University of Maryland President Darryll Pines has joined the ignoble line of educators and administrators enabling the growing anti-free speech movement on our campuses. Pines has defended the shouting down of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md) as exercising free speech as hecklers. He is dead wrong and the Board of Directors should address his inimical view of free speech in higher education. As for Raskin, it is an ironic but telling moment from a member of Congress who has supported censorship and consistently opposed efforts to investigate the silencing of those with opposing views.
I have been highly critical of Rep. Raskin on a number of issues, particularly his efforts to thwart investigations into censorship.
Pines terminated the event after protesters repeatedly interrupted his speech as part of the the Irving and Renee Milchberg Endowed Lecture series, titled “Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century.”
According to the Maryland Reporter, the protesters accused the Jewish legislator of being “complicit in genocide” and rebuffed his efforts to engage them in a dialogue on the issue. After efforts to resume his remarks, Pines finally ended the event early.
Rather than protect the right of Raskin to speak and others to hear his views, Pines offered only a mild criticism of the protesters as needing to be more civil but then insisted “what you saw play out actually was democracy and free speech and academic freedom.” He added that, “from our perspective as a university, these are the difficult conversations that we should be having.”
No it is not as difficult as you suggest. These protesters stopped the free exchange of ideas in a university event. They prevented opposing views from being spoken or heard. In so doing, they blocked the critical condition needed for higher education in allowing an exchange of ideas. Heckling is an effort to stop discussion, not to engage in discussion.
Clearly, the “difficult conversation” for Pines is to enforce university policies and protections for free speech. It takes courage and principle. It requires administrators to have the commitment to suspend or expel students who disrupt classes or events. They have every right to protest outside or to ask difficult questions. They do not have a right to prevent speech.
As for Raskin, he is now the victim of the anti-free speech movement that he has helped fuel in Congress. In my forthcoming book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I discuss this pattern as the anti-free speech movement turns on politicians and professors who once supported them. Others spent years in conspicuous silence as others were targeted, but now have grown alarmed as their own views are declared “harmful” and “triggering.”
As discussed today in relation to a controversy at Tulane, universities continue to enable this movement by failing to enforce policies at events or refusing to punish those responsible. Pines is not alone in his view that this is just an exercise of free speech. Academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech. CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,” Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech.
In the incident last year of a federal judge being shouted down at Stanford Law School, Dean Jenny Martinez later apologized and then released a letter with Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne that reaffirmed the commitment to free speech, but did not commit to holding the students accountable for their disruption.
Dean Martinez later issued another letter with a strong defense of free speech and declared that all students (including the victims of the disruption) would be required to attend a free speech appreciation session. However, she declined any action against the students responsible for the disruption. That is a familiar pattern at universities.
The question is whether the Board of Regents for the Maryland system will call Pines to account for his view of free speech.
Query: why are blacks in positions of power so dumb, principle- challenged and out of step as compared to blacks not in positions of power or aren’t we supposed to notice? Yes Fani, Alvin and Letitia were looking at you. Feel free to substitute “Caucasians” “Asians” “Eskimos” or any other ethnic group for “blacks.” It might be a hint to the answer but it doesn’t explain how they got there. DEI explains a that.
Ain’t karma a bl+c#? Raskin is close to as rotten as schiff. I was brainwashed by the pledge, so there is no hope for me, to shut-up, and not call them out for their #UnAmerican activities. The entire j6 commi-tee, would make putin glow with pride to see the kgb tactics used to get Trump. Only one nominee colluded with russia, in 2016, and it was hrc. “end rant”
On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
Thomas Jefferson
Former war hero and advisor to presidents – Jack Valenti – solved this censorship problem several decades ago.
Valenti realizing that the federal government has no censorship authority under the First Amendment made a deal with private business and the federal government.
Valenti empowered parents (private citizens) with censorship authority, since government officials have no such authority under our First Amendment.
Valenti helped create the parental ratings system for movies and television shows (ie: G, PG, NC-17, etc).
This system could easily be used for social media and even enhanced with pre-programmed viewing filters (controlled by parents).
Now you get it. The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional. Congress is severely limited and restricted in its ability to tax and regulate. Individuals are maximally free. Private industry must self-regulate to preclude deleterious litigation that may drive them into insolvency. The American people enjoy rights and freedoms that allow them to function without governmental interference, aka dictatorship, as free private property entities in the free markets of the free private sector. That was the whole idea of the American Founders and Framers. “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” was Karl Marx and his fellow traveler, Crazy Abe” Lincoln’s idea.
Raskin’s speech needed more cancer.
This is great! Jaimie Raskin is like one of those true believers in the 1930’s USSR. An amoral thug who would turn in his neighbors or even family to the NKVD and then be shocked when taken to the basement of the Kremlin to have a bullet put into his head while still asserting that only if Stalin knew what his people are doing to such a patriot and outstanding member of the communist party he would be saved. May worse things happen to Raskin; he is an authoritarian thug who despises the American Constitution (as did his father)
Could not happen to a more deserving individual.
