Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
president.mit.edu
Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
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Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#2From the PDF [1]:
> We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious. (...) A commitment to free expression includes hearing and hosting speakers, including those whose views or opinions may not be shared by many members of the MIT community and may be harmful to some. This commitment includes the freedom to criticize and peacefully protest speakers to whom one may object, but it does not extend to suppressing or restricting such speakers from expressing their views.
Reasonable stance IMO. As far as I can tell, MIT did not adopt the Chicago Statement [2], so it's nice to see a proposal like this, which seems substantially similar.
[1] https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/default/files/report...
[2] https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/r...
Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#3Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#4[flagged]
Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#5That page seems to use Mailjet marketing tracking links.
The full message could be: free expression, with intimate surveillance.
I'm not saying that's a bad message, and it's happening in practice, in some forms. Maybe people should explore whether that means everyone should take responsibility for their speech. And if so, whether that means responsibility before the audience, the public, or some authority.
Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#6One, perhaps the only, problem with freedom of speech in academia is that can be very actively exploited by bad faith actors, i.e., people who are not interested at all in truth and merely abuse the university system as a platform for furthering political goals and "whitewashing" their position.
These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. They often come from a non-academic background, have a party or "think-tank" background with some obvious political agenda, and their funding also comes from corresponding organizations. Some of them are even just politicians.
The problem with these kind of speakers is not that they speak at a university. The audience is smart enough not to fall for bullshit and to separate politics from science. The problem is that these people use events to give their name and their agenda some credibility and make it easier for the public to confuse their opinions with science. It's a branding problem, political talks can give a university a seriously bad reputation.
Since it would be inconvenient and undemocratic to ban all political speeches and events from universities, I think a trade-off has to be made and some cut-off points are necessary, even if that means that a few interesting talks get lost due to being identified as false positives. It's perfectly fine and reasonable to ban all political speakers from the political fringes (both far right and far left) unless an event clearly serves a scientific purpose and the speaker also has the fitting credentials in terms of actual publications.
I understand this goal is hard to reach in the US, though, since many universities there are private and lobbyism has extended its reach to them. But it's an ideal to strive for. The point is not to keep politics out of universities, there is no reason for that, but to keep bad faith actors out of them.
Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#7[flagged]
I find the differences between these statements minimal. The former implies the latter very easily, making both dangerous.
Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#8One, perhaps the only, problem with freedom of speech in academia is that can be very actively exploited by bad faith actors, i.e., people who are not interested at all in truth and merely abuse the university system as a platform for furthering political goals and "whitewashing" their position. These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. They often come from a non-academic background, have a party or "th…
> The point is not to keep politics out of universities, there is no reason for that, but to keep bad faith actors out of them.
When we talk about these obviously bad actors, are we talking people like Socrates and Galileo? Or are we keeping to strictly political undesirables like Assange, Snowden and the whiny pacifists who nobody likes?
The words you use are dangerously vague and you aren't calling for observable, thoughtful standards.
Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#9One of my favorite incidents involving free speech happened several years ago, and had an MIT connection.
Some alt-right people organized a big so-called "Free Speech Rally" in Boston, perhaps as a Trump-emboldened show of force, or publicity effort.
But a massive number of counter-demonstrators turned out (including many students and staff from MIT), dwarfing the alt-right people by orders of magnitude, and basically told them "no", in so many accents.
"The answer to offensive speech is more speech" doesn't always work that well, nor that literally. And some kinds of speech in a university environment will sometimes call for listening and dialogue, unlike that one demonstration.
But that one day, the alt-right people didn't seem to have genuine dialogue in mind, and it was the free speech that they called for (perhaps cynically and disingenuously) that corrected their particular argument.
Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT
#10One, perhaps the only, problem with freedom of speech in academia is that can be very actively exploited by bad faith actors, i.e., people who are not interested at all in truth and merely abuse the university system as a platform for furthering political goals and "whitewashing" their position. These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. They often come from a non-academic background, have a party or "th…
> The point is not to keep politics out of universities, there is no reason for that, but to keep bad faith actors out of them. When we talk about these obviously bad actors, are we talking people like Socrates and Galileo? Or are we keeping to strictly political undesirables like Assange, Snowden and the whiny pacifists who nobody likes? The words you use are dangerously vague and you aren't calling for observable,…
Everyone you've just mentioned has a highly politically charged position, but is not associated with being a bad faith actor.