Free speech stuff

Random stuff, connected by the Administration's assault on free speech and the refusal of many to recognize or acknowledge it for what it is.

1) Good statement from J Street criticizing the Trump Administration for using "fighting antisemitism" as pretext for attacks on immigrants and universities and on constitutional protections, especially free speech. It echoes the not in our name theme that many in the Jewish community have pushed.

2) I see a telling disconnect between how people (especially Jews) view the detention of Rumeysa Ozturk and the detention of Mahmud Khalil. Many people see Ozturk as a free speech problem--agents seized her for core First Amendment activity of writing an anodyne newspaper op-ed. But they view Khalil as purely a due process problem--seizing and deporting him is fine, so long as they give him process prior to deporting; no one acknowledges that the government seized him for core First Amendment activity of protesting. (This was the ADL position--give him process, but thank you for protecting delicate students from pro-Palestine speech). Even if you accept that Khalil violated some campus rules in those protests, the government does not revoke green cards for minor property violations; the special attention to him arises from the message underlying those violations. One cannot distinguish the underlying speech problem from these cases, at least under U.S. free speech law.

3) NYU canceled a speech by Johanne Liu, former president of Doctors Without Borders, apparently fearing her talk would be perceived as anti-Trump and antisemitic. The last decade has been filled with people insisting that the greatest to free speech comes from a university canceling or disinviting speakers (it is a key metric in FIRE's free speech report card) or otherwise interfering with their ability to speak and be heard without interruption. Those who do not like what the speaker says should sit quietly and politely listen, perhaps asking a challenging (but polite) question in Q&A. Apparently that applies when the objecting person is a queer sophomore wanting to avoid feeling othered by the speaker--not when the objecting person is the President of the United States supported by masked ICE agents. I pick on FIRE a lot, but I want to hear what they have to say on this.