Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Ad Hominem Attacks

Friday, December 16, 2016

Ad Hominem Attacks

I believe that campuses should be open to sides of an issue, that anti-trans people should be allowed to speak on campuses, but there is always a “But.” I believe that college students are smart enough to make up their minds on issues. Now the “but” I do not think that personal attacks on individuals is acceptable.

Breitbart writer targets transgender UWM student
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By Karen Herzog
December 15, 2016

A firebrand speaker who was permanently banned from Twitter for "inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others" blasted a transgender student by name at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, prompting the school's chancellor to immediately condemn the speech in a campus-wide email.

Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos brought his "Dangerous Faggot Tour" to the Student Union at UWM on Tuesday night at the invitation of a new student group called Turning Point USA.

During his speech to a crowd the university estimated at 325 to 350 people, plus others watching via live stream on the Breitbart website, Yiannopoulos singled out a transgender student who had protested against a new UWM policy created for its recreation center's locker rooms.
[…]
Yiannopoulos named and showed a picture of the student to his audience, and accused the student of being a man trying to find his way into women's bathrooms.

Mr. Yiannopoulos cross that line with his personal attacks on the trans student putting her life in jeopardy. She started being harassed and receiving threats and it got so bad that she dropped out of work.

The college president responded…

In an email to the campus Tuesday night, shortly after the event ended, chancellor Mark Mone said UWM was prohibited by law from restricting access to its facilities based on the viewpoint of a student organization or a speaker invited by a student organization.

"Free speech is one of UWM’s core values and I will support students’ decisions to bring a wide array of speakers to our campus – even if the speaker is controversial, and even if I disagree with him or her," Mone said.

"That said, I do not agree with Yiannopoulos’ views, and I strongly condemn the belittling of others and their appearance, and the encouragement of hate and harassment. I also will not stand silently by when a member of our campus community is personally and wrongly attacked."

Colleges should be for the open intercourse of ideas not to create hate and violence.

1 comment:

Stana12/16/16, 10:22 AM
Yiannopoulos' version of free speech is the equivalent of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, which the Supreme Court found is not protected by the Constitution.
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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers