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Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

president.mit.edu

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Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#91

Post by PubliusMI »

panarky wrote: post #70
akomtu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"University of Pisa has canceled the Prof. Galileo's lecture on celestial bodies due to the controversy surrounding his views on heliocentrism, after continued protests by the students who reject the unholy idea that the planet they live on isn't the center of the Universe. Department of Heresy and Inquisition has temporarily suspended Galileo and referred him to Church."

"The MIT statement on free expression states that in order to encourage provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, the university will protect all speech within the boundaries of the First Amendment." "Therefore, as a junior member of the Flat Earth Society, I demand MIT provide me an auditorium and a microphone to legitimize and amplify my nonconformist opinion about the shape of the Earth."

Are there many members of the community at MIT that would be eager to see such a talk?

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#92

Post by himinlomax »

contrast wrote: post #68
tomcam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. Excellent. So let them say what they want and demolish them with reason instead of suppression.

Do you have any evidence to support your assertion here? It seems to me that promoting well practiced liars has rarely resulted in reasoned discussions. Nor does compelling people to promote bad faith actors seem to me anything other than another method of suppression. Compelled speech is not free speech. Let individuals and individual institutions apply some judgement, as if they were living, breathing human beings…

> Do you have any evidence to support your assertion here?

That wasn't an assertion, and there was nothing requiring evidence.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#93

Post by redeux »

jaywalk wrote: post #85
redeux wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a revisionist perspective, even if it’s one that’s held by the court to justify their decision and set a new precedent. Previous SCOTUS rulings found that there was a collective, not individual right to bear arms. That means despite the court insisting that it didn’t just create a right from thin air, history disagrees. By the logic you proposed, in any decision SCOTUS makes they can state that this is the way…

And by your logic, once a SCOTUS decision is made it can never be revisited. Every 2A decision is interpreting the same, unchanged text. So any decision that goes against a previous one by definition means they believe the previous decision was incorrect. The fact that it was interpreted as a collective right before Heller doesn't mean that it was a collective right. It's just how the court (incorrectly) chose to int…

>And by your logic, once a SCOTUS decision is made it can never be revisited.

I never implied any such thing. In fact, I'm arguing that the exact opposite, using DC v. Heller as an example of how SCOTUS can reinterpret a foundational right despite hundreds of years of precedent to the opposite. That speech with implicit violence should be ruled as unprotected speech in spite of hundreds of years of precedent to the opposite.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#94

Post by throwoutway »

roenxi wrote: post #8
jonathanstrange wrote: post #6

One, 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,…

> The words you use are dangerously vague and you aren't calling for observable, thoughtful standards.

Indeed, they seem to be promoting the continuation of the insipid “elitist only” culture. The fact that the most politically divisive of the university cancelled the speaker (which resulted in MIT making this statement) seems to escape the OP

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#95

Post by akomtu »

nonethewiser wrote: post #43
yucky wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand, if he wrote an op-ed uncovering racial discrimination in academia, why would people who are (presumably) against racial discrimination want to cancel his lecture?

> why would people who are (presumably) against racial discrimination want to cancel his lecture? Because they are not against racial discrimination.

In 1984, there is a scene at the end where O'Brien (a party member) interrogates and tortures Winston (the main character). He asks him political questions and demands truthful answers, and if he spots that Winston lies to avoid pain, but knows the truth, O'Brien still electrocutes him. At the end O'Brien shows him 4 fingers and asks how many fingers Winston sees. He says 4! And gets electrocuted. Then he says 5, and gets electrocuted again. After many attempts, Winstom cries "wtf it matters how many fingers are there! it's whatever number you want!" O'Brien, pleased finally, releases Winston. O'Brien wanted to teach that truth shall not be appealed to in presence of authority, for the only truth is the will of the authority, and when the will changes on a whim, the truth does too.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#96

Post by panarky »

superb-owl wrote: post #74
panarky wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The MIT statement on free expression states that in order to encourage provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, the university will protect all speech within the boundaries of the First Amendment." "Therefore, as a junior member of the Flat Earth Society, I demand MIT provide me an auditorium and a microphone to legitimize and amplify my nonconformist opinion about the shape of the Earth."

