> of course limited by laws prohibiting libel, Holocaust denial etc).
And here we see the really tricky cultural clash problem. Some Americans and most Europeans will say that there are obvious limits to free speech - holocaust denial, hate speech, fighting words, etc. But there's a sizable number of Americans (and probably a smaller number of Europeans) who'll say there should be almost no limits to freedom of speech. (Maybe a ban on distributing images of child sexual abuse, but just about everything else is fair game).
Here's an English politician - Luciana Berger, showing a sample of the anti-semitic hate speech she regularly receives. Some people say that's clearly not acceptable and that Twitter should ban those users (I tend to agree with them).
But a sizable number of people say it's fair enough - she's a politician, she's in the public eye, she can just block those users herself, she should put up with it, she should grow a thicker skin, etc.
This is why I think it's both important that there are places people can go to avoid free speech (safe spaces), and also why we shouldn't just blanket label entire buildings/campuses/cities as safe spaces.
If you were, say, a 20 year old female rape survivor it would be reasonable to expect that the campus Women's Center, which has been labeled a safe space for the purpose of my argument (and hopefully in real life), and expect that you wouldn't be confronted with someone standing at a pulpit declaring all the virtues of rape. Or denying rape, etc. etc. There should be buildings like this that are accessible to everyone. There should be support systems in place in society (college campuses included) that would allow someone to work through this, meet with similar individuals, and get proper help.
However, if there is a speaker in an auditorium who has been invited to discuss his new book detailing how a rape culture has propelled industrialized society forward, he should be allowed to present his argument in that space. You, and anyone else that wants to join you, should be free to protest the living hell out of that outside the auditorium. However crazy his argument may be, we have buildings and spaces that were designed to present them. On a college campus, there's probably 50 spaces to do this.
At least in the states, it's still really important to a lot of people that we can have 'crazy' people say 'crazy' things. If we want to keep that, it is important for people to be available to seek shelter from those crazy things, but we can't make the whole world a shelter.
And here we see the really tricky cultural clash problem. Some Americans and most Europeans will say that there are obvious limits to free speech - holocaust denial, hate speech, fighting words, etc. But there's a sizable number of Americans (and probably a smaller number of Europeans) who'll say there should be almost no limits to freedom of speech. (Maybe a ban on distributing images of child sexual abuse, but just about everything else is fair game).
Here's an English politician - Luciana Berger, showing a sample of the anti-semitic hate speech she regularly receives. Some people say that's clearly not acceptable and that Twitter should ban those users (I tend to agree with them).
But a sizable number of people say it's fair enough - she's a politician, she's in the public eye, she can just block those users herself, she should put up with it, she should grow a thicker skin, etc.
https://twitter.com/lucianaberger/status/725635171295330304/...
Working out which laws are useful to follow, and which are probably a bit too restrictive, would probably be helpful.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-emirates-court-idUSKCN0PA1...
Or insult my old employer, even if I'm not in the country when I do so?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/uniteda...