaces of relief, spaces that might be breathing spaces, spaces in which we can be inventive.”10 We write together to claim our intersectional identities and recognize that for us, the academy must include the stories of our bodies, our exclusions, our resistances, our politics, our activism. We write to document our exhaustion in surviving, resisting, and reshaping this deeply violent institution even as we, as graduate students, occupy particularly precarious positions. Given these oppressions in the academy, this is a call for different, transnational, cross-border, and accessible forms of solidarity. We write, ultimately, as an invitation to those other depleted-yet-vibrant bodies, bodies who imagine another kind of academy. An academy that is collaborative, feminist, and inclusive. It is an invitation to strategize, to survive, to heal Ahmed Whiteness coheres itself within institutions through habitual repetitions – the body creates the space and the space creates the body– the nonrecognication of the whiteness inherent with the space is what allows whiteness to manifest itself in the first place and makes whiteness comfortable because it is invisible. The speech act became an object the moment we started the 1AC – this space is inevitably political to us and marks our bodies as hypervisible. Ahmed Ahmed, Sara. "A phenomenology of whiteness." Feminist theory 8.2 (2007): 149-168.We need to examine not only how bodies become white, or fail to do so, but also how spaces can take on the very ‘qualities’ that are given to such bodies. In a way, we can think about the habitual as a form of inheritance. It is not so much that we inherit habits, although we can do so: rather the habitual can be thought of as a bodily and spatial form of inheritance. As Pierre Bourdieu (1977) shows us, we can link habits to what is unconscious, and routine, or what becomes ‘second nature’.3 To describe whiteness as a habit, as second nature, is to suggest that whiteness is what bodies do, where the body takes the shape of the action. Habits are not ‘exterior’ to bodies, as things that can be ‘put on’ or ‘taken off’. If habits are about what bodies do, in ways that are repeated, then they might also shape what bodies can do. For Merleau-Ponty, the habitual body is a body that acts in the world, where actions bring other things near. As he puts it: my body appears to me as an attitude directed towards a certain existing or possible task. And indeed its spatiality is not, like that of external objects or like that of ‘spatial sensations’, a spatiality of position, but a spatiality of situation. If I stand in front of my desk and lean on it with both hands, only my hands are stressed and the whole of the body trails behind them like the tail of a comet. It is not that I am unaware of the whereabouts of my shoulder or back, but these are simply swallowed up in the position of my hands, and my whole posture can be read so to speak in the pressure they exert on the table. (2002: 114–5, emphasis in original) Here, the directedness of the body towards an action (which we have discovered also means an orientation towards certain kinds of objects) is how the body ‘appears’.4 The body is ‘habitual’ not only in the sense that it performs actions repeatedly, but in the sense that when it performs such actions, it does not command attention, apart from at the ‘surface’ where it ‘encounters’ an external object (such as the hands that lean on the desk or table, which feel the ‘stress’ of the action). In other words, the body is habitual insofar as it ‘trails behind’ in the performing of action, insofar as it does not pose ‘a problem’ or an obstacle to the action, or is not ‘stressed’ by ‘what’ the action encounters. For Merleau-Ponty, the habitual body does not get in the way of an action: it is behind the action. I want to suggest here that whiteness could be understood as ‘the behind’. White bodies are habitual insofar as they ‘trail behind’ actions: they do not get ‘stressed’ in their encounters with objects or others, as their whiteness ‘goes unnoticed’. Whiteness would be what lags behind; white bodies do not have to face their whiteness; they are not orientated ‘towards’ it, and this ‘not’ is what allows whiteness to cohere, as that which bodies are orientated around. When bodies ‘lag behind’, then they extend their reach. It becomes possible to talk about the whiteness of space given the very accumulation of such ‘points’ of extension. Spaces acquire the ‘skin’ of the bodies that inhabit them. What is important to note here is that it is not just bodies that are orientated. Spaces also take shape by being orientated around some bodies, more than others. We can also consider ‘institutions’ as orientation devices, which take the shape of ‘what’ resides within them. After all, institutions provide collective or public spaces. When we describe institutions as ‘being’ white (institutional whiteness), we are pointing to how institutional spaces are shaped by the proximity of some bodies and not others: white bodies gather, and cohere to form the edges of such spaces. When I walk into university meetings that is just what I encounter. Sometimes I get used to it. At