Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Moral exclusion
The concept of moral exclusion allows us to understand both the rationale and social acceptance of such acts of political violence.
that inflicting
does violence become morally acceptable? 1 0 Features and rationalisation for both structural and direct violence. This means
violence upon others outside ones scope of justice is justified. The U.S. war against Iraq is an
example of how a state found it morally justified to engage in open war with another state, despite international sentiments against such a war. On the other hand,
the September 11 attacks also exemplify how a terrorist group found it morally justifiable to kill hundreds of innocent civilians in pursuit of its own political
Gender, ethnicity, religious identity, age, mental capacity, sexual orientation, and political
objective.
affiliation are some criteria used to define moral exclusion (Opotow, p. 103). That the African-Americans
have historically been excluded from equality in the distribution of social resources (Cook, 1990) is an example. political entitys scope of justice. Why does one
state find it just to declare open war upon another state? Why are prisoners of war tortured or abused? Our morals apply to those i nside our moral community or
scope of justice (Deutsch, 1974, 1985, and Opotow, 1990, and Staub, 1989, as cited in Opotow). Morals as used in this sense are the norms, rights, entitlements,
Moral
obligations, responsibilities, and duties that shape our sense of justice and guide our behavior with others (Deutsch, 1985, as cited in Opotow, p. 103).
responsibility toward them (Opotow). Excluded others can be viewed as non-persons on whom
oppression, exploitation, and dominance become normal and acceptable. As such, moral exclusion
b. Resisting oppression and injustice requires evaluating the context of
power and social inequality
(Young, 90)
Iris Marion Young. Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Justice and the Politics of
Difference. Princeton University Press. 1990 pp. 3-5 PC
domination and oppression. Such a shift brings out issues of decisionmaking, division of labor, and culture that bear on social justice but are
often ignored in philosophical discussions. It also exhibits the importance of social group differences in structuring social relations and oppression; typically, philosophical
differences exist and some groups are privileged while others are oppressed, social
justice requires explicitly acknowledging and attending to those group
differences in order to undermine oppression. Although I discuss and argue about justice, I do not construct a theory of
justice. A theory of justice typically derives fundamental principles of justice that appl[ies]y to all or most societies, whatever their concrete configuration and social relations,
from a few general premises about the nature of human beings, the nature of societies, and the nature of reason. True to the meaning of theoria, it wants to see justice. It
assumes a point of view outside the social context where issues of justice arise, in order to gain a comprehensive view. The theory of justice is intended to be self-standing,
since it exhibits its own foundations. As a discourse it aims to be whole, and to show justice in its unity. It is detemporalized, in that nothing comes before it and future events will
not affect its truth or relevance to social life. Theorists of justice have a good reason for abstracting from the particular circumstances of social life that give rise to concrete
claims of justice, to take a position outside social life that rests on reason. Such a self-standing rational theory would be independent of actual social institutions and relations,
and for that reason could serve as a reliable and objective normative standard for evaluating those institutions and relations. Without a universal normative theory of justice
grounded independently of the experience of a particular society, it is often assumed, philosophers and social actors cannot distinguish legitimate claims of justice from socially
stands independent of a given social context and yet measures its justice, however,
fails in one of two ways. If the theory is truly universal and independent, presupposing no particular social situations, institutions, or practices, then it is simply
too abstract to be useful in evaluating actual institutions and practices. In order
to be a useful measure of actual justice and injustice, it must contain some substantive
premises about social life, which are usually derived, explicitly or implicitly, from the actual social
context in which the theorizing takes place. Many have argued that Rawlss theory of justice, for example, must have some
substantive premises if it is to ground substantive conclusions, and these premises implicitly derive from experience of people in modern liberal capitalist societies (see Young,
1981; Simpson, 1980; Wolf}, 1977, pt. IV). A theory of justice that claims universality, comprehensiveness, and necessity implicitly conflates moral reflection with scientific
knowledge (Williams, 1985, chap. 6). Reflective discourse about justice, however, should not pose as knowledge in the mode of seeing or observing, where the knower is
initiator and master of the known. Discourse about justice is not motivated originally by curiosity, a sense of wonder, or the desire to figure out how something works. The sense
of justice arises not from looking, but as jean-Francois Lyotard says, from listening: For us, a language is First and foremost someone talking. But there are language games in
which the important thing is to listen, in which the rule deals with audition. Such a game is the game of the just. And in this game, one speaks only inasmuch as one listens, that
is, one speaks as a listener, and not as an author. (Lyotard, 1985, pp. 71-72) While everyday discourse about justice certainly makes claims, these are not theorems to be
demonstrated in a self-enclosed system. They are instead calls, pleas, claims upon some people by others. Rational reflection on justice begins in a hearing, in heeding a call,
concrete social and political practices that precede and exceed the philosopher.
