Slashdot Log In
Colleges Being Remade Into "Repress U"?
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 22, 2008 05:42 PM
from the don't-speak-out dept.
from the don't-speak-out dept.
The Nation has up a sobering article from its upcoming issue about how colleges and universities are being turned into homeland security campuses, in the name of preventing homegrown radicalization. Quoting: "From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention' — as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name — have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Not because people can (sort of) speak freely there, but colleges are banning free speech everywhere else.
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreso, it'd be better if we had this article from a newsworthy source...not an article as blatantly partisan as the Nation. (For the record Reason magazine or National Review would be wrong, too)
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:4, Insightful)
funny, I was always taught my freedom of speech was meant to protect me from idiots who would label me a jackass because my opinion differed from theirs.
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Insightful)
You misunderstand the point of the Bill of Rights, as do most modern readers. The point was to explicitly limit the powers of the federal government. Perversely, I think that it helped to change the focus of the Constitution and our view of the government's powers from the original intent, namely that the government had no powers except those explicitly granted by the Constitution, to the current mess where if the Constitution doesn't explicitly say no, then all bets are off. And even if it does say no, just ask the 9 robed wonders for a waiver (see McCain-Feingold for a perfect example).
This was why the original supporters argued that the BoR was unnecessary. The Constitution never said that the government could regulate speech, so of course such laws would be unconstitutional. Sadly, the supporters of the BoR were probably right, and the existence of the amendments has probably slowed down the growth in the power of government.
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Interesting)
The real point of the Bill of Rights, in case you don't know, was to allow the people of the United States the ability to revolt in case the government turned bad. Seriously, that's what the Bill of Rights was about: preventing the government from quelling a general rebellion.
If you don't believe me, go back and reread the amendments in this light. During the American Revolution, the British government made laws about who could meet with whom. The made it illegal for people to have guns. They quartered soldiers in people's houses. They searched whoever and whatever they wanted. Bla bla bla... the point is that the British government did every one of those things with the intent of quelling rebelling and keeping people in line.
So the point was largely the writers of the Constitution saying, "Remember everything we went through to get free from Britain? Let's make sure that if our own government ever gets as bad as that, they won't legally be able to stop us from rebelling against it like we rebelled against England."
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a country whose government allows skinheads/KKK to parade in downtown Toledo and lets the westboro baptist church protest soldiers funerals. Yet, saying "Bong Hits for Jesus" gets you yanked out of school and into court.
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Unequivocally, yes. Odious though it may be, the alternative of defining standards over what is and isn't a politically acceptable view to have is even worse. The solution to hate speech is to speak back and to be more persuasive, and not to simply censor it. Truly obnoxious speech will generally lose out in a society committed to freedom, though it may take some time.
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:4, Insightful)
Truly obnocious speech will generally lose out in a society committed to truth, but in a society committed to freedom it will continue forever.
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Sad but necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have the "right" to stand up and have a bitch-fest in a class you're signed up for, either - if you disrupt class, the professor has the right to order you out and call security if you don't leave. You don't have the "right" to prevent people from reaching classes either, and we had fuckwits from Code Pinko blockading the classrooms of engineering profs who had military service records and have some military research grants.
And that even includes the fuckwad professors who hold chemistry class bitching about Bush and why everyone should be antiwar, too. You want to protest them? Take it up w/ the Dean, in the student newspaper, in the courts, or on your own time - not in the class.
students at Hampton and Pace universities faced expulsion for handing out antiwar fliers, aka "unauthorized materials."
I don't care what you're doing - whether it's an anti-abortion flyer, a pro-abortion flyer, an antiwar flyer, a pro-war flyer, or an advertising for your frat/sorostitute group's drinking party. If you're trying to force it into people's hands, or putting it on their cars (which is what WE get all the time where I work)... no. If someone actively takes it from you? Fine. But you don't have the right to force crap into my hands and you don't have the right to fuck with my vehicle. And I'm 100% sure that's the bullcrap they are really referring to.
I also love this little gem:
1. Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
I'd trust the guys writing this so-called "report" more if those so-called "peace and justice organizations" weren't fronts for communist groups (ANSWER, International Socialist Workers Party, etc), anarchist groups, blatant racial supremacist organizations (MEChA and La Raza, motto "For the race, everything, for other races, nothing"), or international terrorist/genocide groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
I mean, really. We had a table of morons set up who were boldly collecting money that they admitted they'd be sending to Hezbollah. They should all have been deported for violating their visas - half of them had already dropped this semester's classes anyways, like they do every semester.
