As I sat and watched in horror, I wondered how and why so many brainless screamers were allowed to disgrace the halls of the SLS. The only thing they're qualified for is digging ditches, and that's an offense to ditch diggers.
Totally orthogonal to the particular incident at Stanford Law and this particular post, but I’m actually curious how Glenn and others feel about the recent push by many Republican China hawks to push through a ban of TikTok. Most readers here are focusing on the assault against free speech by the political left, but interestingly enough it seems that progressives like AOC and Jamaal Bowman are the ones coming out to defend TikTok against a ban in part based on First Amendment grounds, although Republican Senator Rand Paul recently did the same as well.
I feel like we live in truly interesting times. Threats to free speech in this country seem to abound from all sources. Given the work Matt Taibbi has done reporting on the Twitter Files, I'd personally love to hear him dive into the First Amendment implications of a potential TikTok ban.
The far greater problem of the proposed ban is that it goes way past TikTok and instead provides for significant jail time for anyone that uses software that the Federal government decides,on any given day, is a threat. It’s a blanket ability to arrest anyone on a whim. It is the work of the Neocon Uniparty that has plenty of Woke Demonstrators and RINO Republicans. On the other hand.... Our politicians know what’s best for us and I think it’s a good, no great, idea that we let them decide who we can converse with. After all, we did elect them to represent us; would be poor form now to remove their authority. And for future reference, when this proposal becomes law and they begin to prosecute and imprison tens of thousands of scoundrel citizens for breaking it, I hope they send them to Guantanamo for a nice long forgotten vacation. Peace out.
Free speech on campus is an anachronistic as the quaint notion of live and let live. The only thing even remotely unusual about what happened at Stanford is who the target was. One has to wonder how these galaxy brain students will respond the first time a judge in a courtroom rules against them, or a colleague in a law firm says something that gives them the vapors.
With the Twitter files, four years of "Russian collusion," the Covid caper, and the recent Congressional testimony from Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, it becomes obvious that free speech as we once knew it is dead. At the very least, it's on life support when govt agencies are routinely outsourcing the task to various shadow groups and working in conjunction with big tech and big media. The evidence has been laid out for all to see and predictably, the left's response has been to attack the messengers. And as a bonus, we now have stories of federal agents engaging in mob-like intimidation tactics by showing up unannounced at people's homes. Actually, this insults the mob as those folks have some honor and a code in how they go about things; increasingly, govt feels no such constraints because what are we gonna do about it?
I'm very curious what Taibbi and Shellenberger's stances are regarding a potential ban of TikTok given their reporting on the Twitter Files and their defense of the First Amendment against government censorship and overreach in the name of supposedly combating misinformation.
I find it ironic that progressives like AOC are the ones actually defending TikTok against a ban in part based on First Amendment grounds, while politicians on the right like Desantis or Hawley who've made a career out of combating political correctness and wokeness can't seem to wait to throw the First Amendment out the window by banning a supposedly malign app because it's based in China. One way or another we seem to be moving towards authoritarianism in this country.
AOC defends TikToc bc it is very valuable for her communications. Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson oppose the ban bc it infringes on First Amendment. big difference between the two and their motives. Only a few people, like Trump, Paul, Carlson stand in the way of the Neocons, RINOs and Woke.
Omg Alex! So much wrong thinking. Where to start?; 1) gov control of our words is for our good, 2) oppressed people, and surely you know Stanford law students are very oppressed, experience violence and injury by opinions not conforming to their own and thus have a right to attack physically Oppressors, 3) The speaker was from the White Privileged and Oppressor class/cast and thus any attack on them is justified on those facts alone. Please do better.
clearly, there is a re-education camp slot with my name on it. Those poor pitiful poor oppressed young people, forced to attend the open air day prison known as Stanford Law, especially the white ones. Their lives must be one of perpetual conundrum.
