Great post!!
So. Practical question -- how do we proliferate the idea of 'freedom/responsibility of speech'.
Personally, I felt I learned about this idea doing my BA many years ago. At present, I'm finding people without a humanities education being critical of a humanities education, and then claiming their freedom of speech is taken away when they are being critiqued and challenged on it.
My argument is, if you truly understand the ideas you're dismissing, then you would have no problem in engaging in a critical debate on the issues, instead of claiming that your freedom is being challenged.
What do you think @tarazkp?
The current issue in places like US Universities is that the humanities department are the one's restricting the freedom of speech of anyone who disagrees with their limited views. In my opinion, if you actually believe what you believe, there is no argument in the world that can shake that belief except one that you can accept as a better position. This means that I can engage and listen to people I wholeheartedly disagree with and still have an amicable discussion.
I’m not in the US so I can’t comment on what’s happening, although I have read that.
I wonder though whether these departments are actually denying free speech, or are they putting forwards reasoned arguments of why (for example) it’s not OK to rape women, or why it’s not OK to harass people of different ethnic backgrounds, or to discriminate against people based on any reason.
Any time I’ve noticed that here (in Australia) it’s ususlly people who want to discriminate against others that are claiming that their freedom of speech is being denied, and so they begin to provide counter-arguments - which is great, because as you say, debate and dialectic is part of democracy.
Freedom of speech isn’t being denied if someone disagrees with you.
Freedom of speech isn’t being denied if a campus makes it not-OK to use hateful and discriminatory language against people whose voices have been denied for a long time.
As you said - and rightly so - you have to accept that if you’re going to make comments like ‘kill all blacks’ then there are going to be consequences.
I am not in the US either but have found a lot of material on people that are trying to improve situations being shouted down on campuses by various factions. There is no chance of talking about real issues if this is the process. The interesting thing is that the universities in the US generally hold the most privileged people on earth.
As said, responsibility of speech is of utmost importance but so is charity in the willingness to listen to someone attempt to state their position, however imperfect. We live in a global society where there are language and cultural difference in the way people approach discussion and this must also be considered by an audience.
My name was blacky for the first years of my school life. I grew up in a small town in South Australia. Some of those people that called me that are my friends today more than thirty years later, as once they started exploring other conversations and circumstances in life, they realised their argument was poor. We all must learn to listen to a range of perspectives even if we disagree. It may not change us but it gives us new space to think upon.
You're in Oz... Yay!
Agree completely. Loving reading your work ;-)