170 search results for “kevin reed”

Erwin Chemerinsky: I think we have to be attentive to the fact that many students want to restrict speech because of very laudable instincts. They want to protect other students from hate speech. They want to create an inclusive community for all. But the response to hate speech can’t be to prohibit and punish it. It’s unconstitutional. We have to find other ways to create inclusive communities.

Natalie: For many students, it’s not just about hate speech, but the kind of speech that creates harm. This term is agonizingly broad and open to wildly different interpretations. But students aren’t wrong in thinking that speech can be a weapon.

Erwin: Students are quite right. We protect speech because of its effects. If speech had no effects, it wouldn’t be a fundamental right. Those effects can be positive but they can also be very negative. Speech can cause enormous harm. It can be hurtful, it can cause people to be excluded, and it can interfere with education or employment. Especially in colleges and universities, we have to be attentive to that.

Natalie: But you do take a hard line in your book that even hate speech must be protected.

Erwin: The law under the First Amendment is clear: Hate speech is protected speech. Over 300 colleges and universities adopted hate speech codes in the early 1990s. Every one to be challenged in court was ruled unconstitutional. And there are good reasons for that.

After some really ugly incidents at the University of Michigan in the late 1980s, the school adopted a hate speech code that was undoubtedly well intentioned. But a federal court declared it unconstitutional, in part, because it was so vague. It said that there could not be speech that “demeans or stigmatizes” anyone based on race or gender. But what does that mean? A sociobiology student who challenged the law said, “I want to study whether there are inherent differences between women and men. What if my conclusions are deemed stigmatizing on the basis of gender?” And during the years Michigan’s speech code was on the books, more than 20 black students were charged with racist speech by white students. There wasn’t a single instance of a white student being punished for racist speech, even though that was what had prompted the drafting of the Michigan speech code in the first place.

That’s part of a much bigger historical pattern: As we saw in Michigan, when hate speech codes or laws are adopted, they are most often directed at the very groups they are meant to protect.

Natalie: You make the distinction in your new book that this doesn’t mean that the First Amendment is absolute. For example, there is no constitutional protection for a “true threat” or for harassment. Campuses can protect students against that kind of speech. But before you address unprotected speech, maybe we should talk a bit about the history of free speech, which you lay out in your book.

Erwin: It is hard to imagine social progress anywhere that wasn’t dependent on freedom of speech. The civil rights protests of the 1960s — the lunch counter sit-ins, the marches and demonstrations — were essential to federal civil rights acts and the end of Jim Crow laws that segregated every aspect of the South. The anti-Vietnam War protests were crucial for the end of that war. This has been true throughout American history. The 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote was the product of demonstrations and speech. …

Of course, we can trust the UO administration not to attempt to restrict the good kind of free speech, right? Actually, we can’t. For more on the efforts by President Schill and his General Counsel Kevin Reed to criminalize peaceful protest at UO, after a sit-in by Carbon Divestment undergraduates, see here:

2/12/2017: The UO administration wants to make peaceful protests a crime. They have proposed a new policy that will restrict the “time, place, and manner” of free speech at UO. Among the many restrictions our administration wants:

4. Use of University Campus for Speech Activities. … The interior spaces of University buildings are, generally, exclusively reserved for University business activities and therefore are not open for Speech Activities unless properly reserved in advance through the Facilities Scheduling Policy. …

And I thought one of the University’s primary business activities was free speech, or as Thomas Jefferson said, “for here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” Another:

6.4 While the streets and sidewalks of the campus are generally open to Speech Activities by University Entities, the Vice President for Finance and Administration may designate portions of a street and the time of day during which a street is not available for speech activities by any Person or group, in order to meet traffic, emergency access, and public transit needs. Any such restriction shall be content-neutral and viewpoint-neutral.

So they want to be able to ban marches down 13th Street by, say, South Eugene High School students protesting the Trump election. And UO students will need permission to put up protest banners:

9.4 University student organizations and ASUO may place banners or signs only in those locations authorized by University Scheduling and Event Services.

And, for those who disobey:

ENFORCEMENT

(1)            Any person violating these rules is subject to:

(a)             Institutional disciplinary proceedings, if a student or employee; and

(b)            An order to leave the immediate premises or property owned or controlled by the University by a person in charge of University property.

(2)            Persons failing to comply with an order by a person in charge to leave or to remain off the immediate premises or property owned or controlled by the University may be subject to citation or arrest for criminal trespass.

That’s right, the UO General Counsel’s office wants to have the right to arrest UO students who engage in peaceful protests such as last spring’s Divest UO sit-in.

 The full text of Provost Phillips’s email today is below the break: