Word: jeffriesism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1991-1991
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
These same people now extend that principle (as they see it) to defend Jeffries' right to advocate racist theories in the classroom and issue death threats to members of the press, and the Yale student's First Amendment right to spray-paint a swastika on another's door.
This is quite different from the defense offered on behalf of Jeffries and the Yale student. The principle behind the respective universities' inaction is that individuals have the right to "express themselves"--the ideological equivalent of the right to "do your own thing."
In addition to being bigoted, the actions in question violate non-ideological community regulations: In the student's case, defacement of another's property; in Jeffries's case, unprofessional misuse of his position as a lecturer to present false and politicized scholarship, and death threats to a Harvard Crimson reporter...
This confusion is typical of the modern debate about free speech in the university. As in the case of Douglas Hann at Brown University, with whom Jeffries has been unfairly compared, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the distinction between speech and action.
Hann was permanently expelled last year for violating Brown's hate speech code, which prohibited "demeaning actions" directed against "a group or class of persons" based on their "race, religion, or sexual orientation." Hann's shouted racist and anti-semitic epithets outside a dorm. In this case, holding and expressing...