Transcripts For CSPAN2 Author And Historian Allen Guelzo 201

Hes received numerous prestigious awards incluing the lincoln including the lincoln prize, the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book prize, and he authors regularly a number of articles that are published in leading newspapers; usa today, the wall street journal, washington post. And hes featured regularly on television and radio programs such as nprs weekend edition. He is the [inaudible] professor of civil war era at Gettysburg College where he serves as director of the civil war era studies program. However, he is on sabbatical from Gettysburg College this year, and he serves as the William Garwood visiting professor in the James Madison program of american ideals and institutions at Princeton University. You can learn more about allens work either by visiting his web site, allenguelzo. Com, but perhaps most importantly allen is a regular speaker at the union league of philadelphia and for the Abraham Lincoln foundation. He is also a member of the union league of philadelphia. So, please, join me in welcoming our distinguished speaker, dr. Allen guelzo. [applause] what a pleasure it is to be introduced by joan carter, always the most gracious of introducers. And to be invited to speak in this series which memorializes jack templeton, whom i remember as both a physician and a friend. So there is privilege on all points to be enjoyed as participating in this series. What we know today as the First Amendment to the federal constitution originally appeared in the form of a resolution attached by the Virginia State ratifying convention to its approval of the new constitution in june of 1788. That resolution declared that the free exercise of religious worship cannot be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified by the new congress which was being created by the constitution. Nor can any other essential rights among which were listed the liberty of conscience and of the press. This resolution was taken up by James Madison and then rewritten and adopted by the senate in september of 1789 and finally ratified by the states on march 1, 1792, in this form. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances. Madison was confident that the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment were the source for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression. Even so is, there were frequent backslidings in american political life starting with the alien and sedition acts in 1798 which attempted to criminalize seditious libels utteredded about president john adams, and that was followed by mob assaults on political speakers in the streets of new york and baltimore in 1804, in 1810, in 1811 and 1815. In 1835 alone there were 147 political riots in the United States leading to the deaths of 63 people. A riot, in fact, inialton, illinois, in 1 is 837 1837 ended in the death of the abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy and prompted the first great political speech of the up and coming illinois lawyer, Abraham Lincoln. Not the action of a mob or the sanction of a magistrate. And yet nearly 250 years after James Madison hailed the First Amendment as the triumph of reason and humanity we once more find argument after argument being deployed and especially in University Environments to overthrow that triumph and silence free speech. But this overthrow comes not in the old guise of brute tyrannical force but in the new clothing of cultural sensitivity. It involves an argument against free speech which arrives in two stages. That first of all culture is distinct from the political and therefore does not enjoy the protections of free speech. And that all political speech is really cultural and so no speech deserves protection. Let me give you some examples. In our Constitution Day lecture at Princeton University on september 20th carolyn rouse, the chair of princetons Anthropology Department dismissed any idea of an absolute liberty for free speech. After all, rouse argued, nowhere are people allowed to say whatever they want in any context with no social, economic, legal, or political repercussions. There are, in or the words some varieties of speech nobody tries to invoke the First Amendment to try to protect. What then does rouse serves the speech that does from speech that doesnt serve the shield of the First Amendment. Rouses answer is, culture. Culture, she says, is what helps us determine the appropriateness of speech by balancing our rights as enshrined in the constitution with understandings of context. In a commonplace way this seems to be true. Since no one suggests that cultural vulgarity or profanity or simple bad manners are things that the First Amendment is designed to protect. The problem is that by culture rouse does not actually mean inhibitions on vulgarities or profanities or bad manners. What she calls culture is in fact politics. Only now by culling it culture she no longers consider herself of guilt i of it suppressing speech protected by the First Amendment. A Climate Change, skeptic zooshe explained is not actually a political dissident but an offender against a received culture. As such has no right to make claims about Climate Change as if all the science discovered over the last x number of centuries were irrelevant. And not just Climate Change. In december 2016, rouse organized a walkout by students on a lecture at princeton by sociologist Charles Murray, charging in a flyer, that murray represented the normalization of racism and classism in academia. This is the same Charles Murray who was then shouted down and physically attacked on march 2nd by student activists at Middlebury College who were loss offended by murrays departure from their culture. In an even more sensational confrontation on may 23rd, campus authorities at Evergreen State College refused to protect biology professor Bret Weinstein by physical threat by angry student activists after weinstein questioned the wisdom of a day of racial absence. That excluded white students from the