Who Decides?
(Fred Speaking)

 
 
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You are talking about harm as though it were self-evident. That's hardly the case. In many cases, whether a student has been harmed and to what extent he or she has been harmed is not at all obvious.

In order to make a speech code work, someone must be empowered to decide that harm of the proper kind and degree has occurred. Do you really want to do that? Neither you nor I can control the process and the people who make those decisions. There is a tremendous risk involved. Suppose the committee that makes these decisions reaches the conclusion that it is harmful to allow gay organizations on campus? This has already happened at other schools. You can disagree, but the problem is that you have created the machinery that can make these determinations and act on them. I don't think that is what you want. The point is that you should not create the machinery to begin with.

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