Centerfield

I agree. Suppressing folks with offensive views tends to make them "first amendment martyrs" and gives them the opportunity to go around acting like the victim -- when, ordinarily, they are the victimizers.

If you want to oppose somebody, explain why they're wrong. Don't stop them from speaking.

I don't consider withdrawal of funding to be censorship. I had no problem with the NEA cutting off grants to artists whose work people considered obscene. And I don't object if the university pulls funds from a publication which gays consider obscene.

If the university were to prevent distribution of a privately funded newspaper on campus, I would have a problem with that. That truly would be censorship.

Rick, would you have a problem if the university withdrew funding from a gay publication because conservatives found it obscene or otherwise objectionable?

Now RW is a private university, so maybe that "have a right," but that doesn't make them right. If you fund student organizations at a school where you say you want to foster the free expression of ideas, and then turn around and take funding away when you don't like some of that free expression, then you're trying to have it both ways, and I have a BIG problem with that.

IF RW, as a private university, decides they want to mediate free speech by funding only those whose speech falls within the bounds they define, then fine. But don't turn around and say you support the free and open exchange of ideas. becuase you supprt the mediated exchange oif ideas within the bounds you want to define. That's a HUGE difference.

The NEA is an interesting analogy. I'm not troubled when they decline to fund objectionable artists, because people who are given our tax money to make art should be accountable in some form to their benefactors. But even though I really like art quite a bit, I wouldn't be bothered if we got the government out of the art business entirely. I think the result would be a decrease in lousy art that fails to rise above the level of an exercise. And people who cared passionately about the arts could work in private foundations free from the need to respond to demagogueing congressmen and grandstanding governors.

No, I wouldn't have a problem if the university pulled funding from a gay publication that went over the line into obscenity. There have been controversial gay programs here in Massachusetts that were state funded that got very explicit in recommending exotic sexual techniques that shall remain nameless. I had no problem with pulling their funding.

I'd like to get beyond the binary by distinguishing a trinity when it comes to certain expressions or acts -- prohibited, permitted, and encouraged. Clearly evil things may be banned. Clearly beneficent things should be encouraged. And the large majority of things which are ambiguous should be permitted without being subsidized.

In general, expression should be encouraged. As a matter of constitutional right, it must not be prohibited. Bigoted expression must be tolerated, but it doesn't have to be subsidized.

That's OK, but if you want to have a policy like that, then don't also say you want to foster free speech. Once it's moderated, it's moderated. If you are going to make specific exceptions, you should be open and honest about it. If you are a school and you say that you are trying to foster free speech in a learning environment for the marketplace of ideas, you don't punish the students for saying the wrong things. That's indoctrination in how and what to think. You can talk subsidy vs. on subsidy all you want, but if you provide funds for speech you approve of and deny it for speech you don't approve of, you are very simply just not fostering free speech. You are moderating it by privileging and encouraging some forms (the ones you agree with) and
discriminating against others. That's not a marketplace of ideas.

By the way, I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a definition of "obscene" that means the same thing to everybody...in this particular case, it's hard to say based on the news account whether what they are writing is obscene or whether it's merely the case that an oppositioin group that wishes to stifle their voice is calling it obscene in order to gain the high ground in the debate over censoring them. And once you dig into it, it starts to get like catching moonbeams in a mason jar.

When you say that you'd like a broad category of speech that should be permitted but not subsidized, you seem to be implying that the "encouraged" category should be subsidized. By whom? Surely not the government? After all, speech is subsidized privately every time you watch TV or buy a newspaper or magazine.

When I'm using the word subsidized, I mean by the government or institutions such as universities which, while private, are themselves often subsidized by the government.

I don't consider newspapers that finance themselves by circulation and advertising to be subsidized.

The goverment doesn't subsidize much expression in this country, except for PBS and NPR and art supported by the NEA.

My basic point is that I don't consider withdrawal of subsidies to be the same as censorship.

Rick, I don't want to drag this out much longer or seem like I'm trying to browbeat. You might be right that withdrawing a subsidy isn't censorship per se. But what I see is a situtaion where a college SAYS that it wants a free and open exchange of ideas. Then it privileges certain ideas, tacitly approving the message and the senders by financing their newspaper, and tacitly condemning other ideas and the people who have them by withdrawing their funding when they say something the college admin doesn't like.

So to me, whether or not this is censorship per se is beside the point. If you are a private educational institution you may well have the legal right to moderate speech. And I won't even argue if you say that this may well achieve a better atmosphere on campus, thus serving a positive goal. It's the doublespeak part that I object to. If you moderate speech to to provide a sheltered academic atmosphere because you think this a good idea, then fine, do it, but don't also try and tell me that you're fostering an atmosphere of free and open exchange, because you are misrepresenting the laboratory you're providing for the students. It's not so much the actual withholding of funding that I object to, it's the saying one thing and doing another that bugs me.

I'm pretty sure that a private university has the right to fund student organizations on the basis of their philosophy, but they should at least but up front that there is a philosophical litmus test.

To my mind, a public university does not. If a public university provides funding to student organizations, then the criteria the adminstration uses as the basis for withholding or rescinding funding better not be based on political ideology. It would have been wrong to do it to communist students in 1963, and it's wrong to do it to conservatives in 2003.

I agree that it is hypocritical and pompous for a college to say it encourages the free and open exchange of ideas and then not follow through.

I am concerned about ideological balance on campus. It certainly bugs me when college funds go to pay speakers fees for someone like Angela Davis, while Republicans have to raise private funds to bringin their speakers. That's bias, but it's not censorship.

Nice blog, really enjoyed it.