evergreen state campus n a for shadowing of rouses Constitution Day rationalization, the evergreen state activists insisted weinsteins questioning violated the norms of evergreens culture. He has incited White Supremacists and he has validated White Supremacists and gnaw sys in our community and in the nation complained one activist. I dont think that should be protected by free speech. By redefining political speech as, culture, the speech silencers are allowed to claim that your speech is not really political. Instead it is offensive or threatening to my whiteness or blackness or gender or values, and is there for outside the protections afforded to political speech. We may laugh at this as yet another example of the old shell game in which political censorship is simply called by another name. Nevertheless shell game or not, this is why the numbers of University Students who told a Brookings Institute survey they do not believe the First Amendment protects offensive speech now outnumber those who believe that it does by 44 to 39 , and why fully a fifth of those students believe that it is acceptable to inflict physical harm on those who are deemed to have made, offensive and hurtful statements. Because it is all culture, not politics. Even it isnt. So what James Madison worked to attain in the name of reason and humanity now yields to the dictatorship of politics masquerading as culture, as though the nation and its institutions were a tribe, rather than a republic and any unapproved remark understood as a defection from an established cultural order. There may be some relief in realizing that the attacks on free speech in the name of culture have a history of their own. A history which from time to time has gained a measure of temporary credibility, only to have its underlying folly pull it back out to sea. The puritans of Massachusetts Bay were confident enough of their culture to insist that any deviation from it was simply a departure from accepted truth and toleration of that infidelity would only sow doubt an confusion among the true believers who needed no further truth. He that is willing to tolerate any religion wrote, Nathaniel Ward in 164or discrepancy way of religion besides his own unless matters merely indifferent either doubts his own or is not sincere of it. Supporters of the alien and sedition act were no less confident in the axioms of their political culture, likewise felt no need to learn anything from what they regarded as palpable error. Truth has but one side and listening to error and falsehood is indeed a strange way to discover truth, wrote the pennsylvania lawyer, alexander addison, what might have passed a parody of rouses princeton lecture. Contempt and fear of free political speech were also the principle characteristics of american slaverys defenders who also believed that they represented a culture of sorts, based this time on race. In 1835 postmaster general aim most kendall yielded to demand by slave holders to sensor abolitionist materials from the u. S. Mail and justified his decision by appealing to Cultural Values over political liberty about. We owe an obligation to the laws, kendall said, but a higher one to the community in which we live. And if a former be perverted so as to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them. So what we deal with today in the confusion of politics and culture, as an, an excuse for suppressing speech is not new, but todays cultured despisers of free speech are not merely victims of a semantic confusion of culture and politics. And this is what leads to the second stage of this new strategy of oh throw. Overthrow. A second stage says there is nothing which is legitimately political anymore. That all political speech really is cultural and thus can be severely regulated without any reference to the First Amendment. In fact the First Amendment becomes a dead letter. The gene ology of this second stage is long and begins with karl marx or, rather with the italian marxist antonio gramsky. He believed that marx had missed an important detail in describing how the working class should one fine day overthrow the capital it ruling class marx designed the working class oppressed by the political and economic power of the european political ruling classes. Gramsky believed that matters were worse than that the working class is oppressed he said not only by the political and economic power of the european ruling classes but by ruling class culture which entices an persuades the working class to adopt the Cultural Values and attitudes of their rulers. Political revolution therefore would have to be about the overthrow of that culture first. Gramsys ideas won their biggest following of americans of the new left in the 1960s. Under the plea of free speech complained herbert markusa, the doyan of the new left, tolerance is extended to policies, conditions and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because the tolerance expressed in such impartiality serves to minimize or even absolve prevailing intolerance and suppression. This is practically indistinguishable from the plea of ward and addison and kendall but it reclothes that plea in the more appealing garb of the oppressed and disadvantaged. The idea that all political speech really is cultural does however allow us to see a bright line connecting the attacks on prospeech with the craze of monument removals began in may in new orleans and peaked since the Charlottesville Riot in august. On one level rage against monuments may seem like a exercise in purely cultural criticism, especially if the monuments are examples of bad taste. Think of the rocky statue on the steps of the museum of art. [laughter] but in the world of marxist ideology after gramsky, culture absorbs politics. Americans the confederate statues and charlottesville have been at the eye of this storm can not be merely statues or merely cultural artifacts in the usual sense of the word culture. Confederate memorials on these terms and were never and are never less than what one fervent history professor at