When I taught the First Amendment, I sometimes shared what I called my “refrigerator theory” of free speech. I analogized bad ideas to those leftovers that migrate to the back of the fridge and begin to smell, and noted that–if those same leftovers had been placed in strong sunlight– they would be bleached of their ability to smell up the place.
The “marketplace of ideas” envisioned by the Founders was intended to ensure that ideas would be subjected to the strong sunlight of public debate, where they believed that bad ideas would lose their negative odors.
I thought about that (admittedly silly) analogy when I read that–ironically–the “Sunshine state” was trying to turn off the sunlight.
Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.
A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college’s library collection.
This purging of disfavored ideas was part of Ron DeSantis’ continued assault on New College and its “liberal” ideas–an assault that has prompted the departure of over a quarter of its students and large numbers of its most respected faculty.
As usual, Heather Cox Richardson provided an excellent commentary on the situation.
The New College of Florida is in the news today for illustrating the logical progression of the idea that Republicans must protect the nation from those who would destroy it. The New College of Florida was at the center of Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s program to get rid of traditional academic freedom. He stripped the New College of its independence and replaced officials with Christian loyalists who tried to build a school modeled after those that Viktor Orbán’s loyalists took over in Hungary. New College officials painted over student murals celebrating diversity, suppressed student support for civil rights, and voted to eliminate the diversity, equity, and inclusion office and the gender studies program. Faculty fled the New College, and more than a quarter of the students dropped out. To keep its numbers up, the school dropped its admission standards.
Yesterday, Steven Walker of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that the school cleared out the Gender and Diversity Center, throwing the books it had accumulated into a dumpster. Officials said the books are no longer serving the needs of the college: “gender studies has been discontinued as an area of concentration at New College and the books are not part of any official college collection or inventory.”
Republicans predictably sneer at those who increasingly compare such efforts of MAGA officials to events in Germany in the years leading up to the Nazi takeover, but the parallels are striking. The Holocaust Encyclopedia, among other histories, has reported on these purges of “unacceptable” ideas.
Beginning on May 10, 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups carried out public burnings of books they claimed were “un-German.” The book burnings took place in 34 university towns and cities. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers ended up in the bonfires. The book burnings stood as a powerful symbol of Nazi intolerance and censorship.
“Intolerance and censorship” certainly characterize Ron DeSantis and his cohort–but I have to believe that contemporary efforts to suppress those who our neo-fascists disfavor will fail, and rather spectacularly. DeSantis may succeed in destroying a once-highly-regarded institution of higher education, but in a country with many other states and universities–not to mention the Internet– his destructive idiocy is simply unequal to the task.
To return to my analogy: when you leave leftovers in the back of your refrigerator too long, they smell up the whole place. Those who crafted the Free Speech clauses of the First Amendment understood that, when ideas are suppressed, they take on an odiferous life of their own. Deprived of the “sunlight” that is provided by robust public discussion and analysis, they fester below the surface, distorting and poisoning civil discourse.
If the perspectives advanced in the books being discarded are harmful or incorrect or incompatible with America’s philosophy, DeSantis and his fellow censors should be able to make that argument in public. Clearly, they can’t.
Ultimately, censorship is an admission that those suppressing ideas are unable to counter them. They have no “sunlight” to offer.
These people are very scary and must be defeated
What is scary is that it took so little time for Governor Dementis to accomplish this goal and so few of the students protested. Isn’t it time for a remake of “Fahrenheit 451”?
“Ultimately, censorship is an admission that those suppressing ideas are unable to counter them. They have no “sunlight” to offer.”
This took me back to January 1992 when Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, on his 2nd or 3rd day in office, sent down the edict to destroy all files and paperwork from Mayor Bill Hudnut’s 16 years of administration. Huge trash bins were rolled into offices to accomplish this; in the Department of Metropolitan Development, TWO huge bins were rolled in. We administered the Financial, Public Housing, Planning and Zoning and Historic Preservation Divisions and the Metropolitan Development Commission was administered from DMD. The bins were checked and emptied often to assure “Little Hitler’s” (Goldsmith’s name within the DMD) edict was complied with. Thus, began the destruction of the local GOP; a precursor to the Trump presidential administration with Indiana’s contribution of Mike Pence to prevent the “sunshine law” from outing the destruction of Indiana’s GOP. Could that answer the question as to why Trump and the GOP approved Pence’s nomination to the Vice Presidency?
Indiana is basically ignored as being worth federal level campaign rallies and speeches; this state’s GOP is set in stone.
Yes, JoAnn. It’s what Republicans do. Remember when Trump killed the Obama administration’s handbook on dealing with pandemics? That was two years BEFORE COVID hit.
Everything Republicans touch dies. Everything Republicans do is retrograde to a modern society. Republicans must be purged from our governments at all levels. The very few Republicans left are being muted by the screeching morons now controlling the right-wing extremist narrative.
The governor is trying to maintain his image as the savior of the MAGA crowd, waiting for Trump to stumble badly or, because of his age and probably poor health, die. DeSantis will be ready to step up and don the mantle of the savior of the nation.
Pascal,
Don’t say stuff like that. We’re already embarrassed beyond understanding with the worship of an orange hairball soiling our reputation daily. The Republicans would have us choose between a psychopath and an ideological idiot. Perfect.
