Please read this thread @davies_will which addresses your @gdnlongread @guardian: “The #freespeech panic: how the right concocted a crisis” bit.ly/2LY5AQ7. The idea that #FreeSpeech is now a "conservative issue" is sprinting to become the new dogma. 1/10
In the process, the article lumps together a cast of characters including @sapinker, @NAChristakis, @RichardDawkins, @SamHarrisOrg, & @JonHaidt — none of whom are conservative — as if they are part of an epic right-wing ruse. 2/10
It’s part of the trend over the last few months in which people 1) label concerns about #freespeech “conservative,” 2) dismiss these concerns & then 3) explain what is “really going on” with the already-dubbed-fake concern that they concluded is mostly “naked self-interest” 3/10
Many of us have spent our careers A) reassuring the public (which generally believes in #freespeech) that it is too important to be a partisan issue and B) defending the free speech rights of people all across the political spectrum. 4/10
To see the rug pulled out from under us by journalists, writers, and professors — three of the professions that rely on freedom of speech THE MOST — is, to say the least, frustrating. 5/10
This piece does nothing to convince people that concerns about campus #freespeech are “concocted by the right,” it just asserts that claim without grappling with the real cases of people on the left & the right being censored on campus. 6/10
Among them: @AliceDreger, @laurakipnis, @lisardurden, @ciccmaher, @creativetime, @cardsw, @SerhaTanyolacar, and many more. 7/10
I hope Davies will also read this response by @rshibley to allegations from the @nytimes that free speech has become “weaponized by the right.” bit.ly/2NQdfAu 8/10
Ceding the value of free speech to partisan politics might make it easier to dismiss the concerns of your opponents, but there will be long-term consequences for doing so. 9/10
It’s fine to call out partisan hackery & free speech hypocrisy when you see it, but at a time of genuine global “democratic recession” (the best new book on this is by @Yascha_Mounk), don’t dismiss the principle of free speech as partisan in the process. 10/10