This is also a false equivalence. MIT is obviously only going to consider inviting speakers that would appeal to some subset of its community. The statement doesn't give anyone a right to demand an audience at MIT, it gives the MIT community license to invite controversial speakers.

Which gives the lie to all the sanctimonious talk about protecting all speech that's legal under the First Amendment.

MIT isn't protecting all legal speech, they're amplifying speech the MIT community wants to hear, and suppressing speech the community doesn't want to hear.

If the MIT community wants to legitimize and amplify speech about perpetuating the current hierarchy of elites, and suppress protest speech aiming to open up and overturn that hierarchy, it's up to the community.

It has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

Contrary to all the feel-good language about platforming nonconformity, the goal is not to provide an equal platform to all viewpoints, because that would be ridiculous.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#98

Post by todd8 »

I was at MIT over 50 years ago. I used to give them money, not a huge amount, but enough to create what has become a permanent endowment under my name. However years ago, I had lunch with the then president of MIT and realized that MIT had changed. It was no longer the MIT I experienced. The student body was different, and clearly, they had tweaked the knobs and selected for a different profile of student.

It made me sad because I remember my fellow students, some rich, some poor, some from Philips Exeter, some like me from inner city Detroit schools, some from Asia some from Southern California. The thing was though, they weren't at all well rounded, the very trait that the president seemed so proud of in the current student body.

My classmates were eccentric, creative, nerdy, and most of all so intelligent. My math classes were full of genuses and savants. I still remember a fellow student in my second semester real analysis class (prerequisite chain was five semester long to get into the class: 1yr Calc -> 1 Semester DiffEq -> 1st semester real analysis -> 1 semester complex analysis); he was a Freshman and the best student in the class. Was he well rounded? I don't think so, but he was good at pinball and math.

Then the tragic Aaron Swartz affair.

They didn't sign the Chicago Letter [1].

I started meeting other MIT alumni that are disappointed with the direction MIT went as well.

Every year they still call me asking for more money.

Take back MIT. [2]

[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/29/u-chicago-let...

[2] https://youtu.be/ZK5r9OZ73Xg

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#99

Post by Manuel_D »

panarky wrote: post #70
akomtu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"University of Pisa has canceled the Prof. Galileo's lecture on celestial bodies due to the controversy surrounding his views on heliocentrism, after continued protests by the students who reject the unholy idea that the planet they live on isn't the center of the Universe. Department of Heresy and Inquisition has temporarily suspended Galileo and referred him to Church."

"The MIT statement on free expression states that in order to encourage provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, the university will protect all speech within the boundaries of the First Amendment." "Therefore, as a junior member of the Flat Earth Society, I demand MIT provide me an auditorium and a microphone to legitimize and amplify my nonconformist opinion about the shape of the Earth."

If someone wants to try to promote flat earth ideas let them. I think it's condescending to MIT students to think this is somehow harming them.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#100

Post by TigeriusKirk »

panarky wrote: post #70
akomtu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"University of Pisa has canceled the Prof. Galileo's lecture on celestial bodies due to the controversy surrounding his views on heliocentrism, after continued protests by the students who reject the unholy idea that the planet they live on isn't the center of the Universe. Department of Heresy and Inquisition has temporarily suspended Galileo and referred him to Church."

"The MIT statement on free expression states that in order to encourage provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, the university will protect all speech within the boundaries of the First Amendment." "Therefore, as a junior member of the Flat Earth Society, I demand MIT provide me an auditorium and a microphone to legitimize and amplify my nonconformist opinion about the shape of the Earth."

Sounds good to me. Bring on the debate.
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