one conference we organize, four black feminists arrive. They all happen to walk into the room at the same time. Yes, we do notice such arrivals. The fact that we notice such arrivals tells us more about what is already in place than it does about ‘who’ arrives. Someone says: ‘it is like walking into a sea of whiteness’. This phrase comes up, and it hangs in the air. The speech act becomes an object, which gathers us around. So yes they walk into the room, and I notice that they were not there before, as a retrospective reoccupation of a space that I already inhabited. I look around, and re-encounter the sea of whiteness. As many have argued, whiteness is invisible and unmarked, as the absent centre against which others appear only as deviants, or points of deviation (Dyer, 1997; Frankenberg, 1993). Whiteness is only invisible for those who inhabit it, or those who get so used to its inhabitance that they learn not to see it, even when they are not it (see Ahmed, 2004b). Spaces are orientated ‘around’ whiteness, insofar as whiteness is not seen. We do not face whiteness; it ‘trails behind’ bodies, as what is assumed to be given. The effect of this ‘around whiteness’ is the institutionalization of a certain ‘likeness’, which makes non-white bodies feel uncomfortable, exposed, visible, different, when they take up this space. Ahmed Stories of diversity and equality are propped up to criminalize our language and deem it as signs of ingratitude – this theorizes that our forms of protest against white supremacy as nagging and unnecessary. Filtration of speech ensures that stories of diversity are promoted and our protest of racism go unheard - free speech does not exist outside of that of which falls within the confines of white coherency. Attempts to access the space of the institution are always terminated and cut off – the 1AC is a disruption of white supremacy – a flipping of the script that destroys the system that marks our bodies are immobile. Ahmed Ahmed, Sara. "A phenomenology of whiteness." Feminist theory 8.2 (2007): 149-168. When our appointments and promotion are taken up as signs of organizational commitment to equality and diversity, we are in trouble. Any success is read as a sign of an overcoming of institutional whiteness. ‘Look, you’re here!’, ‘Look, look!’ Our talk about racism is read as a form of stubbornness, paranoia, or even melancholia, as if we are holding onto something (whiteness) that our arrival shows has already gone. Our talk about whiteness is read as a sign of ingratitude, of failing to be grateful for the hospitality we have received by virtue of our arrival. It is this very structural position of being the guest, or the stranger, the one who receives hospitality, which keeps us in certain places, even when you move up.7 So, if you ‘move up’, then you come to embody the social promise of diversity, which gives you a certain place. It is the very use of black bodies as signs of diversity that confirms such whiteness, premised on a conversion of having to being: as if by having us, the organization can ‘be’ diverse. Diversity in this world becomes then a happy sign, a sign that racism has been overcome. In a research project into diversity work,8 I encounter what I call ‘an institutional desire for good practice’. This desire takes the form of an expectation that publicly funded research on race, diversity and equality should be useful, and should provide techniques for achieving equality and challenging institutional racism. In actual terms, this involves a desire to hear ‘happy stories of diversity’ rather than unhappy stories of racism. We write a report about how good practice and anti-racist tool kits are being used as technologies of concealment, displacing racism from public view. Anti-racism even becomes a new form of organizational pride. The response to our final report: too much focus on racism, we need more evidence of good practice. The response to your work is symptomatic of what you critique. They don’t even notice the irony. You have been funded to ‘show’ their commitment to diversity and are expected to return their investment by giving evidence of its worth. Within academic fields, I would argue, we can also witness this desire for happy stories of diversity, although the desire takes different form. When I give papers on whiteness I am always asked about resistance, as a sign of how things can be otherwise. Some of these questions take the form of ‘what can white people do?’ The sheer solipsism of this response must be challenged. We can recall Adrienne Rich’s description of white solipsism: ‘to speak, imagine and think as if whiteness described the world’ (1979: 299). To respond to accounts of institutional whiteness with the question ‘what can white people do?’ is not only to return to the place of the white subject, but it is also to locate agency in this place. It is also tore-position the white subject as somewhere other than implicated in the critique. Other questions do not re-centre on the agency of white bodies, but just on the need for some kind of understanding of power that shows that things don’t always hold; that shows the cracks, the movement, the instabilities and that appreciates how much things have changed, even whilst recognizing that there is much left to do. So one response to my considering of whiteness has been ‘is there any sense that resistance is possible in this account?’ And, ‘if whiteness is a bad habit, what might it be replaced with?’ You become obliged to give evidence of where things can be undone; to locate the point of undoing, somewhere or another, even if that location is not in the world, but in the very mode of your critique. What does it mean if we assume that critiques have to leave room for resistance, as room-making devices? This desire to make room is understandable – if the work of critique does not show that its object can be undone, or promise to undo its object, then what is the point of that critique? But this desire can also become an object for us to investigate. The desire for signs of resistance can also be a form for resistance to hearing about racism. If we want to know how things can be different too quickly, then we might not hear anything at all. The desire for resistance is not the same as the desire for good practice. And yet, both desires can involve a defence against hearing about racism as an ongoing and unfinished history that we have yet to describe fully. We still need to describe how it is that the world of whiteness coheres as a world, even as we tend to the ‘stresses’ in this coherence, and the uneven distribution of such stress. A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind, what does not get seen as the background to social action, to the surface in a certain way. It does not teach us how to change those habits and that is partly the point. In not being promising, in refusing to promise anything, such an approach to whiteness can allow us to keep open the force of the critique. It is by showing how we are stuck, by attending to what is habitual and routine in ‘the what’ of the world, that we can keep open the possibility of habit changes, without using that possibility to displace our attention to the present, and without simply wishing for new tricks. Osajima Oppressed groups can’t do shit if they are stuck in the cyclical violence of internalized oppression—We are asked to challenge structures yet they have already rendered us powerless and silent—We need a structure to rupture these forms of psychological violence before we can take action OsajimaKeith Osajima. Keith Osajima teaches in the School of Education at the University of Redlands, specializing in race and the experiences of Asian American students in higher education. Internalized Oppression and the Culture of Silence: Rethinking the Stereotype of the Quiet Asian-American Student. De Anza College Political Science Department. http://nypolisci.org/files/PDF20FILES/Chapter20IV_209_20internalized20oppression20and20the20culture20of20silence20FEC2.pdf So how can we understand the quiet Asian student? How can we understand what some have called “situational non-assertiveness”? In this paper, I would like to suggest an analytic perspective that could provide some insights into quiet behavior of Asian-American students. It is a framework that tries to understand the silence of Asian students in relation to the dynamics of oppression they face as students and as members of a racial minority group. I argue that the silent, often unquestioning behavior of the Asian-American student can best be understood as a manifestation of what Erica Sherover-Marcuse calls “internalized oppression.” Let me begin the discussion with an overview of what I mean by this phrase. For those of us who are familiar with or have been involved in progressive social and political movements, we have become familiar with the forms and mechanisms of oppression in society. We recognize the sexism in media images of women; we know that Gay oppression takes many forms; we are aware that racial oppression accounts for the high dropout rates of black and Hispanic students, the high unemployment rates in minority communities, and recent violence against ethnic minorities. What is not well-known or examined is the impact that these oppressions have on people in the oppressed groups. How do the conditions of inequality and exploitation affect the subjective development of oppressed people? Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator famous for his literacy work with peasants, says that one of the most devastating effects of oppression is that it dehumanizes the oppressed people; that under the objective conditions of oppression people lose their ability to see themselves as individual human beings. Frantz Fanon, a psychologist who wrote extensively on the effects of colonialism on the colonized people of Algeria, elaborates on the dehumanizing effect of oppression when he says: “Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: In reality, who am ‘I’?” And how do the oppressed people generally answer this question? According to Albert Memmi, Tunisian author of The Colonizer and the Colonized, the oppressed internalize an identity that mirrors or echoes the images put forth by the dominant group. People come to accept the myths and stereotypes about their group as part of who they naturally are. This is the phenomenon of internalized oppression. Memmi writes: “Constantly confronted with this image of himself, set forth and imposed in all institutions and in every human contact, how could the colonized help reacting to his portrait? It cannot leave him indifferent and remain a veneer which, like an insult, blows with the wind. He ends up recognizing it as one would a detested nickname which has become a familiar description. The accusation disturbs him and worries him even more because he admires and fears his powerful accuser. ‘Is he not partially right?’ they mutter. ‘Are we not a little guilty after all? Lazy because we have so many idlers? Timid because we let ourselves be oppressed?’ Willfully created and spread by the colonizer, this mythical and degrading portrait ends up by being accepted and lived with to a certain extent by the colonized.” The impact of internalized oppression on the attitudes, feelings, and actions of the oppressed is profound. First, it hinders one’s ability to think and reflect. People have difficulty objectifying and perceiving the structural conditions that shape and reshape their lives. Second, oppressed people come to believe that the source of their problems lies, not in the relations within society, but in themselves, in their own inadequacies and inabilities. At the same time that they feel themselves to be inferior, they see those in the dominant group to be superior. Third, the feelings of inferiority, of uncertainty about one’s identity, lead oppressed people to believe that the solution to their problem is to become like or be accepted by those in the dominant group. As Freire says, “At a certain point in their existential experience the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration. In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressor, to imitate him, to follow him.” On the flip side of this desire to be like the oppressor is a degree of selfhatred, a belief that who they are is not good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, strong enough. The overall impact of internalized oppression is that the oppressed become resigned to their situation and do not look critically at it. They feel powerless to change it, and fearful of taking the risks to make change. In this way, the status quo is not questioned nor challenged. Freire writes: “As long as the oppressed remain unaware of the causes of their conditions, they fatalistically accept their exploitation. Further, they are apt to react in a passive and alienated manner when confronted with the necessity to struggle for their freedom and self-affirmation.” They live in what Freire calls a “culture of silence,” where the oppressed believe and feel that they do not have a voice in determining the conditions of their world. The important outcome is that internalized oppression makes it difficult for the oppressed to take action to transform their world. It serves to perpetuate oppression, without necessarily resorting to overt forms of violence and force. The oppressed become unwitting participants in their own oppression. Thus our 1AC asks what the fuck free speech is for Model Minorities when we are told to sit down and raise our hands: we advocate for rage as a methodology of rupturing the antiyellow university-- we create counterpublics that approach this debate about free speech from our embodied experience.
Chandra Rage is a catalyst for change. Raging against the structures of white supremacy are key to bringing it down and empowering liberation movements. Rage is a productive substation for the shame that Asian-Americans feels and a product of our dissatisfaction with the squo. Rage is incomprehensible to white supremacy – anger disrupts the squo and is something inherently uncontrollable by white supremacy. Any other methodology fails. The understanding of the rage that Asian-Americans feel is necessary for change. Chandra Ravi Chandra, M.D. is a psychiatrist, poet and writer in San Francisco. Asian American Anger - It's a Thing!: #dvchallenge Pacific Heart Books, 2014 The power of righteous rage and indignation is undeniable. Is it not moving us closer to solving the problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination, persecution and bondage? Isn’t social media part of a sea change in the life and strivings of humanity, reinforcing and advancing our highest values? Certainly. Dictators, oppressors and one-party states have reason to fear rapid communication and dissemination of ideas, and even more so, the easy spread of anger against them. Social media pushes creatively against control. Censors may impose some limits, but people find ways to skirt those prison bars. The network, the loosely organized or completely unorganized online “flash mob”, is taking aim at hierarchical power structures across the globe. If people power is a forbidden fruit, then social media seems like a blossoming orchard of possibilities. It is a genie that can’t be put back in the bottle, a necessary torch to combat the darkness of ignorance and tyranny. Perhaps, even, a spur to enlightenment, as our newfound connection can inspire us to rise above greed and hatred, and towards compassion and wisdom. Our collective compassion and wisdom certainly will determine our fate. Anger is part of our struggle to make sure that there is an end to all forms of the gulag. In case of emergency, break silence. Anger is a vital component and provocateur of our egos – and must be heard, met and resolved in our advance towards a healthier, more inclusive society. Anger disrupts the status quo – and the modern mantra of technological change is “disruption”. Anger spreading through social media may be the ultimate disruptive force in our global tweet-à-tweet. Facebook and Twitter are conveyance mechanisms for our angry prayers and insistent demands. We become the “hearer-of-all-cries”, the bodhisattva responsive to the suffering of all, the bodhisattva who delays enlightenment to help others become free. When we feel and observe anger, we recognize suffering. We are reminded of the First Noble Truth – “Life entails suffering”. Something deep within us is compelled. We become restless until we find the cure for what ails, the remedy for the wails and woes of a world in distress. Anger comes to us readily on smartphone screens and social media apps, reminding us of the frustrations of our friends and the world we share. No princess can sleep happily with a troublesome Facebook post, an irksome tweet-pea, under her mattress. They are reminders of the journey, more immediate and personal than a newspaper, because they are being served up by someone you know. They can be a litmus test of our spirit and resolve. If enlightenment, or even community, is our goal, then we must learn to listen to the angers of others, and understand our own.
Chandra 2 Rage is looking for the questions before we can begin to find the answers. Rage makes visible the problems we find in ourselves and our community, meaning it’s a prior question to any discussion. Chandra Ravi Chandra, M.D. is a psychiatrist, poet and writer in San Francisco. Asian American Anger - It's a Thing!: #dvchallenge Pacific Heart Books, 2014 So is anger good or bad? That question is probably not as important as getting curious about the anger itself: understanding where it’s coming from, and what to do with it. It’s an important signal that something’s awry. Perhaps its energy can be turned to constructive purpose. Certainly, “stuffing it” or bottling it up inside, can lead to worse problems – like depression. We must touch the flame of anger, but then explore more deeply to understand the fuel of rage. There are no easy answers here. We may rather be right – and angry – than related, but related we must be. Through all our views of anger, we can create a mosaic to help guide our relationship to ourselves, the world, and each other. Where did this anger come from? Where did it lead? If I wasn’t feeling anger, what would I be feeling? What is underneath my anger? How do I want to heal this suffering? Anger is not the answer; it is a question. “Who am I?” “Who would I like to be?” As possessing as it is, anger is not our whole story; but on social media, it can seem like our only note. A shrill and possibly dangerous one, at that. Pae and McCarty Our counter-public focuses on the multiplicity of identities and problems that are commonly shared by latinx and black populations. This subaltern space has the ability to transform our understanding of what counts as a concern and provides minority populations with value to life. Pae and McCarty III 2012 (K. Christine is assistant professor of religion at Denison University, Granville, Ohio. She holds a doctoral degree in Christian social ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and James W. is director of the Ethics and Servant Leadership program at Oxford College of Emory University and a PhD student in religion (ethics and society) at Emory University “The Hybridized Public Sphere: Asian American Christian Ethics, Social Justice, and Public Discourse,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics Volume 32, Number 1, d/l: muse) p. 104-17 jl To critically understand the hybrid concept of Jesus/Christ in light of Asian Americans’ social locations, political struggle, and identity is not sufficient to create just racial relations. We also need to offer practical ideas for meaningful public discourse. Kwok, for instance, suggests a “diasporic imagination” that questions “the construction of the center and the periphery, the negotiation of multiple loyalties and identities, the relationship between the ‘home’ and the ‘world,’ the political and theoretical diasporized subject.”69 Various racialethnic minorities, as diasporized subjects, find their stories in those of others and together interweave the stories of oppressions and liberations. Diasporic imagination creates an alternative space where multiple groups can interact with each other and build up solidarity based on shared political goals. This alternative space is similar to what Nancy Fraser has named a “subaltern counterpublic.”70 Fraser has convincingly argued that because multiple forms of inequality exist in American society we cannot talk about “the public sphere” in any monolithic way.71 Instead, we should recognize the presence of multiple spheres of public