Keep in mind: stereotypes cut both ways

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, 28 August 2016

How would you describe the “typical American?”

Our nearest neighbor and biggest trading partner, Canada, sees Americans as optimistic and hard-working, but intolerant, arrogant, greedy, and violent. Too bad there is no data on our other neighbor, Mexico.

China, a reason Donald Trump offers for why America isn’t great anymore, has a negative view of Americans. Less than half view us as optimistic, less than 40 percent view us as hard-working, less than 30 percent view us as tolerant but 60 percent view us as arrogant, about half view us as greedy, and just over half as violent.

The characteristics of the “typical American” were the subject of a Pew Research Center survey released Dec. 11, 2015 www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/11/patriotic-honest-and-selfish-how-americans-describe-americans/. Pew offered three positive characteristics (patriotic, intelligent and honest) and two negative characteristics (selfish and lazy) that American respondents indicated described the typical American. Go ahead, do your own rating. Then, which of the following additional characteristics do you associate with typical Americans: optimistic, hard-working, tolerant, arrogant, greedy and violent? This latter list was part of another Pew Research Center survey of the U.S. and 15 other nations about Americans.

Typical American. Seems like an innocuous term. Is typical African-American or typical Muslim or typical Mexican as innocuous? Are you getting a little nervous when you read “typical African-American” or “typical white person.” What is the difference between asking what is the typical American like than asking what is the typical?

If there are any of my former students reading they might recognize this definition of stereotype: A generalization (idea) about people; a mental image that summarizes what is believed to be typical about a group of people. Like “typical American.”

What is your stereotype of the typical American? If you are like those Pew surveyed chances are you stereotype Americans as patriotic, honest, intelligent, selfish, optimistic, hard-working, tolerant, arrogant and greedy. It’s a coin flip whether you see Americans as lazy. And a 4 in 10 chance you see Americans as violent.

Among the nations surveyed, the largest nation on earth does not have a very good view of Americans. One might argue, “well, they are just stereotyping us.” That would be right. And what is the knee jerk response of someone called out for using a stereotype? “There is always a basis of truth in a stereotype.” So, which part is the truth?

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How many of you think you are a “typical American?” Describe yourself using these characteristics. Are you “typical?” Who will describe themselves as optimistic, hard-working, tolerant, arrogant, greedy, violent, patriotic, honest, intelligent, selfish, and lazy? My guess is that there are far more who see themselves in terms of the positive characteristics than the negative ones. Few people mind being associated with positive stereotypes. Personally, I could not have answered the Pew study. Americans are all those things; just among my friendship network there are optimists and pessimists, hard-workers and lazy types, humbles and arrogants, violents, pacifists, liars and cheats.

We generally associate stereotypes with something negative. Stereotypes are necessary “precursors” to prejudice and racism. A common response of someone confronted with using a stereotype is to object and deny it. Yet, if we harbor stereotypes about ourselves, why then is it hard to accept we harbor stereotypes about others?

How many Chinese people have actually ever met an American? Yet, they seem to share a distinct stereotype of us. What is the basis of that stereotype? Where are they getting that image from? I doubt many Poles have met many Americans either, yet, three times as many Poles view Americans as tolerant as do Chinese? Nearly 70 percent of Greeks view Americans as greedy while only a fifth of Italians do. Why such a stark difference?

Now think about how you think of other groups especially within the U.S., such as Mexicans, African Americans, European-Americans, Asians, Muslims and others. Are you embracing stereotypes? What is the basis of your views? Broad experience with individuals from those groups or snippets of things you read or hear in the media, friends and family members’ remarks?

Keep in mind, 72 percent of Greeks think we are arrogant, 68 percent think we are greedy, and 68 percent of Australians think we are violent. Is that a fair characterization of you? Don’t like that feeling of being stereotyped? Neither do those who you stereotype. That goes for racial and ethnic groups as well as the supporters of our current presidential candidates.

In a crisis, politicians revert to serving themselves

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, 26 June 2016

Earlier this week while reading all the news that’s print to fit on Facebook, I came across this posting from Twitter: “Not convinced either Democrats or Republicans want movement on gun issues. Both think it helps with base mobilization in 2016.” That’s either pretty cynical or an astute observation. Knowing the author of the tweet, and some readers will recognize the name, Kirby Goidel (formerly of the ISU political science department), I leaned toward the astute.

During Presidential elections I sometimes pretend to be an amateur political scientist. I responded to the posting but then two other real political scientists weighed in and I found the discussion fascinating. The discussion was not among partisans but one of far more objective observers, the kind that we desperately need our pundits to be, not partisan mouthpieces for the party or particular causes. Though I suppose it’s not as entertaining which seems now to be the primary currency of virtually any mass media.

I guess I am naïve. I think I have an accurate read on anyone who seeks political office beyond a local office. (I believe many people are truly civic minded and real world examples of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”) I still thought that there were enough politicians, when facing dire circumstances, natural disasters, and national tragedies like 9/11, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino and now Orlando, who would come together and actually, with good will, try to fix the problem. Of course, there are still the partisan, self-serving, craven politicians, but that “enough” would set aside for a brief moment their allegiance to self, party, ideology, donors, narrow district/state differences and attempt to “fix” it. The fix might prove to be a problem, or not good enough, or an overreach (insert Patriot Act) but “enough” would get on board.

Another quote from the discussion: “… I think that there is probably a basis for a compromise on some of the issues (e.g., terror watch list), but neither side wants to move to common ground and each is content to use the issue to mobilize its base.” (James Garand). So, popular memes on social media among Democrats and their supporters is that Republicans just voted to put guns in the hands of terrorists. If Garand is correct, so did Democrats even by voting for their bills. Talk about craven! Talk about self-serving! My response to the discussion at this point was: “And this kind of calculus is probably why both parties are more negatively viewed by the public than positively and why 39 percent of folks identify as independents.”

Last week’s CNN/ORC poll showed a spike in support for “gun control,” up 9 percentage points to 55 percent. (i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/06/20/cnn_orc_poll_june_20.pdf) More surprising was the overwhelming support for specific measures. 92 percent support expanded background checks, 87 percent support a ban for felons or people with mental health problems and 85 percent would ban people on federal watch lists from buying guns. 90 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats support preventing people on the terror watch lists from buying guns. Such lopsided numbers are rare in the U.S. where we really do disagree on about everything. One would think that even the most craven politician could read those numbers as a green light. Instead, that overwhelming support is ignored.

Rahm Emanuel, a polarizing political figure if there ever was one, is immortalized on “BrainyQuotes” with this seemingly cynical but also true quote: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” This was in response to the dire economic conditions at the outset of the Obama Administration. At least the Obama Administration and Congress actually did something, debate about its effectiveness notwithstanding. In the face of terrorism, domestic or international (the threat of terrorism is having its negative effects on our society), instead of a crisis creating an opportunity to do something, the idea that the parties and individual politicians may only see an opportunity to build themselves, to posture and dither cynically at the greater public’s expense only serves to create more division at rare moments when the public is briefly unified.

Somewhere someone is thinking this: “Just one more mass shooting and we can force a vote on this legislation that won’t pass so we can use it against our rivals.” If our elected officials lost some family members in a mass shooting, would that make any difference?

Probing the bellwether status of Vigo County voters

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 7 February 2016


Two weeks ago I posted a link to an Internet poll for Vigo County voters’ presidential preferences. As promised, here are the results. Thank you to those of you who participated.


This poll cannot be used to make any claims about Vigo County because the sample size is too small and it’s not representative of Vigo voters. Below I discuss the small sample, who responded, and speculate on results.


First, only 42 registered Vigo voters took the survey. This leads to the only significant finding: few people read this column.

After 24 hours I began trying to get the link out to more venues but that didn’t increase the sample size much. There are 19 zip codes in Vigo County, but poll responders only came from nine. The zip codes responders came from were from Terre Haute and its metro area and from West Terre Haute.


The results also suggest that significantly more Democrat voters responded than Republican voters. Once I saw this trend, I tried to get the poll in front of more likely Republican voters, without much success.


Thirty-three of the 42 responders indicated they were likely or very likely primary voters. Among them, when asked who they would vote for if the election were today, I gave a list of almost all Republican and all Democrat candidates. Those 33 voted this way: Sanders 14 (42 percent); Clinton 7 (21 percent; Trump 4 (12 percent); Rubio 3 (9 percent); Paul 2 (6 percent); Cruz 2 (6 percent); and Carson 1 (3 percent). The lineup doesn’t change when we look at those 36 voters who indicated they were likely or very likely to vote in November. The rank order stays the same.


Other (better) polls tell us that Sanders has the youth vote. I asked Vigo voters if they had voted in the last four elections in Vigo. Thirty-four said yes, so that means these are not new voters and would at least be 34 years of age. The lineup is the same, Sanders, Clinton, Trump, Rubio, Paul, Cruz, Carson. Among the six voters who did not vote in each of the last four elections, the lineup is Sanders (4), Clinton (2). If the other polls are accurate, this means there are a lot of “white progressives” responding to my poll. There are many “white progressives” among the professoriate.


I asked who Vigo voters voted for in the last four elections. Among the nine consistent Republican voters (meaning they voted Bush, Bush, McCain, Romney), if the election were held today they voted Trump 4, Rubio 3, Cruz 1, Carson 1. Among the 15 consistent Democrat voters, it was Sanders 8, Clinton 7.


I hoped to identify “bellwether” voters which is why I asked about who Vigo voters voted for in the last four elections. Among the 42 eligible possible bellwether voters, there was only one. And the single bellwether Vigo voter indicated if the election were held today, s/he would vote for Sanders.


Can we learn anything from this too small, unrepresentative poll? No. We can still speculate, however. Given that the Iowa caucuses were last Monday, this small sample of consistent Republican Vigo voters do not like Ted Cruz as much as Iowa Republicans nor as much as the polls suggest New Hampshiricans do. This sample likes Trump and Rubio. Iowa Democrats were split between Clinton and Sanders and so is the small sample of Vigo Democrat voters only they slightly like Sanders more than Clinton. The polls suggest New Hampshirecrats like Sanders far more than they do Clinton. So, the bellwether is pointing in the general direction on the Democrat side, and is pointing more toward Trump and Rubio (who finished in a tight 2, 3 finish, just as they are a tight 1, 2 finish among the small Vigo sample). New Hampshire votes Tuesday. Polls suggest that Trump will win big, followed by Cruz and Rubio and that Sanders trounces Clinton.

The populist candidates, Trump and Sanders, are the most popular among the respective parties in this sample.


This poll uncovered one bellwether voter. That is 2.3 percent of the valid sample. At least this is an estimate of how many bellwether voters there might be, 2.3 percent. There are 70,000 registered Vigo voters, so that would be 1,610 bellwether voters. If half vote but all bellwethers do, that doubles their proportion. Is 4.6 percent of presidential Vigo voters who are bellwether voters enough to decide the election? Seems too small to me. What do you think?

Does Vigo's bellwether voting status really mean much?

Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 24 January 2016


For the last four presidential elections, I’ve been a sought-out “expert” on Vigo County’s bellwether status. Should you be unfamiliar with this phenomenon, Vigo County has voted for the winner in every presidential election since 1952 missing only twice since 1888.


Initially, reporters sought me and Professor Kirby Goidel because we had polled during the 2000 and 2004 elections. We were the first, as far as we knew, to ever poll Vigo voters’ presidential preferences Since then, I am not aware of any scientific polling of the county’s preferences. Nevertheless, journalists continue to contact me for interviews.
                                               

This year, attention to Vigo’s bellwether phenomenon is receiving increased and early attention. A documentary production company, Three Blind Men Productions, has taken up residence in Vigo to document the bellwether effect. Filmmaker Don Campbell will have lived in Terre Haute for a year. I’ve been consulting (unpaid) with Don since the beginning of the project. Politico ran an article consisting of little more than a reporter stopping by a Pie and Politics meeting, the Republicans there were for Trump, and the article declares the bellhether is going for Trump. WFIU did a story on the Politico story and contacted me for a response to the article. Last Saturday, my living room was transformed into a television studio as Bob Abeshouse of Al Jazeera English interviewed me for two hours for an early March news documentary.