the university of North Carolina described as, a campaign to paint the southern cause in the civil war as just and slavery as a benevolent institution, and made a very pointed state about the rule of white supremacy. No, actually, the monuments didnt do that. Actually, it was the laws of the jim crow era that did that. No one has yet shown that general lee descended from his monumental horse in shore lotsville to burn crosses alongs the blue ridge at night. What is cultural only becomes literally threatening and what offense, what is offensive only becomes literally lethal when it is translated into regulations. By the same token however, removals of offensive speakers or offensive public art become more than merely sympathetic and pitying responses to bad taste. They are a practical and aggressive strategy, under the cover of appeals to cultural offense. For suppressing political disagreement. And since the goal of the dissent is the destabilization of a political order, it should come as no surprise that the cultural rage of the Confederate Monument activists often shades over into furious condemnations of the entirety of american history. It is not merely confederate generals who have become targets. Christchurch in alexandria, virginia, decided last month to remove the plaque marking the pew once occupied by George Washington because it might make some visitors feel unsafe or unwelcome. Student activists at the university of wisconsin at madison campaigned in 2016 to decolonize our campus around a statue of Abraham Lincoln which was deemed belittling because lincoln, according to one of the organizers, owned slaves and ordered the execution of native men. Nor is it likely to stop even with american history. In may as the new orleans confederate statues were being brought down, even a statue of joan of arc was spraypainted with, tear it down. Joan of arc . This is to cloud understanding with words. It is to perform what Michael Polania called a moral inversion, a intellectual juggling act in which we invoke the language of cultural offense as a stratgem for silencing political dissent. Do not be deceived. Culture is culture and politics is politics. And we are in deep trouble when one absorbs the other. But let us not be simplistic. Carolyn rouse is certainly correct in one respect, culture does influence speech. There is some speech which is rude and some which is foolish and Cultural Values encourage borish people to censor their rudeness and their foolishness. Even Oliver Wendell holmes, the author of abrams decision recognized the serious public harm that can result from someone falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. But what rouse and the gramskins ignore, culture and politics are really two different quantities. Cultural inhibitions are vague and consensual and easily liable to transgression and shifting. Politics is about laws, which involves crimes and punishments and which take time to implement and time to repeal. Again, culture becomes lethal only when power is invoked to the terminate the competition for cultural expression. Rouse is also correct to say that there are different arenas of speech. In the private sphere, one person can tell another person to stop gossipping or to stop demanding that the umpire be killed. Without that being a trespass on the First Amendment. While in in the public sphere, a different start applies. The problem rouse does not address, the line separating the private sphere where the First Amendment may not operate, and the public where it does is not always clear. For instance, rouse believes that hate speech has no place in the of university because it violates the culture of the university and believes that the university can act to suppress such hate speech without violating the First Amendment because the university operates within the private sphere and can thus live by its own private rules. But the idea that the university is a private enclave that can establish the boundaries of the cultural and the political for itself is becoming less and less persuasive. For one thing, discouraging some forms of cultural speech in academia may be bad for academia is community of culture even if culture is not the province of the Abraham Lincoln<\/a> Institute Book<\/a> prize, and he authors regularly a number of articles that are published in leading newspapers; usa today, the wall street journal, washington post. And hes featured regularly on television and radio programs such as nprs weekend edition. He is the [inaudible] professor of civil war era at Gettysburg College<\/a> where he serves as director of the civil war era studies program. However, he is on sabbatical from Gettysburg College<\/a> this year, and he serves as the William Garwood<\/a> visiting professor in the James Madison<\/a> program of american ideals and institutions at Princeton University<\/a>. You can learn more about allens work either by visiting his web site, allenguelzo. Com, but perhaps most importantly allen is a regular speaker at the union league of philadelphia and for the Abraham Lincoln<\/a> foundation. He is also a member of the union league of philadelphia. So, please, join me in welcoming our distinguished speaker, dr. Allen guelzo. [applause] what a pleasure it is to be introduced by joan carter, always the most gracious of introducers. And to be invited to speak in this series which memorializes jack templeton, whom i remember as both a physician and a friend. So there is privilege on all points to be enjoyed as participating in this series. What we know today as the First Amendment<\/a> to the federal constitution originally appeared in the form of a resolution attached by the Virginia State<\/a> ratifying convention to its approval of the new constitution in june of 1788. That resolution declared that the free exercise of religious worship cannot be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified by the new congress which was being created by the constitution. Nor can any other essential rights among which were listed the liberty of conscience and of the press. This resolution was taken up by James Madison<\/a> and then rewritten and adopted by the senate in september of 1789 and finally ratified by the states on march 1, 1792, in this form. