I would help us if we tried to be more disciplined in our use of these terms. If what we're talking about is the co-regulation of speech among participants in public discussion, we're talking about conditions for public discourse, not about questions for free speech.
Once we think of it as conditions for public discourse, it becomes much clearer that participants can indeed attempt to regulate each other. Including by shouting over each other. Or by telling someone else that they want them to stop speaking.
Was that person who said to someone else, "Be quiet now!" or "It's not your turn!" or "We don't want to hear from you anymore!" right to do so? The answer to the question depends on what shared understanding we have of the role and process for public discourse in that situation.
And it is always situational. Or contextual. Speech on campus or academic speech is public or semi-public speech in a different context than speech in a public square or on a social media app. There, we can have a different conception of what the role, process, form of speech is.
This also means that when people assert what in each academic forum we must hear all possible opinions that are trying to come forward, and that we owe it to the idea of good research or truth to always hear every opinion out, that stands to be challenged.
We might agree on that.

And we might not.

Academic discussion has disciplinary practices added to it. In a few disciplines it actually seems to be a well shared view that we should hear all those opinions out. In most others, it's not. People can get cut short or not called on.
Again, this is not a matter of free speech. It is a matter of how in academic contexts--differing by discipline and by the precise nature of the situation--open or public or semi-public speech is co-regulated. Of how more central participants have more power in regulating others.
I wished university instructors and administrators wouldn't conflate these different concepts quite so often.
My point is not to say that speech shouldn't be as free as possible among public participants or among people in a campus setting. We can, and have, decided on some situations where it should be, including through the use of legal process and captured in case law.
My point is that when these concepts get muddled together into "free speech," then the concept of "free speech" is rife for abuse. Some people will, and have, claimed that someone's free speech was impeded when their manuscript was rejected by a research journal editor.
No.

Obviously.

But maybe not quite so obvious once we're allowing ourselves to talk about "free speech" in relation to scholarly publication when the concept of "free speech" simply does not apply.

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More from @Katja_Thieme

12 Jan
When "I will take my sword to defend this scholar's academic freedom!" means "I will stand on principle when no principle stand is required because it serves my own shoddy thinking in advancing harmful ideas."
I'm referring to the fact that we have yet to see evidence that #KathleenStock's academic freedom has been hampered in any way. She has secure employment. She got an OBE. Her university publicly celebrated her OBE. Her position is safe and secure.
Yet people write & sign a petition that her academic freedom is in peril.

It isn't.

She produces bad & harmful writing.

She shouldn't do so. She should take the responsibilities of her academic freedom more seriously.

But her right to to advance shitty arguments is no danger.
Read 5 tweets
12 Jan
This is an excellent point. And a useful phrase.

The problem with Jesse Singal is Jesse Singal.
Likewise.

The problem with Kathleen Stock is Kathleen Stock.
Read 4 tweets
11 Jan
LOL.

1) Claire managed to make incitement to violence sound like it didn’t actually happen. Free thought!

2) Claire‘s own social media venture—Quillette Circle—regularly flagged and removed posts that challenged those with #Quillette style leanings and beliefs. See below.
Read 8 tweets
7 Jan
I often wonder why Helen Joyce is suddenly so HUGELY exercised about trans people existing.
The comment Helen Joyce responds to so appreciatively—"God that is good."—is egregious. Let's take a moment to note how egregious. 2/
Image
The first half is a complaint about how criticism of anti-trans positions generally and Kathleen Stock's work specifically is, allegedly, not adhering to "normal standards of rational debate." The writer suggests a "sociological" reading of the situation. 3/
Read 21 tweets
6 Jan
Many of you will know that there are transitive and intransitive verbs. I remember that when I first learned about these categories, as a teenager, I had a hard time making them stick. I kept confusing them. Wait, is that transitive? Or intransitive? Which is which now? 1/
As I often did then, I made my own mnemonic. The terms mark the difference between verbs that require an object and verbs that don't. I told myself each verb gets two things. Subject + object or subject + in-. I've been using that mnemonic ever since. 2/
Well, today is the day that by random occurrence I took a moment to consider the lexical meaning of the word transitive. That wasn't something that was meaningful to me several decades ago. I finally get why linguists chose the particular word "transitive" for this purpose! 3/
Read 4 tweets
6 Jan
Today in #Quillette editor confusion.

Jon Kay: „I am so mad Dr. Theresa Tam didn’t pick up our new rules from the #Quillette style guide and wrote about pregnant adult human females the way I want her to!“
Kathleen Stock & #Quillette fans today: One must never say she is transphobic, it is a smear, an insult, an ad hominem! One is only allowed to issue criticism against a living academic in peer-reviewed publications, or better yet, a whole book!

Jon Kay missed that memo.
Geoffrey Miller in #Quillette in October 2019: Polyamory makes you smart, fit, organized, and funny! Please treat it as the next sexual revolution.

Jon Kay, #Quillette editor, in January 2021: Forgot all about that. Let’s use it as a smear against a living academic I dislike!
Read 4 tweets

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