The Sanity Project

CUNY misrepresents American freedoms

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship education law on by

The bogus claim that there’s a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment of the US Constitution usually comes from a left-wing position, but anyone can use it. The Board of Trustees of the City University of New York claimed that the speech made by student Fatima Mousa Mohammed at the May 12 Law School commencement constituted “hate speech.” The statement asserts that “hate speech … should not be confused with free speech and has no place on our campuses or in our city, our state or our nation.” Presumably the university plans or has already engaged in some action penalizing the speaker, though I haven’t been able to find out what it did or is going to do.

This case is particularly interesting because it doesn’t follow the usual script of people holding a left-wing view claiming that positions they don’t like are unprotected “hate speech.” According to an article on FIRE’s website, Ms. Mohammed “accused Israel of ‘indiscriminately raining bullets and bombs’ on Palestinians, criticized CUNY for working with the ‘fascist’ New York City Police Department and military, and expressed disdain for ‘capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism.'” Those sound more like the positions of someone who’d fling “hate speech” accusations rather than being on the receiving end.
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“Phobia” again

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged usage vocabulary on by

After an unpleasant online discussion yesterday, I’m more convinced than before of the need to push back against “phobia” as an epithet. The amount of sheer rage directed at those who question the term — it seems I’m a promoter of “genocide” — shows that something important is going on.

A phobia, as I’ve said before, is a habitual, involuntary, irrational fear. Acrophobia is fear of heights; people with it get dizzy when looking down from high places. Claustrophobia is fear of enclosure in a small space; it can lead to a panic attack when stuck in an elevator that stops moving (or for some, being in an elevator at all). And so on. The involuntary aspect is central. The refusal to think is wrong because it’s irrational and voluntary, and it’s an entirely different case. People aren’t morally responsible for their phobias, though they can be responsible for the degree to which they let them control them.
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Song copyrights 1

This entry was posted in Commentary Music and tagged copyright music writing on by

Reports about a copyright lawsuit by Ed Townsend’s estate against Ed Sheeran recently caught my attention. The suit claims that Sheeran’s song “Thinking Out Loud” infringes on “Let’s Get It On,” usually attributed to Marvin Gaye but co-authored by Townsend. The claim was that Sheeran improperly used “harmonic progressions” and “melodic and rhythmic elements” from the earlier song, but a federal court has ruled there was no copyright violation. That got me thinking about the whole issue of song copyrights.

To start by making my own views clear, I’m in favor of copyright. Some libertarians argue that creative works aren’t tangible objects and thus shouldn’t be subject to property rights, but I think the concept of ownership is as applicable to creations of the mind as to physical creations. Copyright prevents one person (or corporation) from taking someone else’s creation and profiting without getting consent or offering compensation. I think 95-year copyrights are inappropriate, but living creators should enjoy protection against the appropriation of their work.
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