What is this "both sides" bit? There was one side being openly hostile to a person who'd been invited to speak. And these are law students, presumably budding adults with the capacity to understand that not everyone thinks as they do. Are these people you want working with you or for you? One side has outsourced censorship to various tech and media platforms. One. Not both.
David French has a piece on the Stanford Law controversy in the New York Times. I suggest everyone go through as many of the 900+ reader comments on the piece as it takes to dispel any illusion that free speech matters to liberals.
Member "Yan Shen" gifted me a subscription after I (jokingly) bleated I was too poor to afford one, so all access levels on Glenn Loury Substack are now open to me. When I have a minute, I'll try to access the podcast using a temporary non-subbed ID and report back to you.
But I have no problem taking your word that what I would find is dreadful. Maybe the paywall is doing Libertarian and myself a favor. Thanks for taking one for the team by reading the NYT for us.
Unfortunately I couldn’t read it because it wants me to subscribe first. And I won’t subscribe to that old white gray lady rag even for you Dick Bickers.
Thanks Michelle. I have now read the essay and have to admit that it was very well written. I particularly liked the author quoting Frederick Douglass extensively. Thanks Dick Bicker also for the suggestion to read it.
I did not and never would suggest you read French's tripe. As here on the Glenn Loury Substack, the REAL education is given in the NYT readers' comments about the underlying issues. (Free speech, punching Nazis, keeping Trump out of the White House, etc.)
I think the NYT is better with the new editor in chief but it still has a long way to go to regain its reputation. John McWhorter's column is normally excellent, for example.
A small tip is that you can take a url, and do a search on archive.is to see if the snapshot has been saved. With the NYT, normally it is...
I appreciated the willingness of these two young men to put their hand up for freedom of thought on campus. It is concerning; however, that neither of them seemed willing to make this a categorical value. While I may be misunderstanding their meaning, they seemed to leave the door open to protesting this or other speakers with whom they might disagree. And they could not bring themselves to support any form of consequence for the students involved in the most egregious abuse of Judge Duncan.
Agree. She has a lot of money and supporters but that hasn't protected her from the mob. Death threats against her and her family are frequent. They've published her home address on social media and targeted her daughter and her school. Her money has not prevented her life from being disrupted daily. Therefore my comment about Glenn showing real courage.
This looks like a bunch of whites whining that one of their own wasn’t allowed to spew more of his White Privileged logic using big fancy words that are utter violence to marginalized peoples everywhere and always. Best he just keep his oppressor words to himself then assault young Stanford minds. They are the real victims. And of course the Dean who was suspended for doing her job I’m ensuring a fair debate in which no student becomes even more of a victim of mean words. Well done, Dean. You are brave and my new hero. We need more like you to ensure whites, particularly the males that like females of the species, don’t utter another word in challenge to DE&I. Controlling speech is very effective and the best way to ensure the correct voices and messages are published.
Was it Voltaire who said, "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it."?
True then, true now, true forever if one believes in free speech, which does not exist in China, N. Korea, Turkey, Russia or its satrap states, Egypt, Libya, El Salvador, Hungary, certain African states south of the Sahara, the Phillipines and a few other states. Thus Stanford Law is an outlier unfamiliar with Constitutional Law, according to this accusation. Amazing that the instructors at this venerable institution have not been heard from. Whatever became of pinciple?
Time was when anyone attempting to abrogate the right of free speech would immediately be challenged. Defilers of that right need to be restrained while the speaker makes a hero/heroine of him/herself, or digs an intellectual hole so deep he/she must crawl out of it.
Which triggers another pithy, old-school aphorism: "Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
The originator of the following aphorism is forgotten, but its wisdom is equally valid: "Whoever knew truth to come out the worse in a free and open verbal encounter?"
Thank you Glenn for giving this issue more airtime. Resistance to this suppression of free speech will have to led by people like you with sufficient gravitas who are less vulnerable to the mob. The mob can take out anybody (see JK Rowling); I respect the considerable courage you have shown.
