Campus Free Speech

Results of this debate disagree with youhttps://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/free-speech-th...

It's a little bit different here because universities are actively discouraging free debate by forcing students and professors to walk on eggshells around other students due to fear of reprisal. It is very authoritarian in nature and difficult to rebel against due people being branded morally who disagree with it.

no it doesn't, technically sure but universities are suppose to be free from controlled speech like this. see why tenure and academic freedom exist

Yes, that's the usual ideals of universities. The difference is that usually it comes along with not being allowed to make extremely hateful or racist or sexist comments. There's a certain part of american society that has lost their ability to see this distinction and thinks that they should be able to attack other people, say they are not legitimate humans. They think, wrongly in my view, that they aren't free if they can't attack people in this way.

I disagree with your claim that there has never been a widespread norm. On university campuses in particular, there was a long-standing norm of tolerating radical and controversial opinions.If a large group of private universities all retaliate against students for expressing certain opinions (which is what's happening) then that causes the same harm as if the government does it. As I've argued elsewhere in this thread, that's analogous to how discrimination is harmful even if

Wouldn't this behavior mirror that from university staff accused of silencing debate? To me, this behavior looks exactly like something the author describes, even if he might exaggerate.

I think it's vice versa. Some students prevent other students from exercising their free speech rights. E.g. try to prevent speakers they don't like from speaking on campus. Or harass some people for their ethnicity in context of Hamas/Israel war. Then universities look the other way.

You are being overly dramatic._Everywhere_ has politics. It's not special in universities.

Why is this sneering garbage on HN?Look, none of this is new. Universities have always been contentious places, students have always been belligerent and uninterested in hearing the views of their opponents. This is what it is to be young: to believe fully, with or without justification. A generation ago in the US, SDS would have barricaded themselves into the room with both these master debaters and held them hostage with a list of demands for the administration. The verbs have changed, but

Reporting from Oxbridge:This is a real issue but actually most people have reasonable notions of free speech. It is just that the types that end up being welfare/student/women/minority officers are extremely aggressively attacking perceived attacks/hate speech/dissenters/traitors to the cause.If anyone remembers the Tim Hunt story and the witch-hunt that followed (and let us not forgot the role the Guardian played in peddling that), there was a situation where