I agree that the case I just described wouldn’t constitute no platforming. It also seems unobjectionable.

To expand a bit on the differences in responsibilities between doctors and professors: presenting patients with the best arguments in favor of an outdated medicine-related claim you knew to be false would probably be medical malpractice. Presenting students with the best arguments in favor of Plato’s view of the soul or something similar is good philosophical practice.

One last point, it’s hard to believe that “it’s no one else’s business” is really your considered opinion, since you earlier wrote that you sincerely hope that students and others would protest the history department inviting David Irving. This is a weird hope if you really think the invitation is not anyone else’s business. Your only objection is to people protesting *when their motives are insufficiently pure*. So I think you need a better explanation of the wrong that’s involved.

Hi Justin,

I have to admit, I’m having an extremely hard time understanding where you are coming from here. You seem to be assuming general stupidity and ill-will on the part of all academics.

“I learn that the department has an interest in hearing many views that are very far from the mainstream, and that they try to engage with them critically. They don’t invite people because they _agree_ with their conclusions, but because they’d like to hear their arguments and assess them for themselves.”

Sorry, so they believe that they are personally competent to assess the arguments of climate deniers, holocaust deniers, etc.? So they either all have expertise in climate science and the history of WWII, or they suffer from serious Dunning-Krueger issues.

“I’m surprised to hear that the department invited a climate change denier some months back, and that in a previous year they even had a Holocaust denier come and present his arguments. The Holocaust denier had all his arguments soundly defeated during the Q&A.”

Yeah, so you’re starting off with an extremely unlikely hypothetical. In what sense did the Holocaust denier have his arguments “soundly defeated”? By a bunch of philosophers? With no professional training in history? Please explain. What does it mean to “soundly defeat” someone in this context. Did the entire audience, some of whom were presumably laypeople, understand that the holocaust denier was soundly defeated, or did they just come away thinking there were two sides to the issue, both of which were reasonable?

“Are you saying that, in that case, I should flatly refuse to give my talk in that department for moral reasons?”

Actually, in the case you’ve presented, I have no idea if there are moral reasons or not for not speaking there. I would advise you not to speak there on purely self-interested grounds. This department seems to be made up of a bunch of morons.

In cases where there are moral reasons to boycott, they are more or less the reasons Levy was talking about in the original article.

“Which views, exactly, do you think we should be doing this for?”

Well definitely for holocaust deniers. And definitely not for most views, even if we disagree with them. And there will be a small number of views that are borderline cases, in which trained experts should exercise their professional expert opinion.

“If departments that have invited speakers who express those views need to be boycotted, then what about departments that have invited speakers who take less spectacularly dissenting views on moral or even non-moral topics?”

Probably not. No.

“Do you think this will not be apt to freeze up discussions and encourage orthodoxy very quickly? If not, why not, please?”

No, I don’t, at least not in an objectionable way. Because I think that this is already standard practice–this is my point–and it has not had this effect. To the extent that it has encouraged orthodoxy, that has been in cases where there should be an orthodoxy: that the holocaust happened, that George Washington was not a space lizard, that ghosts do not exist, that we should not practice slavery, etc.

“Suppose the speaker in question had an unacceptable view on one topic but was brought in to give a talk on another topic and the unacceptable view never came up. Would you still find it morally praiseworthy to boycott the department?”

That depends. If the person is advocating genocide, then no, you probably shouldn’t give him a platform to discuss his reasonable views on computer science, if that’s likely to create more publicity and aura of reasonableness for his pro-genocidal views. In a lot of other cases, I would say, who cares?

Justin,

Since my more detailed reply to you isn’t showing up for some reason, here’s the short version of how I’d respond to your thought experiments. You seem to be imagining a philosophy department full of people who are not just experts in philosophy but also history and climate science. Such departments do not exist. They cannot. It would take too long to master all of the relevant disciplines. On the other hand, if a department of ordinary philosophers of the sort who do exist regarded themselves as competent to figure out for themselves whether global warming or the Holocaust is real, they would not be worth engaging with. It’s nice to imagine that the department could “soundly defeat” the Holocaust denier in a public debate, but if that means convincing people in the audience that the Holocaust denier is a crank who should not be listened to, that can be very hard for trained historians to accomplish, let alone a bunch of amateurs with oversized egos. Levy’s point is that there is a high risk that audiences will come away instead thinking that Holocaust denial is an unconventional but still reasonable position.

As to whether you should boycott the department in question or not, I have no idea. I would hope, however, that someone would tell them to stop wasting university money on a bizarre and self-indulgent hobby, and to instead start doing their jobs.

