Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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 Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 3:19 pm Post subject: Editorial: "The speech police at Maryland" |
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Where were these elitist academic thought-police in the 60's? Most likely on the campus quad exercising THEIR first amendment rights...
| Quote: | Editorial
The speech police at Maryland
The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper
2007-08-16
WASHINGTON - Legal experts with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) not long ago awarded a “red” rating to the University of Maryland at College Park. Red is the worst in FIRE’s stoplight-themed index and indicates the school “clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.”
The College Park campus is not unique in stifling the First Amendment. In recent years, most college administrations have instituted official codes that silence all speech deemed by at least one hearer to be “hateful,” “offensive” or “insensitive.” These codes, which amount to intellectual and political suppression, are often vigorously enforced by administrators and enthusiastically defended by faculty members. Consequently, a nation of fractious, irascible soap boxers who dared anybody to shut them up is steadily being reduced to a pitiful assemblage of supine automatons. This decline of intellectual vigor is most visible on campuses where freedom of speech and thought were once cherished virtues.
A recent incident at the Maryland Food Collective, a shop in the College Park student union, is a disturbing case in point. A student seeking to pay for groceries was stopped by the clerk. “Your shirt offends me, I won’t ring you up,” the clerk said of the message stamped on the student’s T-shirt, “I Stand for Israel.” After much hand-wringing and political posturing by co-op and school officials, the student got her food after being checked out by a different clerk. Then she apologized to the offended clerk and offered a chocolate cake as proof of the sincerity of her apology for being “offensive.”
Technically, the co-op is not affiliated with the university, but it does rent space from the school, which makes the co-op a place of public accommodation. Numerous federal and state court cases long ago established that places of public accommodation are covered by the First Amendment and cannot discriminate against anybody’s race, sex, religion, political beliefs, martial status, etc.
Officials should have told the collective to stop discriminating or get out, then reminded the campus community that the First Amendment protects everybody’s freedom of speech. But it doesn’t invent a right to not be offended by something somebody else said.
As for the student, the lesson she’s learned at College Park is to never, ever say anything that anybody might find offensive, whatever “offensive” means. Forget the First Amendment. Just shut up and be politically correct, even if that empowers the speech police to tyrannize the academy. At least nobody will be “offended.”
The Washington Examiner |
HT: Powerline |
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