Delgado further argues,
Rules against hate speech, homophobic remarks and misogyny serve both symbolic and institutional values... It has been argued that such prohibitions operate in derogation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, but that amendment already is subject to dozens of exceptions -- libel, defamation, words of conspiracy or threat, disrespectful words uttered to a judge or police officer, irrelevant or untrue words spoken in a judicial proceeding, copyright, plagiarism, official secrets, misleading advertising and many more. The social interest in deterring vicious racial or sexual vituperation certainly seems at least as great as that underlying these other forms of speech deemed unworthy of First Amendment protection. (Gottfried and Delgado 25)
Another defender of speech codes is Barbara Bowen, the president of the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union of the City University of New York, who states, "I don't accept that the left has created a climate of intolerance by vigorously denouncing racist speech. Racism is something that should be denounced each and every time it's encountered" (Glenn 11). Some cases, though, suggest that the sensitivity of some may be too heightened for these odes to be reasonable. David Glenn cites one case from California's Orange Coast College in which a political science professor was suspended with pay after a heated discussion with four Muslim students in one of his classes:
The students claim that Hearlson is biased against Muslims, that he accused them personally of supporting terrorism and that he inspired a jingoistic rage among other students in the class. Hearlson denies these charges, saying that he merely intended to stimulate a discussion about whether there is a double standard at work among Middle Eastern governments that have denounced the World Trade Center attacks but praise Hamas suicide bombings in Israel. (Glenn 11)
Noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams note some of the reasons why the left has been seeking these laws and...
15). He argues that there is a duty resting on convention, which he considers in a deep and morally weighty sense, based on an implied but nonetheless binding contract between the individual and the state: It is a fact, then," they would say, "that you are breaking covenants and undertakings made with us, although you mad them under no compulsion of misunderstanding, and were not compelled to decide in a limited
Civil Liberties and Temporary Security: Billy Budd and Guardians "People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither." Benjamin Franklin's statement is often invoked in times of warfare, when civil liberties tend to be most at risk of curtailment, yet it crucially fails to describe the one sector of the American population that is most involved in warfare: the military. Historically military service has not exactly been the voluntary
783). Gore sees a parallel between the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, after the attack upon Pearl Harbor and the treatment of Arab-Americans in the wake of the Bush Administration's fear-mongering and validation of public prejudices against Muslims. (This attitude conveyed from the top also fostered prejudice amongst ordinary citizens: A commonly-cited complaint of some airplane passengers is that too many 'non obvious' suspects are subject to routine
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