BECAUSE THE CENSORSHIP HAS MADE IT SO PLEASANT ALREADY. “With Musk on the board, the employees said his views on moderation could weaken years-long efforts to make Twitter a place of healthy discourse, and might allow trolling and mob attacks to flourish.” Might we see some evidence of the success of this project so far? Because all I hear are complaints that the supposed abuses are worse than ever.

FORMER REDDIT CEO ELLEN PAO: WE’RE DOOMED IF ELON MUSK DIALS BACK TWITTER CENSORSHIP. I was going to submit that this might be the dumbest thing ever written, but that’s not fair. There is no way she actually believes stuff like this:

Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication… The people who benefit from unrestricted amplification of their views will also be the same people who have benefited from that privilege for centuries.

Yeah, because rich and powerful people (like Musk, who could just buy Twitter outright if he wanted) were the people who had trouble getting their message out before free speech was a thing. All of this argument for social media censorship of “dangerous” viewpoints is an establishment snow job. The target of the censorship is John and Jane Q. Public. Anyone who says it’s not is lying.

THE RECENT OBERLIN RULING ISN’T GREAT FOR FREE SPEECH. It arguably holds the college responsible for the speech of its student government (see p. 18-21), which will likely incentivize colleges to do even more to control student speech. That said, this may well be a “hard cases make bad law” situation without a lot of precedential value. I mean, good luck convincing a jury that the college does NOT control student speech when administrators are saying stuff like this:

Another example was a text message sent by [Dean of Students Meredith] Raimondo after the student newspaper published a letter from a retired Oberlin professor, which expressed criticism of the college’s “handling of the Gibson matter.” Raimondo sent a text message to another administrator that stated, “F-him. I’d say unleash the students if I wasn’t convinced this needs to be put behind us.”

It’s easy to see this going another way (with regard to student speech, at least) if Oberlin administrators had been privately saying things like “Man, this student senate resolution might get us in even more hassle with the Gibsons, but we can’t just take it down.”

GEORGE LEEF, TO WHOM I OFTEN LINK, HAS A NOVEL OUT. From Bombardier Books: The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale: A Political Fable For Our Time. Check it out; good reviews on Amazon, and I bet he could use more!

ZE GERMANS ARE LOSING ZE PLOT AGAIN.

YALE LAW STUDENTS DISRUPT DISCUSSION ABOUT FREEDOM OF SPEECH. FIRE is looking into this, but it bears repeating: the cure to speech you don’t like is more speech, not silencing the person you don’t like. Yale has committed itself to this principle, but seems to have done little or nothing to explain why “equal justice under law” on free speech is the only protection the protesters have for their own speech, should a mass of people take a dislike to what they have to say. Lawyers (and law students), of all people, need to understand this principle.

SOCIAL MEDIA: CALLS FOR VIOLENCE ARE NOT FREE SPEECH, WE MUST BAN THEM! (THUNDEROUS BLUE CHECK APPLAUSE.)

ALSO SOCIAL MEDIA:

SELF-CENSORSHIP ON CAMPUS: FACTS VS. NARRATIVE. The Twitterati (an unrepresentative group that nevertheless wields enormous cultural power) lost its mind over the last couple of days after the New York Times published an op-ed (paywalled, sorry!) from a politically liberal college student and recent FIRE intern cogently pointing out that she expected debate at college but instead found it rife with self-censorship. Apparently, making this personal observation, or polling 37,000 college students to prove it (as FIRE did), makes you conservative regardless of your actual principles or beliefs. Is it really so hard to process the idea that a free speech group could actually be serious about defending everyone’s free speech, regardless of viewpoint?

I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE LET THEM KEEP THAT ONE.

1. Invade the Ukraine
2. Take over Chernobyl
3. ????
4. Profit!

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE?

John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, 1859: “Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.”

The FBI, on Twitter, 2022:

For those who might say “oh, this is only about foreigners,” that doesn’t matter — if the “foreigners” are right about the electoral system being compromised, they’re doing us a favor by telling us so, even if it’s for their own selfish reasons.

FEDERAL JUDGE MAKES SURPRISE CHANGE IN SPEECH AT GEORGETOWN LAW: Scheduled to talk about originalism, Judge James C. Ho instead announces “I’m going to spend my time today talking about Ilya Shapiro” and then does so for the entire speech.

“If Ilya Shapiro is deserving of cancellation,” he concluded, “then you should go ahead and cancel me too.”

Georgetown, cut your losses and just let Shapiro go to work. This is passing “embarrassing” and is headed straight for “career-ruining humiliation” territory.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Georgetown Law Self-Cancels Its Elite Status.

ATF: CONSIDER ‘SWATTING’ YOUR EX FOR VALENTINE’S DAY. Wow, this can’t go wrong. Someone over there needs to look up “perverse incentives” in the dictionary.