Maybe, but JK can still laugh all the way to the bank. And she still has apparently many supporters. If more prominent figures showed this courage we could perhaps vanquish this nonsense.
Jo is well aware of her privileged position. She does what she does because she thinks it is right. If not her, then who I believe was her reasoning.
The publishing industry is full of people who are too frightened to put their heads above the parapets. I completely understand it. Death threats, threats to your career etc are deeply unpleasant (had a few of those for sponsoring a resolution about Free Speech to the Society of Authors -- the UK equivalent of the Authors Guild last autumn).
It is about standing up to copy editors who are often young and saying -- no, these are my words and you don't get to tone police me and giving the editors the courage to do so. It is really hard, particularly when you are a midlist author which most people have never ever heard of and you do really need the pay check and you feel v isolated. (I know we are talking about Stanford law here but it is a cancer which has infected everywhere).
And it is about ensuring that people understand about the Heckler's Veto and why it is totalitarian and an anathema to democracies and freedom of speech. Freedom of Speech protects minorities and allows for change. Mills trident works for a reason. Only people who are frightened of an argument and debate feel the need to shut debates down.
Hey Michelle! I looked up your books on Amazon and your website. Sincerely very impressive work and career. I have just now bought my first. The one with this review “Sexual tension, nonstop action, and spice.” —RT Book Reviews
Currently having an attack of the Crows of Doubt about my latest...but the state of publishing is v much a Culture of Fear which it shouldn't be. Freedom of expression is so important.
That's just sad. I find it absurd that there is an element out there revising and changing literature for the sake of "safety". Yet at the same time, children are exposed to complex sexual and gender identity issues in schools.
And do not get me started on Presentism, and sensitivity readers. Agatha Christie is the latest and they have flattered to deceive as well as erasing certain aspects of characters. She did not write for today's society. She wrote for the 1920 -1976 society and it was v different.
ALso many of the copy editors are young (it doesn't pay v well) and they are flagging up problematic words. Some of it makes no sense and much nonsense.
Yeah. I heard about it last week on The 5th Column (my favorite Substack podcast). Atrocious behavior by the lefties, and the "DEI" leader. I wrote a draft of an essay on this as well and will probably post it in the next few days or week at most. Glad you are covering it. The left once believed in freedom of speech. Those days seem to be largely over, at least from the far-left on campuses. Reminds of the Harper's Letter from 2020.
In my view, a lawyer who isn’t willing to listen to an argument, shouldn’t be in law school. My father was a lawyer, and there are quite a few lawyers in my family, so I find this sort of thing to be inexcusable.
As I sat and watched in horror, I wondered how and why so many brainless screamers were allowed to disgrace the halls of the SLS. The only thing they're qualified for is digging ditches, and that's an offense to ditch diggers.
Totally orthogonal to the particular incident at Stanford Law and this particular post, but I’m actually curious how Glenn and others feel about the recent push by many Republican China hawks to push through a ban of TikTok. Most readers here are focusing on the assault against free speech by the political left, but interestingly enough it seems that progressives like AOC and Jamaal Bowman are the ones coming out to defend TikTok against a ban in part based on First Amendment grounds, although Republican Senator Rand Paul recently did the same as well.
I feel like we live in truly interesting times. Threats to free speech in this country seem to abound from all sources. Given the work Matt Taibbi has done reporting on the Twitter Files, I'd personally love to hear him dive into the First Amendment implications of a potential TikTok ban.
https://www.racket.news/p/my-statement-to-congress
https://www.thefp.com/p/trudeaus-battle-against-a-free-internet/comment/14073509
The far greater problem of the proposed ban is that it goes way past TikTok and instead provides for significant jail time for anyone that uses software that the Federal government decides,on any given day, is a threat. It’s a blanket ability to arrest anyone on a whim. It is the work of the Neocon Uniparty that has plenty of Woke Demonstrators and RINO Republicans. On the other hand.... Our politicians know what’s best for us and I think it’s a good, no great, idea that we let them decide who we can converse with. After all, we did elect them to represent us; would be poor form now to remove their authority. And for future reference, when this proposal becomes law and they begin to prosecute and imprison tens of thousands of scoundrel citizens for breaking it, I hope they send them to Guantanamo for a nice long forgotten vacation. Peace out.