Whether political bellwethers exist is not much of a controversy among political scientists. As far as I can tell, the answer is “no.” Nevertheless, Vigo County’s record is impressive and makes for a good story and a different hook on the glut of presidential campaign news. I expect there to be more reporters and all variety of political storytellers showing up because of Vigo’s bellwether status.                                                  
                                                                                                                                           
Questions posed to me tend to be similar: “What accounts for Vigo’s amazing record in ‘getting it right’?” My answer:  I do not know why Vigo County has such a record of voting for the presidential winner and I don’t think anyone does.       
                                                                                                                                                                                        
Then I speculate on reasons why Vigo has such a remarkable record and respond to reasons posited to me by the journalist. A common one that is wrong, at least now and for the last couple of decades, is that Vigo is a microcosm of the United States. It is not. Vigo is poorer, more poverty stricken, whiter, older, fewer immigrants, less educated (despite four institutions of higher education residing here), more people with disabilities, more people without health insurance, higher unemployment rate, more reliant on manufacturing jobs, local ownership of business is more male, less minority, and Vigo is less urban than the U.S. is as a whole. According to information provided to me this weekend, Vigo also has more nonaligned voters than does the U.S. as a whole. Vigo County is not a microcosm of the United States and I doubt it ever was. 
.                                                                                                                                                                                             
Another posited explanation is that issues of America are the issues of Vigo County. This one is hard to address because one would need to know what the issues were in the campaigns and what the local issues were. I’ve voted in six presidential elections in Vigo County and based on past polling, the most important local issue has been “jobs,” pretty much swamping all others. When is a presidential campaign not about jobs? Maybe the candidate that mentions jobs the most is who Vigo votes for. This might make for an interesting undergraduate research project. 
                                                                                                                                                                                              
My current “most sociologically best guess” points to the relative stability of the population in Vigo County. By stability, I mean there is neither a lot of out-migration nor a lot of in-migration. Being born here is almost the sole means of entry and dying here is almost the sole means of exit; thus, the social barriers and forces that separate us into like- minded “echo chambers,” jobs, religions, race, and social class, are muted when people first meet each other in school.     
                                                                                                                                                                                          
For example, four people become good friends in the second grade and remain adult friends despite one becoming a union carpenter, one a physical therapist, one chronically unemployed, and the other a local business owner. The four, I submit, may influence each other with their different points of view. By being friends, they gain a better appreciation of each other’s views, in a respectful manner and, perhaps, as they decide who to vote for, all those influences come to bear on their choice.

Study gun violence in the US? Don't count on it

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 27 December 2015


It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes ... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn




Why do we bother arguing with numbers? Numbers and statistics are ubiquitous in our society. Someone should do a content analysis of our media and speech and see how much content is oriented around numbers whether it be rankings, opinion polls, scores, profits, costs, guns and crime. Yet, to what degree does any of it make a difference? What numbers change anyone’s mind?

Take the “gun debate.” Recently crime statistics were the topic of the nanosecond. In short, murders and violent crime are way way down. Of course the perception of violence and violent crime is way way up. Research into the perception of crime suggests that one’s perception of crime is not based on personal experience as much as media viewing habits. In other words, those who watch a lot of crime shows and news (both of which are ubiquitous) overestimate by a significant amount the actual level of crime and violence. The actual numbers don’t matter.

Take one disagreement between pro-gunners and anti-gunners: What it means to have lots and lots of guns. The pro-gun side claims more guns reduce crime, especially the murderous kind. The anti-gun side claims, no, more guns leads to more violence. This is what scholars call an empirical question, we can answer this. So, let’s look at the states with the most guns and compare it to the states with the most murders. (This is not perfect because not all gun violence ends up with a corpse, but this is how research proceeds.) We are going to “correlate” state murder rates with gun registrations, a measure of ostensibly legal guns. Washington, D.C., Arkansas and Louisiana are in the top 10 in terms of both number of guns and murder rate. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are among the top 10 murder rates but rank in the next 10 in number of registered handguns. South Carolina and Tennessee are in the top 10 of murderous states but fall in the middle of registered guns. None of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates are among the states with the 10 highest gun registrations. Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and New Hampshire are among the bottom 10 murder rate states but fall in the range of 11-30 in terms of gun registrations. There is a correlation here but it’s not nearly as strong as either side wants to believe.

