• Express Unpopular Views - Rule of Law
  • can’t ban something because it is deemed subjectively offensive
  • this “bedrock principle” of America makes sense given its population - wildly diverse in the definition of what is offensive, what is acceptable
• What is not protected in freedom of speech and expression?
  • threats
  • discriminatory harrassment
    • severe, persistent, pervasive pattern of behavior directed towards an individual or group designed to be discriminatory
    • applies on campus and other institutions, but not considered a part of the general freedom of speech
  • incitement to imminent lawless actions
  • defamation (accusation of fact, i.e., this person is a psychopath)
• What is “free speech culture”?
  • To a degree, culture and law work hand-in-hand to a degree
    • What preceded the law of free speech is the free speech movement
  • “Norms” that reflect a free speech culture:
    • “it’s a free country”
    • “to each their own”
    • “walk a mile in someone’s shoes before you judge them”
• When did it go wrong?
  • it is easy to get in trouble because of your opinion on college campuses, even back in 2001 (administrators, and professors)
    • students, however, exercised freedom of speech quite well back then.
  • administrative class at universities
    • growing energy of political correctness, motivated by a moral fervor for “enlightened censorship” (improve the world by shutting people up), mid 1980s-1990s
      • codes of this nature off campus were dismissed
      • but on campus, they can be enforced by the administrative class (no matter whether professors got disenchanted by this idea)
  • end of 2013 and 2014, students started coming in demanding deplatforming of speakers they didn’t like, demanding new speech codes for trigger warnings and microagressions.
    • students bought the idea of enlightened censorship of the administrative class, now collaborating to get people punished.
  • data in book, speaker is founder of FIRE, foundation that defends and sustains individual rights of americal free speech and thought
    • over 1000 attempts to get professors fired, overwhelmingly concentrated at the most elite colleges in the country
      • 200 got fired
      • more than 40 were tenured professors
  • in a professor polling, 1 in 6 admitted to being investigated or threatened with investigation for their speech, academic freedom, research.
• dates seem to coincide with the invention of the social network
  • invention of the printing press
    • started with optimism about the possibility of mass distribution of knowledge through text
    • led to the proliferation of civil and religious strife
    • Henry VIII thus licensed printing press, limiting power of publication to a few (censorship)
    • ultimately, this was disruptive, but it was worth the strife, leading to scientific revolution, and passing down of knowledge
    • most importantly, millions of people could look at an idea, and say, this is dumb. the public eye, or “disconfirmation”
  • invention of social media
    • started with optimism about the internet
    • led to the proliferation of cancel culture:
      • instead of encouraging expression of our weirdness on the internet, it mobilizes groups of people to tear down ideas
    • similar to the millions of eyes that the printing press, but scaled up
      • this isn’t necessarily bad. but, what social media fails to do is build back up what has been broken down.