Parent
Almost forgot: (Score:5, Interesting)
I helped get this established on our campus. Why did we do it? It has nothing to do with "tracking everyone" and everything to do with crime. We have cameras on the parking lots because we kept having "neighbors" from the black-dominated slums nearby breaking into cars and carjacking people, and so they now have someone watching to dispatch a cop to a problem spot 24/7. We have cameras on buildings leading to classrooms, and even a few IN classrooms, because of people committing rapes and getting into fights.
5. Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out.
Yeah. Because enforcing the law is a problem... how?
The American Immigration Law Foundation estimates that only one in twenty undocumented immigrants who graduate high school goes on to enroll in a college--many don't go because they cannot afford the tuition but also because they have good reason to be afraid: ICE has deported a number of those who did make it to college, some before they could graduate.
When every one that gets in displaces a legal citizen, legal resident, legal visa-holder who had the RIGHT to apply... yeah. I applaud such efforts.
Parent
Re:Almost forgot: (Score:4, Insightful)
I am empathetic to the issues you're presenting here. On the grounds of the university I work at, crime is very much an issue - usually, as far as I can tell, perpetrated by individuals not enrolled at the university. I hear you, and I don't think you're trolling.
But - what makes the camera response difficult for me is that such institutions, in my experience (which makes this just another fscking opinion), are *incapable* of setting and sticking to terms of reference for such a facility. Once the cameras are in place, people just can't help themselves in using them beyond a scope of a video record to be used to identify thieves in response to car break-ins, for example.
The transition to surveillance devices is fast, not matter how big a stack of bibles were used in swearing that they would never be used that way. Once the facility is in place, there is *always* what sounds to be a reasonable context for going beyond the original terms of reference.
I believe that, in a free society, an individual has a reasonable expectation of proceeding through their day without being subject to arbitrary surveillance. If you remove that expectation, you take a significant step towards a functioning police state.
Arbitrary surveillance is like crack for enforcement agencies of all ilk. Once they've tried it, they can't get it off it - it just works too damn well. And major precepts of privacy and freedom go out the window without a genuine debate about it every having taken place.
I'm not trolling either - I just feel strongly on this issue.
Parent
Re:Almost forgot: (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, no - usually it's some moron in admissions trying to "promote diversity."
And what about kids from disadvantaged AMERICAN families? Poor families, families who emigrated legally, families who for whatever reason lived in shit-ass school systems like California's? I'd rather see them in than your so-called "favorable candidate for citizenship" any day.
Hell, the kids have already been fucked by the number of illegals packing in and ruining California's public school system, now you fuck them out of college too?
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not just a matter of semantics. I wouldn't bother with this point if the vast majority of 'anarchists' were "Chaoticists" misusing the word to mean doing away with all law. The word is actually, very frequently used to mean no rulers. In the UK, there have been literally over 10,000 people put on lists of suspected anarchists because they oppose Monarchy (literally "One-archy"). They are people advocating getting rid of the British monarchy, including having no House of Lords, but many still support elections and laws, including having a House of Commons based parlimentary system. The U.S. gets these lists as part of establishing its own no-fly, and no-visit lists, and the US's intelligence services usually take the British anarchist designation as meaning "opposed to all government" so the U.S. is currently keeping "British anarchists" out of the country because they are people who don't support the current heir to the throne of George III. Funny, I thought the U.S. got started that way.
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Informative)
The current American President is from a family that are for all practical purposes Tories, pro aristocracy both in Britain and in America.
Its quite possible British anarchists would be banned by the current administration precisely because they are vocal critics of the British royal family. The Bush clan are inordinately fond of the British monarchy.
Yale and Connecticut have been a hotbed of Tory sympathizers since the America revolution and its that is the heartland of the Bush clan, not Maine or Texas. The Yale Fraternity Skull and Bones, where most of the Bush men have been members, originates from a group of Connecticut Tories and prominent opium traffickers. The Skull and Bones emblem comes from the pirate flags of Opium smugglers. A number of blue blood American families acquired much of their wealth trafficking in Opium in China in the 1800's. They were more or less the same as Heroine smugglers are today. Reference Wikipedia on William Huntington Russell [wikipedia.org] one of the principal founders of Skull and Bones.
Americans were never universal in their support of the American revolution, for severing ties with the British throne, or establishing a Democracy which many Tories considered mob rule. Tories morphed into the Whig Party which in turn was the foundation of the Republican party which is why Republicans tend to be white, elitist and pro wealth.
One interpretation of the Republican revolution over the last 10 years is it was basically the Tories regaining control of America 200 hundred years after they lost the American revolution. The last 8 years have been marked by the Republican aristocracy regaining control of the reins of power in America and doing away with as much of the American constitution as they could manage. Tories have always held the constitution in complete contempt along with the concept that all men are equal. Tories/Republicans are most decidely of the opinion that some people are better than others.
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:4, Informative)
Your blathering about the skull and bones sounds like the dude who got tazed.
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Fantasy is the word which comes to mind...
In real life it doesn't work to say to the officer who pulls you over for speeding, "Gee thanks, but I don't subscribe to your government". Realistically speaking, anarchy can exist only as an extremely fleeting state which is always followed by some form of government. Human nature dictates this, and the proof is the complete and utter lack of successful anarchist societies.
Before you fire back with that example, note I said "successful". As in "still working". I know there are legends, and of course there have been fleeting periods, but no real working examples of what you describe. Hence, the word for what you are calling anarchism is "fantasy". It never existed and it never will.
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
Full disclosure: I am a 30 year old college professor at a small private school.
Disrupting classes, invited lectures or other campus-wide gatherings is not only rude, but it is nothing less than thuggism. The whole point of the academy is the free and open flow of ideas. You may agree or disagree with those ideas, but to shout them down or disrupt the educational process is beyond the pale. Engagement with those you disagree with is far more constructive than acting like a jackbooted jerk.
Before the late 1960s, hipsters were escorted off of campuses, student radicals were usually expelled. Professors who did not 'fit in' were routinely let go.
Today, the politics on campus has all but reversed itself from the 1950s. "The man" today is the Boomer-aged Administration and Faculty: leftists who promote speech codes and shut down campus debate, harass conservatives, excuse 'favored groups' antisocial activity, etc. There hasn't been a truly progressive bone in the corpse of campus leftism since I was an undergrad in the late 90's. All that is 'left' is a proto-totalitarianist mantra of thoughtcrime and newspeak (oddly enough, that was the name of our campus newspaper whilst I was there!)
To be a real 'campus radical' today is not to be a pot-smoking hippie; it is to be a member of the campus Republicans!
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason "campus Republicans" are perceived to be the campus underdogs is that at this point in history the right tends to produce ideologues, who don't deserve and rarely qualify for university positions. This lack of open-mindedness is the biggest hinderance to right-leaning scholars playing a bigger role on campuses. The ideologues have all the answers and simply must find away to make data and evidence fit their ideology; whereas, a credible and open-minded conservative can soundly analyze data, let chips fall where they may. The manufactured threat that accompanied the run up to the Iraq war is a perfect example of the soft thuggery of the neocons (leave out contradictory evidence, use the most bizarre interpretation of data--the Al centrifuge tubes come to mind). The intellectual conservatives, the kind that fit in an academic environment, happen to be out numbered at the moment.
Sincerely,
Boomer-aged Faculty
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe it or not, Universities are traditionally considered bastions OF free thought and speech - these are the tools of learning. If I wanted to just learn from the professor in a classroom, then why don't we just simply call it "High School v.2"?
I'm at a public University, and guess what? No designated "Free Speech Zones" or anything. Do the students riot? Scream in classes? Block the professors? Never. And we do have some issues [wikipedia.org].
It's bad enough that the K-12 system starts students off on the idea of utter compliance (might even be part of the reason why your University has these issues now), but to even make Universities stifle speech - then what good is that pesky Bill of Rights?
Here's the interesting part: We're considered on of the more conservative University of California schools - nestled in the heart of a Conservative part of California.
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Insightful)
The American people gave up on taking responsibility for themselves when the Great Depression hit. They had screwed up and instead of working themselves out of it, they turned to government to fix it. Ever since, when troubles arise, instead of working it out themselves, people turn to government to fix it. It should be no surprise that our leaders have used that blind trust and faith to garner power and money for themselves and their cronies. The end result is where we are now, the people have given up their superiority over their government and unless we the people decide it's time to take responsibility for ourselves, and actually do it, it's going to be a fun ride into whatever form of tyranny we end up with (I've got my money on a "Brave New World" type central authoritarian system).