The traditional effort to transcend that finitude toward a universal theory yields only finite constructs which escape the appearance of contingency usually by recasting the given
as necessary.
at its finest: to reproach the questioning and the questioner as politically heinous, hence also intellectually unworthy. " Speech codes kill critique, " Henry Louis
Gates remarked in a 1 993 essay on hate speech.14 Although Gates was referring to what happens when hate speech regulations, and the debates about them, usurp the discursive space in which
one might have offered a substantive political response to bigoted epithets, his point also applies to prohibitions against questioning from within selected political practices or
institutions. But turning political questions into moralistic ones-as speech codes of any sort do-not only prohibits certain questions and mandates
certain genuflections, it also expresses a profound hostility toward political life insofar as it seeks to preempt argument with a
legislated and enforced truth. And the realization of that patently undemocratic desire can only and always convert emancipatory aspirations
into reactionary ones. Indeed, it insulates those aspirations from questioning at the very moment that Weberian forces of rationalization and bureaucratization are quite
likely to be domesticating them from another direction. Here we greet a persistent political paradox: the moralistic defense of critical practices, or
of any besieged identity, weakens what it strives to fortify precisely by sequestering those practices from
the kind of critical inquiry out of which they were born. Thus Gates might have said, "Speech codes, born of social critique, kill
critique." And, we might add, contemporary identity based institutions, born of social critique, invariably become conservative as they are forced
to essentialize the identity and naturalize the boundaries of what they once grasped as a contingent effect of historically specific social powers. But moralistic reproaches
to certain kinds of speech or argument kill critique not only by displacing it with arguments about abstract rights versus identity-bound injuries, but also by
moralize. But here the problem goes well beyond superficiality of political analysis or compensatory gestures in the face of felt impotence. A moralistic, gestural politics
often inadvertently becomes a regressive politics. Moralizing condemnation of the National Endowment for the Arts for not funding
politically radical art, of the U.S. military or the White House for not embracing open homosexuality or sanctioning gay marriage, or even of the National Institutes of Health for not treating as a
political priority the lives of HIV target populations (gay men, prostitutes, and drug addicts) conveys at best naive political expectations and at worst, patently confused ones. For this
condemnation implicitly figures the state (and other mainstream institutions) as if it did not have specific political and economic investments, as if it were ., not the codification of various
dominant social powers, but was, rather, a momentarily misguided parent who forgot her promise to treat all her children the same way. These expressions of moralistic outrage implicitly cast
the state as if it were or could be a deeply democratic and nonviolent institution; conversely, it renders radical art, radical social movements, and various fringe populations as if they were not
potentially subversive, representing a significant political challenge to the norms of the regime, but rather were benign ent ities and populations entirely appropriate for the state to equally protect,
principle is not simply irritating: it results in a troubling and confused political stance. It misleads about
the nature of power, the state, and capitalism; it misleads about the nature of oppressive social forces, and
about the scope of the project of transformation required by serious ambitions for justice.
Such obfuscation is not the aim of the moralists but falls within that more general package of displaced effects consequent to a felt yet unacknowledged impotence. It signals disavowed despair
over the prospects for more far-reaching transformations
B. Institutions empirically favor public college administrators over those who
challenge them
(UIUC, 16)
UIUC Journal of Law 2k16 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "First Amendment offers scant
protection for professors." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 May 2016.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160509191016.htm
A new study by a University of Illinois employment law expert determined that the First Amendment often fails to protect the most controversial ideas expressed by faculty in higher education.
When academics choose to litigate speech disputes with colleges and universities, they end up losing
nearly three-quarters of the time -- a finding that points to the growing tension between academic freedom and campus speech codes, said Michael LeRoy, a
professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois and author of the paper. The paper's findings suggest that the First Amendment doesn't adequately protect academic freedom as fully as
faculty "understand the concept of constitutionally protected speech," LeRoy said. "There have been a variety of recent controversies dealing with academic freedom, and it's really striking to see
faculty members speak up and very sincerely believe that they are absolutely protected in their speech," he said. "The First Amendment is not synonymous with academic freedom, and my
involving First Amendment claims by professors and college instructors against public colleges and
universities from 1964-2014, found that educational institutions won more than 73 percent of cases
in federal and state courts. Faculty members lost most First Amendment cases involving publishing,
classroom activities, protests, social commentary and campus criticism, according to the research. "If
you look at the trend lines, the speech rights of public employees are narrowing -- and, coincidentally, this is occurring when public speech via social media has become so much more prevalent,"
LeRoy said. The study also found that win rates varied by the geographic boundaries of the federal circuits. Courts located in the 7th Circuit, which encompasses Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin,
overwhelmingly ruled in favor of colleges and universities (88.9 percent) while schools won less frequently (63.6 percent) in the 2nd Circuit, which spans Connecticut, New York and Vermont.
