E-Pluribus | March 21, 2024
Silencing coaches; the case for institutional neutrality in higher education; and censorship doesn’t stop hate, it just hides it.
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
George Perry: Gender Ideology Leaves Coaches With Nothing To Say
Writing at Reality’s Last Stand, coach and author George MJ Perry shares several striking anecdotes about what athletes and coaches face today as a result of the transgender controversy. Perry exhorts his colleagues to stick up for athletes under their leadership when the pressure is on.
Coaches need the freedom to say what they need to say
[H]ow [can] we as sports people can talk amongst ourselves about trans-identifying males in women’s sports[?] Megan, who played Division I soccer and currently coaches girls' soccer at one of Houston's most prestigious high schools, shared her insights.
“I believe thoughtful solutions can only come from environments where people can discuss topics freely, openly and without fear. The fact that your first question about this topic includes 'if we can talk about this' is alarming. We live in a country where freedom of speech is a right. All opinions on this topic should be heard and discussed respectfully. Only then, can the sports community make appropriate decisions for its athletes.”
“I believe we should always be able to talk to our fellow coaches about transgender athletes competing in sports. We need to create an environment where coaches, parents and especially athletes are not afraid to speak up and be heard... Ethically, we have the responsibility to create safe spaces for women to compete and thrive without fear for their safety.”
She concluded, “As a coach, a former athlete and, most importantly, as the mother of a little girl, I feel I have a responsibility to speak out on this issue.”
[. . .]
I’m sure there are other coaches who agree with us, but have been told to be quiet by their ADs. If the AD told me I would have a [trans-identifying male] on my team, I would fight it. I would work with the coaches on the boy's side to get them to welcome this [trans-identifying male], or I would not play the [trans-identifying male]. I’m sure that would cause problems, but I would not want to take away from my female athletes.
[. . .]
Our athletes trust us to coach from a position of responsibility. They don’t know and shouldn’t have to care about who wields authority—the authority to take away our job, career and reputation—over us. But they are made to care when they step onto the pitch, the track, the pool deck, the mat, or the ring and realize we’ve withheld crucial information they needed and deserved to know. That’s when they begin to question whether anyone truly cares for them or their sport.
They are made to care when coaches are forced to fail them.
Read it all.
Michael Strambler: The Importance of Neutrality and Free Speech on Campus
Higher education should prepare young people for the challenges they will face as adults. Michael Strambler at Discourse Magazine says that schools will be more successful if they provide an environment where students can learn and develop their beliefs without having to conform to their institution’s party line.
Among the institutions in any free society, the university should be the last place where one needs to be concerned about suffering from communicating or endorsing an idea—unless, of course, the idea is clearly and egregiously wrong. The incentive structure for self-censorship and parroting “acceptable” slogans that universities are baking into the system by taking political positions should be alarming to anyone, whether you believe the university to be a place primarily for advancing knowledge or primarily for advancing justice. And the fact that this structure is increasingly becoming a part of everyday American life should be seen as a crisis for democracy.
A more productive way of having a debate would be to address the merits of an argument and, in the case of principles such as free speech and institutional neutrality, remember what those principles are meant to be.
Most principles or ideals are impossible to fully live up to. In research, we strive for objectivity even though there’s wide agreement that complete objectivity is unattainable. And the fact that what some people call “objective” is really just them revealing their subjectivity and bias, says nothing about the value of objectivity. It just means they have inadequately practiced objectivity, and it’s the job of others in the scientific community to point this out and offer solutions for correcting it.
[. . .]
On institutional neutrality [. . .] there’s not so much agreement within Yale or across other universities. The Kalven report, which Faculty for Yale endorses, argues that the university should serve as a “home and sponsor” for faculty and student critics but should not be the critic itself. The university must assume this neutral position because any attempt at achieving a collective position would necessarily inhibit the intellectual freedom of its members. These freedoms at universities, the report says, need to be “extraordinary.”
The critics of Faculty for Yale argue that institutional neutrality is a cop-out to taking on the hard but necessary role of leading on important matters of our times. Neutrality is the “safe option” that is unacceptable and should be rejected. They believe universities can have independent and free thought and take institutional positions. However, as the editorial staff of Harvard’s student-led paper has recently concluded, the risks of taking positions include stoking culture wars and diminishing institutional credibility. I also tend to agree with the students’ statement that taking positions “neither effects change nor offers emotional comfort.”
[. . .]
