Johns Hopkins pro-choice group tries to silence pro-life students using “harassment” policy
Nothing says “harassment” more than confronting liberal students with alternative ideas
Once again, the supposedly open minded left tries to silence their opposition on campus.
Peter Bonilla of The FIRE reports.
Pro-Choice Johns Hopkins Group Turns to Harassment Policies to Silence Pro-Life Speech
Recently, FIRE successfully defended the rights of the now-recognized Johns Hopkins University student group Voice for Life (VFL). As Torch readers may recall, VFL was wrongly denied recognition in March due in part to student government leaders’ personal disagreements with VFL’s viewpoint and activities. Members of Johns Hopkins’ Student Government Association (SGA) also claimed incorrectly that the group’s planned “sidewalk counseling” activities violated Johns Hopkins’ harassment policies—a position the university’s Office of Institutional Equity rejected. Fortunately, the SGA’s judiciary committee unanimously overturned the rejection, granting the group recognized status.
As Hopkins’ News-Letter student newspaper reports, this sequence of events has inspired the formation of an opposing group, calling themselves Voice for Choice (VFC). This is all to the good, right? What isn’t there to admire from a free speech perspective about one group inspiring the formation of another group to provide a different, opposing message? The answer to speech you don’t like, as FIRE always says, is more speech.
Unfortunately, the News-Letter‘s report presents some cause for concern.
The ultimate goal of the movement is to eliminate harassment on campus. Voice for Choice takes issue with Voice for Life’s club activities, including sidewalk counseling and approaching pregnant women.
“The problem is not that they want to express their views, but that they want to use harassing tactics,” [VFC member Caitlin] Fuchs-Rosner said. “The tactics they want to use could be triggering for rape victims, but the administration did not do anything about that.”
She believes that Voice for Life’s activities will harass legally protected classes of people — women and pregnant women.
VFC’s Facebook page goes even further than that, stating that VFC “will be circulating a petition online and on campus to garner student/alum support for an official harassment complaint.”
Pro-Choice Johns Hopkins Group Turns to Harassment Policies to Silence Pro-Life Speech (The FIRE)
Comments
“Harassment” as used by the left means, “telling us what we don’t like hearing.” Orwell once remarked that unless freedom means the freedom to tell people what they do not want to hear, it means nothing. Exhibit A–the campus today.
In other words, you can have an organization on campus but if you want to advocate the group’s position that’s “harrassment.” A variant I sometimes see is “I don’t feel safe,” which doesn’t mean “somebody is trying to hurt me physically” but “I’m uncomfortable hearing what you’re saying.”
I keep remembering Elena Kagan’s response during her confirmation to the question as to whether abrogating Citizens United would allow the government to suppress speech based on who was saying it. She thought it would but she wasn’t worried because the government “probably” wouldn’t use the power too often.
I still call myself a neoconservative. At some point the “neo” may be dropped in favor of “Burkean.” I try not to be deductive in my politics; rather than “as a [name of ideology] I think…” but “I think this and people who also do tend to be called conservative.”
One reason why I identify with conservatives is because liberals are open about their belief that some speech should be suppressed and people punished for saying it, and they will decide what and who.
I have a friend,FB and personal, very nice lady, and whenever she criticizes the Kochs I ask her, “and what about Soros?” And today I finally got an answer as to why she’s against the Kochs using their money to advance a political agenda but OK for (the convicted felon Soros) to do so: “The Kochs are regressive and Soros is progressive.” In those words.
Such a person cannot claim that she believes in true freedom of speech.
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