> allegations of censorship
Greg Lukianoff wants to sue the department of education [1]. He just needs a case. Here is his org's free speech case list [2], and here's another clip of him talking about it [3]
Laws do not enforce themselves. People need to make an effort to bring cases to court when there are injustices.
The video clips are from the time of BLM protests at Yale at the end of 2015. Students were upset about an email from a faculty member who suggested that, while certain racist halloween costumes were ill-advised, they aren't against the law and other students should learn to deal with them peacefully.
BLM students were in an uproar and saw this email as an approval of costumes like black face. The Yale President came out in support of the protesters. Erika Christakis, the author of the email, eventually resigned, despite support from thefire.org and others. Greg predicted this [4]
The same thing happened around the time of the Vietnam war at Yale. Some guy named Shockley was invited to talk about eugenics. The idea was to allow his bad ideas to be heard so that he could hang himself. But some students protested and would not let him speak. Here's the full story [5]. The culmination of that episode was a report from a newly created committee on Freedom of Expression, led by Vann Woodward, also known as the Woodward report [6]. Its final paragraph reads,
> The conclusions we draw, then, are these: even when some members of the university community fail to meet their social and ethical responsibilities, the paramount obligation of the university is to protect their right to free expression. This obligation can and should be enforced by appropriate formal sanctions. If the university's overriding commitment to free expression is to be sustained, secondary social and ethical responsibilities must be left to the informal processes of suasion, example, and argument.
So that all sounds good. Lukianoff and thefire.org argue that Yale's administrators haven't been living up to the actions suggested by the report.
Contrast this to how Columbia handled a visit by Ahmadinejad. Many people felt very strongly he should not be allowed to speak at such a reputable institution. Yet, they allowed it, and now he's on record saying that Iran has no gay people. It was an absurd thing to argue. Those who invited him knew he was going to say it. They wanted him to share his true feelings, hear foreigners' reactions, and give more of the world a chance to hear and talk about that viewpoint.
[1] https://youtu.be/qGnNKmR1EEc?t=57m02s
[2] https://www.thefire.org/category/cases/free-speech/
[3] https://youtu.be/qGnNKmR1EEc?t=20m40s
[4] https://youtu.be/qGnNKmR1EEc?t=17m32s
[5] http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/02/05/william-shockl...
[6] http://yalecollege.yale.edu/faculty-staff/faculty/policies-r...