There is nothing surprising here.
Lines have been drawn.
A Conservative Christian is shouted down.
Books on Black history are banned
Discussions of race in schools is suppressed
Neither side is going to give an inch.
Marxists and those who follow derivative ideologies like postmodernism don't exactly believe in free speech.
https://unskool.substack.com/p/howard-zinns-legacy-of-encouraging
Free speech on campus is an anachronistic as the quaint notion of live and let live. The only thing even remotely unusual about what happened at Stanford is who the target was. One has to wonder how these galaxy brain students will respond the first time a judge in a courtroom rules against them, or a colleague in a law firm says something that gives them the vapors.
With the Twitter files, four years of "Russian collusion," the Covid caper, and the recent Congressional testimony from Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, it becomes obvious that free speech as we once knew it is dead. At the very least, it's on life support when govt agencies are routinely outsourcing the task to various shadow groups and working in conjunction with big tech and big media. The evidence has been laid out for all to see and predictably, the left's response has been to attack the messengers. And as a bonus, we now have stories of federal agents engaging in mob-like intimidation tactics by showing up unannounced at people's homes. Actually, this insults the mob as those folks have some honor and a code in how they go about things; increasingly, govt feels no such constraints because what are we gonna do about it?
I'm very curious what Taibbi and Shellenberger's stances are regarding a potential ban of TikTok given their reporting on the Twitter Files and their defense of the First Amendment against government censorship and overreach in the name of supposedly combating misinformation.
I find it ironic that progressives like AOC are the ones actually defending TikTok against a ban in part based on First Amendment grounds, while politicians on the right like Desantis or Hawley who've made a career out of combating political correctness and wokeness can't seem to wait to throw the First Amendment out the window by banning a supposedly malign app because it's based in China. One way or another we seem to be moving towards authoritarianism in this country.
AOC defends TikToc bc it is very valuable for her communications. Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson oppose the ban bc it infringes on First Amendment. big difference between the two and their motives. Only a few people, like Trump, Paul, Carlson stand in the way of the Neocons, RINOs and Woke.
Omg Alex! So much wrong thinking. Where to start?; 1) gov control of our words is for our good, 2) oppressed people, and surely you know Stanford law students are very oppressed, experience violence and injury by opinions not conforming to their own and thus have a right to attack physically Oppressors, 3) The speaker was from the White Privileged and Oppressor class/cast and thus any attack on them is justified on those facts alone. Please do better.
clearly, there is a re-education camp slot with my name on it. Those poor pitiful poor oppressed young people, forced to attend the open air day prison known as Stanford Law, especially the white ones. Their lives must be one of perpetual conundrum.
So sad. Such a lack of civility from both sides of many important issue. Praying.
What is this "both sides" bit? There was one side being openly hostile to a person who'd been invited to speak. And these are law students, presumably budding adults with the capacity to understand that not everyone thinks as they do. Are these people you want working with you or for you? One side has outsourced censorship to various tech and media platforms. One. Not both.
It was both sides because the speaker is a member of the White Privileged and Oppressor side; basically KKK/Nazi sans the uniform and hood.
The least he could have done was wear the uniform and hood for the speech.
Completely unnecessary. Color of his skin and tone of voice gave him away.
David French has a piece on the Stanford Law controversy in the New York Times. I suggest everyone go through as many of the 900+ reader comments on the piece as it takes to dispel any illusion that free speech matters to liberals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/opinion/free-speech-campus.html
FYI, on the most recent Glenn podcast I can’t read or comment bc it says I have to pay. Are you getting same message? Any advice?
Wednesday's release, the March Q&A, is a subscriber exclusive, so it's behind a paywall. Monday's podcast stays behind the paywall until tomorrow.