discourse and the different ways in which they interact with and influence one another.72 The Hybridized Public Sphere • 105 Explicitly or implicitly excluded from “formal” or “strong” publics and conversations that influence and help determine political life in a democratic society, oppressed and marginalized people and groups can still participate in the discursive life of that society. They can form and participate in “weak” public spheres that, while lacking any institutional authority to implement desired changes, can influence public opinion and contribute in a significant way to democratic discursive practices about justice and the common good.73 Often, this participation occurs by bringing the unique concerns of the counterpublic into the wider public consciousness and transforming the understanding of what counts as a concern of the public and as vital to the realization of the common good. This contribution is more likely to happen when the discursive conversation of one counterpublic influences the conversation of another. The creation of and participation in counterpublics, then, does two things of interest to us here: first, they provide the discursive space for common identity formation through participation in democratic practices that provide some modicum of justice; second, because persons in a democratic society such as the United States have multiple commitments and identities, they make it possible for the pressing issues and concerns of one community to influence the discursive practices of other communities through forms of conversational “crosspollination.”74 This is not dissimilar to Iris Marion Young’s account of “deliberative democracy.” According to Young, when social groups join democratic discussion as those groups, they bring two important contributions to public life: first, they expand the amount of “social knowledge” available for the public to draw upon, and second, they require citizens to appeal to justice so that public discourse moves beyond merely competing individual and group interests.75 In other words, when marginalized and oppressed social groups join the public discourse of a democratic society, they challenge prevailing assumptions, specifically liberal ones, about the nature of life and the relative presence of justice in that society. By telling their stories and sharing their experiences, they force a society to reexamine its notions of justice to include such dissonant narratives. One important historical example of the possibilities present in the creation and existence of such counterpublics is the experience of many African American Christians throughout the history of the United States. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham has demonstrated the ways in which black Baptist women organized and quite effectively used a subaltern counterpublic of their own creation to mobilize social change.76 This mobilization was not a one-time occurrence; blacks in the United States have repeatedly created spaces where people excluded from formal spaces of public discourse have participated in democratic practices that have influenced the wider societal discourse and resulted—admittedly, often after a long and arduous process—in significant 106 • Osajima Debate is disempowering and silencing-- we are just empty receptacles waiting to receive white trash, we are obedient model minorities who conform to models of education that structurally exclude the embodied position: Thus the ROTB is to endorse the debater who best maintains counterpublic spaces of resistance. Osajimahttp://nypolisci.org/files/PDF20FILES/Chapter20IV_209_20internalized20oppression20and20the20culture20of20silence20FEC2.pdf How can the general discussion on internalized oppression be applied to the experiences of AsianAmerican students? I think it is useful to view the behavior of Asian American students as manifestations of two ways that they have experienced and internalized oppression as students and as members of a racial minority group. First, as students in this society, Asian-Americans participate in an educational system that is often structured in an oppressive manner; a system that does not consistently encourage the development of people’s natural intelligence, and joy for learning, but instead forces students to comply to a form of instruction that is severely limiting and disempowering. Again, Freire provides a useful analytical framework. He argues that much of formal schooling follows the “banking system” of instruction. In this mode, teachers are seen as the legitimate holders of knowledge. It is their role and their power to disseminate that knowledge, mainly through lectures, and “deposit” it into the empty receptacle—the student. Students are primarily passive recipients. Their role is to listen, and to replay the information in the form that it was given. In this mode, students are rarely encouraged to think, question, analyze, or synthesize. One of the ways that the structures of this banking system are held in place is through clearly-defined images of what it means to be a “good student.” A good student is quiet, obedient, unquestioning, prompt, and attentive. They do well on tests