Looking just at murders with guns, by far the most common means, it’s clear that not all people are equal. Not to dismiss the tragedies, but the chances of being murdered by a gun in the U.S. is much greater for males than for females. The Brookings Institute analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and found for women, the gun murder rate is less than five per 100,000 while for men, it is at least three times higher. In short, gun violence is a “man thing,” though not all men are murdered equally.

The greatest gun danger to white men is suicide, not being murdered. Almost 80 percent of gun deaths among whites are suicides, while it’s black men who have reason to fear others with guns, over 80 percent of gun deaths among blacks are murders.

As a scholar, arguments over numbers call for more research which means more numbers. There are all kinds of interesting correlations (correlations do not equal causation) regarding guns and violence, risk factors, and cultural factors. All of which are worthy of study and could yield some valuable insights regarding policy. 

 Yet, as a nation, as reflected in our national policies, we choose to NOT study it. A 1993 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, funded by the CDC, that concluded rather than protection, guns in the home pose an increased risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance. This article received a lot of attention and the NRA began a campaign to stop federal funding of such research and succeeded. In 1996 an amendment to the omnibus budget bill was passed that prohibited any CDC money to be spent on research that advocated or promoted gun control. That ban remains in effect and was later expanded to include the National Institutes of Health.
           

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes ... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  

Why do we bother arguing with numbers? Numbers and statistics are ubiquitous in our society. Someone should do a content analysis of our media and speech and see how much content is oriented around numbers whether it be rankings, opinion polls, scores, profits, costs, guns and crime. Yet, to what degree does any of it make a difference? What numbers change anyone’s mind? Take the “gun debate.” Recently crime statistics were the topic of the nanosecond. In short, murders and violent crime are way way down. Of course the perception of violence and violent crime is way way up. Research into the perception of crime suggests that one’s perception of crime is not based on personal experience as much as media viewing habits. In other words, those who watch a lot of crime shows and news (both of which are ubiquitous) overestimate by a significant amount the actual level of crime and violence. The actual numbers don’t matter. Take one disagreement between pro-gunners and anti-gunners: What it means to have lots and lots of guns. The pro-gun side claims more guns reduce crime, especially the murderous kind. The anti-gun side claims, no, more guns leads to more violence. This is what scholars call an empirical question, we can answer this. So, let’s look at the states with the most guns and compare it to the states with the most murders. (This is not perfect because not all gun violence ends up with a corpse, but this is how research proceeds.) We are going to “correlate” state murder rates with gun registrations, a measure of ostensibly legal guns. Washington, D.C., Arkansas and Louisiana are in the top 10 in terms of both number of guns and murder rate. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are among the top 10 murder rates but rank in the next 10 in number of registered handguns. South Carolina and Tennessee are in the top 10 of murderous states but fall in the middle of registered guns. None of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates are among the states with the 10 highest gun registrations. Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and New Hampshire are among the bottom 10 murder rate states but fall in the range of 11-30 in terms of gun registrations. There is a correlation here but it’s not nearly as strong as either side wants to believe. Looking just at murders with guns, by far the most common means, it’s clear that not all people are equal. Not to dismiss the tragedies, but the chances of being murdered by a gun in the U.S. is much greater for males than for females. The Brookings Institute analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and found for women, the gun murder rate is less than five per 100,000 while for men, it is at least three times higher. In short, gun violence is a “man thing,” though not all men are murdered equally. The greatest gun danger to white men is suicide, not being murdered. Almost 80 percent of gun deaths among whites are suicides, while it’s black men who have reason to fear others with guns, over 80 percent of gun deaths among blacks are murders. As a scholar, arguments over numbers call for more research which means more numbers. There are all kinds of interesting correlations (correlations do not equal causation) regarding guns and violence, risk factors, and cultural factors. All of which are worthy of study and could yield some valuable insights regarding policy.   Yet, as a nation, as reflected in our national policies, we choose to NOT study it. A 1993 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, funded by the CDC, that concluded rather than protection, guns in the home pose an increased risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance. This article received a lot of attention and the NRA began a campaign to stop federal funding of such research and succeeded. In 1996 an amendment to the omnibus budget bill was passed that prohibited any CDC money to be spent on research that advocated or promoted gun control. That ban remains in effect and was later expanded to include the National Institutes of Health.  A continuing mistake.