It’s possible to value principles of justice, diversity, openness and inclusiveness and still criticize specific approaches to achieving them. All of us, but especially academics, who care about such principles should be open to, even eager to hear, such points of view because doing so leads to better ideas and solutions. In this age of viral social media and cancel culture, that nuanced discussion is almost certain not to happen if people fear that their livelihood is threatened for simply stating or endorsing a viewpoint.
Read the whole thing.
Jacob Mchangama: Censorship doesn’t Prevent Hatred
Writing for the Swiss magazine Schweizer Monat (don’t worry, the article is published in English), Jacob Mchangama, CEO of The Future of Free Speech, asserts that silencing voices of hatred is misguided. While it does shut down offensive speech, it doesn’t actually change hearts. Mchangama says that, despite the discomfort, allowing hateful speech to be heard is a more effective way to neutralize it than trying to ban it.
2023 was a disastrous year for free speech in liberal democracies. Unfortunately, 2024 only promises to deepen the free speech recession that has been sweeping open societies for years.
[. . .]
There are compelling reasons why governments and civil society should worry deeply about outpouring of hatred and extremism on a continent where antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry are rearing their ugly heads, and political parties with explicitly intolerant agendas are on the march. Unfortunately, the default reaction from both governments and cultural institutions has been to respond with censorial and repressive measures that are likely to be counterproductive and dangerous to both freedom of expression and tolerance.
The outbursts of antisemitism following the Hamas attack were particularly concerning to European governments given the fate of European Jews during Nazism. In France and Germany, authorities banned pro-Palestinian protests, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested and several people were charged with glorification of terrorism or hate speech. This includes a French trade union leader arrested in his home at dawn for a Facebook post. 16 French Senators went even further and submitted a bill that would punish anti-Zionism and «hateful» criticism of Israel with prison of up to 5 years. The Guardian fired cartoonist Steve Bell for a cartoon critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which the newspaper deemed antisemitic. Several cultural events in both Europe and the United States featuring Palestinian authors, academics, filmmakers, and musicians were canceled despite the fact that they had no relationship to terrorism.
[. . .]
However well intentioned, many of these attempts to protect democracy by being «intolerant of the intolerant» – to paraphrase Karl Popper – rests on a false premise. Namely that criminalizing harmful speech is an effective remedy without relevant social costs or unintended consequences. This is a serious flaw that merits scrutiny.
First, many democracies – including European ones – have already adopted various measures to restrict harmful speech. A recent report by The Future of Free Speech Project scrutinizes free-speech trends in 22 open democracies from 2015 to 2022. The findings are clear and concerning: 78 percent of the developments were speech restrictive, with national security and hate speech being the leading causes for curtailing free expression.
[. . .]
[R]esearch suggests that free speech often correlates with less violent social conflict in democracies. By allowing even intolerant voices, free speech acts as a «safety valve», reducing the likelihood of fringe groups resorting to violence. Permitting hateful speech also makes it easier for law enforcement to identify and surveil those most likely to escalate vicious words into violent acts. In the Netherlands, the prosecution of the far-right politician Geert Wilders not only failed to prevent him from winning the recent parliamentary elections. Researchers have shown that Wilders’ trial correlated with a spike in non-violent hate crimes (including hate speech), hinting at a backlash effect of increased affective polarization radicalizing his supporters.
The misuse of free-speech restrictions by authorities is also a real risk. In Ireland, a new hate speech bill is set to criminalize «material that is likely to incite violence or hatred» in such a broad way that it could include memes and gifs downloaded on personal devices. Spain’s broad application of laws against «glorifying terrorism» that has sent rappers to prison for up to nine years and France’s penalization of an LGBTQ rights leader for calling a political opponent a «homophobe» also exemplify the potential for abuse. So do the many prominent examples of over-blocking legal content on social media platforms. Undoubtedly, freedom of expression can be used to attack crucial democratic values such as equal dignity for all. But it does not follow that restricting freedom of expression to prevent these harms will solve the problems at hand.
Read it all here.
Around Twitter (X)
Jonathan Kay spotted this oddity in an announcement for a transgenderism conference at Columbia University: “This event has received an exemption from the boycott of University events by the organizers of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) group.”
Journalism drops the ball again on “gender-affirming care,” Jesse Singal warns. Jonathan Chait agrees.
And finally, Canada's Globe and Mail with a warning about “excessive free speech”! [Corrected from “Great Britain's” in original post.]
Oh no... 😳
“Great Britain’s Globe and Mail”? I’m afraid there are a bunch of Canadians out there who will take you to task for that (even if they are still subjects of His Majesty Charles III). The little maple leaf is a hint…