When will college kids learn the meaning and power of boycott?
Worse thing you can do to these jerks – rant to an empty hall.
Exactly!
Free Speech works both ways.
An idiot may have his First Amendment Rights to speak.
But every other person against him has equal Rights to drown out his speech with theirs.
Trouble? Keeping Him Off Campus?
This can only mean one thing. The day I’ve dreaded has arrived.
He’s gotten the campus ministry assignment from the Mormon Church.
Can’t they just make passing an IQ test a prerequisite to speaking? Problem solved…
A humble proposal for these schools:
Require mandatory advance ticketing for events with outside speakers not connected to any course or class. No ticket sales at the gate or door. Put a modest price on the tickets - $10 to $20 each. Students committed to attending can do so. The funds go straight to the the university. The more tickets sold in advance, the larger the venue can be booked. As long as the advance ticketing policy is applied across the board, it should pass 1st amendment muster. Speakers who wish to speak without the ticketing policy, simply need sponsorship from a faculty member for the event as part of the faculty member’s course or class.
How does someone not connected with MSU (not a student, staff or faculty, or resident of Michigan) get to rent a room on MSU’s campus for an outside speaker?
This really is fairly simple, except that there are always troublemakers looking to start, literally, a fight.
Non-Violent protest including counter-assemblies, picketing the pathway to the venue, even yelling outside are all acceptable in my mind for showing how you feel about this particular speaker.
Also, other than for reporting on what is actually going on, don’t attend.
Now if the speaker is “discriminating” on who can attend their little “talk” then I think there are grounds to prevent said speaker since it is no longer the public use of a public facility.
I also like that advanced ticket thing, but I think that’s problematic when one would like to offer information for people that need it that may not be able to afford it.
Just some thoughts…
Except he will attract off campus people of his ilk. It is not just for students.
I agree in principle regarding protest techniques, but Spencer is a special case. He does his shtick specifically to get a reaction. He feels validated by people loudly and aggressively protesting him. He’s very much like a flame feeding on the oxygen of hate. Starve the flame of oxygen and it goes out. If he showed up and no one was there, he would stop coming. He’s only going to liberal venues because he expects his supporters can goad counter-protesters into fights.
If there was no counter-protest (and more importantly no media coverage), he would drop it in a heartbeat.
His gig as Supercuts Nazi haircut model must be ending.
There was a recent piece and NPR interview with former 60’s SDS radical Todd Gitlin regarding free speech on campus.
He mentioned that back in the 60’s the Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell would show up on campus wearing full Nazi regalia. The students pretty much ignored him. Same ought to be the case with Spencer.
sunlight is a powerful disinfectant. post pictures of attendees on social media. let them own their hate to friends and family.
The headline requires an edit:
Why State Colleges Will Likely Have Trouble Keeping Richard Spencer Off Campus
Fixed.
Michigan State University of violating his and Spencer’s First Amendment right to share their “Alt-Right philosophy.”
When this term first started appearing last year (or when I first started seeing it), I didn’t have an issue with it - seemed like it was a useful catch-all term. But now that they’ve appropriated it, it’s used to hide what they really are: bigots and racists.Be nice to see the MSM stop using it completely and call them the “racist right” or something.
Oh, an even better idea: call them the GOP!
As for the subject of this article, I think they need to be allowed to speak. Denying them that right plays into their hands, lets them hide in the slums of the internet (where they can grow in the darkness like manure-fed bacteria without alarming the huge part of the population that doesn’t pay close attention to these things), and does not speak well for our support of free speech. Let them speak. And let us greet their speech with the protest and ridicule it deserves. They’re not going to get many converts from these speeches on campus - the conversions happen online - and most who attend will already have swallowed their racist bile hook and sinker.
So, there’s how you shut down speech. Legally.
Spencer and his tribe use clubs and guns and have hot heads around school kids, so it should be easy.
Is it possible to just say no–to have the fascists address a hall with no audience? But the alternative that would stop those people is to pack the hall with anti-fascist and anti-racist audience members trained and dedicated to just sitting silently. Or, if they must show their displeasure, let them stand up and turn their backs on the speakers–silently.
I realize that the likelihood of this happening are not high, but a guy can hope, can’t he?
Let him speak.
And let those who care take notes and pictures of those who attend.
And make sure all employers who interview on campus get files of those notes.
Problem solved.
Free speech saved.
Consequences learned.
He has the right to speak. He doesn’t have the right to be listened to. And my right to shout him down is just as sacrosanct as his right to speak. The problem is these characters believe they have a right to uninterrupted speech, unchallenged speech. His opinion is a flawed minority opinion. He doesn’t get equal time, he gets time proportional to the equation (Racists Rants)/(Racists Rants + all other opinions). And for every minute he gets to speak there should 1000 minutes at the same event for the rest of us.