Stefanik Ivy Presidentd

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12/11/2023 13:58

Subject: Re:Stefanik Ivy Presidentd

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Anonymous wrote:Regardless of what initial intentions student protesters may have for chants such as “globalize the intifada,” or any of the other slogans associated with eliminating Jewish people from Israel’s land, they can no longer pretend not to know that their use causes many people a reasonably felt sense of intimidation. On this matter, the Age of Innocence is behind us. If college campuses regularly had groups of kids chanting “White power,” I would not be comfortable sending my children there, even if those chanters never took a “targeted” action against a specific person.

Excellent Op-Ed by Danielle Allen in the Post: https://wapo.st/4aq36pA

What is a "reasonably felt sense of intimidation"?

Read the article. It's well worth it.

I have read it. What is a "reasonably felt sense of intimidation"?

From the article:

If the communications you use while protesting would constitute harassment if targeted at a specific individual, the presumption will be that the protest method is likely to create a pattern of generalized intimidation incompatible with a culture of mutual respect.

That doesn't answer the question.

Also, so you can't say "hell no we won't go" at a protest now? What about "whose campus, OUR campus" from protestors claiming not to feel a sense of belonging?

The whole notion of "reasonableness" starts to fall apart when the offense taken at a lot of these chants is grounded in various identity markers. To take it a step further, for some of these identity markers, the very act of protesting, in any form or fashion, is intimidating in and of itself, regardless of the words used.

Also from the article:

While protest, within acceptable limits, is protected by free speech, on this college campus those acceptable limits include that your method of protest not cause intimidation to other members of our community. Intimidation is behavior that involves a threat of violence to deter or coerce others.

Only intimidation if it "involves a threat of violence".

Yes, and those phrases could be read or "felt" as such. Not to mention the whole "words are violence" thing.

So are you advocating for full 1st amendment speech at (private) college campuses?

I can see the argument both ways, but on balance think that Allen's approach is probably a good one.

My thought is that a lot of what is currently "felt" on college campuses is unreasonable and should not be catered to lest other values critical to a liberal arts eduction be completely overrun, but you also cannot deny that these feelings seem to be increasingly and genuinely held, at least in the minds of the students. The locus of what is "reasonable", at least for a college student, seems to be shifting to a place where you cannot both safeguard these students from feeling intimated and preserve a healthy degree of academic freedom and discourse. In making determinations of "reasonableness" in situations like this, you also run into defaulting and baselining problems. How do you arrive at a suitable point of reference for something that is so inherently fraught and bound up in variegated questions of identity? Some of this thinking undergirds the whole crux of DEI and CRT efforts.

I don't even necessarily reject Danielle's framing per se because I think there will be issues and edge cases with any one, I am just trying to ascertain how it is workable by mapping it onto the current climate and pedagogy in university environments.

Extraordinarily difficult question, to which I don't have an answer.

I think "reasonably" has to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to limit the "felt/perceived" subjectivity.

Would a reasonable person view the speech as threatening violence in light of the totality of the circumstances?

Not sure there's a better solution.

This is the difficulty of invoking reasonableness. In some legal contexts, it might be more workable when you are talking about a generalized behavior or perceptions applicable to all groups in torts or criminal law or whatever. But in this context it is much more difficult to apply a general notion of reasonableness to a situation for which only a narrowly circumscribed group can be targeted and thus feel intimidation or offense.

PP. I take your point though, and your framing is probably as close as you can get on something like this.

Agree with you re: the "difficulty of reasonableness".

A possible partial solution would be to pair the rule with specific examples of presumptively prohibited speech.

This would give a baseline (though incomplete) common understanding of what's tolerated.

Listeners would therefore effectively give "consent" by attending the institution, and speakers would have "notice" of what's permissible.

Still imperfect, but perhaps moving the right direction?