Hoppe’s courageous fight against the left’s campaign against dissenting views has led to a reexamimation by UNLV of the issue of free speech.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/4218/hoppe-and-free-speech/
Hoppe and Free Speech
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Sorry to dissent, but this issue has got nothing to do with freedom of speech. From what I can see there is little evidence of government censorship or interference, it is only a private matter between Mr Hoppe and his employers.
I work for a risk analysis consultancy. If I gave an interview in which I claimed that risk management was useless, I would probably be fired. Would that be censorship? Hardly. So let’s not get carried away.
Marco,
you are too clever and too smart for your own good … what in the world is the point of your example … it has nothing to do with what happened to hoppe … I hope your risk analysis skill are better than the reasoning you apply here …
Marco is right. The voluntary dealings of employers with their employees have nothing to do with free speech. The only valid legal question is whether the University violated a contractual agreement with Hoppe.
Gentlemen, we’ve been through this. Academic freedom was guaranteed as a matter of contract–consistent with long tradition–and violated by a state institution for political reasons. The case is well documented and egregious. Please read bit: here.
Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the meeting at UNLV yesterday, so I don’t know what the results of the conference. Nothing in today’s local papers, either. If I find anything out, I’ll post it here and on my announcement of the event on Liberty & Power.
Cheers!
Just Ken
Of course, Jeffrey. My point was just that the University didn’t violate Hoppe’s right to free speech; it violated a contract.
Roy, yes, I know what you mean–except that “academic freedom” as that term is used, including the right to teach and speak, has a long enough heritage to permit us to use the phrases in a ways that transcends purely abstract theoretical or legal concerns. Even before the rise of the nation state, when the Church administered all universities, Popes and Bishops would not interfere with research and teaching, except under the most grave conditions. The university functioned as a sanctuary. The idea that a professor should be granted maximum latitude in all intellectual endeavors is part of the fabric of the whole Western idea of learning. So in that sense, it probably possible to speak of freedom of speech and research in a way that is particularly applicable to academia.
Academic freedom means freedom from government interference, not freedom from being fired. A flagrant violation was the treatment of the Italian physicist Gian Carlo Wick during the McCarthy era. When asked by the State of California to swear he’d never been a communist, he refused to do so and immediately lost his job. The Hoppe case has very little to do with this. Not only was the government not involved, he was never even in danger of losing his job. I think it would be best to save our indignation for when it really is needed, otherwise it devalues the currency.
By the way, Hoppe’s case also has little to do with the first amendment, as was claimed by the Review Journal. The first amendment states
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
It says nothing about private institutions dealing with their employees.
There is a first amendment/free speech aspect to this: the state does not much distinguish between private and state action, or between State and federal action. They have indeed foisted an attituded of political correctness on us, in part by force of insidious laws like affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws. These laws have spilled over into the public and private workplaces. They distort what private contractual regimes re academic freedom of speech would otherwise specify.
A victory against PC policies of a public university strikes at the enemies of free speech, private and public.
If UNLV is receiving taxpayer dollars in any form (student aid in the form of grants or low-interest loans, or outright grants to the university) then as far as I am concerned it’s a matter of free speech in addition to the contract which was agreed upon.
I agree with the assertion that this was a violation of contract, not free speech. I don’t think it matters that UNLV is a state entity. I support Hoppe’s fight, but it is not a constitutional issue, in my opinion. UNLV has simply been revealed to be a den of hypocrites.
“Hoppe’s courageous fight against the left’s campaign against dissenting views…”
This is just ditto-head dumb, and a sad indication that I misjudged Mises as a place where this left-leaning seeker can find new ideas.
The much attacked ACLU Damn commie!) is defending the guy for darn sakes!
Cronyism and corruption know no allegence. But we’ll never get around to tackling that while this sort of stupid prevails.
I’m on the prof’s side professionally but I must say, he was the adult in this situation and he didn’t handle it very well. His statement that the school should have told the brat to grow up says a lot about his people skills. He could have made this go away with a little tact.
