E-Pluribus | March 28, 2024
The fight for free speech is a global one; how colleges are coping with new DEI laws; and how evolving definitions can cut both ways.
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
J.D. Tuccille: Free Speech Is Under Attack in the U.S., but It's on the Ropes Elsewhere
Many countries have laws and constitutions that purport to protect free speech, though none quite as famously as our own here in the United States. And according to J.D. Tuccille at Reason, the US’s leadership in the fight is obvious and more necessary than ever in view of concerning trends around the globe.
If you think free speech is under attack in the United States—and it is—you should see its besieged status in the rest of the world. Open contempt for unrestricted debate prevails in even many supposedly "free" countries and finds its expression in laws that threaten harsh penalties for those who dare to speak in ways that offend the powers that be.
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[F]ew countries share America's resistance to censorship (and restrictions on self-defense). That's certainly the case in Canada, where the ruling Liberal Party is pushing Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, to regulate speech on the internet.
"Bill C-63 risks censoring a range of expression from journalistic reporting to healthy conversations among youth under 18 about their own sexuality and relationships," warns the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. "The bill imposes draconian penalties for certain types of expression, including life imprisonment for a very broad and vaguely defined offence of 'incitement to genocide', and 5 years of jail time for other broadly defined speech acts."
Ireland is going a step further, with lawmakers working on legislation that would outlaw merely "preparing or possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics."
"One of the fundamental rights protected under the Irish Constitution is the right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions," barrister (lawyer) Grace Sullivan told the Irish Independent. But under the proposed law, it will be an offence to "incite hatred" but "there is no clear definition of what 'inciting hatred' means," she cautioned.
Scotland, for its part, has already enacted a "hate crime" law targeting speech that authorities believe might "stir up hatred against a group of persons based on the group being defined by reference to" a laundry list of characteristics including race, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and age.
"The Hate Crime Bill will come into force on April 1, expanding existing legislation to cover comments made in private settings without the intention to offend," Laura Pollock reported last week for The National. She noted police assurances that comedians and actors won't be targeted for their performances, even though such situations were included in training materials.
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Unfortunately, restrictive legislation and hollow assurances by the authorities that they'll use their authoritarian powers wisely are far more the global norm than are American-style protections for speech. We complain about government attempts to muzzle, but open censorship is increasingly common in other countries.
Read it all here.
Erin Gretzinger and Maggie Hicks: The Chaos of Compliance
How are institutions of higher education responding to states’ efforts to rein in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies? Erin Gretzinger and Maggie Hicks examine a Chronicle of Higher Education survey of colleges to gauge how effective the new laws have been so far.
Since last year, eight states have passed laws curtailing the type of diversity initiatives state-funded colleges can offer. Yet public knowledge of the laws’ on-the-ground effects has largely been limited to sporadic local news coverage, and sometimes filtered through politically distorted channels.
To assess how colleges have changed in response to these new laws, The Chronicle surveyed public colleges in two states that have enacted them: Texas and Florida. Of the 137 colleges surveyed, about 40 percent answered, many of which offered detailed accounting of changes they have made to comply with the laws. (Several other colleges answered, but failed to address The Chronicle’s specific questions or declined to participate.)
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Nearly four dozen campuses in the two states offered substantive responses to The Chronicle: Over all, 24 colleges made changes to an office or department; 23 cut or reassigned jobs; seven ended DEI training for admission or employment; two axed funding for DEI activities; and 15 eliminated other DEI-related programming. Interestingly, 19 said they were already in compliance with the law and didn’t have to alter anything.
The responses yielded a familiar aura of uncertainty as administrators grapple with what is permissible under the legislation. The changes campuses did make varied greatly. While one Texas college eliminated its multicultural center, another opened one to replace its DEI office. While some colleges in Florida have simply reassigned their DEI employees, the University of Florida recently terminated 13 of its full-time staff. Experts previously told The Chronicle that the vague, sweeping laws leave large room for interpretation. The immediate effects, spelled out here, prove just how vast that gulf is in practice.
