Freedom of Speech Archives

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

A new book authored by by First Amendment Expert Greg Lukianoff and Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt is set to be released July 17, 2018.

A timely investigation into the new “safety culture” on campus and the dangers it poses to free speech, mental health, education, and ultimately democracy

The generation now coming of age has been taught three Great Untruths: their feelings are always right; they should avoid pain and discomfort; and they should look for faults in others and not themselves. These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility. The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations.

This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization.

This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.

Mark your calendars: @glukianoff and @JonHaidt are going on tour for their new book, The Coddling of the American Mind! More info about the events here: https://t.co/vjKB26inCt pic.twitter.com/ntwFIz1rzI

— Penguin Press (@penguinpress) August 30, 2018

About the Authors

Greg Lukianoff is an attorney and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. His writings on campus free speech have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, in addition to dozens of other publications. A regular columnist for the Huffington Post, he is a frequent guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and has made numerous television appearances, including on the CBS Evening News and Stossel. He received the 2008 Playboy Foundation Freedom of Expression Award and the 2010 Ford Hall Forum’s Louis P. and Evelyn Smith First Amendment Award on behalf of FIRE. Lukianoff is a graduate of American University and Stanford Law School.

Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He obtained his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and then taught at the University of Virginia for 16 years. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and The Happiness Hypothesis. He lives in New York City.

Films, newspapers, magazines and intranets and other media spread decadent ideologies, cultural poisoning

Photo courtesy KCNA.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun Calls for Foiling Ideological and Cultural Poisoning by Imperialism

Date: 20/01/2018 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source

Pyongyang, January 20 (KCNA) — For all the nations aspiring to independence and opposing imperialism to combat the poisoning of decadent ideologies and culture of every description precisely means a fierce struggle to defend their sovereignty and dignity, says Rodong Sinmun in an article Saturday.

The article goes on:

The imperialists regard the reactionary ideological and cultural poisoning as the most effective way for attaining their aggression and predatory aims with ease.

The degenerate reactionary ideology and the American outlook on value, which were employed as a guide to aggression, play the main role in aggression at present.

The imperialists consider the rising generation as the main target of their corrupt ideological and cultural poisoning.

Through films, newspapers, magazines and intranets and other media which the young people enjoy very much, the imperialists make them corrupt and degenerate and spread illusions about imperialism.

Those young people infected with luxury and enjoyment are reduced to renegades of their countries and stooges of imperialism unwittingly.

North Korean Defector: Return DPRK to State Sponsored Terrorism List

Some countries witnessed regime changes and government falls and the young people took the lead in causing such abnormal situations. That is because they were infected with the imperialist ideological and cultural poisoning.

The struggle in the ideological and cultural field is a war without gunfire. And a wrong struggle results in the worse consequences than the defeat in war.

The bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning is more dangerous than a formidable enemy coming in attack with guns.

Any hesitation and concession to the ideological confrontation would give way to the bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning and then it would make mess of the destiny of a nation and country.

The Amazing Kims: Mythology and the Cult of Personality in North Korea

Report: Campus speech codes decline for 10th straight year

One in three colleges surveyed maintain severely restrictive speech policies, but 90 percent of top colleges maintain policies that stifle speech to some degree

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 19, 2017 — For the 10th year in a row, the percentage of universities maintaining written policies that severely restrict students’ free speech rights has decreased. But despite a decade of free speech victories to eliminate the most egregious speech codes, more than 90 percent of universities still maintain at least one policy that either restricts protected speech or can too easily be interpreted to do so, according to a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Released today, Spotlight on Speech Codes 2018: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses reports on written policies at 461 of America’s largest and most prestigious colleges and universities, all of which are accessible online in FIRE’s searchable Spotlight database. FIRE rates schools as “red light,” “yellow light,” or “green light” institutions based on how much, if any, protected speech their policies restrict.

FIRE is also pleased to announce a new feature in our Spotlight database that allows users to write to a school about its speech codes directly from the school’s Spotlight page. Advocates and supporters can now make their voices heard by sending a prewritten or customized email straight to administrators with the click of a button.

TAKE ACTION: CONTACT YOUR SCHOOL ABOUT ITS SPEECH CODES

Major findings from the report include:

Just under one third (32.3 percent) of surveyed institutions received FIRE’s poorest, red light rating for maintaining speech codes that both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech. This year’s figure is seven percentage points lower than last year and almost 42 percentage points lower than in FIRE’s 2009 report.
Most institutions — 58.6 percent — receive a yellow light rating. While less restrictive than red light policies, yellow light policies still prohibit or have an impermissible chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech.
Thirty-five institutions earned FIRE’s highest, green light rating for free speech in this year’s report. Since the report was written, two more universities have earned green light status, bringing the total to 37. Only eight institutions earned this rating in the 2009 report.

“More institutions than ever before understand the importance of free speech and are taking concrete steps to protect it,” said FIRE Vice President of Policy Research Samantha Harris. “There is still a lot of work to be done, though — and we look forward to working with more colleges and universities in the years to come.”

