Free Speech on Public Colleges

The "Privacy" argument is completely non-topical. Malicious violations of privacy are NOT considered to be protected by the first amendment. Virtually all states have laws providing legal recourse to victims of the sort of stuff my opponent talks about, including "revenge porn" [1] [2]. In other words, my opponent is trying to get me to defend something outside the scope of the resolution, and thus everything he said on the matter should be dismissed. This debate comes down to "hate speech." (1) Emotional Stability My opponent's laundry list of evidence actually *supports* my case. Yes, it is true that "hate speech" can have negative impacts on the emotional well-being of its victims. And that is precisely why we need to prepare students to cope with it in a healthy manner. The fact is that once they graduate, they're gonna be exposed to "hate speech," and there's nothing campus authorities can do to prevent that. My opponent is advocating that we protect students from any and all "hate speech" for the four years that they are in school... and then what? Then they go out into the real world, encounter people like Hal Turner, and fully experience all the horrible emotional consequences Con speaks of, because they never had the opportunity to learn how to deal with it properly. Con's advocacy is nonsensical. Instead of trying to castigate "hate speech," public universities should simply offer counseling to those who are negatively impacted by it. Counseling sessions should train students to *avoid* their emotional impulses and retain their self-esteem when confronted by hateful language. Campus culture as a whole should reinforce an attitude of mental fortitude in the face of adversity and unconditional confidence in ones own self-worth. Absolutely nothing is accomplished by shielding college students from the reality they're gonna face after graduation. What I'm advocating is infinitely better for the long-term emotional stability of students. (2) Social Progress Furthermore, turning college campuses into free-speech-zones will actually *reduce* the occurrence of hate speech in the long-run. The best part about the right to free speech is that everybody has it. Just as bigots are free to speak their minds, everybody else is free to speak their minds in universally condemning bigots for their morally repugnant views. In the words of some famous guy whose name I forgot, "sunlight is the best disinfectant" -- the vast majority of people are reasonable and conscientious, so simply allowing public exposure to ugly ideas ends up sparking widespread social pressure against those ideas, organically eradicating them far more effectively than any campus authorities possibly could. Force has never been a particularly useful vehicle for social progress -- it simply serves to push regressive sentiments into the shadows, where they fester and boil and silently gain momentum within isolated circles. If you really want to see a less prejudiced and less hateful world, freedom of speech is the way to go. (3) Political Censorship I'd like to call attention to the part of last round where my opponent mentioned Milo Yiannopoulos. Let's look objectively at what exactly Milo did there -- all he did was call out a student for doing something he believes to be wrong, using their actions as an example to advance his argument. He didn't expose any information about the student that wasn't already publicly available. He didn't attempt to incite any sort of violence or harassment against the student. He did literally nothing wrong, yet my opponent is calling for Milo to be punished for saying what he did. And many people who share Con's ideological inclinations would agree, simply because they perceive Milo's rhetoric on trans-genderism to be "hateful." That is deeply disturbing, and it highlights an underlying problem with Con's advocacy -- it opens up an opportunity for people to legalistically manipulate campus speech codes and apply them to *any* speech they don't like. This is especially true when it comes to "hate speech" restrictions. On many college campuses, simply disagreeing with liberal orthodoxy on issues like transgenderism, the gender wage gap, or racist police brutality has become enough to get your arguments labeled as "hate speech." Given how vague and subjective Con's definition of the term is, that same sort of mislabeling is virtually inevitable. Allowing restrictions on "hate speech" is just begging for political censorship. == CONCLUSION == My opponent's proposed "hate speech" restrictions... (1) Leave students unprepared to emotionally cope with "hate speech" in the real world. (2) Prevent bigotry from being organically eradicated via social pressure. (3) Open the floodgates for censorship of contrarian political opinions. Any one of those harms, taken alone, is sufficient reason to oppose Con's advocacy. If you find even one of those to be persuasive, vote Pro. The resolution is affirmed. - [1] http://www.dmlp.org... [2] https://www.cybercivilrights.org...