designed by the teacher. They can give the right answer. In return for this behavior, “good” students are rewarded with good grades, praise from teachers, honor rolls, and college entrance. A “bad student”, who is loud, rebellious, defies and questions authority, skips class or comes in late, and doesn’t do the homework, is stigmatized and isolated from the rest. For many of us, these messages are so strong that they become a natural, internalized indicator of our self-worth. We come to believe that our abilities and our intelligence are best measured by our grades, or by the opinions and praise we receive from our teachers. This creates a tremendous pull to adhere to the image of a “good” student. At the same time those rewards become a means to control students, for in the process we lose sight of the fact that we are smart enough to think and figure many things out ourselves, and we also lose sight of our critical, reflective abilities that allow us to question the ways that schooling may be oppressive. I think for Asian students, the pull to be “good” students becomes even stronger when we place that student oppression in the context of the way Asians have responded to racial oppression in this country. For many Asian-Americans, silence and education lies at the heart of how we have dealt with racial oppression. As Colin Watanabe and Ben Tong argued in the early 1970’s, Asian-Americans often adopted a passive, quiet, conforming behavior as a means to survive racial hostilities. It was deemed safer not to rock the boat than to call attention to oneself and risk oppression. Many of us learned these lessons from our parents as we were growing up, internalized them, and came to believe that we too might be in danger if we speak out, or call attention to ourselves. Thus, even when the situation may not be threatening, the internalized oppression often makes us feel that we need to be quiet in order to be safe. On another front, AsianAmericans have long identified education as a strategy to deal with racial discrimination. Education has been seen as a way to gain social and economic mobility and to fend off racism. The result has been a tremendous pressure on Asian students to do well in school, which in many respects has been realized. This success, in turn, has been institutionalized as another stereotype in the media’s portrayal of Asians as the model minority. It is here that student and racial oppression merge and reinforce each other. On the one hand, Asian students believe that education is the key to overcoming racial oppression. Many of us are also told that being quiet, conforming, and invisible is a good way to avoid being the target of racism. We take these internalized messages to school where they meld neatly into the way that students have been oppressed. Recall that being quiet and conforming is encouraged and rewarded in schools, for it is a central facet of the banking system of education. Thus, we have a situation where the oppressive features of the educational system work to reinforce the ways that Asians have dealt with racial oppression. Young AsianAmericans often internalize these images and come to believe that their identity and self-image hinge upon being the successful quiet student. It is understandable, then, why they often carry these feelings, perspectives, and actions into every classroom situation, and have difficulty breaking with familiar patterns and feelings to answer questions in our classes. Theory Underview
Aff gets RVIs a. Our aff justifies RVIs—this space is our space of rage, and theory debates are a silencing of our protest against police brutality because it goes against your rules of debate—if you have the freedom to police me you can’t get away with qualified immunity. If what you did was irresponsible and oppressive, it’s a reason to vote you down. Framework Underview Framework is how they mark our bodies as irrational because we operate outside their productive limits. This is the violent attempt to invisibilize whiteness by determining the mechanisms by which we engage with the resolution. That denies accountability and re asserts colonial violence on yellow bodies-Kincheloe’99 {Joe L; Research chair at Faculty of Education at McGill University; “The Struggle to Define and Reinvent Whiteness: A Pedagogical Analysis”; College Literature 26 (Fall 1999): 162-; 1999; http://www.virginia.edu/woodson/courses/aas10220(spring2001)/articles/kincheloe.html; accessed 9/22/16}AvP While no one knows exactly what constitutes whiteness, we can historicize the concept and offer some general statements about the dynamics it signifies. Even this process is difficult, as whiteness as a socio-historical construct is constantly shifting in light of new circumstances and changing interactions with various manifestations of power. With these qualifications in mind we believe that a dominant impulse of whiteness took shape around the European Enlightenment’s notion of rationality with its privileged construction of a transcendental white, male, rational subject who operated at the recesses of power while concurrently giving every indication that he escaped the confines of time and space. In this context