I am no Jamie Raskin fan. I cry zero tears for him because as far as I am concerned, chickens came home to roost. Maybe he starts to understand, which I doubt. Politicians never learn.
However, what happened is both wrong and shameful. The idea of shutting down a discussion in an open intellectual forum is just wrong. Anti-intellectualism is not a cure to an intellectual debate. It nothing more than ignorance running wild. He may have it coming, but it does not make it right.
I can only hope he takes this lesson to heart.
Fat chance of Raskin ever doing the right thing.
As Pines said, it may have been “democracy and free speech and academic freedom” in action. But it lacked all civility, courtesy and respect.
Remember, this is the generation that scolds everyone that we must show respect. Respect for people of color, the alphabet community, indigenous peoples, you name it.
But show any civility, courtesy, or respect for anyone *they* disagree with? Fuggedaboutit.
I might agree if only Jamie Raskin would openly agree to support the idea that conservative voices should be allowed on campus and be heard instead of silenced by the very protesters that greeted him. To Date, he’s not willing to do that, and until he does, I say to the students of Maryland University, and their president, keep on keeping on!!!!
When Raskin was visibly suffering from his cancer and cancer treatments several years ago, he had my sympathies.
However, in the period since then (2023-24) I have found Raskin to be almost as difficult to agree with as I continue to disagree with Rep. Schiff.
And yet, shouting Raskin down at the Univ. of Maryland event is unacceptable, and those who did so (students and outside agitators) deserve a reasonable punishment.
Smells like gander sauce to me 😉
“MacDonald is seen interrupting the event [at Tulane].” “[T]he shouting down of Rep. Jamie Raskin [at U Maryland].” And then: “[T]he ignoble line of educators and administrators enabling” that rotten behavior.
Bratty children raised without limits and boundaries become uncivilized college students acting without limits or boundaries. Who are then cheered by academics who reject limits and boundaries.
Having dealt with that type for some 30 years, one thing is predictable: Their behavior is utterly unpredictable, and they are capable of anything.
Try a little plagiarism? Can I get away with it.
Deface posters, disrupt events, occupy buildings? Why not. There are no consequences.
Concoct a hoax to frame your own students for rape? Let’s try that.
A little wilding, that kills an innocent teenager? Oh, well. It’s anything goes.
Teens carjacking, shoplifting, assaulting en masse? Who are you to say that’s beyond the limit?
WHEN DO ACTUAL AMERICANS GET THEIR FREEDOM BACK?
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The Department of Agriculture is unconstitutional.
Land-grant universities, such as the University of Maryland, are unconstitutional.
Congress has no authority, per Article 1, Section 8, to tax for anything other than debt, defense, and general Welfare.
Congress has no authority to tax or otherwise provide for charity, or to distribute governmental assets as favor or charity.
Charity is a function of free people operating free enterprises that are conducted in free markets.
Not surprisingly, it was Karl Marx’s fellow traveler, Comrade General Secretary Abraham Lincoln, who created both through the vigorous and liberal application of brutal military force in the modality of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Ultimately, the singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court, which must have struck down Lincoln’s antithetical, communistic, illicit, and unconstitutional acts.
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“Land-grant university”
“A land-grant university (also called land-grant college or land-grant institution) is an institution of higher education in the United States designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890.[1]”
“Signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, the first Morrill Act began to fund educational institutions by granting federally controlled land to the states for them to sell, to raise funds, to establish and endow “land-grant” colleges.”
– Wiki
Indubitably Abraham Lincoln was a Brilliant Man, a Great American!
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Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858
Many people accepted the rumors spread by Douglas supporters that Lincoln favored social equality of the races. Before the start of the September 18 debate at Charleston, Illinois, an elderly man approached Lincoln in a hotel and asked him if the stories were true. Recounting the encounter later before a crowd of 15,000, Lincoln declared:[18]
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
He continued:
I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
– Robert Morgan, “The ‘Great Emancipator’ and the Issue of Race – Abraham Lincoln’s Program of Black Resettlement”
Akin to the liberation of the black man by Grant, Sherman, Custer and a few other Unionists in the name of equality and humanity. Their next step was to exercise mass extermination of the plains Indians.
What seems missing in many of the arguments presented is that what these “protesters “ present as free speech is not presentation of an opposing argument. It is unfounded screaming slogans, profanities and screaming insults throughout a presentation of an argument opposite their own. That is NOT free speech, it’s actually infringement of the presenters rights to free speech. These people should be immediately removed from the platform and no one should have a bull horn. If they persist they should receive their just rewards, a good old attitude adjustment session.