Liberty University Plays Censorship The Lefty Way
Responding to the group’s dissent from the teaching of Liberty University’s sponsoring religious group, the Liberty University administration has stripped funding and revoked recognition from the campuses College Democrats club.
Of course, because Liberty is a private university, it is not bound by the First Amendment. But anyone who takes free speech more seriously than just a legal technicality has to be concerned about the reasoning they are using. Even religious schools should be able to recognize that God is not a partisan zealot and that their students should have the freedom to come to a personal understanding of God’s will in their lives in their own way, without the velvet hammer of the university administration coercing them into it.
Nonetheless, it is also suspicious that only now is this an issue of interest to the liberal and faux moderate blogosphere. Conservative student groups — including those at public universities — have been targeted for years for harassment, theft, vandalism, and other forms of discrimination. The reasons for the abuse has consistently been the dissent of those conservative groups from liberal ideological hegemony that dominates most college campuses. And even when administrations are not actively patricipating in the repression of conservatives through speech codes and ideologically biased funding rules, most administrations have shown themselves willing to stand idly by and deny targeted conservative groups the protections they eagerly extend to more politically correct associations. Sometimes, for example, left-leaning campus administrators effectively censor conservative speakers by allowing leftist groups of thugs to make threats of violence with the only consequence being the imposition of prohibitive “security fees” on their conservative victims. Yet one can search the major liberal and faux moderate sites of the blogosphere in vain for any discussion of those stories. But when conservatives sign on for the path blazed by the leftist thought police, suddenly then it is a major problem. One can almost — almost, but not quite — forgive Hot Air for their ambivalence.
Convenient.
Just so there is no misunderstanding, I will state my position clearly. Ideological discrimination is a betrayal of the basic values of any university, public or private, secular or religious. This is true regardless of whether the target is liberal or conservative. Liberty University’s action is indefensible.
One only wishes that the liberals and faux moderate out there would take a similarly blanket approach instead of only noticing when it is their own ox getting gored.
Details on speech codes and other forms of ideological repression against both left and right can be found at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education web site.
Big mistake by Liberty University
Liberty University is a private university, but it accepts federal funding. It cannot be shut down for freedom of speech violations, but it can be found ineligible to receive those funds in the future, which would be a massive crisis for the school.
If they truly are consistent in their reasoning, they would voluntary refuse the funding.
If that were a serious possibility, then there are many other private colleges that would already have lost their federal funding. As I said, the practice of censoring conservatives on campus has been a serious problem for a long time, and FIRE’s list includes quite a few private colleges among those doing so.
Until anti-conservative harassment and discrimination on campus starts receiving serious attention from liberals and/or the government, I don’t think it would be fair to single out Liberty for any form of actual punishment. They should be criticized (preferably by principled liberals who were also willing to look at the many problems on their own side as well instead of just opportunistic liberals and faux moderates exploiting this as yet another hypocritical partisan cudgel), but to actually punish them while giving anti-conservative censors a continuing pass would be manifestly unfair.
I’ve remarked elsewhere that I disagree with Liberty’s behavior. I agree, Jason, Liberty’s action is legal, but out of keeping with the whole concept of inquiry that underlies a place of higher education. I also agree with you – one of the most irritating things about this is the howls of protest from the usual voices of the leftists in the academy. These are the same crowd who don’t see anything wrong with Harvard (also a private university) getting rid of ROTC because they oppose the military’s practices; or speech codes that muzzle conservative speakers; or mandated diversity training, etc, and they are NOW offended that Liberty has done to the Democratic party club what the academic left has done to conservatives regularly for years. Once again, the embodiment of Nat Hentoff’s line about “Free speech for me, but not for thee” can be seen in the action of many supposedly educated professors.
I like what I heard a conservative speaker once say, “You have the right to speak, just not the right to be heard.” The idea that a somehow liberal slant in higher learning causes “security fees” to exclude conservative speaking is somehow the same as a school outright banning a major political party because of “trivial” differences. Note, I say trivial in that abortion and gay tolerance may seem somehow important to some, but if they truly understood the book they read, they would find that all works, either for “God” or for the “Devil” are the same. I think they should think about Zaccheus, who was a part of the local government at the time, and rather a vile character, even with the standards of today. His views were not attacked, the organization that he worked for was not banned. Instead the Christ came over to his house, to his place of power, and reached out to him with his heart.
