As students return to college campuses across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza.
As students return to college campuses across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza.
I am responding to this comment:
I consider disruption to be a form of harm. It’s not as serious as, for example, physical injury, but it’s still harm. The main form of disruption that the recent protests have engaged in involved trespassing and so it was illegal, but many colleges preferred to address the problem internally rather than calling the police. These new rules are part of the process of addressing the problem internally, and we’re discussing whether or not they do so without infringing on the students’ free speech rights. My point is that preventing the protesters from being disruptive is not an infringement.
(“Illegal” wouldn’t be the end of the discussion even where the police were called to remove trespassers, because a university’s policy of having the police remove some trespassers but not others could also infringe on free speech rights.)
Disruption is not a form of harm.
Disruption is impossible without causing harm. If you’re not harming me then I can just ignore you and so you have failed to be disruptive.
Edit: The word “disruption” can be used in other contexts to describe acts that aren’t harmful. For example, a new discovery might be said to disrupt the existing paradigm. My claim is about “disruption” used to describe protest-associated actions like blocking roads, making a lot of noise, or preventing students from going to class.
Being unable to ignore something is not a form of harm.
Gotta love a “free speech absolutist” who thinks that it doesn’t count as free speech if it stops you from walking to the other side of the quad without taking the long way around.
What material harm do you experience from those things?
And, if there is any material harm, is that worse than what people are experiencing in Gaza?
Loss of personal income and denial or service come to mind with like 5 seconds of thought.
Any non-salary employee who’s late to work probably doesn’t just get to make it up later. The business that employs then may lose business as a result of the shortage/delay. Their products being shipped to them could be delayed resulting in loss of sales. The ripple goes on and on but most pockets getting hit are commuting workers, more than big businesses.
As for if it’s worse than what others in Gaza are experiencing? A pointless exercise. As my parents told us growing up “there are children starving in Africa”, yet it doesn’t make me like the taste of steamed green beans any more or less. Their suffering doesn’t impact my suffering, no matter how extreme the difference.
Come now, I don’t believe for an instant that anyone is as fragile as that. Even my nephew who is a young cancer survivor and weathered people who refused to wear masks during the pandemic by wearing his own.