And to think, I consider myself a patriot. But, I'm not so blinded by it to be unable to see that we have screwed up royal and that we're in trouble.
Parent
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:4, Interesting)
Rampant capitalism is simply feudalism and bonded servants. In the US it has been the dismantling of the good work done at the end of the depressions, the rules the constrained the worst excesses of corporations and the rich, the social services that were put in place that stabilised and produced a healthier society, and as a result a more complacent society. It was a complacent society that allowed the damage to be done starting in the 70 and culminating in the current disaster.
You can guarantee things will get worse if you create an even more ineffective social security net, allow fewer constraints upon the greed of corporations, less tax for the rich (they should pay the most, they benefit the most), fail to ensure free trade is actually fair trade (it ain't free trade if one side can cheat by underpaying workers, with poor and dangerous working conditions, use child slave labour, and polluting the environment). Failure to turn things around will ensure a path to a more primitive Mexican economy of the previous century that the Mexicans are now endeavouring to leave behind. A vote for even more necon capitalism is a vote for 'El Presidente de la República de los USA' , a vote for someone who fights for the workers, the majority of the people, is a vote to recreate a country the respects it's own constitution and the people it is meant to respect (don't think so, check out the social security net of Mexico that's what you are aiming for).
As for turning around private campuses, haven't you realised yet, that they are in fact trying to get rid of the smart arse free thinking individualists because they are buggering up the grade averages and making to hard for the spawn of the 'rich but ugly' and the 'pretty but stupid' to gain a passing mark ;).
Parent
Queue (Score:3, Insightful)
Fearmongering works on both sides (Score:4, Interesting)
Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
The Weathermen were a "peace and justice organization".
Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry, from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles.
Dear me, police armed with non lethal weapons? They have guns in a gun owning society? We're all doomed, I say, doomed.
Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out
Enforce the law against illegal immigrants? A horrific sign of incipient totalitarianism.
Take over the curriculum, the classroom and the laboratory
I'm shocked by this one, frankly (even more so than I was by the tasers). A government department wants to sponsor research within it's remit?
Privatize, privatize, privatize.
a) this has fuck all to do with repression of academia, just a left wing fear of the private sector
b) giving contracts to private sector companies is not privatisation.
The new homeland security campus has proven itself unable to shut out public scrutiny or stamp out resistance to its latest Orwellian advances
Protip: Orwell wasn't warning about the right in 1984. If the average reader of the Nation got their way, only the targets would change. Any kulaks here?
Re:Fearmongering works on both sides (Score:5, Insightful)
1968 called - it wants its bogeyman back.
Geez, enough straw men in that field already? Crows have to eat y'know.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
What amazes me about this is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But damn, everything our parent's generation did when they were kids, they have made illegal for the next generation. Did your parents go to parties when they were underage and drink? Did they get Cited by the police for it? What about smoking a bit of weed. Bet they would ground you! In my town, they used to cruise one of the main roads. Nowaday's there are signs posted saying
I can't take anything seriously anymore (Score:5, Funny)
Tonight... on 24! Jack Bauer delivers the glorious CTU smackdown to some girly man professors with their sights set on terrorizing the Heartland! Watch the Godless professors soil their undies as Bauer delivers a peer reviewed parcel of whoopass!
Presented in high definition Tyranovision!
Free Speech Zones (Score:5, Interesting)
If the right is truly repressing speech on campus via federal reg's, it's double-plus bad ungood; however, I contend there's far more internal repression of speech, and hence of thought, from the left on campus and has been for decades. (Why? Because they believe that true diversity will be achieved once everyone agrees with them.) So, if we want free speech on campus, let's make sure all of the sources of repression are dealt with.
Re:Free Speech Zones (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Free Speech Zones (Score:5, Insightful)
Because everyone thinks "You're being a dick; I, on the other hand, am airing a legitimate greivance."
Parent
this isn't the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Score:5, Informative)
Speech codes and anti-harassment "respect" policies are the most common culprits when it comes to violating individual rights at colleges.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8597.html [thefire.org]
I'm disgusted by what happened at the University of Delaware, and these guys are right to oppose it.
