Tournament: North Texas Longhorn NSDA Districts | Round: 1 | Opponent: AnyOne | Judge: w00t w00t
I value morality – the evaluative term “ought” in the resolution implies an analysis of ethical obligation.
The value criterion is promoting educational flourishing on university campuses – the judge should vote for the side who proposes the best method to prepare college students for the real world.
There are three reasons to prefer my framework:
First, actor specificity – analytic
Second, topic literature - analytic
Third, affirmative framework choice – analytic
I advocate that the United States ought not restrict any written constitutionally protected speech. To clarify, this refers to any student-run press organizations and all books.
The Hazelwood court case established a precedent that has been used to justify press restrictions on university campuses.
Peters and Lomonte ‘13 – Jonathan Peters and Frank Lomonte. “College Journalists Need Free Speech More Than Ever.” The Atlantic. March 1st, 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/college-journalists-need-free-speech-more-than-ever/273634/
Even as college students and journalism programs are making more important contributions to independent reporting, the federal courts are curtailing First Amendment freedoms for students at public institutions.
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That journalistic process can be challenging for students, but it engages students with the corresponding challenge of self-government, and with journalism's role in preserving democracy.
Extension of the Hazelwood decision would allow censorship to run rampant – currently, university administrators already attempt to restrict articles critical of them – without constitutional protection, watchdog journalism will die.
Goodman and Hiestand ’05 – S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center. (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. The Case of Hosty v. Carter. October 20, 2005.
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.
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Amici do not believe this Court intended the censorship of college and university student newspapers to be the legacy of Hazelwood.
The vagueness of the guidelines imposed by Hosty, another Court decision, gives administrators unprecedented censorship power, threatening the very existence of the university press. In addition, these restrictions spill over – private university campuses base their speech codes on that of public universities.
Lukianoff and Harris ‘05 – George Lukianoff. Samantha Harris. Foundation for Individual, Rights in Education. 2005. (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. The Case of Hosty v. Carter. No. 05-377. October 19, 2005.
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.
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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
Censorship of student journalism is horrible – it discourages intellectual inquiry and criticizing existing power structures.
Schuman ’16 – Rebecca Schuman. “Student Journalists Are Under Threat.” Slate Magazine. December 8th, 2016.
Well, here’s some great news to cheer you up: The American student press is under siege!
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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.
An uncensored college press is key to student activism.
Lomonte ’16 – Frank D. Lomonte. “NEWS RELEASE: Report spotlights threats to college press freedom, calls on nation's colleges to end retaliation against journalists and advisers.” Southern Poverty Law Center. December 1st, 2016. 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.
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Their rights of free speech and free press must always be guaranteed.”
Restrictions upon free speech silence movements for social progress.
American Civil Liberties Union 1 – Nonprofit and Nonpartisan Non-Governmental Organization. Member dues as well as contributions and grants from private foundations and individuals pay for the work we do. Formed in 1920. ACLU, No Date. "Hate Speech on Campus." American Civil Liberties Union.
A: 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.
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"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."
Speech codes have historically backfired.
American Civil Liberties Union 2 Ibid.
Historically, defamation laws or codes have proven ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst.
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"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."
Free speech restrictions create intellectual “echo-chambers” that severely decrease the value of a student’s education.
Kelly-Woessner ‘16 – KELLY-WOESSNER, APRIL. (Woessner is a professor and chairwoman of the political science department at Elizabethtown College) "The Fierce Debate over Free Speech on American College Campuses." LancasterOnline. N.p., 18 Sept. 2016. Web. 10 Jan. 2017. http://lancasteronline.com/opinion/columnists/the-fierce-debate-over-free-speech-on-american-college-campuses/article_8c208d66-7b65-11e6-88de-d78bce73d4c3.html. Premier
We are all uncomfortable with speech that challenges our core values. The evidence from social psychology is that we are becoming less open to disagreement. Our social networks have narrowed, such that they have fewer friends across party lines.
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When we characterize disagreement and value conflicts as forms of aggression, or define discussion participants as victims or perpetrators, we only exacerbate group conflicts.