The message of hate that I am reading, justified by claims of unfair treatment, is just lame. I never read the part of the Jesus’ messages that goes, “We should be mean and nasty to everyone that doesn’t agree with us.” or “force thy neighbor to follow your beliefs or else.” If you want to live in a world where only your beliefs exists, follow the examples of the orthodox Jewish community or to an even greater extreme, the Amish, but please don’t try to tell me how I should be to not offend your sensibilities or that government should reinforce your moral convictions. Live an example of how you think others should be, show me how God works though you, and by your example, you might help me to see the same God.
How is Liberty University Anti-Abortion when they are so willing to throw the baby out with the bath water?
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 5/23/2009, at The Unreligious Right
@Rico
We do not accept federal funding. Students may use federal financial aid to pay for school, however, we as an institution are not funded by the US government. -Admissions Counselor
You seem pretty adamant about this idea that conservatives are continually harassed at public universities…do you have any published incidences of this?
I go to a large public university in a blue state and I can honestly say that campus politics are split. I certainly don’t see bias one way or another. And at my “liberal” college all political/religious/nationalist groups are represented by the student association as long as the funding and interest is there. what LU has done is cowardly, and shows just how afraid that establishment is of the actual concept of liberty. its amusing to see any comparison being made to this outside of other fundamentalist christian colleges.
The FIRE web site I mentioned has a comprehensive database of free speech violations against both left and right on college campuses in the United States. Any review of that database will show a hugely disproportionate number of them target conservatives.
I would not say they are “continually harassed” — that was a misrepresentation of my argument, a typical tactic from liberals trying to brush away the issue rather than deal with it. I would, however, say that there exists a significant problem, the instigators are disproportionately self-identified liberals, and that trying to cover it up or attack the messengers only highlights it more.
I like how right-wingers blame the left even when one of their own right-wing institutions is in the wrong.
Please provide a list of private schools on the “left” that banned the Republican Club. Links would help, too.
This school “Liberty” cannot claim to be worthy of that name. This decision had nothing to do with liberty.
Seems Michigan Tech is RED:
Michigan Technological University has been given a speech code rating of Red.
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/states/MI
Funny how all/most of the state universities in Michigan are RED, yet the private conservative colleges aren’t even rate. No database ratings for Hillsdale, Kalamazoo or Calvin College.
Seems HC has some skeletons worthy of FIRE:
Seems there’s a similar trend in Virginia.
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/states/VA
If you looked around FIRE’s site before passing hasty judgment, you might have noticed their explanation — private colleges are not bound by the First Amendment and, therefore, FIRE often does not rate them. It has nothing to do with left/right. And they go out of their way to continue to cover and criticize those instances anyway, even without a rating:
It is noteworthy that even your evidence of free speech failures at Hillsdale came from FIRE’s web site. Thus, your attempt to criticize FIRE for failing to rate conservative colleges is pretty lame.
BTW, nice try changing the subject again, Rudi. You just can’t stick with any subject that is critical of liberals, can you? By your pattern, it ALWAYS has to be INSTANTLY changed to what amounts to “look over here — conservatives are worse”, as if the failures of conservatives constitute an all-purpose excuse for liberals to get away with anything they want forever and ever.
Lame. And if you keep it up, you’re just going to get your off-topic subject changes deleted and/or get yourself banned for your constant spamming.
I did root around FIRE before I made my comment. Why are private schools in Ohio and Virginia listed, but no Liberty,KC or Hillsdale. I also have personal experience with MCCC and John Bonnell and applaud their work on his behalf. But Bonnell would never make it through the back doors at KU or Hillsdale…
Myron, a summary of a few instances can be found here: http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/4990.html.
Read through the FIRE web site and you can find many, many, many more examples of harassment, discrimination, vandalism, speech codes, and other forms of ideological repression directed against any and all dissenters from liberal ideological hegemony.
Pretending the problem does not exist won’t make it go away and will, in fact, make both the problem and the resulting backlash worse.
Rudi,
I see you ignored the specific quotation I made from the FIRE web site explaining their policy.
I often find their coverage incomplete as well (it is based in self-reporting, so that limits their ability to be comprehensive in covering every single school), but there is no evidence of systemic bias in their coverage. FIRE defended Ward Churchill, for example. And FIRE has defended leftist students who appeal to FIRE for help with the exact same energy it defends conservative students. Also, it may be relevant to consider that the founding members of FIRE were a partisan Republican and a partisan Democrat.
