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Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

president.mit.edu

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Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#101

Post by panarky »

Manuel_D wrote: post #99
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."

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.

People are free to promote whatever crackpot ideas they wish. The question is whether MIT should provide a platform for everyone.

Since there are infinite crackpot ideas but only one Kresge Auditorium, the MIT community must make value judgments about what speakers and ideas are worthy, and which ones are not.

No institution should be compelled to provide a platform for all speakers and ideas. Some speakers and ideas are worthy of MIT, and many are not.

MIT faculty and leadership should embrace their fiduciary duty to make these hard judgments. They should grapple with what it means for speakers and ideas to be worthy, and what speech should not receive MIT legitimacy and amplification.

Instead this statement evades all of that by pretending to support all speech as long as it's legal.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#102

Post by ternus »

PubliusMI wrote: post #91
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."

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

You might be surprised. The MIT Lecture Series Committee (a student club which now mostly screens movies) invited Gene "Time Cube" Ray to give a talk: https://web.mit.edu/iap/www/iap02/searchiap/iap-4330.html

AIUI this was controversial, but not for the reasons you might think: people were concerned that the guy wasn't well and that encouraging him wasn't kind.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#103

Post by PubliusMI »

woodruffw wrote: post #34
roenxi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In 399 BC, Socrates went on trial for corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens, and for impiety." [0] I dunno, that sounds like the sort of thing that might be considered bad faith. I suppose the exact charge might not have survived translation. How do we think about heretics who corrupt people in good faith? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates#Trial_of_Socrates

You can read the Apology yourself (in the original Greek, even), and see that is has nothing to do with “bad faith” in the way we understand contemporarily: “corrupting the youth of Athens” refers specifically to encouraging their atheism and lack of deference. To his eternal credit, Socrates does not argue very well in his defense. But this does not amount to bad faith on his part.

You tell us right now what it means to "participate in bad faith" or you quit talking about censoring "bad faith" speakers.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#104

Post by woodruffw »

PubliusMI wrote: post #103
woodruffw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read the Apology yourself (in the original Greek, even), and see that is has nothing to do with “bad faith” in the way we understand contemporarily: “corrupting the youth of Athens” refers specifically to encouraging their atheism and lack of deference. To his eternal credit, Socrates does not argue very well in his defense. But this does not amount to bad faith on his part.

You tell us right now what it means to "participate in bad faith" or you quit talking about censoring "bad faith" speakers.

Bad faith is characterized by inauthenticity, meaning: acting or arguing in discordance with one's true beliefs or intentions.

Edit: bad faith is additionally characterized by its intentional stance, meaning that it shouldn't be confused with a state of ego dystonicity (wherein the actor acts compulsively against their self-perceived "true" nature).

To the best of my knowledge, there is no serious interpretation of Socrates in which his recorded expressions are considered to be in bad faith. The absolute closest stretch would be arguing that the Socratic method is in some sense "faithless," which is distinct from the negative nature of bad faith.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#105

Post by yucky »

customkitchen wrote: post #55
tablespoon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

If by "the DEI people" you mean "students who were only able to be there because someone made a conscious effort to do diversity outreach" then yes. They would be opposed to someone suggesting that they should stop the outreach so that people like them could no longer be there. His piece (you can read it here: https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-opinion-16... ) is more of the same intellectually dismiss…

>And just for fun he suggests at the end that any university even considering how to approach race issues is somehow comparable to nazism.

I wouldn't invoke Godwin here, I think the point may have been to show racial discrimination in general always ends badly. People who support it will always defend their reasons, but in the end doesn't it always lead to divisiveness and suspicion and hatred?

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#106

Post by gaze »

So, how far are they willing to go? Will they host neo-nazis? Will they host far right conservatives? I wonder if they'd be up for hosting pro-BDS speakers or out-and-out socialists or communists. Freedom of speech is never, ever given out equally, no matter what they say. At some point, something crosses the line into "crying fire in a movie theatre" for just about everyone. This is effectively a statement that some professors didn't like the threshold that the students set with the Carlson lecture, but surely the professors/administration have some threshold that will come out in due time.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#107

Post by angrais »

todd8 wrote: post #98

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…

What do you gain by donating money to the university? Is there a tax break for such donations? What good came out of your donations? Is there traceability and accountability of each dollar donated?

I ask as I simply cannot fathom donating money to a university where the overarching aim is often to make money.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#108

Post by [deleted] »

redeux wrote: post #46
tomcam wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of years of case law in the Anglosphere contradict your view. Neither statement would be considered incendiary enough to merit censorship in the USA or Britain.

You're speaking of what is, and I'm speaking of what I believe should be. These two things are not in contradiction. Laws can and do change. There was no individual right to bear arms in the United States until the 2008[1], changing establish law for the past 200+ years at the time. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

[deleted]

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#109

Post by tomcam »

redeux wrote: post #46
tomcam wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of years of case law in the Anglosphere contradict your view. Neither statement would be considered incendiary enough to merit censorship in the USA or Britain.

You're speaking of what is, and I'm speaking of what I believe should be. These two things are not in contradiction. Laws can and do change. There was no individual right to bear arms in the United States until the 2008[1], changing establish law for the past 200+ years at the time. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

I respect (and sharply disagree) with what you want to be, but the second amendment was always about individual rights. Those rights have been slowly removed by the states. Heller reaffirmed them, as the first line of the article points out.

EDIT: Just noticed jaywalk and others answered much more artfully than I did. Sorry for not checking first.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#110

Post by tomcam »

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…

You made assertions. I did not. We have a well established free speech tradition. It’s on you to prove why a place of education should shut down civil discourse that you don’t like.
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