And, the “fighting words” doctrine will address any instances of real harassment – speech codes aren’t necessary to create a safe learning environment.
American Civil Liberties Union 3
A: The U.S. Supreme Court did ruled in 1942, in a case called Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, that intimidating speech directed at a specific individual in a face-to-face confrontation amounts to "fighting words,"
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Over the past 50 years, however, the Court hasn't found the "fighting words" doctrine applicable in any of the hate speech cases that have come before it, since the incidents involved didn't meet the narrow criteria stated above.
Blaming societal problems on root cause factors trades off with solving individual acts of violence, cedes responsibility and perpetuates oppression.
Kappeler ‘95 Susanne Kappeler, Associate Prof @ Al-Akhawayn University, The Will to Violence: The Politics of Personal Behavior, 1995, pg. 6-7
This means engaging also with the discourses which construct violence as a phenomenon but obliterate the agent’s decision to violate.
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It is so naturalized, in fact, that it is not violent action which attracts attention, but any resistance to it: leaving a violent relationship or situations of violence, resisting bullying, pressure and blackmail, refusing to fight back.
Constant criticism without realistic proposals for reform perpetuates oppression and changes nothing – Structural violence is a material problem that needs materials solutions. Academic theorizing and critique does nothing for morally excluded individuals that need our help. If we are to create an effective liberation strategy, then debate must be a place for carpentry rather than critique.
Bryant 12 — Levi R. Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Loyola University in Chicago, 2012 (“Underpants Gnomes: A Critique of the Academic Left,” Larval Subjects—Levi R. Bryant’s philosophy blog, November 11th, Available Online at http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpants-gnomes-a-critique-of-the-academic-left/, Accessed 02-21-2014)
I must be in a mood today–half irritated, half amused–because I find myself ranting. saying “revolution is the answer!” without addressing any of the infrastructural questions of just how revolution is to be produced, what alternatives it would offer, and how we would concretely go about building those alternatives.
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Even the Tea Party knows something is wrong with the economic system, despite having the wrong economic theory. None of us, however, are proposing alternatives. Instead we prefer to shout and denounce. Good luck with that.
Specific evidence is more accurate than broad root cause explanations.
Price ’98 - Richard Price is a former prof in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University. Later, he moved to Johns Hopkins University to found the Department of Anthropology, where he served three terms as chair. A decade of freelance teaching (University of Minnesota, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Florida, Universidade Federal da Bahia), ensued. This article is co-authored with CHRISTIAN REUS-SMIT – Monash University – European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 1998 via SAGE Publications. http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~courses/PoliticalScience/661B1/documents/PriceReusSmithCriticalInternatlTheoryConstructivism.pdf
One of the central departures of critical international theory from positivism is the view that we cannot escape the interpretive moment.
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In short, if constructivists are not advancing totalizing discourses, and if making ‘small-t’ truth claims is inevitable if one is to talk about how the world works, then it is no more likely that constructivism per se violates the interpretive ethos of critical international theory than does critical theory itself.
Abstract ethical theorizing prevents dealing with very material oppression – we should debate about tangible policies and real-world change.
Curry ’14 - Dr. Tommy J. Curry. “The Cost of a Thing: A Kingian Reformulation of a Living Wage Argument in the 21st Century”, Victory Briefs, 2014.
Despite the pronouncement of debate as an activity and intellectual exercise pointing to the real world consequences of dialogue, thinking, and (personal) politics when addressing issues of racism, sexism, economic disparity, global conflicts, and death, many of the discussions concerning these ongoing challenges to humanity are fixed to a paradigm which sees the adjudication of material disparities and sociological realities as the conquest of one ideal theory over the other.
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In other words, King aims to reformulate the values which deny the legitimacy of the living wage, and those values predicated on the flawed views of the worker, Blacks, and the colonized (dignity, justice, fairness, rights, etc.) used to currently justify the living wages in under our contemporary moral parameters.
Use reasonability on T:
a) preserves the value of substance
b) promotes creative argument -~-- education outweighs fairness