January/February LD Topic

I affirm that Resolved: Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not restrict any constitutionally protected speech.Definitions: Public college/university: a university that is predominantly funded by public means through a national or subnational government Restrict: Put a limit on; keep under control. Constitutionally protected speech: I will just post a link to the relevant exceptions to free speech as defined by the constitution/supreme court cases https://en.wikipedia.org...# Observation One: There are two actors implicated in the resolution. Public universities and their governing bodies, and the United States government. I value morality defined by Merriam Webster as "conformity to ideals of right human conduct". 2 warrants: 1) Ought is an operative term in the resolution and thusly implies obligation since ought is defined as "to indicate duty or correctness" (Oxford Dictionary). The ought implied in the resolution is moral, not functional. 2) States (and thus public universities, who receive funding from states and often act on their behalf) are normatively understood to have moral obligations. Heindel 12’ “We commonly attribute to states and other institutional organizations moral duties and obligations. For example, it is widely held that the state has a moral duty to protect its citizens from external threats. The standard is Rule Utiltarianism, defined as following a set of rules whose general application maximizes well being. 2 warrants: 1) Phenomenal introspection shows that morality requires the maximization of well-being. Sinahababu 12' "Moral feelings represent natural properties in virtue of shared phenomenal character, much as empathy represents how others feel. If moral feelings represent moral properties via this kind of empathic representation, the hedonic character of moral feelings lets them represent hedonic properties. Then the moral value of pleasure can be detected in introspection." 2) Rules can be justified on utilitarian grounds when case-by-case calculations lead to worse outcomes. Rawls "Rules are pictured as defining a practice. Practices are set up for various reasons, but one of them is that in many areas of conduct each person's deciding what to do on utilitarian grounds case by case leads to confusion, and that the attempt to coordinate behavior by trying to foresee how others will act is bound to fail. As an alternative one realizes that what is required is the establishment of a practice, the specification of a new form of activity; and from this one sees that a practice necessarily involves the abdication of full liberty to act on utilitarian and prudential grounds. Rules define a practice and are themselves the subject of the utilitarian principle." Thesis: Any unconstitutional speech restrictions on college campuses weaken the normative rule that free speech ought to be protected. This severely harms US citizens. Thus the aff burden: Restricting constitutionally protected speech on college campuses is harmful Contention One: Restricting Constitutionally Protected Speech anywhere is harmful on balance A. Restrictions hamper search for truth, stem from epistemic arrogance The search for truth is necessary to advance in all areas of life. Philosophical, scientific, theological, political, and all other aspects of life should be informed by relevant facts about what is or isn't true to achieve the best outcomes. Pinker 14'" First, free speech is the only way to acquire knowledge about the world. Perhaps the greatest discovery in human history — one that is logically prior to every other discovery — is that all of our traditional sources of belief are in fact generators of error and should be dsmissed as sources of knowledge. These include faith, revelation, dogma, authority, charisma, augury, prophesy, intuition, clairvoyance, conventional wisdom, and the warm glow of subjective certainty. Free speech was not just central to the development of knowledge in the history of humanity; it may be central to the development of knowledge in any intelligent species." B. Spillover Speech restrictions necessarily spillover because speech restrictions can never be narrowly targeted at one particular issue. Once it has been established that we can restrict speech for any perceived greater good, we have handed over authority to university administrators or the government to determine what speech is or isn't permissible. This has always led to spillover instead of narrowly tailored restrictions. Epstein 16 "The harm principle can never be extended to cover cases where one person takes offense at the speech or conduct of other individuals—which is why flag-burning, however distasteful to most people, nonetheless receives constitutional protection"That extension of the harm principle, if applied uniformly to all speech acts, means that anyone who takes offense gets the right to sanction, if not veto, the speech of others, at which point no one can speak at all." C. The Purpose of the University Free speech is inextricably tied to the very purpose of the university, the actor in this debate. Pinker 14' articulates again " A liberal education should make certain habits of rationality second nature. Educated people should be able to express complex ideas in clear writing and speech. They should appreciate that objective knowledge is a precious commodity, and know how to distinguish vetted fact from superstition, rumor, and unexamined conventional wisdom. They should be acutely aware of human fallibility, most notably their own, and appreciate that people who disagree with them are not necessarily stupid or evil. Accordingly, they should appreciate the value of trying to change minds by persuasion rather than intimidation or demagoguery." D. Marginalized people Restriction of speech on college campuses can easily lead to, and has lead to the silencing of marginalized voices. This reality stands in stark contast to the mistaken belief that speech restrictions can protect marginalized voices. If restrictions can be placed on speech, those restrictions would necessarily exist because of public consensus. If the consensus turns against marginalized people (as it often has) they will be the first to suffer from a lack of content neutrality with regard to speech. Gates 93' "Why would you entrust authority with enlarged powers of regulating the speech of unpopular minorities unless you were confident the unpopular minorities would be racists, not blacks? You don't go to the teacher to complain about the school bully unless you know the teacher is on your side. In a democratic society the only speech the government will be successful in censoring is that of the politically marginalized. Reverse the popular consensus (against blacks) and justifications for hate speech laws are turned on their head" E. Negatation of Self-Ownership Within the context of any debate, we perform certain actions that are self affirming. One of those is the exercise of rationality, free will, and use of our physical and mental faculties, all of this presupposes self ownership. Negating.. negates self ownership. This is a performative contradiction. Hoppe " Argumentation does not consist of free-floating propositions but is a form of action requiring the employment of scarce means; and that the means which a person demonstrates as preferring by engaging in propositional exchanges are those of private property. For one thing, no one could possibly propose anything, and no one could become convinced of any proposition by argumentative means, if a person’s right to make exclusive use of his physical body were not already presupposed. It is this recognition of each other’s mutually exclusive control over one’s own body which explains the distinctive character of propositional exchanges that, while one may disagree about what has been said, it is still possible to agree at least on the fact that there is disagreement"