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances. Madison was confident that the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment<\/a> were the source for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression. Even so is, there were frequent backslidings in american political life starting with the alien and sedition acts in 1798 which attempted to criminalize seditious libels utteredded about president john adams, and that was followed by mob assaults on political speakers in the streets of new york and baltimore in 1804, in 1810, in 1811 and 1815. In 1835 alone there were 147 political riots in the United States<\/a> leading to the deaths of 63 people. A riot, in fact, inialton, illinois, in 1 is 837 1837 ended in the death of the abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy<\/a> and prompted the first great political speech of the up and coming illinois lawyer, Abraham Lincoln<\/a>. Not the action of a mob or the sanction of a magistrate. And yet nearly 250 years after James Madison<\/a> hailed the First Amendment<\/a> as the triumph of reason and humanity we once more find argument after argument being deployed and especially in University Environments<\/a> to overthrow that triumph and silence free speech. But this overthrow comes not in the old guise of brute tyrannical force but in the new clothing of cultural sensitivity. It involves an argument against free speech which arrives in two stages. That first of all culture is distinct from the political and therefore does not enjoy the protections of free speech. And that all political speech is really cultural and so no speech deserves protection. Let me give you some examples. In our Constitution Day<\/a> lecture at Princeton University<\/a> on september 20th carolyn rouse, the chair of princetons Anthropology Department<\/a> dismissed any idea of an absolute liberty for free speech. After all, rouse argued, nowhere are people allowed to say whatever they want in any context with no social, economic, legal, or political repercussions. There are, in or the words some varieties of speech nobody tries to invoke the First Amendment<\/a> to try to protect. What then does rouse serves the speech that does from speech that doesnt serve the shield of the First Amendment<\/a>. Rouses answer is, culture. Culture, she says, is what helps us determine the appropriateness of speech by balancing our rights as enshrined in the constitution with understandings of context. In a commonplace way this seems to be true. Since no one suggests that cultural vulgarity or profanity or simple bad manners are things that the First Amendment<\/a> is designed to protect. The problem is that by culture rouse does not actually mean inhibitions on vulgarities or profanities or bad manners. What she calls culture is in fact politics. Only now by culling it culture she no longers consider herself of guilt i of it suppressing speech protected by the First Amendment<\/a>. A Climate Change<\/a>, skeptic zooshe explained is not actually a political dissident but an offender against a received culture. As such has no right to make claims about Climate Change<\/a> as if all the science discovered over the last x number of centuries were irrelevant. And not just Climate Change<\/a>. In december 2016, rouse organized a walkout by students on a lecture at princeton by sociologist Charles Murray<\/a>, charging in a flyer, that murray represented the normalization of racism and classism in academia. This is the same Charles Murray<\/a> who was then shouted down and physically attacked on march 2nd by student activists at Middlebury College<\/a> who were loss offended by murrays departure from their culture. In an even more sensational confrontation on may 23rd, campus authorities at Evergreen State College<\/a> refused to protect biology professor Bret Weinstein<\/a> by physical threat by angry student activists after weinstein questioned the wisdom of a day of racial absence. That excluded white students from the evergreen state campus n a for shadowing of rouses Constitution Day<\/a> rationalization, the evergreen state activists insisted weinsteins questioning violated the norms of evergreens culture. He has incited White Supremacists<\/a> and he has validated White Supremacists<\/a> and gnaw sys in our community and in the nation complained one activist. I dont think that should be protected by free speech. By redefining political speech as, culture, the speech silencers are allowed to claim that your speech is not really political. Instead it is offensive or threatening to my whiteness or blackness or gender or values, and is there for outside the protections afforded to political speech. We may laugh at this as yet another example of the old shell game in which political censorship is simply called by another name. Nevertheless shell game or not, this is why the numbers of University Students<\/a> who told a Brookings Institute<\/a> survey they do not believe the First Amendment<\/a> protects offensive speech now outnumber those who believe that it does by 44 to 39 , and why fully a fifth of those students believe that it is acceptable to inflict physical harm on those who are deemed to have made, offensive and hurtful statements. Because it is all culture, not politics. Even it isnt. So what James Madison<\/a> worked to attain in the name of reason and humanity now yields to the dictatorship of politics masquerading as culture, as though the nation and its institutions were a tribe, rather than a republic and any unapproved remark understood as a defection from an established cultural order. There may be some relief in realizing that the attacks on free speech in the name of culture have a history of their own. A history which from time to time has gained a measure of temporary credibility, only to have its underlying folly pull it back out