E-Pluribus | April 18, 2024
Censorship by any other name; bye-bye bipartisanship; and Oklahoma State dumps its "bias response team."
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Oliver Wiseman: Censorship in the Name of Safety
We often trade freedom for safety in a variety of ways: speed limits, seat belts, gun laws, hunting regulations, etc. But sometimes “safety” is just a smokescreen. At The Free Press, Oliver Wiseman has two examples from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, demonstrating that no one side has a monopoly on the urge to censor.
Look at any case of contemporary censorship and you will almost always find the same justification for silencing an unwelcome voice—safety. The rationale will invariably be light on specific threats—and is, in reality, a cowardly cover for an ulterior motive.
Yoram Hazony, the [National Conservatism Conference in Brussels] event’s organizer, said there was “no threat to public order” at the gathering. And I believe him. Belgian authorities have cited no specific threats. And as someone who has covered National Conservatism gatherings in the past, I find the idea that this tweedy crowd would get into any scraps difficult to believe. The only risk to my safety was nearly dying of boredom at a breakout session on common good constitutionalism.
But of course, public safety isn’t what this is really about. Hazony’s event was targeted because of objections to the ideas being discussed there.
[. . .]
Hazony’s politics could hardly be more different to those of Asna Tabassum, an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, but she faced the same cowardly excuse for censorship this week: “safety.”
Tabassum was selected as USC’s valedictorian, but as well as having a top-notch GPA, Tabassum appears to possess some, shall we say, robust views on Israel.
Several student groups complained about her selection and pointed out that Tabassum’s Instagram bio links to a post full of noxious anti-Israel rhetoric, including a description of Zionism as a “racist settler-colonial ideology”—in other words, the sort of thing professors are teaching college kids at top schools across the country. One group, Trojans for Israel, said that by choosing Tabassum as valedictorian, USC had turned commencement into an “unwelcoming and intolerant environment for Jewish graduates and their families.”
USC is not famous for its commitment to free expression—it once suspended a professor for simply saying a Chinese word that sounded like a racial slur. And the school had a decision to make. Administrators could have said they had made a mistake in picking Tabassum because her views were at odds with USC’s values and stripped her of the role. Or they could have stuck by Tabassum and ridden out an uncomfortable commencement day in the name of free speech. Instead, they opted for a weaselly fudge, keeping Tabassum as valedictorian but preventing her from speaking.
“Tradition must give way to safety,” said Provost Andrew T. Guzman in a letter to the USC community. It made references to the “alarming tenor” of the response to Tabassum’s selection and “substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement” but was light on specifics.
Read the whole thing.
Bryan Gentry: Is Bipartisanship History?
Ideally, everyone in this country would live up to the notion that, whatever our differences, we’re Americans first. Bryan Gentry writing for Discourse Magazine is afraid that sentiment is slipping away and that Americans of disparate political views are largely no longer willing to work together for the common good.
Sixty years ago, a Republican senator named Everett Dirksen convinced his party to support the top legislative priority for the Democrats. The bill was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would outlaw Jim Crow segregation and employment discrimination based on race (among other factors). Southern senators from both parties were filibustering the bill, so Senate Democrats needed Republican votes to keep the legislation moving. Dirksen wrote amendments to the bill and challenged his fellow Republicans to live up to America’s founding creeds.
“Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come,” he told them, paraphrasing Victor Hugo in a speech that June. “The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment.” Moments later, 27 Republicans and 44 Democrats voted to end the filibuster and move the bill forward.
It was a bold, bipartisan move that today would get Dirksen run out of D.C. like a basketball player who scored an assist for the rival team.
[. . .]
Today on the Republican side, House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing a threat to oust him from his leadership role because he cooperated with Democrats on a spending bill—hardly six months after Kevin McCarthy was cast out for the same sin. Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher is resigning early because of the way other Republicans reacted to his vote against impeaching Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. In the Senate, Mitt Romney is retiring after his entire term has been defined by controversy for his anti-Trump stance.
Mavericks and moderates across the aisle do not fare better. For years, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema attracted vitriol from the left whenever they brokered deals with Republicans. Now they’re both leaving the Senate, and Manchin ruled out a centrist run for the presidency. Sinema, an independent since 2022, said, “I believe in my approach, but it’s not what America wants right now.”
The retreat from bipartisanship punishes everyday Americans, too, as problems become political footballs. Donald Trump urged Republicans to reject a border security deal partly because fixing the border while Joe Biden is in the White House would be “a gift to the radical left Democrats.” Four years ago, Democrats rushed to close schools, restaurants and churches, then ran ads blaming Trump for the pain, even as he advocated for shutdowns to end.
[. . .]
[B}ipartisanship [is] the willingness “to do something for your country,” even when it costs you or your party politically. And despite its low status today, bipartisanship can make a comeback. Organizations such as More in Common and Braver Angels are doing significant work to help Americans discover areas of agreement and compromise. If those ideas catch on, we may see voters send more politicians like Dirksen to Washington. But until then, it looks as though bipartisanship is an idea whose time has come and gone.
Read it all.
Jennifer Kabbany: Oklahoma State U. to shut down bias response team to settle free speech lawsuit
In Ooooo-klahoma, the wind of free speech has come sweepin’ down the plain! (with a nod to Rodgers and Hammerstein.) Jennifer Kabbany of The College Fix reports that as part of settling a student lawsuit, OSU will disband its “bias response team” and stop trying to police political speech in emails, among other concessions. Oklahoma, OK!
Oklahoma State University will shut down its bias response team to settle a lawsuit filed by a nationwide campus free speech organization, the group announced Tuesday.
The settlement secured by Speech First states the university will disband its Bias Incidents Response Team, will not reinstate the team nor create a new entity responsible for “bias incidents,” and will wipe all references to the bias response team from its website and written material.
The settlement also requires the public institution to change its “computer policy that previously forbade students from sending emails about politics,” a news release from Speech First stated, adding the school will also rewrite its harassment policy to include “important speech protection for students.”
[. . .]
The lawsuit was filed in January 2023. The university attempted to get the complaint tossed by claiming the plaintiffs — students not named to protect them from retaliation — did not have standing because of their anonymity; that argument was rejected in February by the Tenth Circuit appeals court.
[. . .]
The OSU complaint had argued that under school policies, “students can be disciplined for ambiguously defined ‘intimidating’ speech, discussing politics in emails, commenting in class, or even, in the words of the University, for showing ‘a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing.’”
Read it all here.
Around Twitter (X)
Via Steve McGuire, Columbia University has had it with an unauthorized camp out on campus. Click for video.
Here’s new NPR CEO Katherine Maher on the truth. Click for video. Reactions from several others follow (including Maher herself from 2019.)
And finally, Konstantin Kisin with a what-goes-around-comes-around reminder: