{"id":215,"date":"2015-04-10T20:59:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T20:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/?p=215"},"modified":"2015-04-11T12:26:22","modified_gmt":"2015-04-11T12:26:22","slug":"a-ub-student-responds-to-the-question-of-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/2015\/04\/10\/a-ub-student-responds-to-the-question-of-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"A UB Student Responds to the Question of Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following a unit on Fascism between the world wars, students in “Europe 1914-1945” had a writing assignment in which they had to respond to a question about free speech, violence, and race.\u00a0 The aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo<\/em> attacks had recently\u00a0played out in the news.\u00a0 Professor Hudgins asked them:<\/p>\n

“Is there a role for some restriction of speech in democratic states (or, perhaps, in\u00a0the “republic of facebook\u201d)?\u00a0 Or, is the answer to lift the flood gates and \u201cmay the best speech win\u201d?\u00a0 What is the role of a college education in\u00a0dealing with\u00a0this issue?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of her students, Todd Ballard, a psychology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, articulated a sophisticated response that demonstrated the writing and critical thinking skills that CAS\u00a0programs <\/a>develop in students of all backgrounds.\u00a0 Here is his response in full:<\/span><\/p>\n

“This is a very difficult question to answer.\u00a0 Living in a culture that promotes freedom of speech regularly, and a culture that\u00a0focuses on\u00a0individualism and intellectual autonomy, it\u2019s difficult for me to ever agree with any type of restriction of speech.\u00a0 On one hand, freedom of speech should be a right, and nobody should be able to take that away from you.\u00a0 On the other hand, there are many people who will abuse their right\u00a0to freedom of speech, and doing so may hurt others, and it may hurt an entire race if the person in question has enough influence or power.<\/p>\n

Even the media\u2019s freedom of speech causes many racial problems today.\u00a0 For example, news programs tend to show racially charged stories for the sole purpose of increasing ratings. This tends to provide viewers with the necessary tools and ammo to become racist, and provides endless stereotypes\u00a0of races and cultures of all kinds. \u00a0In this situation, I believe that there should be some restriction of speech, at least when it pertains to race or racially charged issues.\u00a0 People should be allowed to express their opinions, but this opinion should be restricted when it begins to gear towards violence.\u00a0 All it takes is one person with enough power on Facebook or Twitter to spark a wave of violence against a race, group, or culture.<\/p>\n

With the way that social media is today, the racism and hate of one individual can reach thousands or even millions in under a minute.\u00a0 Specifically in the United States, people are very reactive, and tend to take what they hear for fact without thinking for themselves. \u00a0On \u201cthe republic of Facebook,\u201d or any other social media, people tend to react very poorly to racism or hate speech. \u00a0Instead of ignoring it, or following up with accurate information, people tend to lose their cool and respond in the worst possible way, and rebut with further racism and hate. \u00a0It almost seems like there is a war going on within social media. My point is that I believe that there should be some restriction to our freedom of speech, because losing a small portion of our rights is preferable to\u00a0[widespread] hatred of a group of people based on ill-informed statements.<\/p>\n

I believe to accurately approach this issue further, a college education is very much needed. People don\u2019t know how much different other cultures and races are from their own culture and race, and most people are overcome by their world-view, believing that only their opinion is right and no one else\u2019s. This can easily cause racism throughout the world. I believe that an education is needed so that people can learn about different cultures, as well as learn about the history of racism. Not only that, but people should learn how to become critical thinkers in order to stem the tide of inaccurate information being spoon fed to us by the media.”<\/p>\n

Todd’s report is just one instance of what makes UB a terrific place:\u00a0 A thoroughly diverse community of learners of multiple age groups, ethnicities, social classes, and sexual identities coming to class to share different perspectives throughout the semester, and get to know each other.\u00a0 Register for any of UB’s history courses <\/a>if you want to explore how present-day news links to our past.<\/p>\n

\"CH<\/p>\n

Cover of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo<\/em> for Oct. 2, 2013.\u00a0 Castorama is a do-it-yourself hardware store in France.\u00a0 The Roman guard is telling Jesus that the hardware store is closed so (to put it more politely than the cartoon) he is out of luck.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following a unit on Fascism between the world wars, students in “Europe 1914-1945” had a writing assignment in which they had to respond to a question about free speech, violence, and race.\u00a0 The aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks had recently\u00a0played out in the news.\u00a0 Professor Hudgins asked them: “Is there a role for some … Continue reading A UB Student Responds to the Question of Free Speech<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":289,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/289"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/nhudgins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}