I've never read The Nation, but I'm guessing from context that it is conservative.
Overly paranoid article (Score:5, Informative)
1. Police departments on campus getting more firearms, including semiautomatic rifles and pistols.
This is just dumb, for several reasons.
A. Students may not see it that way, but the reason that campus police have guns is to protect the students. Criminals love to target students. Better armed criminals argues for better armed campus police. Happy peaceful unarmed campus police equals soft target. And there are always some nuts out there. Campus police may seem intimidating to students, and part of their job is to keep students from rioting and burning campuses down during periodic fits of dissention, but their primary job is to go get the people who come from outside to prey on students.
B. 99% of police in the US now use semi-automatic pistols - they're just a better choice for officers than revolvers.
C. Semi-automatic rifles are, in many situations, less likely to hurt bystanders than shotguns, the more common shoulder arm police use. Police also have had some long-range issues (snipers, mass murders, etc) which rifles are needed to counter.
2. Blackwater as an example in the privatization
Blackwater has for a long long time been a police and security training company. They also got into private security in Iraq, yes, but what they do in the US is nearly entirely provide tactical and skills training to police officers. Do you want more professional, better trained police? Most people do... Doctors and Paramedics need continuing training, so should Police. Some departments are big enough to do most of their own training, but most aren't. Training is good.
Re:Overly paranoid article (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Because schools are a 'gun-free' zone'.
Better armed criminals argues for better armed campus police
No- they argue for better armed students. The cops are minutes away. The students are right there. The cops will 'form a perimeter' , then wait for SWAT to show up before going in. This can be many more minutes. The students are right there.
Who should be armed? The people who won't show up for 10 minutes? Or the people who are on the scene?
Parent
Re:Overly paranoid article (Score:4, Informative)
That's a funny one for me... semi-automatic sounds so SCARY, but really isn't much different from a revolver.
With a revolver you have, one click = one shot.
With a semi-auto pistol you have, one click = one shot.
Only effective difference is reload time (and autoloaders close that gap with training), and rounds in a load (usually 6 for revolver, more for semi-autos)
Parent
Re:Overly paranoid article (Score:5, Insightful)
While I was at Berkeley, we had a number of riots in the city, ostensibly over UC policies (related to Peoples Park, mostly) but almost entirely carried out by non-students. We had an incident where the UC Berkeley SWAT team had to shoot and kill a crazy guy who'd shot and killed one student and was holding about 15 others hostage, forcing the women to strip and sexually abusing them. We had a local small female protester who broke into the Chancellor's house and tried to knife two police officers who were trying to get her out, which unfortunately got her shot and killed.
The same SWAT officer who shot the first named crazy in the head was the same guy I saw months later just sitting there and shaking his head a bit as Andrew Martinez, "The Naked Guy", walked by in his usual disattire, distracting a whole bunch of people from the "Make Peace Not Atoms" protest on Sproul Plaza.
Yes, incidents happen. But for the most part, students get away with pretty much anything short of assaulting each other or destroying campus property. And for every legit police abuse case that came up while I was in school, there were multiple cases of "The officer saved our asses"... from a multiple rapist, from a band of teenagers who were randomly attacking students with 2x4s, from muggers who'd knifed someone a couple of months ago...
If I'd ever seen a legitimate case of an officer oppressing someone, I'd pay more attention to your and the article writers' fears. But I haven't. And I've seen the stuff they actually did do to protect people.
Your right to feel secure in your paranoia doesn't extend as far as disarming or removing those who legitimately help save students lives and safety.
Parent
Re:Informative? (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, do you have any experience with shotguns other than Doom/Quake? A shotgun fires a number of pellets that spread rapidly into a cone shape. After about 30 ft, the spread will be about 12 inches. With 00 buck shot, that is 8 pellets somewhere in a one foot circle. Think about a shoulder shot with 4 pellets missing the target entirely. They will be heading down range and can easily hit a bystander. Shotguns are great weapons for close in fighting, especially indoors and in heavy brush, due to limited range. At anything more than 60 ft, they loose effectiveness and are a danger to anything down range.
Oh, and shotgun pellets can go through walls just fine. Especially 0 or 00 buck shot at close range. The big difference is that the shotgun will put a 2-3 inch hole in the wall and create more shrapnel.
Parent