And anyway, your whole line of attack here is irrelevant. Even if it were true that Hillsdale et al also violated free speech, how does that justify the proliferation of leftist speech codes and discrimination against conservatives that exists very broadly at state schools all across the country? Your attempts to change the subject just show that you are trying to cover it up rather than respond to it in a principled way. As long as it continues, that behavior pattern exposes you as a partisan leftist rather than a principled liberal. And the idea that conservatives have to be perfect before we are allowed to talk about liberals’ failings is ridiculously biased and dishonest.
Anyway, since surveys reveal that over 90% of college professors and administrators identify as either liberal or far left, even if it were assumed that conservatives and liberals were equally prone to ideological discrimination, that would make addressing it from the liberal side 9 times more significant an issue without even taking into account the fact that the liberal-dominated state schools are far larger than the small conservative colleges you are complaining about. At a minimum, it would justify resisting your continuing efforts to change the subject to focus exclusively on conservatives’ sins.
Jason I applaud and welcome both the ACLU and FIRE, but both have built in bias’. But why is the private schools like Hillsdale and Liberty ignored, yet private Case Western given a RED light? Just seems this points out a slight bias at FIRE, butr they are doing good work. I hope they continue fighting for Bonnell, but he should just retire…
Some of the problems are with schools being PC in regards to women, minorities and foreign students. The opening scene and the frat party pledges isn’t that far off…
Please read the explanation AGAIN, Rudi. Those colleges that specifically announce a commitment to some principles that trump free speech are not rated, but are still considered subject to criticism.
Those colleges, like Case Western and Macalester, which promise commitments to free expression and then publish other provisions that contradict that are vulnerable to both rating and criticism.
And some colleges aren’t rated simply because FIRE hasn’t gotten around to rating them yet. They might not be “ignored” as simply not rated YET.
But there is no evidence of a systemic ideological bias, as I said.
And even if there was, my point about the non-responsiveness of your usual attempts to change the subject continues to be true. Why is it that you are unable to tolerate criticisms of liberals without ALWAYS trying to change the subject to refocus exclusively on the alleged failings of conservatives? Seriously, I can’t think of a single instance where you have broken with this annoying, trollish pattern, and my base of experience with you runs back a couple of YEARS now.
BTW, “being PC with regards to women and minorities” is precisely the problem when that political correctness is enforced through a speech code. If free speech does not cover comments that dissent from the dominant ideology, what is the point of it existing at all? Also, when it becomes completely impossible to express an anti-abortion position without being deemed misogynist or to express a criticism of affirmative action without being called a racist, even provisions requiring mere “tolerance” can easily be perverted into sweeping tools of ideological conformity.
Read this on Bonnell:
http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/2003/11/from_two_of_joh.html
I really enjoyed his class, but he was offensive, crude and disgusting at times. But these remarks were in context and pertinent to the subject matter. The CM post points out how may complaints come from people who never sat in his class, just second hand comments taken out of context.
The Bonnell case appears to be a typical application of a speech code — intolerance driven by outside activists with a predetermined agenda and zero attention to the particular context of comments which they use as an excuse for a jihad.
While not ALL such codes are written and enforced by leftists, my experience working with this issue for many years indicates that a large majority of them are. (This is not surprising since over 90% of college professors and administrators identify as liberal or far-left.) Accordingly, any fair treatment of the issue will focus mostly on the problem as it comes from left-leaning sources.
If you had read the article I posted or, for that matter, found the old article I wrote on FIRE’s web site defending Ward Churchill, Rudi, you would have noticed that I do not exempt conservatives from criticism for their violations of free speech principles when they deserve it. I even took pains to note how Liberty appears to be violating its own religious principles as well as the general higher education commitment to free inquiry. But I do insist that anyone dealing with the issue acknowledge the fact that leftist censorship produces the majority of the cases.
And the ACLU’s record on this particular issue is mixed. They do not have FIRE’s record of defending cases from each side with equal vigor and they have, in fact, directly supported violations of free speech in some cases where those restrictions were targeted against conservatives (especially during the 1990s). In fact, FIRE was in part established in direct reaction to the refusal of the ACLU to uphold its own principles in some of these cases. Even if I were to concede that FIRE has a “slight” bias, the ACLU has often shown a blatant bias. (Here is a recent example of the ACLU’s failure to act in an ideologically unbiased fashion with regards to free speech issues.) There are some recent examples of the ACLU becoming more principled in recent days, so perhaps there is improvement.
Much more severe criticism of ideological bias can be applied to the AAUP and the Chronicle of Higher Education — they get very exercised about cases of academic freedom when the victim leans left, but they develop sudden blindness and deafness when the victims are conservatives.
