UCI and U of Oklahoma, Dissent and Bigotry, Intimidation and Free Speech

.

.

.

Two universities; two groups of students; two tales of democracy, discrimination, dissent, and disdain.  But only one group’s critics crossed the line yesterday of personally identifying the people who had done something inappropriate; only one group of students need fear for their careers and their safety.  By any measure, it’s the wrong one.

A group of UCI students in their student government voted to remove an American flag from the wall of their small office lobby, and (so as not to single out the U.S. flag) not to have the flags of any nation displayed.  They couched it in terms of protecting the feelings of those students, especially those from abroad, who saw the American flag as a symbol of oppression. Maybe — but it seems more likely from the tenor of their resolution that it was the compromise product of an intensive tug-of-war between those who see American foreign policy as evil and those who see it as having the capacity for either good or evil or perhaps as never evil because it’s ours.

This is the sort of debate that, if — and I do mean IF — you believe in the First Amendment and the principles of free speech, you should agree that it’s good for students to have at an outstanding college.  It gets them thinking about our principles, and their applications, at a deeper level.  The stakes, at least within that lobby, are rather low.  One thing that they may have come to realize is that there are fundamentally only two choices: to allow someone intent on plastering the American flag everywhere in the office to do so, or to prevent it.  If they were to prevent it, then the question would be “How much?”

Practically, their error was probably not to provide some space for the U.S. flag among others, if they wanted — but bear in mind that even that is a limitation on freedom of speech.  One of their complaints about the posting of the U.S. flag is that it promoted an ideology of “American exceptionalism” — and boy howdy did they get that right!  Whatever they did short of star-spangling the whole office would potentially be subject to criticism; to subjugate the U.S. flag to being “one among many,” as they might have done, would be taken as deprecating it.  (U.S. flag next to and on an equal footing as the Mexican flag?  Somali?  Israeli next to Palestinian?  Three Israeli flags next to four Palestinians ones?  What about a United Nations flag?)  So, unable to resolve the irresolvable problem, they settled on a bright-line rule — “no flags at all.”  And, of course, it blew up in their faces.

Once Fox News got a hold of it, and banged the drum to call attention to it like it was an act of war, the students’ efforts were doomed.  This should have been obvious to them from the start — and it is probably obvious in retrospect.  Rights that are supposed to protect you can tend to be somewhat theoretical when put to the test.  They were vilified and crucified in comments sections; Democrats strove unsuccessfully to keep up with Republicans in their condemnations (but of course we’re not as good at it); and the Council superior to the student government exercised their veto on a Saturday.  And one might think that that would be the end of it.  But one would be wrong.

On Sunday, a graphic was produced by the website AmericanStrong in the style of a wanted poster, containing the names and full-face photographs of the six students who, in a democratic and approved process, voted to remove the American flag from the small student government lobby.  Multiple people have suggested in multiple comments sections that they be expelled, be made to repay their loans, deported, hounded from ever getting gainful employment, and various other things that are essentially designed to raise the costs of presenting a particular political view to such heights that hardly anyone with any economic vulnerability would dare to do so.  That’s not a particularly American thing to do — free speech implies a marketplace of ideas, not a cesspool of threats — but it has been common enough in Russia and China and other authoritarian regimes over the years that it’s not really a surprise.  This is why free speech needs protection.

But there is something new here.  Over the past decade, we’ve come to live in an increasingly violent and well-armed society in which the Internet has amplified whatever previously solitary impulses some people have had to do something violent, heinous, and crazy.  Except for the unlikely prospect that one is really trying to arrange a lifetime employment embargo to exclude these people, what purpose can possibly be served by publicizing these students’ names and photos (and can addresses and other contact information be far behind)?

The one purpose that comes to mind is: physical intimidation.  Bullying.  That’s the substance that these students perceived as being behind the symbolism of being forced to display an American flag where they might have preferred a picture of Russell Brand or Angela Davis or John Lewis or Taylor Swift or the Earth.  The threat of violence to impose conformity of thought.  That’s a profoundly anti-intellectual attitude, inimical to the mission* of a public university.  (*Offer may not be honored in Wisconsin.)

I’m not showing you the original.  I’m only showing you the redacted and annotated version that I created last night in the process of creating a new page on Facebook — “Protect the UCI 6” — that I hope will focus public attention to and individual self-reflection on what has been done here that will lead those who have shared it both to nausea and shame.

And yes, I signed it — which has already earned me panicky messages on Facebook — because that gives it more power.  I want people to be clear on who will show their face to defend our liberties and freedoms and who, despite superior power and will to harm, has to hide between the anonymity of the pseudonym — or the hood.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, lots of people claimed to “Stand with Charlie,” but let’s get real — extremely few put themselves anywhere near harm’s way (if one doesn’t count muscle injury from patting oneself on the back.)  That’s not good enough — especially when it comes to these 6 students (sorry, I still tend to call them “kids”) in our own Orange County.  If, as I hope, the anti-violence crowd is the majority here — a majority including those who strongly disagree with these students on the merits of their argument and action — then we had better be prepared to stand by them, literally if need be, to deter vitriol and violence aimed at them and to give the rest of our neighbors some pause when it comes to the idea of really taking substantive action against their symbolic protest.

The Democratic Party seems likely to be a poor vehicle for such an effort; so, from reading comments here, apparently are the Libertarian and Green parties.  That leaves the remnants of Occupy — who in my opinion tend to err in the other direction, but who aren’t ones to stand by and munch popcorn while watching a political beatdown.  If any of you have ever quoted Voltaire in saying “I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it” — well, here’s a chance to demonstrate your convictions.  I don’t expect that you’d have to pay that sort of price — but, if the very prospect of it is silencing your lips when protest is appropriate, then you’re choosing between freedom and oppression.  We need to stop intimidation dead in its tracks, right now.

Speaking of hoods, as I was, other college students got into the news yesterday as well.  You remember the children’s song “If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands.”  Well, it turns out that there are other words to it.

Post by HLN.

(I can’t fine a way to embed this onto the blog — Headline News’s code doesn’t seem to work — but if you go to the post you’ll see that it’s a lot of white guys singing a sped up version of the song with the lyrics:

There will never be a Negro SAE
There will never be a Negro SAE
You can hang him from a tree
But he’ll never sign with me
There will never be a Negro SAE

Of course, they don’t say “Negro” — which my friend Elie Mystal of Above the Law Redline suggests is the only reason that they’re getting into trouble at all.  (Another reason might be that one of OU’s top offensive line recruits decommitted from the football team in the wake of the video, which perhaps might put their safety at risk.)  They also don’t say “at SAE,” by the way, as anyone who’s ever been in a fraternity would probably realize.  (It’s “an SAE.”)

It will be interesting to see whether the Oklahoma students sustain as long-lasting and vicious an attack as the UCI students will.  For me, though, they will ever be paired in memory, along with the question “who should be more embarrassed today, those associated with UCI or with OU?”  And, the other questions, of course: are we ever going to get the names and full-face photos of the people on that bus distributed?  And will their economic futures be ruined — or will they somehow still get hired by someone who doesn’t mind people saying the word “Negro” as if it rhymed with “trigger.”  The difference between the two students groups should not be lost on us; it  won’t be lost on the world’s students who look more like UCI’s than OU’s.