Thanks Mark.
Member "Yan Shen" gifted me a subscription after I (jokingly) bleated I was too poor to afford one, so all access levels on Glenn Loury Substack are now open to me. When I have a minute, I'll try to access the podcast using a temporary non-subbed ID and report back to you.
Like Libertarian, I won't pay for this.
But I have no problem taking your word that what I would find is dreadful. Maybe the paywall is doing Libertarian and myself a favor. Thanks for taking one for the team by reading the NYT for us.
Which is why you should check the archive.is
Someone has already archived it. https://archive.is/4Q3wz
Unfortunately I couldn’t read it because it wants me to subscribe first. And I won’t subscribe to that old white gray lady rag even for you Dick Bickers.
In case you don't see the above, archive.is is a wonderful thing. The article has already been archived. https://archive.is/4Q3wz
Thank you for the link Michelle. Good article.
Thanks Michelle. I have now read the essay and have to admit that it was very well written. I particularly liked the author quoting Frederick Douglass extensively. Thanks Dick Bicker also for the suggestion to read it.
I did not and never would suggest you read French's tripe. As here on the Glenn Loury Substack, the REAL education is given in the NYT readers' comments about the underlying issues. (Free speech, punching Nazis, keeping Trump out of the White House, etc.)
I think the NYT is better with the new editor in chief but it still has a long way to go to regain its reputation. John McWhorter's column is normally excellent, for example.
A small tip is that you can take a url, and do a search on archive.is to see if the snapshot has been saved. With the NYT, normally it is...
FYI, I mentioned you in a post on this thread.
I appreciated the willingness of these two young men to put their hand up for freedom of thought on campus. It is concerning; however, that neither of them seemed willing to make this a categorical value. While I may be misunderstanding their meaning, they seemed to leave the door open to protesting this or other speakers with whom they might disagree. And they could not bring themselves to support any form of consequence for the students involved in the most egregious abuse of Judge Duncan.
The future does not, at present, look bright.
Nothing wrong with protest, lots wrong with shouting down speakers or intimidating those wanting to hear them.
Agree. She has a lot of money and supporters but that hasn't protected her from the mob. Death threats against her and her family are frequent. They've published her home address on social media and targeted her daughter and her school. Her money has not prevented her life from being disrupted daily. Therefore my comment about Glenn showing real courage.
This looks like a bunch of whites whining that one of their own wasn’t allowed to spew more of his White Privileged logic using big fancy words that are utter violence to marginalized peoples everywhere and always. Best he just keep his oppressor words to himself then assault young Stanford minds. They are the real victims. And of course the Dean who was suspended for doing her job I’m ensuring a fair debate in which no student becomes even more of a victim of mean words. Well done, Dean. You are brave and my new hero. We need more like you to ensure whites, particularly the males that like females of the species, don’t utter another word in challenge to DE&I. Controlling speech is very effective and the best way to ensure the correct voices and messages are published.
epic troll!
Zeno:
Was it Voltaire who said, "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it."?
True then, true now, true forever if one believes in free speech, which does not exist in China, N. Korea, Turkey, Russia or its satrap states, Egypt, Libya, El Salvador, Hungary, certain African states south of the Sahara, the Phillipines and a few other states. Thus Stanford Law is an outlier unfamiliar with Constitutional Law, according to this accusation. Amazing that the instructors at this venerable institution have not been heard from. Whatever became of pinciple?
Time was when anyone attempting to abrogate the right of free speech would immediately be challenged. Defilers of that right need to be restrained while the speaker makes a hero/heroine of him/herself, or digs an intellectual hole so deep he/she must crawl out of it.
Which triggers another pithy, old-school aphorism: "Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
The originator of the following aphorism is forgotten, but its wisdom is equally valid: "Whoever knew truth to come out the worse in a free and open verbal encounter?"
I rest my case.