This is part of the point of Levy’s whole argument: nobody is capable of critically evaluating all arguments by themselves. It is a mistake for our philosophers to think they can evaluate the arguments of Holocaust deniers or climate change skeptics themselves. They have to be willing to rely on the authority of better placed sources.

As for where the dividing the line between charlatans and people we happen to disagree with is, that needs to be left up to the professional judgment of the relevant experts. And as for your possibility #3, the answer is obviously that it depends.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to be oblique here. I thought I was clear that in the original case you described of the history department, punitive actions against the faculty were unjustified because the history faculty have the moral right to invite speakers to campus even if their decisions about who to invite are obviously wrong and problematic. This means there is a fairly strong sense in which it’s no one else’s business who they invite, in the sense that no one else has the standing to try to force them to revoke the invitation, although others on campus do have the standing to try to convince them to change their minds.

Anyway, I only brought up the other cases to show some ways in which my view is less extreme than it might seem at first glance.

I don’t think the difference between the hospital and the university is entirely or mainly about the higher stakes of medical care. It’s about the different duties incurred by the professionals in these domains; doctors are saving the life and health of patients, professors are educating students, and these roles go along with different rights and responsibilities vis a vis exposing the patients/students to ideas. I think the stakes of what happens at a university are often very high. Replace Plato’s theory of the soul with Plato’s critique of democracy, or his arguments against poetry, which I happen to think are pretty morally disgusting and dangerous, and I would say the same thing about the example.

Of course you’re right that our role isn’t literally to corrupt the youth. But I do think our role is in part to “corrupt the youth” in a figurative sense, that is, to present them with a bunch of evidence bearing on certain interesting questions and let them come to their own conclusions, even if that ends up sending them down the wrong path in certain ways.

“No, free speech should be fully protected in the classroom, and everywhere. But telling someone they are not invited to give a talk by the history department is not a violation of their free speech rights. Nor is telling a department that inviting a certain speaker violates the professional standards of their academic discipline and that you will not engage with them as members of the profession if they do so.”

Clearly we disagree about what counts as a violation of someone’s moral (not legal) right to free expression, and more important to me, what counts as a violation of someone’s moral rights as a listener who wants to hear someone else’s speech.

I think it’s pretty clear that there is a sense in which free speech rights are less robust in a classroom than they are in, say, a public square. Just like those rights are less robust when you’re on someone else’s private property, since they can ask you to leave. In a typical classroom there is one person who has the standing to set certain boundaries on which topics others are allowed to speak about. Maybe you’re just referring to the fact that this is nothing more than a “time and place” restriction, in which case we don’t disagree.

“One last point, it’s hard to believe that “it’s no one else’s business” is really your considered opinion, since you earlier wrote that you sincerely hope that students and others would protest the history department inviting David Irving.”

Right, what I would have said if I were being more precise is that something can be “someone else’s business” to a greater or lesser degree. That is, there are some ways in which others have the moral standing to intervene and other ways in which they don’t.

By analogy, if I knew you were feeding your kids an unhealthy amount of high-fructose corn syrup, I would have the standing to talk with you about this and try to change your mind. Since we’re friends, I would probably have the standing to make my case a little more stridently that a mere acquaintance, but less stridently than your brother could. But I would not have the moral right to convince your colleagues not to accept speaking invitations from you in the hopes of pressuring you to feed your kids a healthier diet. (On the other hand, if I knew you were literally poisoning your kids I would have the right to do that and more.)

Dave,

I don’t know what “moral right” you think the history department has to invite Holocaust deniers. Yes, departments have a right to invite speakers. No, they do not have a right to invite whomever they want. The person needs to be contributing to the mission of the department. Normally that would be at the department’s discretion, but in this case they are engaged in fairly obvious professional malpractice.

This doesn’t interfere with the right of the Holocaust denier to speak. Nor anyone’s right to listen to them. You are on the internet right now. You can easily hear all the arguments from Holocaust deniers that you want. Have at. The question is whether academic departments should be hosting them.

And sorry, you’re argument is, if people accepted arguments like these Timothy Leary and Eldridge Cleaver would never have been able to lecture at universities?

Justin,

Here’s my verdict on your examples:

1. The example is under-described. I need to know, did these generalist thinkers also devise an experiment to test the truth of string theory, translate the Mahabharata, solve the liar paradox, and cure cancer while they were at it? Did they give their students some materials to read beforehand so their students could help?

