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One thing I'm unclear about in the U.S.C. situation.

Was Tabassum planning to give a speech about Israel and Gaza? If so, I don't think I'd have an issue with USC's decision. Commencement is a celebration for a lot of students and families, and I think it's reasonable to decide that it's not the place for speeches about the most controversial issues of the day. Along the same lines, I believe Commencement isn't the place for someone to give a speech about the Confederate flag representing a people's regional heritage or the importance of defending Taiwan against China's aggression either.

On the other hand, if Tabassum was willing to speak about other topics and she is losing her ability to give a speech because of her political posts about Israel, I would fully agree that is outrageous and the Jewish pressure groups and the university are fully in the wrong. Just as they would be in wrong to remove someone as a Commencement speaker because they had expressed pro-Confederate flag or anti-Communist China political views at some point either.

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Tabassum has indicated that she had not yet written a speech when she was notified that her appearance had been canceled, nor has USC indicated that it was the content of the speech that prompted its action. It claims the decision was based solely on security threats, which have remained unspecified. In Tabassum's case it doesn't seem to be in question that it is her social media posts that prompted this outcome, whether the security threats were genuine or pretextual.

There is no general rule governing what commencement speeches should or shouldn't be about. An individual university may set rules or not, and these would be conveyed to prospective speakers upon invitation. Our views about what is or isn't appropriate are not relevant: the question is whether an institution applies its rules in a generally neutral manner.

The USC administration has defended its decision on non-security grounds as well, stating that there is no free-speech right to speak at a commencement, which is, of course, true. Universities, however, have never promoted free speech on the basis of the First Amendment. They promote it on the basis of the freedom of inquiry and expression necessary to pursue the mission of discovering and disseminating knowledge and understanding: that is, academic freedom. Constraining academic freedom because there is no First Amendment prohibition against that is an abandonment of the university mission. USC, as a private institution, can do so without being answerable to a government that sponsors it, but not without the costs that come from closing realms of inquiry and expression, and from the justified damage to academic reputation that doing so entails.

Academic freedom in the pursuit of a university's mission entails intrinsic risks. If the goal becomes minimizing risks--whether security risks or risks of lost donations because of controversy--the university and mission are diminished. It's noteworthy in this case that USC was unwilling to share any specifics with Tabassum to explain their reaction, and has stated that it will reexamine the processes by which undergraduate valedictorians are selected. The USC president noted specifically that the faculty committee that reviews candidates does not currently include social media presence in that review, implying that future aspirants for valedictorian will need to watch their social media speech if they want an invitation to speak at a commencement. This is one way that prioritizing risk avoidance can work its way down into the heart of a university.

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Thanks Robert. I had seen that Tabassum hadn't yet written a speech, but I wasn't sure if there had been any conversations with her about whether there would be boundaries regarding the subject matter and whether she would be willing to abide them.

It sounds like you're saying there weren't, in which case I agree with you and Noah that USC has behaved very disappointingly here. Certainly, the idea that there was some kind of major security risk at play here is a canard.

In general, I think universities should support the speech rights of a huge range of speakers. I think campuses should be willing to host speakers who call for the end of the Jewish state and one country from the river to sea, as well as speakers who call for Israel to annex Gaza and the West Bank and to expel Palestinians from these areas in the interests of Israeli peace and security. And university students should be free to express their support for positions as radical as either of these without fear of any official sanction.

However, I do think that Commencement (and other type of events like freshman orientations) is a unique type of event for a university, and it's reasonable for institutions to be much more prescriptive about what kinds of speech are and aren't appropriate for that type of event without risking their integrity or overall commitment to allowing freedom of thought and inquiry.

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I agree that if USC's established practice involves any type of prior agreement between valedictorian and administration, and a designated valedictorian didn't agree to it, it would be a fair reason to ask her to step aside. It would not require a security pretext.

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" . . . that’s a story about the heckler’s veto being wielded by self-styled progressives, and the fact that at this late date these people still haven’t figured out that this is a simply catastrophic tool for them wield is simply mild-blowing to me."

I think the basic problem is that progressive tactics emphasize "solidarity" over changing minds. Solidarity emphasizes heightening ties within a group and offering increased social rewards to those on the fringe of the group so they will join and expand the group, but at the cost of repelling everyone beyond that fringe. The incremental additions at the fringe--which will be substantial during periods of high stress (George Floyd; Gaza War), although not necessarily enduring--mask the counterproductive result of driving others further away and hamstringing the liberal Left. Perpetually heightened commitment, participatory political theater, and the serotonin boosts of endless moral-victory laps are effective blinders. (It seems to me I've seen this play before, starting from the Free Speech Movement in 1963 through the submersion of the antiwar movement in the Watergate extravaganza of 1973-74; about a decade in that pre-social media age.)

The same dynamic works on the Right, but there the far end (alt-right) has more or less become able to operate through the mass movement of MAGA. Because of the relatively contained range of the progressive Left, the liberal Left has remained substantial and capable of growth from the center, although overtly subject to attack from association with progressives. The trade-off on the Right is that the alt-right influence has the enormous MAGA base to work through, but is coming close to eliminating the conservative Right, which may create a hard limit on the Right overall.

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Since when is deliberately sending a false fire alarm not a crime?

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I don't think Noah (or anyone else) was saying pulling a fire alarm when there is no fire is appropriate behavior. I think he was saying the opposite. Having said that, I'm not sure that it is a crime. And if it technically is, I think it's a very minor one.

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I think Mr. Feit's point is that Clark claimed the students had committed no off-campus crime. Massachusetts law includes this statute (which I either know from vast scholarship or Googled a moment ago): "Whoever, without reasonable cause, by outcry or the ringing of bells, or otherwise, makes or circulates or causes to be made or circulated a false alarm of fire shall be punished by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than one year."

So when Noah reports that Clark asserted, "it could not discipline the students because they were not on campus, and it can only discipline them for off-campus activities that violate the law which their behavior at this event, however discreditable, did not," it probably means that Google is unavailable on the Clark campus.

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