“FREE SPEECH MAKES FREE PEOPLE.” PRIMETIME OLYMPICS TV AD WITH CELTICS STAR ENES KANTOR FREEDOM. FIRE shares the story of the Turkish (now American) NBA star, barred from his native land for speaking out.

Watch it before it somehow gets canceled!

THIS YEAR’S TEN WORST COLLEGES FOR FREE SPEECH IS OUT TODAY! And you won’t BELIEVE who’s… Oh heck, yeah you will. Georgetown is on there. In fact, FIRE had to delay the release a bit just to update its entry.

This 11th annual edition of FIRE’s annual list also includes a college that punished students for handing out stickers critical of China’s government, and another that sent a law professor to mandatory reeducation for including censored references to slurs in an exam — the materials for which used the same slur redacted in the same way. I am not making this up.

BIDEN ADMIN WANTS TO REGULATE BITCOIN, CRYPTOCURRENCIES BASED ON “NATIONAL SECURITY.” National security in this context means “hand it over to the Fed/big banks” so the right people can make money, and also make it government spyware.

GEORGETOWN PREDICTABLY DISAPPOINTS ON ILYA SHAPIRO. Sigh.

UPDATE: To be clear, the fight continues. A number of college professors, led by Eugene Volokh, have signed on to a letter in support of Shapiro’s rights — including a lot of names Instapundit readers will recognize.

A CHANCE TO HELP CANCEL CANCEL CULTURE: The New Tolerance Campaign is inviting people to contact Georgetown Law dean William Treanor and urge him to stand up to a textbook cancellation campaign by keeping Ilya Shapiro, who sent what he admits was an “inartful” tweet criticizing Biden’s promise to limit his Supreme Court search to black women and exclude males and people of other races from consideration, regardless of qualification. You can learn more in FIRE’s letter to Dean Treanor, too.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related: “So, basically, people are talking about firing Ilya Shapiro for expressing a sentiment held by most Americans, most non-white Americans, and most Democrats, because it’s too right-wing I guess.”

VANDERBILT BANS ITS STUDENTS FROM ATTENDING HOME BASKETBALL GAMES BUT NOT VISITING STUDENTS. The ban may end today. Ten years ago, we discovered Vanderbilt admins were nuts when they kicked more than a dozen Christian groups off campus for requiring the “wrong” beliefs about homosexuality. Looks like not much has changed.

SUPREME COURT WILL HEAR PAIR OF COLLEGE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASES. I wouldn’t get too excited. Equal justice under law is pretty far in the rear-view mirror at this point.

WASHINGTON & LEE CHANGES COURSE, ALLOWS STUDENT CAMPAIGNING AFTER SHUTTING DOWN COLLEGE GOP BEFORE VA. ELECTION. Students couldn’t campaign for Youngkin before the election based on W&L’s bogus 501(c)(3) reasoning. Last week W&L finally changed the policy – the day before Youngkin took office, which seems like all kinds of coincidence.

Reminder: W&L President Bill Dudley is the one who amusingly said last year that universities had been unfairly dragged into the culture war.

GHISLAINE MAXWELL DEMANDING RETRIAL AFTER JUROR ‘MISTAKENLY’ DOES NOT TELL COURT HE WAS A SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIM. And boy are these federal prosecutors extra-mega-ethical about the the whole thing, asking the court to investigate a jury biased in their favor. I bet they do that all the time!

I really preferred it when our ruling class tried to be less ostentatious about all the cover-ups and double standards.

KAVANAUGH AND ROBERTS JOIN COURT’S LIBERALS IN UPHOLDING VACCINE MANDATE FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS. What must it be like to be on the side that never receives unpleasant surprise “defections” in highly politicized Supreme Court cases? I’ll never know myself, but it must feel freaking great.

WILL YOUR COLLEGE DEGREE BE A GOOD INVESTMENT? Merits of the education itself aside, the gatekeeping function colleges provide used to make this an easy “yes,” at least in most people’s eyes. That seems to be fading now, as costs mount while the utility of many degrees continues to decrease, for all kinds of reasons — not just the usual suspects.

HUFFPO’S WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT ON JAN. 6 VERSUS 9/11. I’m a free speech lawyer. I am an awfully hard person to seriously offend. But by golly, this guy managed it, by spitting on the graves of thousands of innocent people for a Twitter hot take.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The thing you have to understand though, is that he’s sincere. The worst thing a Democrat can imagine is a threat to Democrats’ political power. Islamists aren’t seen as such a threat. Meanwhile their biggest fear is that the Normal-American community will rise up and take back control of the country and its institutions. All the media censorship, charges of “white supremacy,” etc. is just designed to prevent that.

HO HO HO, FREE SUBSIDIZED CELL SERVICE FOR HOUSEHOLDS MAKING…$198,000? As long as your income took a hit from COVID. I am not 100% sure this is the best use of tax dollars, but I guess it beats giving the Taliban $80B of weapons.