2. The example is under-described. Are we talking about the actual Philip Kitcher or a fictional character named Philip Kitcher who doesn’t know any science?

3. Nope. I wouldn’t boycott that talk. The speaker is probably wrong, but isn’t obviously arguing for falsehoods. Unlike the Holocaust denier.

“Normally that would be at the department’s discretion, but in this case they are engaged in fairly obvious professional malpractice.”

I don’t agree that it’s malpractice. To recycle my point from before, if I reserve a room in my department and invite Irving to present his ramblings to me one-on-one, I’ve probably done something uncool, but it seems clear to me that I haven’t violated my professional obligations. The same goes if I invite a colleague to join us. I don’t see why issuing an open invitation to anyone else on campus who would also like to listen suddenly turns this into a case of professional misconduct.

“This doesn’t interfere with the right of the Holocaust denier to speak. Nor anyone’s right to listen to them. You are on the internet right now. You can easily hear all the arguments from Holocaust deniers that you want.”

Here you seem to be assuming that the ability to say what you like on the internet automatically means your free speech rights can’t be infringed by preventing you from speaking elsewhere. But that’s obviously not correct; consider what would follow if we applied that same logic to justify prohibiting protests on campus or something similar.

“And sorry, you’re argument is, if people accepted arguments like these Timothy Leary and Eldridge Cleaver would never have been able to lecture at universities?”

That is one of several arguments I’ve made, yes.

Hi Dave (and also Justin),

I feel like we’re not getting anywhere, so I’m just going to try to clarify my position (and what I take Levy’s position to be as well) one last time and then I’m calling it a day. I took Levy’s position to be extremely weak: when universities select someone to give a talk, that generally communicates to the audience that this person has some reasonably high degree of epistemic authority. Maybe they’re wrong, but they are at least worth taking seriously. But this creates a pro tanto moral reason against inviting certain kinds of cranks and charlatans–because it misleads the public. Arguing against such people does no good when it comes to preventing people from being misled: because academics argue all the time with people who they do respect and regard as experts, and everyone knows this. My students would never get the impression that I regard someone as a crank simply because I argued with them during the Q&A of a talk. There’s the additional problem that to laypeople, it is often not clear when someone has been soundly refuted. This is why some professional historians have made a point of avoiding debate with Holocaust deniers. Unless you already know a lot of history and proper methodology of history, it won’t be clear to you how disingenuous a professional Holocaust denier is being. We can imagine fantasy scenarios in which truth wins out and a bunch of scrappy, non-dogmatic philosophers outsmart David Irving in the Q&A and everyone comes away enlightened about the truth, but that’s not actually how things work.

Now, this is a pro tanto reason for no-platforming. Being pro tanto, it can potentially be defeated by other considerations. So when you present a bunch of other cases that are more complicated, I’m going to say, “yeah, that’s more complicated.” I don’t know what else to tell you. No, I don’t think that academics should no-platform everyone they disagree with, obviously. Levy has made clear he doesn’t think that either. So who should you no-platform? Cranks and charlatans? How do you know who is a crank or a charlatan? Well I picked a case where it’s obvious. What about less obvious cases? Yeah, you have to use good judgment. Does this mean some people make mistakes. Yes, it does. Sorry, life is messy. But, as Spencer Case noted above, free speech sometimes has bad consequences. And whatever you might think, the right to protest speakers, to shun, censure, and to refuse to interact with others are all aspects of free speech. A robust culture of debate means we will not only debate our opinions, but debate which opinions get to get debated. And sometimes you’ll think other people are wrong to exclude an opinion, and you’ll be really mad at them. But that’s life.

Anyway, I don’t think I’m going to convince either of you that this is correct, but maybe you can take into account that this is how some people are thinking. I’ve seen non-philosophers make similar points to Levy’s, though not with an explicit reference to higher-order evidence of course. So this kind of idea is motivating some people. If you want to convince them that no-platforming is mistaken in general, I don’t know that you’d have much luck. But you might be able to convince them that particular cases of no-platforming are wrong, if you are willing to take their concerns into account. Saying, “oh, but what about this case, but what about that case” is not addressing their concerns. But presenting evidence that the speaker in question is not a charlatan might.

And yes, Dave, preventing a protest may interfere with people’s freedom of speech. But the reason for that is not that it prevents other people from hearing their ideas, which are easily accessible. And no one’s freedom of speech is violated by denying them an invitation to be a speaker at an academic conference.

I agree that there is less reason to no-platform speakers invited by student groups. That seems to follow from Levy’s general argument, too: an invitation from a student group is weaker higher-order evidence.