The Critic and the Clown: A Tale of Free Speech at Berkeley
We seem to have reached a new high, or low, in the academy’s free speech wars. Berkeley’s anthropology department has been compelled to reschedule a talk by Anna Tsing, a well known and highly regarded anthropologist at UC Santa Cruz, in order to make space—a safe space, as it turns out—for Milo Yiannopoulos to speak there on the same day.
Aside from getting us—rightly—infuriated, I hope this incident reminds us that the marketplace of ideas, like all markets, is a highly organized and structured market, privileging some ideas over others. Ideas don’t simply enter and exit a power-less space; speech doesn’t just happen. In any institution, there are gatekeepers who give a pass to some speech but not others, and who insist that the price of entry for some speakers is higher than others. Speech is a material practice: it requires resources (paying a speaker, setting up sound systems, reserving rooms, paying for security, and so on), and resources need to be distributed. In a system of scarcity, which is what an institution is (even in the academy, time and space are finite, as this Berkeley episode reveals), distribution will involve considerations of equity: some interests will be heeded, some will not; some voices will get heard, some will not. While we tend to think of speech as simply additive—I speak, you speak, we all speak—it can be a zero-sum game.
This incident simply makes concrete, albeit in a fairly dramatic way, what all of us see all the time in the academy. Just to give you the easiest sense of that: Most speakers in these fancy, and well paying, circuits of exchange never come to Brooklyn College. We simply don’t have the money to pay them. Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, and Berkeley do. Free speech ain’t free.
But this incident has an additional element of farce: The Berkeley administration has essentially decided that “the free exchange of ideas” requires a critic to make space for a clown. Clowns can sometimes be critics, but that isn’t the case here. Yiannopoulos is a fabulist and a fool. What we’re seeing here is a university administration deploying the rhetoric of high-minded academic ideals—free speech, deliberation, listening and giving answers to one’s critics—in the service of a hustle. Yiannopoulos’s hustle: pretending he has something to say that is of value. And the administration’s hustle: pretending that they are engaging in anything other than pathetic PR for an institution that is terrified of its critics.
Just to be clear: Though I make exceptions for someone like John Yoo, I tend to be extremely dubious of the no-platforming position, for reasons I don’t want to get into here. Nothing in this post should be construed as support for that position. But many of the flat-earth arguments in favor of free speech, particularly in contexts like these, tend to be fatuous in the extreme and deny the most elemental facts of what is going on.
16 Comments
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I have no idea how the University pay to speak system works and probably don’t want to. If it’s a marketplace that’s enough to turn me off, and I hate the idea that this is just another for profit enterprise. That’s the subtext to all of this, quality of information seems to have nothing to do with what is considered valuable in a marketplace.
That being said, the concept of who gets to speak based on politics should only be judged by merit, not notoriety. Yiannopoulos seems to be very low level intellectual, adept at playing the culture war game and drawing the Eyre of the left. He feeds off of the anger and resentment and need to violate PC rules. In that sense I respect him, because he is simply showing them that “they are not wise”. The fact that he is a clown only shows to what level the anti-free speech types have sunk to- a clown is essentially getting the better of the debate.
But that’s it, and other than the initial “act” there is no catharsis, no exchange of ideas, and nothing of value. If the Left would just let him speak, the ideas would wash out as poorly constructed polemics by someone who isn’t a real intellectual. You can blame the market all you want, but what the market values is controversy, and Milo is a master at that venue of the absurd and ridiculous.
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He feeds off of the anger and resentment and need to violate PC rules. In that sense I respect him, because he is simply showing them that “they are not wise”. The fact that he is a clown only shows to what level the anti-free speech types have sunk to – a clown is essentially getting the better of the debate.
You really have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you okay with racist bigots showing up at your school? People who look to purposefully harm transgenders, like Milo does?
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My point is that this culture of outrage represented by that question is what gives Milo his “market value” and thus his podium. Being incensed by a critic of Left wing ideology to the point of Godwin’ing off the bat is how the man makes his living.
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“If the Left would just let him speak, the ideas would wash out as poorly constructed polemics by someone who isn’t a real intellectual.”
There is SO much to unpack in that one sentence, but I’ll just ask one question: what evidence do you have that identifying “poorly constructed polemics” has ever had any dissolving effects on “poorly constructed polemics”?