As 'privatization' expands, the public sphere erodes

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 13 December 2015


Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-party series of essays about free speech on college campuses.

Two other forces have brought us to the point where students feel threatened on ISU’s and other campuses by “street preachers” and “unsafe” in the face of passionate disagreements and potential objectionable Halloween costumes. And they are related. The first is the incredible narrowing of the “public” as well as the tarnishing and demeaning of all things public.


“Private” is good, while “public” is bad. What public institution is held up with pride in the United States anymore? Certainly not democratic government or our courts. Even the military is forced to increasingly privatize. Public education once used to be held up, but not anymore with those who are entrusted with our public institutions working effectively to undermine them. Public lands are constantly under fire to be privatized. National, state and municipal Parks’ budgets are cut and cut until they are no longer truly public because to stay in operation they have to charge user fees and then “privatized.”


Who doesn’t love Disney World? But you don’t have freedom of speech there. Try wearing a provocative piece of legible clothing without a Disney trademark. Go to a town square, and you can start talking loud about the mayor if you want, except there are no people anymore in the town square, they are at the mall. So, go to the mall and start on about the mayor being a crook; you will be escorted out. Public might as well be “pubic” in today’s America. Facebook isn’t public, not only can people “block’ you but Facebook can violate your constitutional rights by shutting you out, except it’s not your constitutional right, you have to play by Facebook’s rules and that is their right as (private) property owners. Even the Livefyre commenting feature on the Tribune-Star’s website where this essay appears has “rules” about speech.


As we de-public our democracy, we create fewer and fewer spaces where those cherished rights can be exercised. You don’t have rights to free speech in the workplace (unless you work for the government, oh right, not even there, ask the Terre Haute police officer about his political statements contrary to the current administration’s favor). You don’t have rights to free speech in a private home at the dinner table. As a culture we might emphasize it, but it mostly only works when people are relatively equal. Your boss or your mom aren’t going to respect your mouthiness as free speech, its back-talking or insubordination and you get grounded or fired for it.


Most of those corporate sponsored SEC football schools, like Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Auburn, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Tennessee, and Texas A&M, are all government schools established as Land Grant Universities by the Federal Government following the Civil War to specifically further the industrialization of the country, but today, they are more like private schools because the states are getting out of the public anything business (even prisons as they are rapidly being privatized). And with that privatization comes the inevitable treating students as “customers.” And customers are treated well are they not?


I mean, if an employee is treated shabbily by a boss, we hardly care. Just look at the waning public support for unions. But if a customer is treated poorly by a business, it’s known and in some cases, some treatment is considered illegal, such as refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, or refusing to serve a customer with the wrong religion or skin color. Public institutions treat people shabbily, like the IRS, while our universities recruit students as though they are heading off to a private resort and given the debt that so many students carry even in public (government) colleges. No wonder they feel the right to exclude offensive individuals from their “private” space, especially the obnoxious and biased press.


No, it’s not the “pussification” of America nor is it the” progressivism” of higher ed or the continued insensitivity of the dwindling white power structure of academia, it’s the systematic devaluation of and shrinkage of the “public” in our society. Free speech only ever existed in the public sphere which once was ubiquitous, especially with such incredible institutions as education and a press that served the public. But today, public is an insult and everyone unquestioningly assumes the superiority of “private.”

The result is a loss of social space to exercise free speech or to have a free press. Besides, the “press” is so vilified today. For some, it’s the press that is the “enemy.” Mizzou students formed a ring around protesters to protect them from the intrusive eye of the press. Later some of them will be the legislators who pass laws that make it a crime for journalists to take pictures of factory farms to show the public the conditions of the animals that become bacon and hamburgers. As our “public” rights erode, “private” rights expand.

