  urlLink AMHERST, YOU DON'T HAVE TO PUT ON A YELLOW LIGHT! In other news, urlLink Amy highlights FIRE, a website which seems to rate institutions in terms of their censorship. My alma mater received a yellow light because of the following policy statements: Faculty Handbook - Academic Regulations - A.
Academic Regulations - 2. Statement on Freedom of Expression and Dissent - 3. Statement on Respect for Persons Respect for the rights, dignity and integrity of others is essential for the well-being of a community. Actions by any person which do not reflect such respect for others are damaging to each member of the community and hence damaging to Amherst College. Each member of the community should be free from interference, intimidation or disparagement in the work place, the classroom and the social, recreational and residential environment.
View full policy (PDF, 28 KB). You must have Adobe Acrobat installed to view this document.
Faculty Handbook - Academic Regulations - A.
Academic Regulations - 2. Statement on Freedom of Expression and Dissent - 3.
Statement on Respect for Persons Each member of the community should be free from interference, intimidation or disparagement in the work place, the classroom and the social, recreational and residential environment. View full policy (PDF, 28 KB). You must have Adobe Acrobat installed to view this document. It kind of irked me that these two statements gave Amherst a yellow light.
first of all, these policies are clearly aimed at allowing the most speech-- preventing others from intimidating and stopping people from expressing their views. That seems to be a fine goal to me. Secondly, Amy argues that people have the right to make such disparaging remarks, and the right to be free from such statements being censored. I take issue with that. While its one thing to make a political statment of the sort that may implicate certain minorities/traditionally oppressed groups, its entirely different to simply disparage a group. statements of the latter group really don't express a viewpoint other than "I hate X group. " and don't really fall under the category of public speech that deserves to be free. The Amherst Policy aims at separating simple hate speech from legitimate political expressions. Look, I like free speech as much as the next guy, but the purpose of free speech isn't that everyone can say any crazy thing they like.
Its to allow all legitimate viewpoints-- viewpoints that it would be legitimate to choose for oneself. Things like Sexually Harrassing statements, racially hateful statements and the like aren't really legitimate a choice. We shouldn't be free to choose Nazism, and similarly we shouldn't be free to choose hate speech. Amherst College shouldn't be faulted for preventing it, either. also I now believe that urlLink John Dolan is funnier on his blog than he has ever been in real life. 