In this town, Atlanta, it certainly has always been the artists (mostly young) and the homosexuals who have taken the riskier investments-in neighborhood after neighborhood, abandoned by white flight(those PC-damners), that revitalized this city. And began some racial healing. All being un-done now by developers who are forcing the poor and middle-class out of town with luxery development. And they really don’t care what race you are. You’re in their way. That’s the new PC.
If UNLV is a public university, that makes Hoppe a public official, and as far as I can see his position is even less defensible. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom to be subsidised by the taxpaying public.
As for what Hoppe himself thinks about freedom of speech, here in an interesting passage from his book Democracy: the God that Failed (p. 218).
There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.
Wow. Did Hoppe really write what is quoted above? Physically remove communists and homosexuals from society in order to maintain its libertarian order? Sounds like a man after my own heart. Why couldn’t he have taught at my bland, suicide-inducing graduate school?
I must drink of this man’s strong wine. Nay, I shall intoxicate myself!
Somehow, I don’t think Hoppe was advocating the removal of the above listed, so much as addressing their collective propensity to vote for highly-centralized government. I could be wrong – I haven’t read the book yet.
tribalecho, I hope you don’t leave. The discussions here are free-ranging and the points of view are not herded into one single channel of thought. Unfortunately, the feelings and sensibilities may from time-to-time be offended, but hopefully we can all move past that.
As for the un-PC working-class whites that abandoned the cores of the cities in droves in the 60′s and 70′s, it had less to do with racial hatreds and more to do with a withdrawal of services (functioning public education and police) that those folks had come to rely on. It is unfortunate that many equated the fact of minorities moving into a neighborhood with societal and cultural decline, but most people do not care whether the increase in crime or the decrease in property values in a neighborhood are leading or following indicators – they are just getting out while they can. If you want to blame someone, blame the politicians who pumped federal dollars into Section 8 housing,and the landlords who benefit by it for bringing the least-responsible elements of the poor community into established neighborhoods. The cost of not offending the least-responsible and least productive is the destruction of the incremental savings of millions of hard-working people. And I give kudos to the gays and other minorities who improve such neighborhoods. But being “driven” out is unpleasant no matter whether by crime, drugs, property prices, rent, or taxes.
I want to see the context under which this quote is taken. If i am not mistaken, someone has already explained elsewhere that Hoppe was explaining how a conservative “community” would, should and could act under its own community standards and laws if it wanted to live a particular conservative lifestyle under libertarian law.
Conversely, I believe Hoppe would argue that an exclusive homosexual community could if it so desired, rightly exclude all conservative, anti-homosexual heterosexuals from their community. That’s a libertarian society.
Correct me if i have it all wrong.
He is talking about what he regards as real libertarianism as opposed to “false multi-countercultural and anti-authoritarian egalitarian left-libertarian impostors”. He claims that true libertarians must distinguish themselves from these people by “practicing (as well as advocating) the most extreme form of intolerance and discrimination”, which include “ill manners, misconduct, incompetence, rudeness, vulgarity and obscenity”.
I’m no big fan of liberal democracies myself, but I think I’d rather take my chances in any one of them than join Hoppe’s collective.
See, this is the problem with copyright law — I can’t go look up the above quotations to see their context (or, indeed, if they’re even true quotations), because I haven’t bought Hoppe’s book yet.
It seems this discussion has been had before at
http://blog.mises.org/blog/archives/003107.asp
here’s a posting (thanks Charles) that seems to address the context issue:
—-
John T. Kennedy, nice of you to take Hoppe completely out of context by excluding the preceding sentences (or did you even read the book?):
“In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance towards democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal.”
Clearly he is talking about the right of owners of private property to exclude others. This is clearly advocating liberty and the preservation of property rights.
Go peddle your distortions to the high schoolers at the anti-state.com.
Posted by: Charles Warren at February 6, 2005 08:12 PM
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