Free Speech is Taking a Beating on Campus

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of two columns from Thomas L. Steiger on the subject of free speech on college campuses. 

The events at the University of Missouri and Yale last month have pushed questions of free speech and freedom of the press into the limelight. I’ve been thinking about free speech and its meaning in our society today since ISU’s “microdrama” surrounding free speech when the Chief of ISU Public Safety sent an email to all students pointing out that the evangelizing by Terre Haute’s own fiery modern circuit riders, Brother Jed, Sister Cindy, and I’m sure in spirit, “Mad Max”, was protected speech under the US Constitution.




I don’t know what precipitated it, but I’m guessing that some ISU students who didn’t like the street preacher’s insults of “fornicator,” “whore,” “whore monger,” and “sinner” either complained or perhaps got physical, because the preachers were then relocated with a barricade around them with a sign that read “THIS IS PROTECTED SPEECH YOU HAVE THE OPTION TO LISTEN OR IGNORE WALK AWAY OR STAY YOU MAY ALSO PARTICIPATE THREATENING OR INTIMIDATING CONDUCT WILL NOT BE ALLOWED.”




I was surprised by this and began watching the students interact with the street preachers. The angry students worry me. I saw no one trying to use humor to argue back. I know our students are religious and many know their bibles and have paid attention to the lessons of their home church, but few tried to argue with the preachers at that level, instead people were googling things to hurl back to the preachers.




Brother Jed, Sister Cindy and (now departed) Mad Max first insulted me when I was a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Florida. Holding court on the Plaza of the Americas with often 100s of students mocking back at them was great entertainment in a pre- Internet time. I recall Jed calling me a whore monger. I actually was familiar with the term, my preference for 1940s serial detective novels taught me a lot. As an awkward 17-year-old on a campus of 60 percent males, I wished I was a whore monger.




Jed, if you have never seen him, has quite an act. It’s dramatic and very physical. We learned to imitate it and often would line up behind Jed and go through his motions with him. Sometimes he would get agitated with us. We never threatened him. We mocked him; laughed at him and each other. I don’t recall any anger. I saw intense anger, perhaps hatred, as ISU students yelled “you preach hate” at the street preachers.




Because of the threatened boycott of one of the sacred rites of fall advertising, SEC football, by 30 African American gladiators (football players) the attention of the nation was momentarily fixed. The hunger striker never seemed to make the news. But, by god, threaten Saturday football in the SEC and stuff happens. A university president and chancellor are toppled. But it was the student reporter getting poor treatment and a liberal journalism prof stopping the reporter from doing his job that really hijacked the show. Follow that up with the controversy at Yale over Halloween costumes and you now have this essay.




Conservative reactions to the Yale incident, where the Yale administration sent out an email to the students to be culturally sensitive regarding their Halloween costumes and a faculty member who thought the Administration’s official email was a bit heavy handed and encouraged the students to express themselves and for others to just look away or ignore a costume they didn’t like, led to an eruption on campus where the faculty were harangued, apologies demanded, threats made, etc. Look it up, it’s a fascinating peek into the lives of some of our most privileged students.


Conservatives have jumped on this with their usual memes around such topics with the “pussification” of America, which is nothing more than a not-so-subtle complaint about women’s greater equality. One thing has changed on American college campuses, there are more women than men today and while there are still some areas that are still heavily male, they are dwindling.




Another conservative meme, one artfully crafted by that noted sociologist George Will (anyone who knows him will smile at me calling him a sociologist) blamed “higher ed progressivism” for the debacle at Yale. Really? So a year or two at Yale causes this? Never mind the 12-14 years of private school education among a select “people like us” atmosphere. Or that Yale students aren’t like “government” school university students who attend “public” (said with derision) universities where the grounds are public property and free speech must be respected. It’s not just a school policy as it is at Yale, but American Constitutional Law that protects it at a government school like ISU.


Liberals are having a hard time responding to these issues. They can’t seem to deal with the contradictions. It’s OK, use the contradictions to move the discussion along. Use data, evidence, and reason. Oh, and throw in “nuance.” That’s always a winner.




Next week: As public rights erode, private rights expand.