[UPDATE]: I realized I just couldn’t let this pass until later. As an update to my earlier post about yesterday’s UA resolution to pass a worthless – in every sense of the word – anti-discriminatory clause, I’d like to present the following to our readers.
For those of you who haven’t read the Daily Stun‘s editorial today, here is an excerpt (the only excerpt worth reading):
…an anti-discrimination clause would inhibit the University’s ability to provide free speech, free association and free expression rights in a manner akin to the federal government….we deny that Cornell should provide such unrestrained First Amendment rights to its students in the first place.
Finally. I can finally give praise to the Stun editors for not restraining their eternal, deepest, most insidious desire to send a giant middle finger to the Constitution of the United States of America. At very last they have come out of the radical closet to admit that they believe Cornell University should have every right to impede upon every student’s free speech, association, and expression. I’m proud to be part of an institution that allows me to print a paper this coming Wednesday that will offer an opinion of reasonable, perhaps intellectual, and stable mind.
If you agree with the editors at the Cornell Daily Sun that you are smarter, wiser, more prudent, and more visionary than all of the following men, then support their movement. Or, if you are rebellious enough to embrace the belief that the following men had something good going on, or if you just enjoy your liberty, I desperately ask you to make yourself known. Write Skorton. Write the Review. Write the Stun. Write on your blog. Post a comment. Be heard.
People the Stun thinks are baffoons:
1 Washington, George
2 Read, George
3 Bedford, Jr., Gunning
4 Dickinson, John
5 Bassett, Richard
6 Broom, Jacob
7 McHenry, James
8 Jenifer, Daniel
9 Carroll, Daniel
10 Blair, John
11 Madison, Jr., James
12 Blount, William
13 Dobbs, Knight
14 Williamson, Hugh
15 Rutledge, John
16 Cotesworth, Charles
17 Pinckney, Charles
18 Butler, Pierce
19 Few, William
20 Baldwin, Abraham
21 Langdon, John
22 Gilman, Nicholas
23 Gorham, Nathaniel
24 King, Rufus
25 Johnson, William
26 Sherman, Roger
27 Hamilton, Alexander
28 Livingston, William
29 Brearley, David
30 Paterson, William
31 Dayton, Jonathan
32 Franklin, Benjamin
33 Mifflin, Thomas
34 Morris, Robert
35 Clymer, George
36 Fitzsimons, Thomas
37 Ingersoll, Jared
38 Wilson, James
39 Morris, Gouverneur
Ferenc I agree with you entirely, but there are certain consequences to this line of reasoning that supporters of this resolution have to accept. If Cornell wants to ban Nazi groups on campus, that’s fine. If Cornell want’s to ban any speech that says anything negative about any minority group, for example, that’s also fine. But at this point the University must admit that it does not have a vested interested in upholding the principles of free speech. We would need to explicitly state to students upon acceptance that Cornell is a university that endorses certain liberal viewpoints about equality, fairness, and how others should be treated. If you don’t conform to these beliefs, you shouldn’t expect to have your free speech protected on campus. That has to be made clear.
Now don’t think that this is a ridiculous proposal. Christian universities present these kinds of disclaimers all the time, and courts have upheld their rights to remove groups from campus that don’t fully endorse Christian doctrines.
Also consider the flip side of the argument. If a majority of Cornell students feel that it is important for there to be a rule that discriminatory speech should be banned, even at the expense of the freedom of speech, then it should be equally valid for a predominately Christian university (not an official Christian school, just one with a lot of Christian students) to force all of its students to read and then be tested on Bible scriptures. After all, this university should have no more responsibility to uphold 1st amendment rights than Cornell, right?
We’ve had this discussion before, Ferenc, and while I know we don’t entirely agree on the national level, I think we can definitely agree about the dangers of such a resolution at a university level.
First, these “expansive and progressive anti-discrimination policies” are not supported by conservatives. There is not universal agreement that hate crimes should be dealt with differently from similar crimes that aren’t directed towards some targeted group.
I also want to address two of your points:
1) “A school that forces students to memorize Bible passages against their will is violating the First Amendment in a much more profound way than one that prohibits students from publicly assailing students of a particular ethnic or religious group.”
– Disagree. This isn’t just about protecting students of a particular ethnic or religious group. The campus discrimination code would make it so that Chi Alpha could not have forced their leader to step down after he admitted to being a homosexual, thus violating their right to free speech and assembly. I can go through a number of similar examples; this is just as bad a violation of the first amendment as my example from my last comment.
2) “Regardless, the example seems to me to rest on a false premise; any school that forces its students to memorize scripture is a Christian school, de facto if not de jure. As long as students know this before committing to attend the university, there is no harm done.”
– So if my first amendment rights are compromised, there is no harm done because I should have known that Cornell is an ultra liberal university and that this was to be expected? This doesn’t seem right…
Finally, I’m not really trying to “compare Cornell’s regulations to [my] unlikely scenario.” My intention is to show that if you support one course of action, you should certainly not find anything wrong with this other one I present.
“I want to ask, though: do conservatives find it acceptable for the University to condone racist, sexist, and other types of hateful speech when it interferes with the ability of students to enjoy a safe and comfortable learning environment? That seems to be what you’re suggesting.”
– Hm, I’m not really sure what you mean here. I certainly don’t believe the university should condone it, but it is a different matter when the university passes a code of conduct that allows them to punish anyone suspected of practicing discriminatory speech.
“It’s not as though next week the S.A. is going to decide that politically conservative speech is against Campus Code. We’re talking about extreme cases of harassment and discrimination here, and I feel as though the issue is being blown out of proportion.”
– Last year the SA wanted to remove “Cornell” from Cornell Review. That’s not too far off from outright censorship. I don’t think our complaints are blowing things out of proportion at all.
This is an awesome post. Thanks for sharing.