But if you have a specific case of free speech infringement at Hillsdale or Calvin or whatever, I bet you that if you submit it to FIRE, it will receive the same treatment that it would if the ideological tables were reversed. In fact, I know this is true because I’ve seen FIRE do it, as in the case with Ward Churchill. The ACLU cannot boast a similar empirical record and, in fact, many of FIRE’s cases are cases that the ACLU refused to support or even to respond to at all.
The activists against Bonnell are puritans who object to his idiosyncratic ways. In this case it’s family values conservatives attacking a libertarian or liberal. When I took his class, he injected the perverse definition of Red Wings into the discussion of a short story back in the Reagan days. Bonnell is still their offending the puritans for his own amusement, and those who get his shtick. But Bonnell has done this for over 25 years.
I can’t dig up any first hand knowlege of any wrong doing at HC…
Agree with you on ACLU, but their overall body of work is outstanding…
Let’s see if FIRE goes after Liberty…
Jason – I’m a little lazy right now, so could you post a link or email those articles of yours at FIRE. When I get a chance I’d like to read those.
Rudi,
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Harvey Silvergate, a co-founder of FIRE, at a conference held in Philadelphia last summer. I can assure you, the guy considers himself a liberal, but has very deep misgivings about how “liberalism” has been behaving on college campuses nowadays.
The guy is a highly-ranked member of the ACLU, and has acknowledged there are two competing philosophies at that organization on what social justice is supposed to look like. Needless to say, Harvey has taken the side which holds that free speech is more fundamental than protecting certain groups from its effects.
We live in a time when the ideological split parallels liberal/conservative lines, but that’s simply incidental to our time in history. There was a time when conservatives stood on the opposing side of this view, particularly in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (which you can find on Wikipedia).
I do consider myself a very well-traveled conservative, and so I’ve naturally found FIRE to be an oasis of honesty about the dismal state of our liberties at institutions of higher learning. I’ve not yet met a liberal grad student who felt that she could not air her opinions above a whisper for fear of reprisal, but I’ve met many a conservative and libertarian student who fit that description.
…other interesting comments recently coming from Bill Maher, of all people:
What I find most disturbing in America today is the attacks against mostly conservative values.
We believe in God and want God to have a part in our lives, both privately and publicly….The response has become…God does not exist and even if he does he does not belong in politics and he does not belong in public therefore take YOUR god and shove him where the sun dont shine.
Unless of course your Muslim. Then we apologize for offending you because we do realize that YOU will cut off our fricken tongue for saying such a thing but those passive Christians will just sit quietly by and allow us to trash talk them.
Sex, Drug, Booze, Self Indulgence are our Motto. America must debase herself because we do not believe in personal responsibility. We believe that the pursuit of life liberty and happiness is above all our right and that anything that dares to stand in that way is of course blatantly wrong.
In short….the march to fascism …..or a national agenda of a godless America is powerful. It was predicted in the bible and it has preceeded the fall of every nation on earth from 4000 bc to 2000 AD.
There is always something that is the glue that holds a collective conglomeration of individuals together. Laws help. The constituion was a wise document but thru it all it takes even more then that.
That bonding element has always been Religion. But Religion stands opposed to Sex, drugs, booze, Gay rights, Abortion and personal debasement.
So it must go. Thus the lines are drawn…..War on Christians and apologies to Muslims who will cut your tongue off if you stand against them.
Smooth move exlax(America). Smooth move.
The owner of this site is a moderate conservative and a Muslim. I doubt he is properly covered in your sweeping characterization of Muslims. Did you intend to leave no exceptions in the above paragraph, or was that an error?
The owner of this site is a moderate conservative and a Muslim. I doubt he is properly covered in your sweeping characterization of Muslims. Did you intend to leave no exceptions in the above paragraph, or was that an error?
This remark was made in the context of the USA’s declaration of a war on Terror which is of course primarily concerned with Fundamental Muslim extremists. The ones that are the trouble makers.
The corollary was that the War by the left on Religion in America is that the left has declared war on the fundamental Extremist Christians within America. The ones that are the trouble makers.
The difference is that In America in todays climate it is okay to be at war with ANY Christian but that we are careful to make distinctions when we are at war with Muslims both within our borders and outside. The reason that I must conclude is that Muslim Fundamentalists….aka Terrorists will result to violence for their means while Christians will result to political influence hence there is no fear of one group while their is profound respect for the other.
That was my sole contention above.