The Da Christi Code: UC Berkeley Chancellor’s “Free Speech” Email Decoded
by Simon Rogghe
On Wednesday August 23rd, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ issued a second email, “doubling down” on her commitment to “free speech.” Let there be no mistake: what passes for “free speech” in the current political climate is in fact hate speech and white supremacist ideology.
In order to lift the veil of fog Christ casts on the issue of “free speech,” shrouding the truth as to whose interests UC Berkeley’s administration is really serving, I will address the points of Christ’s email line by line:
“This fall, the issue of free speech will once more engage our community in powerful and complex ways.”
There is nothing complex about it: the UC Berkeley
administration refuses to take a stance for truth and justice and
is blatantly catering to white supremacy.
“Events in Charlottesville, with their racism, bigotry, violence and
mayhem, make the issue of free speech even more tense.”
“Tense” is not the word. The right word would be lethal.
“The law is very clear; public institutions like UC Berkeley must
permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to
speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view. The
United States has the strongest free speech protections of any
liberal democracy; the First Amendment protects even speech
that most of us would find hateful, abhorrent and odious, and the
courts have consistently upheld these protections.”
This comes straight from the first paragraphs of the ACLU
website:
However, Christ fails to mention that “the First Amendment does not
protect behavior on campus that crosses the line into targeted harassment or threats, or that creates a pervasively hostile environment for vulnerable students,” which, obviously, after the events in Charlottesville, is the case in the current climate.
Moreover, even if the law protects hate speech, the Chancellor of a university such as UC Berkeley should have the moral fiber to condemn said hate speech openly and straightforwardly.
“But the most powerful argument for free speech is not one of
legal constraint — that we’re required to allow it — but of value.”
Again, this comes straight from the ACLU website. It is doubtful,
however, that confrontation with riots and physical violence can be sold as “value” to students and parents forking out ever-increasing amounts of tuition.
“The public expression of many sharply divergent points of view
is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a
university. The philosophical justification underlying free speech,
most powerfully articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book On
Liberty, rests on two basic assumptions.”
This is an arbitrary example of just one philosopher’s opinion.
The philosopher Karl Popper who lived during the 1930’s and
40’s (unlike John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) who had no experience
with modern-day totalitarianism), had a different viewpoint, which
he expressed as “The Paradox of Tolerance” in The Open Society
and Its Enemies Vol. 1:
“Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to
defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
In other words, in order for a society to remain tolerant and free it must be intolerant of intolerance.
“The first is that truth is of such power that it will always
ultimately prevail; any abridgement of argument therefore
compromises the opportunity of exchanging error for truth.”
Such a naively optimistic statement may have been prevalent in the
“we shall overcome” mindset of the 1960’s, but it
does not hold up in history.
It should not take a Holocaust for truth and justice to prevail in the end.
“The second is an extreme skepticism about the right of any
authority to determine which opinions are noxious or abhorrent.
Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own
speech vulnerable to it.”
In fact, it is up to an authority to determine this. It is called
Human Rights. Without these, we would still be living under
Absolute Monarchy. Moreover, when it comes to basic human
dignity, there is no need for an authority “to determine which
opinions are noxious or abhorrent.”
Some opinions blatantly fly in the face of humanity, and we, as humans, are equipped to discern wrong from right — unless said authority deliberately tries to disable our innate moral judgment by invoking slippery slope arguments of relativity and confusion.
“Berkeley, as you know, is the home of the Free Speech
Movement, where students on the right and students on the left
united to fight for the right to advocate political views on
campus. Particularly now, it is critical that the Berkeley
community come together once again to protect this right. It is
who we are.”
The free speech movement was born out of leftist motives: “The
Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a college campus
phenomenon inspired first by the struggle for civil rights
and later fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War.”
Let’s not re-write history, shall we?
“Nonetheless, defending the right of free speech for those whose
ideas we find offensive is not easy. It often conflicts with the
values we hold as a community — tolerance, inclusion, reason
and diversity. Some constitutionally-protected speech attacks
the very identity of particular groups of individuals in ways that
are deeply hurtful.”
The “constitutionally-protected speech” Christ refers to does not
only attack minorities and particular groups or individuals. It
attacks the freedom of us all.
“However, the right response is not the heckler’s veto, or what
some call platform denial. Call toxic speech out for what it is,
don’t shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the
narrative that universities are not open to all speech. Respond to
hate speech with more speech.”
More speech indeed, until reason and justice are drowned out by
all the noise, and the Tower of Babel we once held to be
civilization crumbles to oblivion.
“We all desire safe space, where we can be ourselves and find
support for our identities. You have the right at Berkeley to
expect the university to keep you physically safe.”
But don’t ask for anything more. Any requests for ethical
leadership and moral courage shall be unequivocally denied.
“But we would be providing students with a less valuable
education, preparing them less well for the world after
graduation, if we tried to shelter them from ideas that many find
wrong, even dangerous.”
Once again, Christ refuses to take a principled position.
White supremacist ideology is not a conglomerate of ideas that “many” find wrong. It has no place in a free democracy.
“We must show that we can choose what to listen to, that we can
cultivate our own arguments and that we can develop inner
resilience, which is the surest form of safe space. These are not
easy tasks, and we will offer support services for those who
desire them.”
I wonder how much “inner resilience” the victims in the
concentration camps had to cultivate before being sent off to the
gas chamber.
“This September, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos have both
been invited by student groups to speak at Berkeley. The
university has the responsibility to provide safety and security for
its community and guests, and we will invest the necessary
resources to achieve that goal.”
So the university’s responsibility to “its community and guests,”
also invoked in an earlier email by Christ, really extends to groups
inviting white supremacists, their guests being the white
supremacists invited to speak.
“If you choose to protest, do so peacefully. That is your right,
and we will defend it with vigor.”
Only not as vigorously as the previous lengthy paragraphs defending
the alt-right.
“We will not tolerate violence, and we will hold anyone
accountable who engages in it.”
This (implicit threat?) seems a bit misdirected. It is not the
counter-protesters who engage in violence. It is the hordes of
“free speech” ralliers who come armed to the teeth ready to fight.
“We will have many opportunities this year to come together as a
Berkeley community over the issue of free speech; it will be a
free speech year. We have already planned a student panel, a
faculty panel and several book talks. Bridge USA and the Center
for New Media will hold a day-long conference on October 5;
PEN, the international writers’ organization, will hold a free
speech convening in Berkeley on October 23. We are planning
a series in which people with sharply divergent points of view will
meet for a moderated discussion. Free speech is our legacy,
and we have the power once more to shape this narrative.”
Yes, let us all redefine free speech while singing Kumbaya
around a bonfire of books, wreathing garlands of swastikas.
The UC Berkeley administration has a long-standing tradition of siding with the establishment.
Should we conclude, then, that the new Chancellor’s vision of higher eduction looks anything like this?
Or shall we remember the truth about the Free Speech movement and use our reason to fight this deliberate sowing of fog and confusion?
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