to sea. The puritans of Massachusetts Bay<\/a> were confident enough of their culture to insist that any deviation from it was simply a departure from accepted truth and toleration of that infidelity would only sow doubt an confusion among the true believers who needed no further truth. He that is willing to tolerate any religion wrote, Nathaniel Ward<\/a> in 164or discrepancy way of religion besides his own unless matters merely indifferent either doubts his own or is not sincere of it. Supporters of the alien and sedition act were no less confident in the axioms of their political culture, likewise felt no need to learn anything from what they regarded as palpable error. Truth has but one side and listening to error and falsehood is indeed a strange way to discover truth, wrote the pennsylvania lawyer, alexander addison, what might have passed a parody of rouses princeton lecture. Contempt and fear of free political speech were also the principle characteristics of american slaverys defenders who also believed that they represented a culture of sorts, based this time on race. In 1835 postmaster general aim most kendall yielded to demand by slave holders to sensor abolitionist materials from the u. S. Mail and justified his decision by appealing to Cultural Values<\/a> over political liberty about. We owe an obligation to the laws, kendall said, but a higher one to the community in which we live. And if a former be perverted so as to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them. So what we deal with today in the confusion of politics and culture, as an, an excuse for suppressing speech is not new, but todays cultured despisers of free speech are not merely victims of a semantic confusion of culture and politics. And this is what leads to the second stage of this new strategy of oh throw. Overthrow. A second stage says there is nothing which is legitimately political anymore. That all political speech really is cultural and thus can be severely regulated without any reference to the First Amendment<\/a>. In fact the First Amendment<\/a> becomes a dead letter. The gene ology of this second stage is long and begins with karl marx or, rather with the italian marxist antonio gramsky. He believed that marx had missed an important detail in describing how the working class should one fine day overthrow the capital it ruling class marx designed the working class oppressed by the political and economic power of the european political ruling classes. Gramsky believed that matters were worse than that the working class is oppressed he said not only by the political and economic power of the european ruling classes but by ruling class culture which entices an persuades the working class to adopt the Cultural Values<\/a> and attitudes of their rulers. Political revolution therefore would have to be about the overthrow of that culture first. Gramsys ideas won their biggest following of americans of the new left in the 1960s. Under the plea of free speech complained herbert markusa, the doyan of the new left, tolerance is extended to policies, conditions and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because the tolerance expressed in such impartiality serves to minimize or even absolve prevailing intolerance and suppression. This is practically indistinguishable from the plea of ward and addison and kendall but it reclothes that plea in the more appealing garb of the oppressed and disadvantaged. The idea that all political speech really is cultural does however allow us to see a bright line connecting the attacks on prospeech with the craze of monument removals began in may in new orleans and peaked since the Charlottesville Riot<\/a> in august. On one level rage against monuments may seem like a exercise in purely cultural criticism, especially if the monuments are examples of bad taste. Think of the rocky statue on the steps of the museum of art. [laughter] but in the world of marxist ideology after gramsky, culture absorbs politics. Americans the confederate statues and charlottesville have been at the eye of this storm can not be merely statues or merely cultural artifacts in the usual sense of the word culture. Confederate memorials on these terms and were never and are never less than what one fervent history professor at the university of North Carolina<\/a> described as, a campaign to paint the southern cause in the civil war as just and slavery as a benevolent institution, and made a very pointed state about the rule of white supremacy. No, actually, the monuments didnt do that. Actually, it was the laws of the jim crow era that did that. No one has yet shown that general lee descended from his monumental horse in shore lotsville to burn crosses alongs the blue ridge at night. What is cultural only becomes literally threatening and what offense, what is offensive only becomes literally lethal when it is translated into regulations. By the same token however, removals of offensive speakers or offensive public art become more than merely sympathetic and pitying responses to bad taste. They are a practical and aggressive strategy, under the cover of appeals to cultural offense. For suppressing political disagreement. And since the goal of the dissent is the destabilization of a political order, it should come as no surprise that the cultural rage of the Confederate Monument<\/a> activists often shades over into furious condemnations of the entirety of american history. It is not merely confederate generals who have become targets. Christchurch in alexandria, virginia, decided last month to remove the plaque marking the pew once occupied by George Washington<\/a> because it might make some visitors feel unsafe or unwelcome. Student activists at the university of wisconsin at madison campaigned in 2016 to decolonize our campus around a statue of Abraham Lincoln<\/a> which was deemed belittling because lincoln, according to one of the organizers, owned slaves and ordered the execution of native men. Nor is it likely to stop even with american history. In may as the new orleans confederate