[posted to usenet, I forget what group] The point has been made to me that freedom of speech is just as threatened in the American workplace as in the American schools. I agree. And since virtually every place where people associate is a workplace for someone, even if it's just the people who maintain the establishment, prohibiting "offensive work environments" requires suppressing free speech in almost any place people could gather to discuss issues. In response to the Wall Street Journal editorial which I just posted, with the permission of the Journal, I wrote the following letter. I don't think they ever had space to print it, so I reprint it here. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To the Editor: Although your editorial "Speech Codes and Censors" is timely and courageous, it understates the menace that vague "harassment" rules pose towards freedom of speech, both in universities and in society at large. Your editorial cites Emory's speech code forbidding any behavior which has the "reasonably foreseeable effect" of creating a hostile environment. But at MIT, where I am a student, speech need merely have offended a "reasonable person" of any category defined by race, gender, sexual orientation, and/or religion to bring punishment. This standard is absurdly vague. How will administrators decide what is "reasonable?" What if reasonable people disagree? Must all agree, or can the views of one allegedly reasonable person out of a group of a several million lead to punishment? MIT administrators can't tell me, but they do confirm they might punish me if I violate the standard. One official even told me that "if a person thinks he/she is being harassed, then he/she is." Regrettably, campuses are no longer the only places in society without free speech. Thanks to the recent "civil rights" act, companies face jackpot-sized damage awards if they permit their employees to exercise their free speech rights. Most speech takes place in schools and commercial establishments. If the courts fail to do their first-amendment duty and strike down speech-restricting harassment laws, free speech will disappear from our society. The vagueness of the "reasonable person" standard, used by many courts, and prohibitions against "hostile" or "offensive" workplaces have frightened many companies and universities into restricting speech more than required by law. And college administrators are able to hide their restrictive speech codes behind EEOC guidelines and harassment laws, allowing them to evade criticism from students challenging censorship and ideological persecution. Unconstitutionally, the government uses our schools and employers as intermediaries in a war on free speech. By their own definitions, many harassment policies constitute harassment. Many reasonable people at MIT find that the vague and arbitrary constraints on their speech create a hostile, offensive, and intimidating environment. The sexual harassment policy is additionally offensive because it is based on the work of Catherine MacKinnon, an anti-male bigot who has called men "a group trained towards woman-hating aggression," stated that "sexual harassment is marriage is rape," and belittled the horror of rape by questioning "whether the concept of consent is even meaningful" in sexual relations. Its prohibition of "ogling" and "leering" violates bodily integrity and raises images of the Old South, where black people who failed to avert their eyes from whites were lynched. Inoffensive speech needs no protection, since no one wants to ban it. The first amendment exists to protect unpopular speech, including speech now banned under the label "harassment." Free speech is the safeguard of all our other freedoms. It must be upheld. Sincerely, Lars Bader --------------------------------------------------------------------- Even though this particular letter didn't get printed, I strongly encourage people to take their flames, make them into letters to the editor for their local newspaper, print them out, and send them in. 99% of people don't read Usenet. But they vote and their representatives control us. We have to reach them and teach them to vote against censors, and writing letters to the editor is an easy way to do so. Most of the times I've written letters, they have been printed. People in foreign countries: don't let your representatives and courts buy this concept of "harassment". It's very vague and can easily be perverted. It spreads so quickly there is barely time to combat it. The US is currently in a frenzy about the whole concept of "sexual harassment," which no one can define properly. Harassment cases are driven by civil damages, which makes them much more enticing to bring to court than cases of traditional government censorship. In this respect, it's sort of like the persecutions for witchcraft in Medieval Germany or the accusations of Albigensian heresy in southern France, where the offer of part of the accused's property led to innocent people being turned in for torture and execution. Make your governments define specifically what they're regulating, or you'll lose your speech too.