On February 2, 2017, our attention was brought to the University of California Berkley to initiate a debate on the role of free speech in public universities. Breitbart editor and alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was forced to leave the UN Berkley campus after an anti alt-right protest turned violent. The Mr. Yiannopoulous’ speaking event was cancelled, causing uproar amongst the conservative community, including the President of the United States (Doubek). This series of events re-proposed the question, what is free speech’s role on college campuses, and should public universities play favorites with speech. While public universities ought not ban individuals on the alt-right nor members of recognized hate groups, they must favor educationally
…show more content…
As discussed previously, universities have a stated goal. Keeping that in mind, it is the university administrator’s role to develop the package that provides the greatest probability of meeting the intended goal while staying within financial and logistic boundaries. If public universities had the funds and facilities to provide for each person who wishes to provide speech, there would be no need to favor speech. However, that is not the case. Every dollar spent to bring Milo Yiannopoulous to campus could have been spent on providing transportation to feature a Supreme Court Justice, Lawrence Lessig or Spencer Abraham. Just as any other organization operates, universities must create a hierarchy or resources and thus a hierarchy of speech. Creating a hierarchy is not a radical concept- it happens naturally. For example, the Student Activity Committee at IUP considers hundreds of potential major acts, and selects only one for the fall semester. In their decision, they consider student turnout, quality of performance, student taste, and the acts image to select the ideal act. I would assume that the decision makers weigh certain aspects higher than other. The same process exists when selecting potential speakers and other educational programs. I argue that the university place a higher emphasis on the potential of advancing the …show more content…
Government officials would choose administrators who uphold their ideology. However, by giving the power to the administrators to create the hierarchy, we avoid a strict configuration, drafted in legislation, and carrying the full power of the government. In this case, the government does not need to formally announce a new policy or constitutionally disenfranchise those who engage or sympathize with hate speech. Second, I am arguing that hate speech should not be facilitated by public universities. However, I am not arguing that public universities engage in anti-hate speech. The government ought not perpetuate and promote hate speech as it is contradictory or unrelated to its cause. The scarce resources require the development of a package, and the value of hate speech is low enough that there is little desire to spend resources on including it in the package. If a private university sees value in some hate speech, such as Liberty University President Jerry Fallwell, Jr. calling on students to carry weapons to ‘end those Muslims (Liberty University),’ they have every right to do so as it is fundamental to their cause. However, that sort of behavior would not advance the mission of a public
As discussed previously, universities have a stated goal. Keeping that in mind, it is the university administrator’s role to develop the package that provides the greatest probability of meeting the intended goal while staying within financial and logistic boundaries. If public universities had the funds and facilities to provide for each person who wishes to provide speech, there would be no need to favor speech. However, that is not the case. Every dollar spent to bring Milo Yiannopoulous to campus could have been spent on providing transportation to feature a Supreme Court Justice, Lawrence Lessig or Spencer Abraham. Just as any other organization operates, universities must create a hierarchy or resources and thus a hierarchy of speech. Creating a hierarchy is not a radical concept- it happens naturally. For example, the Student Activity Committee at IUP considers hundreds of potential major acts, and selects only one for the fall semester. In their decision, they consider student turnout, quality of performance, student taste, and the acts image to select the ideal act. I would assume that the decision makers weigh certain aspects higher than other. The same process exists when selecting potential speakers and other educational programs. I argue that the university place a higher emphasis on the potential of advancing the …show more content…
Government officials would choose administrators who uphold their ideology. However, by giving the power to the administrators to create the hierarchy, we avoid a strict configuration, drafted in legislation, and carrying the full power of the government. In this case, the government does not need to formally announce a new policy or constitutionally disenfranchise those who engage or sympathize with hate speech. Second, I am arguing that hate speech should not be facilitated by public universities. However, I am not arguing that public universities engage in anti-hate speech. The government ought not perpetuate and promote hate speech as it is contradictory or unrelated to its cause. The scarce resources require the development of a package, and the value of hate speech is low enough that there is little desire to spend resources on including it in the package. If a private university sees value in some hate speech, such as Liberty University President Jerry Fallwell, Jr. calling on students to carry weapons to ‘end those Muslims (Liberty University),’ they have every right to do so as it is fundamental to their cause. However, that sort of behavior would not advance the mission of a public