statues were being brought down, even a statue of joan of arc was spraypainted with, tear it down. Joan of arc . This is to cloud understanding with words. It is to perform what Michael Polania<\/a> called a moral inversion, a intellectual juggling act in which we invoke the language of cultural offense as a stratgem for silencing political dissent. Do not be deceived. Culture is culture and politics is politics. And we are in deep trouble when one absorbs the other. But let us not be simplistic. Carolyn rouse is certainly correct in one respect, culture does influence speech. There is some speech which is rude and some which is foolish and Cultural Values<\/a> encourage borish people to censor their rudeness and their foolishness. Even Oliver Wendell<\/a> holmes, the author of abrams decision recognized the serious public harm that can result from someone falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. But what rouse and the gramskins ignore, culture and politics are really two different quantities. Cultural inhibitions are vague and consensual and easily liable to transgression and shifting. Politics is about laws, which involves crimes and punishments and which take time to implement and time to repeal. Again, culture becomes lethal only when power is invoked to the terminate the competition for cultural expression. Rouse is also correct to say that there are different arenas of speech. In the private sphere, one person can tell another person to stop gossipping or to stop demanding that the umpire be killed. Without that being a trespass on the First Amendment<\/a>. While in in the public sphere, a different start applies. The problem rouse does not address, the line separating the private sphere where the First Amendment<\/a> may not operate, and the public where it does is not always clear. For instance, rouse believes that hate speech has no place in the of university because it violates the culture of the university and believes that the university can act to suppress such hate speech without violating the First Amendment<\/a> because the university operates within the private sphere and can thus live by its own private rules. But the idea that the university is a private enclave that can establish the boundaries of the cultural and the political for itself is becoming less and less persuasive. For one thing, discouraging some forms of cultural speech in academia may be bad for academia is community of culture even if culture is not the province of the First Amendment<\/a> and especially if the discouragement comes not as a result of debate but before the debate is even begun. This would be the to introduce into the life of the University Something<\/a> akin to the spirit of the red queen. Sentence first, verdict afterward. But rouse is in even greater danger from the way that University Life<\/a> in modern america has long since left any precincts that could be called private or even communal. Once upon a time we could speak of private and of Public Higher Education<\/a> as two entirely different worlds. When we did, we took for granted that state authorized and state funded Higher Education<\/a> would be prevented from restricting or controlling academic speech. Since Public Higher Education<\/a> belonged to the public sphere, while private Higher Education<\/a> could do as it wished, however wisely or foolishly but the wall of separation between public and private Higher Education<\/a> has been eroding for the last half century. Funding from public sources now constitutes the bulk of Higher Education<\/a> resources in the United States<\/a> private as much as public. Whether government sub ven shuns for Research Programs<\/a> or vast influx of government guaranteed student loans. For all realistic purposes, the distinction between public and private Higher Education<\/a> has ceased to exist. With it, so has the assumption that there exists a private world of Higher Education<\/a> which is somehow exempt from the application of the First Amendment<\/a>. Ironically if it is hatefulness and hate speech, which the despisers of free speech want to target, then it is curious that some of the most vial examples of hateful speech have occurred within the very groves of presumably private colleges and universities, and, from those most committed to suppressing rather than expanding free speech rights. On november 12th, 2015, 150 black lives matter activists invaded the baker baryalai blairry at dartmouth, assaulting one female student, shouting to others in the library, and i will pause here to say that, as a respector of the culture of the union league of philadelphia, i will not entirely repeat the words that were used. Suffice it to say the activist shouted, bleep you, you filthy white bleeps. Bleep you, and your comfort and [bleep] you, you racist bleeps. This was a way of expressing solidarity with our brothers and sisters across the country who are staring terrorism and assault directly in the face. Dartmouth Colleges Office<\/a> of communications subsequently he released a statement affirming dartmouths loyalty to the principles of free speech, public protest, and inclusivety. However the college also declined to take any action against the library invasion because, there were no specific violations of the standards of conduct. Some standards. Some conduct. The dartmouth affair was swiftly followed bit demands of black voices incident at another presumably private university, duke. Where the target shifted from intimidating students to intimidating faculty. Among the demands was the requirement that professors will be in danger of losing their jobs and nontenured track faculty will lose tenure status if they perpetuate hate speech that threatens the safety of students of color. They will also be liable if the discriminatory attitudes behind the speech include potentially harm the academic achievements of students of color. This fall read colleges humanities 110 course, began with student demonstrations in the classroom which attack assistant professor Lucia Martinez<\/a> as