Vernon, would that choice be between DeSantis and Rubio or JD Vance?
I am having a problem with this line: “Those who crafted the Free Speech clauses of the First Amendment understood that, when ideas are suppressed, they take on an odiferous life of their own. Deprived of the ‘sunlight’ that is provided by robust public discussion and analysis, they fester below the surface, distorting and poisoning civil discourse.”
It seems to me that when good ideas, like those DeSantis is burying, will not “fester” and smell up the place, but, rather, perhaps quietly, continue to feed intelligent minds behind the scenes, continue to be respected, and return to the surface, sprouting new leaves, when the sunshine, inevitably, returns.
We need a seriously large b blue wave, in Nov., so that people like DeSantis read futility into their rancid hopes.
Hmmm. Reflecting on back of the refrigerator analogy, is it the baking soda that causes ebullient laughter?
A powerful way to sell control is to package it as freedom—freedom from others who threaten your culture.
A powerful way to sell freedom is to package it as control—control over being controlled by granting government specific powers to maintain societal order but no more—guardrails on power.
To help out Sheila with modern terminology, “liberal” is now referred to as “woke.” Elon refers to it as the “woke mind virus.” LOL
Governor DeSatan was saving Florida’s youth from the woke mind virus at New College. I find it hilarious that students and faculty voted with their feet by leaving. The school had to eliminate its admission requirements to compensate for new students’ lost revenue. That’s hilarious!
I ventured off yesterday to research some of the nutjobs behind Project 2025 and found several new crazy people and their organizations. Once again, all their organizations sound innocent enough, but they are all fronts for dark money. What’s worse is they claim to be Christians and want others to follow Christianity because the US needs Jesus. Russ Vought worked with Trump and co-authored P-2025. He was caught on video claiming that it was all part of Trump’s plan to deny involvement with the Project, but it’s considered a plan for Trump’s fifth year as POTUS. They have moved beyond the plan and are writing specific laws, policies, and executive orders for Trump to implement on Day 1.
Talk about smelly leftovers!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/15/politics/video/project-2025-russell-vought-lah-digvid
They can kill the books, but they can’t kill the ideas.
I agree completely with what you said 100%. I would add one important point though. Our “Forefathers” were the wealthy and powerful generally slaveowners or otherwise profiting from chattel slavery. They were open to “free speech “ as long as it didn’t push noticeably for the “radical” threats to their power from the “bra burners”, the “Berrigan Brothers “ of the 1700’s and beyond.
The Dems- politicians and other powerful don’t acknowledge that Many of the Public can see how The Middle East is Not primarily threatened by Hamas and Iran’s existence. Rashid Khalidi, Rashida Tlaib and Chris Hedges are pitted against the “liberal “ voices of authors selling their brand on MSNBC. The People speak but generally the voices of “reason” such as Amy Goodman and Democracy Now are pitted against the Propaganda of Mainstream America. You are 100% correct about the parallels w
Its 1930’s Germany, however here you are omitting the fact that for 60% of us a professional football injury to our quarterback is at least as important as protesting on issues like abortion racism and the genocide of Gaza and Israel. We call for “reason” while Boeing and Black Rock take our tax dollars. The issues go well beyond Trump and DeSantis. Warren Buffett won’t free us! Organize locally and nationally and internationally! Be curious! Men, especially White Men, wake up!
“Ultimately, censorship is an admission that those suppressing ideas are unable to counter them. They have no “sunlight” to offer.” AMEN!!
Frank McNutt,
Those you named are all part of the pantheon of idiocy. Add in the wretched Donald Trump and you have a collection of fools that only deranged corporate money would be proud. The Dark Money crowd see themselves as a star chamber of profit before everything else, thus democracy stands in their way.
The thing is that let’s say these shitbags get their way and the working population becomes ill, un-educated and poverty-stricken to the point they can no longer make the goods and services, nor afford to buy them on their own. Uh-oh. Good bye revenue stream. The point is that the blind greed fails to understand – willfully or otherwise – the consequences of their self-absorbed philosophy.
BTW, speaking of Christians and DeSantis: Jesus, if he really existed, was both woke to the bone and a complete socialist. Eat that right-wing frauds.
New College was one of the most admired schools in the Council of Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC), an organization I briefly headed. What has happened to New is both a tragedy and a harbinger of where the US could be headed. COPLAC schools attempt to marry the mission of high-quality, residential, private liberal arts colleges to a commitment to access, affordability, and community engagement. There is an obvious reason such schools are perceived as a threat by the likes of Governor DeSantis—they teach students to question, to think creatively, and to value diversity. The “liberal” education they provide is not politically partisan; rather, it is meant to be liberating…i.e., liberating from unexamined dogma, from received stereotypes, from the unquestioned acceptance of popular myths, etc. It is an education for democratic citizenship—which is exactly why authoritarians like DeSantis fear it.
Sorry for the typo; the organization is the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.
Aberger,
Christian Nationalists would want nothing to do with a college that specifically teaches Satan worshipping and Marxist ideology. You don’t need critical thinking skills when you have faith in God’s word. These folks work from scripture to rewrite state and federal laws/policies.
Personally, I don’t think you can or should teach scripture unless you are woke (the old definition). Emmett Fox doesn’t think so, either.