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Sounds like the Mein Kampf argument, and I agree that calling garbage ideology out and ridiculing it doesn’t always historically have the effect one would hope. But the only alternative is to control and police speech, which I think is the greater of the two evils by far.
Niping the “Mein Kampf” in the bud is a fantasy on the Left anyways, we all endlessly dream of preventing catastrophe without ever considering the costs. Milo is hardly even on that level, once the outrage fades there is nothing but some dude from the 1980’s that is a cross of Gordon Gecko and American Psycho . Lame ideas that are a caricature of themselves that can’t get out into the dialectic to be squashed because there is some free speech denier feeding the troll.
And again, the guy has a few good points- the Left’s echo chamber is made of titanium and doesn’t like dissent. Give the troll a pat on the head for realize that and let’s then proceed to dismantle the rest of the tired garbage.
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From the standpoint of the Academy, the provision of platforms for speaking engagements is not a for-profit enterprise. Some of them have more money to meet the demands of high profile speakers but I don’t think they’re making a profit; the speakers are, of course. I think the problem with universities offering platforms for the Milos, Ann Coulters and other right-wing trolls who have nothing of intellectual substance to offer is the actual mistake. Berkeley should have politely declined to invite Milo for precisely the reason Prof. Robin mentions: that it would necessitate excluding actual intellectuals or individuals with something to contribute to public discourse worthy of academia and not have students listen to a screed of hate speech and insults. Right-wing trolls have plenty of other spaces willing to entertain them; let them go elsewhere. I do think it was a mistake to automatically exclude Charles Murray; his ideas are indeed contemptible but at least debatable. So, invite him to an Oxford style debate where he can present but also have to defend his ideas. My guess is that he would decline.
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I don’t think this is close to a new low in free speech on campus (there’s far too much competition for that). Rescheduling a speech is a minor nuisance, not a crisis. It is disturbing that a department was asked to pay for extra security because of campus protests, since the administration should be covering the costs of any necessary security (as Berkeley’s new policies declare). And it’s not clear why the library would need extra security for this speech (if they fear idiot protesters breaking things, they will need security anyway).
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I know it sounds the same to Democrats, but it’s spelled pacifism, not passivism.
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I will not blame Corey for moderating this out….
Antifa, duty calls!
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And don’t forget to bring lunch.
Tomatoes, eggs, and whip cream pies for desert.
Clowns have to eat, too.
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“I tend to be extremely dubious of the no-platforming position, for reasons I don’t want to get into here.”
I’m not. I think that it’s a rational, moral, and pragmatic response to our times, and that antifa are doing exactly what should be done.
Probably best not to get into why you’re dubious if it’ll only the usual, but if it’s not, it might be good to engage with a movement that actually has some energy and increasing participation.
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Doesn’t the “no platforming” movement provide the platform and feed the troll? Chomsky just called Antifa a “gift to the right”. Is Noam a white supremacist now?
Is Glen Greenwald a racist for praising the ACLU’s defense of speech?
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I understand and identify with Adorno a little bit more every year. As the dust has settled after the 2016 election, I’ve grown to see Yiannapolous and even Trump himself as manifestations of the Culture Industry. The Culture Industry now so thoroughly dominates American life that not even a nominal distinction exists between politics, academia, and entertainment. And yes, I’m well aware it didn’t start with Trump. If anything, Reagan was the first true Culture Industry president in the US for the obvious reason that this was precisely where his career started. Rather than a debate over free speech, this is what I see.
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I wholly agree. Nearly 40 years now of a horrible downward trend into absurd, intellectually dishonest binary Left vs Right thinking that simply shore’s the establishment. Chomsky was right, none of it means much and the shift has been to global oligarchy while people argue nonsense about how many angels dance on the head of a pin.
The New Deal made America great, and we have been spiraling into oblivion since it’s failure in the 1970’s. When Chomsky and Sanders are dead and buried, is there any hope left at all?
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Well said, but I’d add a bit of Debord and the Situationists here for this has all the earmarks of “The Spectacle”.
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I think Yiannapolous is a troll– someone who wants to provoke rather then have a dialogue. I also think the Breitbart website is guilty of censorship, in the sense that they used dirty tricks to shut down ACORN. I am not sure what I think about the rescheduling; it doesn’t seem like a major issue.