a race traitor, and at this antiblack and ableist. Driving her to admit that i am scared to teach courses on race, gender or sexuality or even texts that bring these issues up in any way. Im at a loss as to how to begin to address it, especially since many of these students dont believe in history or objective facts. The atmosphere was even more intimidating at reed when a guest speaker was shouted down with, bleep this sis white bitch. Sis, being shorthand for sis gendered or people that identify with their birth sex and bleep your transphobia. I would like to be able to say that College Students<\/a> will sometimes simply be College Students<\/a> and walk away. But i have some difficulty understanding these dam examples of speechsilencing as anything but hateful and even more difficulty understanding why they are tolerated within institutions where the boundaries between public and private have long since zigzagged away into the distance. When the habit of moral inversion becomes this commonplace in institutions which, like it or not, have become the narrow straights through which young adults must pass in order to gain admission to economic opportunity, we may depend upon seeing this habit replicated in the Larger Society<\/a> the only consolation to be drawn, and it is not one to rejoice in, is that the activists who are today the most relentless in their demand, will be the first ones sent to the wall by the nextwave of activists they will have spawned. Last month the university of california at berkeley, the home of the 1960s free speech movement, was slated to host a free speech week, featuring the sensational listic altright provocateur milo yiannopoulos. An event had to be canceled by its response also, citing extraordinary pressure and resistance, if not outright hostility from the universitys administration. There is no question in my mind that yiannopoulos represents one of the poorest imaginable occasions for free speech but the real issue was stated with admirable clarity by a berkeley sidewalk chalk artist, who wrote simply, free speech kills. I am moved to say from a very different angle, that indeed free speech does kill, which is why James Madison<\/a> was so determined to protect it. It kills stupidity, sloth, corruption, smallmindedness, pride, overconfidence, and selfrighteousness. Free speech embarasses, disrupts and exposes. And therein lies its real offense. Moreover, the genuinely oppressed as opposed to the hustlers of faux outrage, have always known freedom of speech to be their best friend. Witness frederick douglas. Liberty is meaningless, douglas said in 1860 where the right to put aer ones thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That of all rights is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities and powers found in injust is and wrong are sure to tremble if men are allowed to reason of righteousness of temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery can not tolerate free speech. Five years of its exercise would banish the Auction Block<\/a> and break every chain in the serf. Or witness george orwell. If liberty means anything, it is the right to tell people people what they do dot want to hear. Witness benjamin frankly, without freedom of thought, and freedom of public liberty without freedom of speech. Witness john milton. Give me the liberty to know, to put aer and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties. Witness even the pregramski, rose luxembourg. Freedom is exclusively for freedom for one who thinks differently, all that is instructive, wholesome, purifying in Political Freedom<\/a> depends on this essential characteristic. Argue with them if you like. But do not expect me to believe that freedom of speech is some disguised puppetry of the powerful. It is to the contrary an indispensable ingredient for preventing tyrannies. Tyrannies be they of the left or the right. Be they in the name of the father land, the vok, or the workers. There are always two Great Questions<\/a> to be asked at such moments of crisis, who is to blame, what is to be done. We have seen how many hands are soiled with blame, for the present crisis of the First Amendment<\/a>. But what is to be done . The great instinct of humanity, even when facing catastrophe, is to do nothing rather than something. But we will not make ourselves safe by doing nothing. Or, by doing as the green grocer described by havel in his great 1978 essay, the power of the powerless. A green grocer who every morning during soviet rule in Eastern Europe<\/a> hung out a sign, workers of the world unite . It was a slogan which the green grocer knew was untrue, havel wrote, but which he hung out anyway because these things must be done in order to get along in life and guarranty him a relatively tranquil life in harmony with society. But this havel warned only allowed the regulators to conceal from the green grocer and the green grocer to con sale from himself the low foundation of his obedience. The ultimate tragedy of the green grocer though is that he does not need to lie like this to himself. He can choose to live in truth and truth, said havel is a back bacteriological weapon, utilized when are ripe by a single civilian to disarm a entire division. So we return to the question, what is to be done. Three things at least force themselves on us. First make common cause. In his new book, the once and future liberal, the reflective mark lila warns people of his own left persuasion, not to be seduced by the air horns and pepper spray of the silencers. We are all voices in a democratic chorus of citizens, pleads little ila. People on the left must stop thinking of themselves as the vanguard of a movement whose goal is to replace argument with taboo, and run conservative political speakers off campus in a purging ritual. I entertain a gal lax of disagreements with mark on specific policies and politics and points but on the Common Ground<\/a> of citizen, he and i are flesh of the same flesh and bone of the same bone, and we must seek each other out. Here is another