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For the laws’ advocates, questions remain about how colleges are complying — if at all. As some colleges have simply changed an office’s name or reassigned programs, they worry there is still more to be done to eliminate DEI altogether. And with some campuses opening activities to “everyone” that were traditionally catered to one group, they’re concerned administrators are creating workarounds rather than eradicating DEI completely.
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[DEI] advocates pointed to a need to look beyond the effects and instead spotlight what they see as the real motivations behind the laws. “DEI is not a problem. It never has been a problem,” Ingram said. “This is about a certain political class in Texas, looking at certain communities that they find to be flourishing too much … and trying to create restrictions, trying to create closets even, again, for people to feel shame, for people to feel like they don’t belong.”
Ingram and others see hope in the efforts to push back. “I’ve seen so many powerful students and professors stand up and say, ‘We’re not going anywhere,’” he said. “‘We belong. You cannot take that from us.’”
It’s “hugely concerning” to Shapiro, of the Manhattan Institute, that colleges may try to evade the DEI laws with cosmetic changes, but still try to continue the same work. “I think there is going to be ongoing litigation over all of this,” he told The Chronicle.
Sylvester sees the laws targeting colleges as just one piece of ending “the tyranny of DEI” everywhere, from businesses to government agencies. “The universities will be the hardest because it’s where it started,” she said. “The tentacles are deep in the university systems.”
She’s not exactly sure when the vision will come to fruition. But she is confident about the trajectory: “We’re at the beginning of the end.”
Read it all.
Brad Polumbo: Glaad’s new ‘homosexual’ definition makes no sense
In the years leading up to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision on same-sex marriage, a debate raged over the definition of “marriage.” Just how flexible was it, and was the term subject to evolution like other words? The current debate over gender ideology and transgenderism more specifically involves definitions as well, but the two sides in the debate are not identical to the earlier debate. At UnHerd, libertarian-conservative Brad Polumbo explains why attempts to redefine “homosexual” make no sense to him as a gay man and amount to a “political war on reality.”
Open-mindedness is generally considered a good thing. But if you’re too open-minded, it’s easy to forget exactly what you were standing for in the first place. That’s what’s happening at some of the US’s biggest LGBTQ rights organisations, such as Glaad.
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Recently, it’s been discovered that the latest iteration of Glaad’s language guide labels “homosexual” an “outdated” and “offensive” term that should be avoided. It recommends using “gay” or “lesbian” instead, but even those are now potentially problematic. Glaad thus suggests the alternative “same-gender-loving”, which the organisation describes as an “Afrocentric alternative” to “what are considered Eurocentric, or white, identities like gay and lesbian”.
At first glance, this is just another example of social-justice ideologues engaging in mental gymnastics to try to stay ahead of the curve (and perpetuate a justification for their organisation’s existence given that many of its initial goals, such as destigmatisation of AIDS victims and gay marriage, are long since achieved).
After all, while “homosexual” was sometimes used in a derogatory manner, it doesn’t really have a negative connotation anymore. And the same could be said, exponentially more so, for the term “queer”, which was originally used almost exclusively as an insult, yet Glaad nonetheless lists “queer” as a favourable, enlightened term for us to now use. This is inconsistent, to say the least.
As a gay man, I’d much rather be called “homosexual” — an accurate term simply meaning attracted to the same sex — than “queer”, a nebulous term that most people don’t know the definition of. Meanwhile, “same-gender-loving” is not just a ridiculous alternative but an inaccurate one too.
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We should therefore treat this saga at Glaad seriously. That’s because it’s part of the progressive Left’s broader attempt to erase biological sex as a meaningful concept in the human experience. For evidence, just look at how the Left in the US has embraced the proposed “Equality Act”, reintroduced in 2023 with near-universal support among Democratic politicians, which literally redefines the word “sex” under federal law to include self-perceived “gender identity”. And their ongoing fight for males to participate in women’s sports similarly requires a wilful denial of the realities of biological sex.
Read the whole thing.
Around Twitter (X)
Did police at Vanderbilt University err in arresting a reporter who was covering student protests?
Heckler’s Veto Wins, Part 1,000,001? Via Steve McGuire. Click for video.
And finally, now Coleman Hughes is apparently responsible for New York Times headlines.