Criticizing Speech Versus Punishing Speech

I have been very critical of Move On’s “Betray Us” ad. I thought the Senate’s censure resolution was silly but not serious. A waste of time but not a threat. Perhaps this description by Glenn Greenwald of a threat to PUNISH speech, in this case, Columbia University’s, for its decision to invite the Iranian President Ahmadenijad to speak there, will illustrate the difference between criticizing speech and punishing speech:

In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said lawmakers, outraged over Columbia’s insistence on allowing the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum, would consider reducing capital aid and other financial assistance to the school.

“There are issues that Columbia may have before us that obviously this cavalier attitude would be something that people would recall,” Mr. Silver said. “Obviously, there’s some degree of capital support that has been provided to Columbia in the past. These are things people might take a different view of . . . knowing that this is that kind of an institution” . . .

“It’s not going to go away just because this episode ends. Columbia University has to know . . . that they will be penalized,” an assemblyman of Brooklyn, Dov Hikind, who also attended the rally, said. . . .

Penalized. Punished. Not criticized. This makes all the difference in the world to me. Legally. And Substantively. Censuring Move On with a tootless sense of the Senate bill is silly. What Silver and Hikind propose is a violation of the First Amendment. The differences are stark. Where’s the blogswarm on this? Where’s the concern for free speech?

[UPDATE] A lesson in free speech.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the stage at Columbia University on Monday to a blistering reception from the president of the school, who said the hard-line leader behaved like “a petty and cruel dictator.”

Ahmadinejad smiled as Columbia President Lee Bollinger took him to task over Iran’s human-rights record and foreign policy, and Ahmadinejad’s statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel.

“Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” Bollinger said, to loud applause.

He said Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust might fool the illiterate and ignorant.

“When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous,” Bollinger said. “The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history.”

Ahmadinejad rose, also to applause, and after a religious invocation, said Bollinger’s opening was: “an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here.”

“There were insults and claims that were incorrect, regretfully,” Ahmadinejad said, accusing Bollinger of falling under the influence of the hostile U.S. press and politicians.

“I should not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment,” he said.

During a question and answer session with the audience, Ahmadinejad appeared agitated. In response to one question, Ahmadinejad denied he was questioning the existence of the Holocaust.

“Granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestian people?” he said. . . .

This is why free speech is good. The sunshine will wipe away the false and the vile.

38 comments

Skip to comment form

  1. If I understand you correctly, you make an either/or distinction between criticism and punishment. And you place a value of insignificant (or relatively harmless) on the former, while placing a free speech serious violation value on the latter.

    I believe that they are two features along a continuum, and that they both violate the principle of free and unfettered speech. 

    The former chips away and erodes it, while the latter results in more visible damage.  But they are both damaging, and they ultimately lead to the same result.

    • oculus on September 24, 2007 at 21:00

    Figured Columbia was a private school and could do whatever it wanted.  Thanks for calling out the repressive state legislators. 

    • Armando on September 24, 2007 at 21:09
      Author

    For some who dislike my style, I hope you will discern, and I hope it is actually there, an openness to discussing substance in critical fashion.

    Therre is no question that civility can be a powerful tool for forwarding such discussion but personally, I would rather err in not demanding it (I know I often will be, at the least, brusque, if not downright uncivil in response), but I promise you I will try to address substance.

    It can be rewarding I think. 

    • Ender on September 24, 2007 at 21:23

    why can’t the public funds be conditional. And why can’t school’s behavior/speech/policies be one of the criteria?

    Why is removing public funds automatically censorship? If Columbia wishes to stand by their decisions and “freedom of speech” then why can’t they do it without taxpayer subsidies?

    • snud on September 24, 2007 at 21:44

    Armando. I can’t recall who said it – and I’m sure I won’t get the quote right – but it’s something along the lines of: one doesn’t counter bad speech with censorship but with more speech.

    And “punishing” Columbia University is asinine. If that happens it’ll be the students who are punished – and I doubt they had any say-so as to whether Ahmedednijad gets to appear to flap his jaws.

    If this republic is who and what we say we are we should have no fear whatsoever of what this Iranian pipsqueak may have to say and surely the students of Columbia have grown good bullshit detectors by now.

    Not only that but if we as a species have any hope of survival we better stop seeing the world in absolutes of black and white, “right” and “wrong”.

    I remember when we were great “pals” with Iran as long as our oil-puppet Shah was in power.

    I think Columbia University has this right for allowing him to speak and shouldn’t be “punished” for doing what we claim is one of our God-given “rights”.

  2. One factor that doesn’t seem to be discussed is  the probability that Ahmadinejad is mentally ill.  As in him using very similar types of speech and terms that George W Bush uses.  What comes to mind:  narcissistic, grandiose, purposeful, stubbornly refusing to alter his position when presented with factual evidence to the contrary.

    Just sayin’….

Comments have been disabled.