It is a famous aphorism that freedom of speech does not protect yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, but as is frequently the case with aphorisms, the ‘general truth’ contained therein is often not completely accurate. The First Amendment states that Congress — and now extended to cover state and local governments — shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. In the case of yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, a violation of the First Amendment occurs not in punishing the consequences of such an action, if that action is untrue and results in injuries due to a panic, but would be a law or regulation which prohibited people from going into theaters because they might yell, “Fire!”
We have already seen such a violation, in which the Biden Administration pressured various social media companies to “remove content it considers misleading, including about the COVID-19 pandemic.” And there was the famous but failed attempt by the Administration to create its own Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board in the Department of Fatherland Security, something that Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post reporter who gained her greatest fame with the doxing of Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate saleswoman and creator of the Twitter site that the left hate, Libs of TikTok sorely lamented.
But within hours of news of her appointment, (Nina) Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.
Well, it’s another year, the Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board idea has died a well-mocked and well-deserved death, but now there are some defenses of people not being restricted in their speech but paying the consequences for it. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Dozens of public figures have been dismissed from their jobs because of their social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war. It’s a scorched-earth battle, and it makes real conversation impossible.
by Jonathan Zimmerman, Columnist | Thursday, November 30, 2023 | 7:00 AM EST
Your tweet was antisemitic. You’re fired!
Your tweet was anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic, as well. You’re fired, too!
Welcome to the digital war we’ve been waging in the United States, while a real one rages in Gaza. Dozens of physicians, entertainers, and journalists have been dismissed because of their posts about the conflict. It’s a scorched-earth battle for the age of social media. And it makes real conversation impossible.
The only solution is to let everyone tweet what they wish, whether you agree with them or not.
I have been fully supportive of people tweeting exactly what they wish, and do not want the anti-Semitic tweets censored, not because I support what they are saying, but because I very much want the anti-Semites to tell us exactly who they are, so that we can avoid them, and avoid doing business with them. I completely support the things we have previously reported about deep-pocket university donors closing their checkbooks due to anti-Semitism on campus, and creating ‘do not hire’ lists of the haters of Jews. Dr Zimmerman, who write the column cited above, was similarly displeased that the deep-pockets donors were using their money to fight anti-Semitism.
But, and fair warning here, I am going to use a word which will offend many, no one, and I include Dr Zimmerman in this, would be even remotely surprised or opposed if a company fired an employee who said that he hated niggers.
Why did I use the dreaded “n” word? Because it points out the extreme end, the end to which even Dr Zimmerman would almost certainly not go to defend someone’s job if he said the wrong thing. Me? I’m retired, so I can’t be fired for using the word! 🙂
Corporations have exactly one purpose, and that’s to earn money for their shareholders, and if they believe that allowing employees to say things which can cost them money, or, as has frequently been the case, call into question the professional commitment of lawyers and physicians to fully support or treat patients and clients who are members of the demographic group they’ve slammed.
Dr Zimmerman then discussed a couple of cases in which he raised questions as to whether people should have been fired for tweets some found offensive, then stating:
Did NYU fire (Benjamin) Neel to create “the appearance of even-handedness” with (Zaki) Masoud, as the suit alleges? I don’t know. But here’s what I do know: There’s no way to justify firing one of these guys unless you also dismiss the other one. And if we keep calling for their heads, we will lose our minds.
How many more people will be fired for tweets about Israel/Palestine? And how do you know you won’t be next on the list if someone is offended by your own post?
Like I said, I’m retired, so I know that I won’t be fired! But corporations, companies, organizations, and schools depend on customers, patients, clients, and consumers to have faith in the people with whom they deal, and if an employee uses his freedom of speech in a manner which could cause prospective customers, et al, to lose faith in their employees and in the company in general, that employee has become a liability, not an asset.
My copy of Mein Kampf. I don’t own it because I support it, but because it is an historically significant book.
Dr Zimmerman is a university professor, and university professors have a natural interest in the free expression of ideas. Unfortunately, the immature hot heads on so many of our college campuses, including the University of Pennsylvania, do not seem to have much interest in the free expression of ideas when those ideas run contrary to what many in the student body believe. Penn itself earned some notoriety by telling “strongly advising” the actually female members of the school’s women’s swim team not to speak out to the press about Will Thomas and tried to instill fear in the women that if they did, their employment prospects would be diminished.
The columnist is right about the free exchange of ideas, but only in an abstract sense. Would he, or really anyone — other than some of today’s Palestinian-supporting university students, that is! — give intellectual credence to a calm and rational discussion of the ideas expressed in Mein Kampf?
Dr Zimmerman’s original column title, which I saw by putting my cursor on the tab in which the article appeared, was “We need a truce in the Israel-Palestine tweet wars.” But let’s tell the truth here: we’re not going to get that truce, and we really shouldn’t have it. Anti-Semitism festered in Europe for 1,800 years after the Romans expelled the Jews from the Levant, and the Shoah was only the most extreme example of it, unprecedented in size and scope and viciousness, but not in kind. Just as the victorious Allies did what they could to “de-Nazify” Germany after the war, we need to marginalize today’s anti-Semites as much as possible.
One major difference at Harvard was a letter signed by more than 650 faculty calling on the university to keep Claudine Gay; its board announced last week that she would remain. A group of current and former MIT faculty leaders also issued a letter of support for their president, Sally Kornbluth, and the board of trustees there also backed her, according to the Washington Post.
