College Speech Codes and the Neo-Puritans

While heads are turned toward the other scandals du jour, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has been hard at work trying to ram its Utopian vision of speech down the throats of colleges and universities. If students didn't read Orwell in high school, they get to live it in college.

Via FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,

In a letter sent yesterday [May 9, 2013] to the University of Montana that explicitly states that it is intended as "a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country," the Departments of Justice and Education have mandated a breathtakingly broad definition of sexual harassment that makes virtually every student in the United States a harasser while ignoring the First Amendment. The mandate applies to every college receiving federal funding—virtually every American institution of higher education nationwide, public or private. 

The letter states that "sexual harassment should be more broadly defined as 'any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature'" including "verbal conduct" (that is, speech). It then explicitly states that allegedly harassing expression need not even be offensive to an "objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation"—if the listener takes offense to sexually related speech for any reason, no matter how irrationally or unreasonably, the speaker may be punished. 

Why? Are they all a bunch of Puritans in Washington? Not likely. Rather, this reflects a neo-feminist political perspective that seeks to protect women from any feelings of sexual harassment. In other words, it's the feminist version of the delicate teacup rule, that women are entitled to go through life without their fragile eyes or ears being forced to suffer anything that they prefer not to see or hear.



At Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene offers a much deeper discussion of what is involved in the newspeak, and why it reflects no acquaintance whatsoever with the First Amendment. But in reading into the inanity of these rules, and the underlying notion of "equality" they purport to promote, I couldn't help but to draw an immediate connection to the Cyber Civil Rights movement promoted by Lawprof Danielle Citron, with the backing of the head feminist lawprof, Ann Bartow.

Ever the evil genius, Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Profs, who I'm sure comes to this symposium with an open mind, makes a pre-emptive attack in her opening post:

Many participatory sectors of the Internet are dominated by aggressive bullies, nasty haters and monetizing opportunists. It's hard to tell whether they constitute a numeric majority, but the geography of the Internet allows a small number of people to scorch vast swaths of earth with surprisingly little effort. There is no currently such thing as the "safe spaces on the web where those with unpopular views can exchange ideas without fear of retribution" that Frank Pasquale calls for. Not even here. The folks running this symposium decided not to facilitate comments on CCR related posts here at Concurring Opinions, but they have no control over the conversations that take place other places, which may be intractably linked to this blog via hyperlinks and search engine results. I'm doubtful that the architecture of the Internet can be changed to provide the benefits of connectivity without simultaneously facilitating engagement or intervention by bad actors.

By the mere act of linking to the CCR posts, others (myself included) are "aggressive bullies, nasty haters and monetizing opportunists."  Bartow's never been one to tolerate any opinions other than hers, and she is well rehearsed in the art of simultaneously painting herself the victim even as she lashes out.

The appeal of the rhetoric is self-evident. After all, who wants to be an aggressive bully or a nasty hater?  Or for that matter, who wants to be a sexual harasser on a college campus because he asked a girl on a date and was not only rejected, but criminalized.  The possibilities are endless.

As insane as the CCR movement seemed at the time, particularly in light of its frontal assault on otherwise well-established rights such as free speech, the imposition of campus speech codes is not only insidious in itself, but the precursor to clearing up the neo-feminist angst online. 

After all, if they teach the males while in college that they are sexual harassers based upon the feelings of any potential hearer or seer of their male nastiness, chances are pretty good that they will conform their conduct to avoid being labeled an outcast or criminal, and carry that conduct over to their use of the internet.  It may take time for the newspeak mindset to filter through male society, but the hope is it will happen.

And similarly, with the DOJ and DOE on board with the evisceration of free speech in the name of delicate feelings, it becomes a baby step to push this view of sensitivity into other areas of life.  The workplace is already a lost cause.  The internet is just down the road apiece.

Even though these campus speech codes may not seem to affect many of us directly, though it could very well affect our children, the failure to recognize where this is heading and how it may impact general perceptions of "propriety" when it comes to free speech now may well prove disastrous later.  Ten years from now, merely writing this post could spell a ten year mandatory minimum for me, though I suspect it will be digitally burned before any delicate eyes might see it and suffer unpleasant feelings.



 

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