Thank you Glenn for giving this issue more airtime. Resistance to this suppression of free speech will have to led by people like you with sufficient gravitas who are less vulnerable to the mob. The mob can take out anybody (see JK Rowling); I respect the considerable courage you have shown.
👏👏👌
Maybe, but JK can still laugh all the way to the bank. And she still has apparently many supporters. If more prominent figures showed this courage we could perhaps vanquish this nonsense.
Jo is well aware of her privileged position. She does what she does because she thinks it is right. If not her, then who I believe was her reasoning.
The publishing industry is full of people who are too frightened to put their heads above the parapets. I completely understand it. Death threats, threats to your career etc are deeply unpleasant (had a few of those for sponsoring a resolution about Free Speech to the Society of Authors -- the UK equivalent of the Authors Guild last autumn).
It is about standing up to copy editors who are often young and saying -- no, these are my words and you don't get to tone police me and giving the editors the courage to do so. It is really hard, particularly when you are a midlist author which most people have never ever heard of and you do really need the pay check and you feel v isolated. (I know we are talking about Stanford law here but it is a cancer which has infected everywhere).
And it is about ensuring that people understand about the Heckler's Veto and why it is totalitarian and an anathema to democracies and freedom of speech. Freedom of Speech protects minorities and allows for change. Mills trident works for a reason. Only people who are frightened of an argument and debate feel the need to shut debates down.
Hey Michelle! I looked up your books on Amazon and your website. Sincerely very impressive work and career. I have just now bought my first. The one with this review “Sexual tension, nonstop action, and spice.” —RT Book Reviews
That's v kind of you. I do hope you enjoy.
Currently having an attack of the Crows of Doubt about my latest...but the state of publishing is v much a Culture of Fear which it shouldn't be. Freedom of expression is so important.
Cheer up, the Dark Ages were also a Culture of Fear and they only lasted 600 years.
That's just sad. I find it absurd that there is an element out there revising and changing literature for the sake of "safety". Yet at the same time, children are exposed to complex sexual and gender identity issues in schools.
Yes, and there is a section of children's publishing which is v complicit in this, in a way that they were not about anorexia etc. https://www.transgendertrend.com/trans-picture-books-little-children/ explains some of this.
And do not get me started on Presentism, and sensitivity readers. Agatha Christie is the latest and they have flattered to deceive as well as erasing certain aspects of characters. She did not write for today's society. She wrote for the 1920 -1976 society and it was v different.
ALso many of the copy editors are young (it doesn't pay v well) and they are flagging up problematic words. Some of it makes no sense and much nonsense.
True
Yeah. I heard about it last week on The 5th Column (my favorite Substack podcast). Atrocious behavior by the lefties, and the "DEI" leader. I wrote a draft of an essay on this as well and will probably post it in the next few days or week at most. Glad you are covering it. The left once believed in freedom of speech. Those days seem to be largely over, at least from the far-left on campuses. Reminds of the Harper's Letter from 2020.
Michael Mohr
"Sincere American Writing"
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
You voted for this and now you're getting it good and hard.
The chickens are coming home to roost.
I agree and “chickens” is a great descriptor for them.
The protest was an organized event, Alan Dershowitz named them on Megyn Kelly's show.
It's really despicable that this is the future generation of lawyers. To say we are doomed is putting it mildly...
We all saw the Kristakis debacle Yale years ago. They said it right out loud: we will take over the Bench, the Firm, and the DA Office.
I know, right. Ditto the ACLU, once a crucial bastion of free speech advocacy. Sad sad sad. Medicine and science are next.
Michael Mohr
"Sincere American Writing"
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Oh, medicine and science are just a footstep behind.
Indeed
In my view, a lawyer who isn’t willing to listen to an argument, shouldn’t be in law school. My father was a lawyer, and there are quite a few lawyers in my family, so I find this sort of thing to be inexcusable.
Could you please move that bunch of deck chairs on the aft deck a bit more forward? Thanks.
Correct.