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Penny M's avatar

How are you better on Substack than Twitter? That's just unfair. This is one of the more enjoyable defenses of the concept of free speech I've read in a while.

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Kees Manshanden's avatar

While I agree with you that CMU should defend free speech, and it shouldn't make a difference if the speech is vile, I don't think the CMU statement is weak sauce. It shows that they'll defend free speech even when it's nasty.

Emphasising the nastiness of the free speech you'll defend can make the defense stronger. When the ACLU defended the Nazis in the Skokie case, they issued a pamphlet: "Why the American Civil Liberties Union Defends Free Speech for Racists and Totalitarians". By showing that they'll even defend racists, they showed that they took free speech seriously.

The abstract statement "Free expression is core to the mission of higher education. We have no other comment." is not that powerful. I imagine they also think social justice is core to the mission of higher education. How would CMU respond if those core mission statements collide? You need to show that free expression trumps social justice.

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