According to LeRoy, the Supreme Court's 1968 decision in Pickering v. Board of Education was the tipping point in favoring an employer's constitutional right to regulate the speech of its
workers. "The Pickering case created a balancing test that later court decisions have since refined," he said. "After Pickering, courts were compelled to weigh the competing interests of public
employees and employers on a case-by-case basis. While the precedent recognizes that public employees do not relinquish their First Amendment rights on the job, it does enable a government
employer to regulate the speech of its employees differently from citizens. And as the data from my study show, courts usually weigh those interests in favor of universities and colleges."
Another case -- 1994's Waters v. Churchill -- gave institutions an additional advantage by allowing them, as public employers, to limit speech that administrators deemed "disruptive" to a public
school. "In the first court rulings after Waters, the faculty win-rate plummeted from 22.6 percent to 13.1 percent, and in appellate rulings, the rate dropped even more precipitously, from 14.5
percent to 3.3 percent," LeRoy said. Although his dataset only considered public colleges and universities, LeRoy said private schools aren't immune to speech controversies, either. "Faculty at
private colleges and universities lack the constitutional protection of free expression in their workplace because the First Amendment doesn't cover speech at work for private institutions," he
said. "If you work at a public university, then you are protected under the First Amendment. To that point, it's important to remember that slightly more than one-fourth of the plaintiffs in my
dataset won their First Amendment claim. We shouldn't lose sight of that number.
C. Speech restrictions are co-opted in order to divide and suppress minorities
(Strossen, 2000)
Strossen, Nadine, (National President, American Civil Liberties Union; Professor of Law, New
York Law School), 2000, Incitement to Hatred: Should There Be A Limit, New York Law School,
pg. 26, March 19, 2017,
http://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=fac_articles_chapters
Even during the short time that the University of Michigan rule was in effect, there were more than twenty cases of
whites charging blacks with racist speech. More importantly, there were only two instances in which the rule punished speech on the ground that it was racist-rather than conveying some other
type of bias-and both involved the punishment of speech by or on behalf of black students. Let me underscore that: 100% of the speech punished as
racist was by or on behalf of African-Americans. Moreover, the only student who was subjected to a full-fledged disciplinary hearing under
the Michigan rule was an African-American student accused of homophobic and sexist expression. In seeking clemency from the punishment that was imposed on him after this hearing, the
student asserted that he had been singled out because of his race and his political views.73 Others who were punished at the University of Michigan included several Jewish students accused of
engaging in anti-Semitic expression (they wrote graffiti, including a swastika, on a classroom blackboard, saying they intended it as a practical joke) and an Asian-American student accused of
making an anti-black comment (his allegedly "hateful" remark was to ask why black people feel discriminated against; he said he raised this question because the black students in his dormitory
Connecticut's hate speech policy, under which she had been penalized for an allegedly
homophobic remark, was Asian-American. She claimed that other students had engaged in
similar expression, but that she had been singled out for punishment because of her ethnic
background. Representing this student, the ACLU persuaded the university to drop the challenged policy.7 " Following the same pattern, the first complaint
filed under Trinity College's then-new policy prohibiting racial harassment, in 1989, was against an
African-American speaker who had been sponsored by a black student organization , Black-Power
Serves itself. Again, I stress that these examples are not just aberrational. Rather, they flow from the very premises of those who
advocate hate speech codes. As they rightly note, discrimination and prejudice is, unfortunately, endemic in United States society-including on campus and in our
legal system. Indeed, exhaustive studies of state and federal courts throughout our country consistently
show entrenched patterns of racial and gender bias." So, for those of us who are committed to eradicating discrimination, the last thing
we should want to do is to hand over to discriminatory officials and institutions power to
enforce necessarily vague hate speech codes that inevitably call for subjective, discretionary
decisions. This discretionary power predictably will be used in a way that is hardly helpful
to disempowered groups.
