Ubiquitous
2024-04-27 02:05:13 UTC
Reply
PermalinkThat appears to be the way things are at Americas top universities,
where students who openly back terrorist groups are now violating place
and manner restrictions. Theyre violating their student codes. Theyre
sitting out in the middle of the campus, obstructing other people from
getting to class, shouting genocidal slogans at them.
At Columbia, because the administration is filled with cowards, they
are doing nothing about it.
It is important to break down the free speech concerns that people
justifiably have about what is happening on these college campuses. To
understand the concerns, first you have to understand that there are
various factors that go into the actual legal obligations that various
universities have with regard to their students.
On the one hand, theres the First Amendment, which applies differently
at private universities and public universities. The First Amendment
suggests you cannot have viewpoint discrimination on college campuses,
but that only applies in full at public universities. For example, if I
wanted to speak at UC Berkeley and the student group properly invited
me, cleared it through all the procedures, and fulfilled the time,
place, and manner restrictions, then I would have a legal right to
speak at UC Berkeley.
The same does not hold true when I go to speak at a private university
such as DePaul University. That actually happened when I showed up at
DePaul University, which is a private Jesuit university. When I showed
up there, they didnt want me there. They threatened to arrest me if I
set foot on the campus.
And they had the legal right to do that. Not only that, they also got
the Cook County Sheriff out there to arrest me if I set foot on the
campus. Was that morally correct? Of course not; it was absurd. It was
a restriction on the principles of free speech.
But was it a legal violation of my rights? No.
That is why I could not sue them; they are a private university. Public
universities and private universities have different legal obligations
with regard to viewpoint discrimination on campuses.
You can see why. Lets say that you have a Christian university. They
have no obligation to bring in a professor or speaker who is wildly
pro-abortion or plans to teach Judaism or Islam. Its a Christian
university.
To take another example, a private Jewish university in New York has no
obligation to have professors who are teaching radical Islam.
But in public universities, theres the question of time, place, and
manner restrictions, which, legally speaking, suggest you can have
neutral laws that basically say youre allowed to protest only during
certain particular hours.
By the way, this doesnt just apply to universities. This applies in
cities. This is why its illegal for protesters to walk onto a highway
and block it. You must have a permit in order to protest at certain
times in certain places.
There are certain places in the United States where you have very broad
leeway for speech. If you walk into a public park and start shouting
about politics, theres a good shot youre protected. But even in
public parks, if youre going to have a mass rally, there are time,
place, and manner restrictions. You dont want that happening at 2:00
in the morning with a loudspeaker.
Another concern with regard to college campuses is Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I have long argued that the Civil Rights Act, while obviously excellent
in its intent, goes too far in many areas of American law, from
applying to private accommodations to its restrictions on speech at
universities.
Its an anti-discrimination law. It was designed to allow black people
to live fulsome lives in the United States, a well-intended law. If Id
been around in 1964, I likely would have voted for the Civil Rights
Act, despite all of my mitigating problems with the actual legal
language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But it does go too far in a
lot of areas when it comes to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which
guarantees that college students have a right to a place that is free
of a harassing environment on the basis of sex, race, and ethnicity.
This creates some kind of fraught situations with regard to free speech
because there could be a situation in which a university tried to claim
that particular types of speech could violate Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act. That is one of the things that all of these universities
are now being slammed for because they have created massive speech
codes that are theoretically designed to quash violations of the Civil
Rights Act on campus. Many of them go too far, which FIRE, the free
speech group, has pointed out. Many of these speech codes are not
actually designed to avoid violations of the Civil Rights Act.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP
But it is the case that if you have a bunch of pro-terrorist students
on campus harassing Jews as they get to class by spitting on them, who
shout about the extermination of Jews between the river and the sea,
who are suggesting that they want to globalize the intifada, a
violent, incendiary attempt to kill Jews in Israel and elsewhere, that
kind of speech would violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
You can make the case that some of the speech is borderline in how it
interplays between the Civil Rights Act and free speech, and Id be
sympathetic to that case. But on a legal level, the reality is that
these universities cannot receive federal funding if they are acting in
violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The Biden administration has made this clear. They put out a letter in
November 2023 which addressed this specifically, calling it a Dear
Colleague letter and reminding schools that receive federal financial
assistance of their legal obligation under Title VI of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and its implementing regulations (Title VI) to provide all
students with a school environment free from discrimination based on
race, color, or national origin, including shared ancestry or ethnic
characteristics.
Columbia University, now the epicenter of the anti-Semitic pro-Hamas
movement, has a student code of conduct; theyre a private university.
In the Columbia University Student Code of Conduct, the Statement of
Ethical Conduct reads:
1.) Be honest, ethical and truthful.
2.) Obey the law.
These demonstrators are violating the law. They are trespassing.
Theyre in violation of the law.
Columbia Universitys Standards of Discipline & Policy state:
As members of the Columbia University community, all students
are expected to uphold the highest standards of respect,
integrity, and civility. These core values are key components
of the Columbia University experience and reflect the
communitys expectations of its students. Students are expected
to conduct themselves in an honest, civil, and respectful
manner in all aspects of their lives.
I didnt realize spitting on Jews, threatening Israel with
extermination, and acting at the behest of terror groups and terror
supporters was acting within that purview.
A private university like Columbia University has no obligation
whatsoever to tolerate pro-Hamas students chanting anti-Semitic slogans
on their campus. They likely have a Title VI Civil Rights Act
obligation not to allow that to happen on their campus because it
creates harassing, discriminatory incitement.
If there were a group of white supremacists at Columbia University in
the middle of campus chanting, Blacks should not replace us, that
would not last one hot second before the police were called in.
Columbia, however, has been bending over backwards because they dont
want to tick off their faculty and students. The ideological capture of
these universities happened decades ago during the late 1960s with
student protest movements that decided to take over campuses and
threaten actual deans; then, the deans did nothing because their
liberal mindset back in the 1960s was that they had to respect what the
students were saying, even if those students were violating the law.
For two full generations, college administrations have been completely
captured by the radicals. All those student radicals ended up as the
administrators at these universities, and then they hired like-minded
professors. Thats why professors are joining in all of this mayhem.
People keep asking, why are these universities doing this? Why are they
allowing this?
The universities are allowing this because they are completely staffed
by people who agree with the demonstrators.
--
Let's go Brandon!