Other findings:

Roughly one in nine institutions maintains a “free speech zone” policy, through which student demonstrations and other expressive activities are quarantined to small or out-of-the-way areas of campus.
Twenty-seven schools or faculty bodies (seven more than last year) have adopted statements in support of free speech modeled after the one adopted by the University of Chicago in January 2015.
Fully 30 percent of institutions maintain some form of bias response team tasked with identifying “bias” or “hate speech” on campus. These teams rely on students anonymously reporting other students for speech that, though subjectively “offensive,” is often fully protected by the First Amendment or institutional promises of free expression. More than half of private institutions surveyed have implemented bias response teams.

As Congress considers adding speech code reporting requirements to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, FIRE’s report informs the policy discussion with data and analysis on the prevalence and nature of speech codes.

Spotlight on Speech Codes 2018: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses can be read in full on FIRE’s website.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

TAKE ACTION: CONTACT YOUR SCHOOL ABOUT ITS SPEECH CODES

Google & YouTube Sued for Discrimination: PragerU Takes Legal Action

LOS ANGELES — Prager University (PragerU) has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to stop Google and YouTube from unlawfully censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech.

The lawsuit cites more than 50 PragerU videos which have either been “restricted” or “demonetized” by Google/YouTube. The PragerU videos range on various subjects presenting a conservative point of view, and include a video by noted Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz on the founding of Israel. PragerU previously compiled a complete list of their restricted videos here, which includes: “Why America Must Lead,” “The Ten Commandments: Do Not Murder,” “Why Did America Fight the Korean War,” and “The World’s Most Persecuted Minority: Christians.”

In correspondence cited in the filing, Google/YouTube made it clear that the censorship of certain videos was because they were deemed “inappropriate” for younger audiences.

“Watch any one of our videos and you’ll immediately realize that Google/YouTube censorship is entirely ideologically driven. For the record, our videos are presented by some of the finest minds in the Western world, including four Pulitzer Prize winners, former prime ministers, and professors from the most prestigious universities in America,” stated PragerU founder Dennis Prager.

Prager added, “They are engaging in an arbitrary and capricious use of their ‘restricted mode’ and ‘demonetization’ to restrict non-left political thought. Their censorship is profoundly damaging because Google and YouTube own and control the largest forum for public participation in video-based speech in not only California, but the United States, and the world.”

The total number of people who currently use YouTube exceeds 1.3 billion people. Google and YouTube advertise YouTube to the public as a forum intended to defend and protect free speech where members of the general public may express and exchange their ideas. They have represented that their platforms and services are intended to effectuate the exercise of free speech among the public. According to Google and YouTube: “voices matter.” YouTube states that it is “committed to fostering a community where everyone’s voice can be heard.”

“However,” said Eric George of Browne George Ross, the firm representing PragerU, “Google and YouTube use restricted mode filtering not to protect younger or sensitive viewers from ‘inappropriate’ video content, but as a political gag mechanism to silence PragerU. Google and YouTube do this not because they have identified video content that violates their guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate for younger viewers, but because PragerU is a conservative nonprofit organization that is associated with and espouses the views of leading conservative speakers and scholars.”

“This is speech discrimination plain and simple, censorship based entirely on unspecified ideological objection to the message or on the perceived identity and political viewpoint of the speaker,” said former California Governor Pete Wilson of Browne George Ross. “Google and YouTube’s use of restricted mode filtering to silence PragerU violates its fundamental First Amendment rights under both the California and United States Constitutions. It constitutes unlawful discrimination under California law, is a misleading and unfair business practice, and breaches the warranty of good faith and fair dealing implied in Google and YouTube’s own Terms of Use and ‘Community Guidelines.’”

“There is absolutely nothing ‘inappropriate’ about the content of the PragerU videos censored by Google and YouTube; the videos do not contain any profanity, nudity or otherwise inappropriate ‘mature’ content and they fully comply with the letter of YouTube’s Terms of Use and Community Guidelines,” said Marissa Streit, PragerU’s chief executive officer who has engaged in a year-long-effort to try and persuade Google to stop censoring PragerU content. Streit continues, “It’s clear that someone doesn’t like what we teach and so they intend on stopping us from teaching it. Can you imagine what the world would look like if Google is allowed to continue to arbitrarily censor ideas they simply don’t agree with?”

“This is not a left/right issue. It is a free speech issue, which is why prominent liberals, such as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, are supporting our lawsuit,” Prager concluded.

The lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California is available here.

###

Advisory Legal Council:
Former Governor Pete Wilson’s Law Firm, Browne, George and Ross;
Eric George;
Alan Dershowitz;
Barak Lurie, Kelly Shackelford, Mat Staver;
and additional prominent attorneys.

PragerU, founded by Dennis Prager in 2011, is a not-for-profit organization that helps millions understand the values that shaped America and provides millions of Americans and people around the world with the intellectual ammunition they need to advocate for limited government, individual responsibility and economic freedom. In 2016 alone, PragerU’s videos received over 250 million views, a figure that will eclipse 350 million in 2017. PragerU is a resource for all who value liberty. It is a threat to all those who do not.

Website | www.PragerU.com Twitter | @PragerU