example of common cause. This fall 15 distinguished academics from yale, princeton, and harvard, including princetons Robert George<\/a> and john lon der began, harvards adrian vermuel, yales david galutner, published a letter of advice for the class of 2021, urging newlyarrived students to remember that the Central Point<\/a> of a College Education<\/a> is to seek truth and to learn the skills and the acquire the virtues necessary to be a lifelong truthseeker. And princeton president , christopher icegruber in his remarks at the universitys opening exercises on september 10th, insisted that independent thinking is at the heart of the liberal Arts Education<\/a> and rests on a careful and respectful engagement with views very different from your own. The layers reference for Free Expression<\/a> which under lie the First Amendment<\/a> are deep in American Life<\/a> but that depth can not being felt unless on all hand americans of democratic will set aside their partisanships for a moment, and trust each other enough as citizens to say the outrages against free speech must end. Second among the things that must be done, defund. The antifree speech activists are not great in numbers, but have deep wells of Financial Support<\/a> through foundations to which you and your firms are often asked innocently to contribute. To the extent these organizations are private entities, they have a exactly the freedom for which i plead, to state their mind, but the institutions of Higher Education<\/a> where the most visible suppressions of free speech are not, at least in any meaningful sense of the term. In todays financial environment, they are acutely responsive to the slightest puff of philanthropic or legislative disapproval. Of the 40 biggest university endowments, 35 experienced declines in 2016. Even at a time when the overall market rose by 13 . As a whole, university and College Endowments<\/a> shrank across the boards by 2 . Middlebury college, suffered a 9. 1 in its endowment value. Dartmouth lost 4. 1 . While reed colleges modest endowment lost 5. 4 . By the end of 2017, Moodys Investment Services<\/a> predicted that the closure rate of small colleges could easily triple over that of the last decade. These are not, in other words, institutions which can afford to ignore inquiry into their patterns of speech suppression. It is time to press on that weakness. This is not a pleasant recommendation for those whom Auld Lang Syne<\/a> appeals to the alma mater are reason for writing annual contributions. I ask only whether Auld Lang Syne<\/a> and all mamatter weigh heavily than the First Amendment<\/a>. Were not talking about merely embarrassing frat boy behavior or previous sore real excentrist. Were talking about orchestrated campaigns to the assault the fundamental liberties of the american republic. Tolerated by campus administrators, in equal measure fear confrontations with student activists as a threat to their Career Advancement<\/a> and who hope no news of their cravenness leaks out to the press and to the alumni. Target your giving as intelligently and purposefully as you target your personal investing. Stand with those who stand for free speech. Defund those who will not. And do not pass by on the other side. Finally, act. The stakes here are not minor ones. On october 4th, black lives matter activists stormed a stage at william and mary, a public virginia institution, where the American Civil Liberties<\/a> unions Claire Guthrie<\/a> yega was about to speak on students and the First Amendment<\/a>. They drowned out her with cries of, aclu, you protect hitler too. And the revolution will not uphold the constitution. Well, it surely will not. But you must. I have no regard, for either the fanatics of the neonazi right or the new red guards of the antifa left. What i do know is that both rejoice in the death of free speech and so both have raised their hand against the laws that have guaranteed us the exercise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When you see and hear such attacks on free speech, speak, write, stand, rebuke, testify it is too important for you like havels green grocer, to make meaningless noises in the hope of being spared yourself. And by the same token, when you see foolish people parading foolish ideas about race, or gender, or equality, ideas which reason and truth cry out against, show again by how you respond, that even under the greatest of provocations, no one is authorized in the great forum of the republics life to silence another. The strongest retort to an offensive speaker is an empty room. The strongest retaliation to a neonazi parade is a curb full of people turning their backs. Is this merely a foolish sentimentality on my part . I do not think so. And i do not speak now as a white man seeking to excuse the stupidities of other white men. Or as an academic, eager as we in the professorat t are to foul his own professional nest to tell stories of academic folly out of school. I do not even now speak as an american but as a friend to all disfranchised humanity in the everlasting war between commoners and kings. Which is why i say, when the black maskers finally feel emboldened enough to come with nooses and baseball bats, whether for Charles Murray<\/a> or Bret Weinstein<\/a>, or carolyn rouse, i say, take me first. When they come for the pentacostal bakers, for the mormons, for the jews, for the catholics, for the atheists, i say, take me first. When they come for you, my friends, if i am still here to say it, i will say take me first that is the answer of James Madison<\/a>, of the First Amendment<\/a>, and only worthwhile answer of the free spirit. Thank you. [applause]","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia903103.us.archive.org\/14\/items\/CSPAN2_20180209_165500_Author_and_Historian_Allen_Guelzo\/CSPAN2_20180209_165500_Author_and_Historian_Allen_Guelzo.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20180209_165500_Author_and_Historian_Allen_Guelzo_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240630T12:35:10+00:00"}