surrounding communities might have leapt to the racist speaker's defense had the state attempted
to discipline the speaker and thus had created a First Amendment issue. Instead, they remained
united with the offended students because the glare of the public spotlight remained sharply focused on the
racist incident without the distraction of cries of state censorship. Although the counterspeech was not aimed primarily at
influencing the hearts and minds of the residents of the offending dormitory room, its vigor in fact caught the residents by surprise. 68 It prompted at least three of them to apologize publicly and
to display curiosity about a civil rights movement that they were too young to have witnessed firsthand. 69 This effective use of education and counterspeech is not an isolated instance at A.S.U.,
but has been repeated on several occasions, albeit on smaller scales. 7 One year after the counterspeech at A.S.U., Stanford University responded similarly to homophobic speech. In that case, a
first-year law student sought to attract disciplinary proceedings and thus gain First Amendment martyrdom by shouting hateful homophobic statements about a dormitory staff member. The dean
of students stated that the speaker was not subject to discipline under Stanford's code of conduct but called on the university community to speak out on the issue, triggering an avalanche of
counterspeech. Students, staff, faculty, and administrators expressed their opinions in letters to the campus newspaper, in comments on a poster board at the law school, in a published petition
signed by 400 members of the law school community disassociating the law school from the speaker's epithets, and in a letter written by several law students reporting the incident to a
prospective employer of the offending student. 71 The purveyor of hate speech indeed had made a point about the power of speech, just not the one he had intended. He had welcomed
disciplinary sanctions as a form of empowerment, but the Stanford community was alert enough to catch his verbal hardball and throw it back with ten times the force. Thus, the argument that
counterspeech is preferable to state suppression of offensive speech is stronger and more fully supported by experience than is conceded by Delgado and Yun. In both of the cases described
because the universities eliminated the issue of censorship by quickly announcing that the hateful
speakers were protected from disciplinary retaliation. Indeed, the counterspeech against the bigotry was so powerful in each case that it
underscored the need for top administrators to develop standards for, and some limitations on, their participation in such partisan speech. 72
universities have adopted hate speech codes at the expense of other policies that would
constructively combat bias and promote tolerance. In fact, some former advocates of campus hate
speech codes have become disillusioned for this very reason. One example is the minority student who was initially a leading
advocate of one of the earliest campus hate speech codes, at the University of Wisconsin, Victor DeJesus. After the ACLU successfully challenged that code under the First Amendment, Mr.
DeJesus opposed the University's efforts to rewrite the code in the hope of coming up with something that would pass constitutional muster. As the New York Times reported: Victor DeJesus,
co-president of the Wisconsin Student Association, said that he initially supported the hate
speech rule, but that he had changed his mind because he felt the regents were using it as
an excuse to avoid the real problems of minority students. "Now they can finally start putting their efforts into some of our major
concerns like financial aid, student awareness, and recruitment retention," Mr. DeJesus said.
overthrew the Batista dictatorship. Its leader was Fidel Castro and the majority of its members in the initial uprising in 1953 were students. In 1960, four
students from North Carolina A and T University, a Black University, sat in at the local Woolworth counter in the section reserved for
whites in Greensboro, North Carolina. They ordered coffee and refused to move and the police arrested them. Spreading rapidly
throughout the South, these organized sit-ins are often considered the beginning of the
powerful social movements of the 1960s, especially the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movement which were so central to the
1960s. A major group was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, which was composed primarily of Black
college students. They played a central role in the organizing of Black communities in the South
including but not limited to the right to vote. SNCC mainly worked off campus. They also opposed the war in Vietnam and the draft. Beginning later in the 1960s, Black
Student Unions (BSUs) and MEChAs (Chicano student group) demanded, rallied, protested and occupied
college administration offices at college campuses throughout the country and won
increased access to higher education, the creation of Black and Chicano Studies
departments, and hiring of faculty and staff of color. Another major group that had chapters on hundreds of colleges through
the U.S. was Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They were primarily composed although not exclusively of white college students. SDS called for a participatory
democratic society and played a major role in the growing movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam. They were also very active in struggles against racism and poverty. A
constant discussion in SDS was whether to focus on organizing on or off campus. SDS and SNCC were both part of what is often called the New Left; groups interested in
changing themselves and leading by example as they actively organized to transform society. As part of the new left but also as a reaction to the sexism within the New Left, a
very powerful womens liberation movement developed in the late 1960s. It has had an important impact in changing for the better the lives and consciousness of women
although sexism and patriarchy are still part of U.S. society, on and off campus.