Worth noting that the organization that came to the satirist’s defense, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, “FIRE” took a principled stand here. In other cases, it sides with the Federalist Society which comes under criticism from the left.<p>For example, the Rutgers law school student bar association had required all organizations under it to have sessions on CRT, but FIRE threatened to sue and they relented.<p><a href="https://www.thefire.org/victory-facing-public-pressure-rutgers-law-student-bar-association-rescinds-critical-race-theory-requirement/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thefire.org/victory-facing-public-pressure-rutge...</a>
The Federalist Society ideals involve "checking federal power, protecting individual liberty and interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning". If they truly cared about protecting individual liberty, they wouldn't have complained about one person's satire. They making a big fuss about it is quite antithetical to their organization's ideals.
This is one in a grand history of parody flyers and papers on campus.<p>The Chapparal used to love taking the mickey out of the Stanford Daily by printing up fake papers and dropping them in the Daily’s newspaper racks around campus on one of their off days. Stories were told of the Daily staffers running madly around campus trying to remove them.<p>The student LGBT organization responded to an infamous two-page spread published by the Stanford Review about the evils of homosexuality with a none-too-polite two-page spread of their own.<p>The only thing that might have been improved in this case: a disclaimer at the bottom. I’m amused a law student didn’t think to include that.
This seems to be the growing trend of anything happening online or within media outlets. "We hold these rights as sacrosanct for all people ...unless they use those rights against causes or people for which we support, including us!"
> The student alleged that Wallace’s satire “defamed” the Stanford Federalist Society, causing “harm” to the student group and to the “individual reputations” of the officers.<p>This reminds of me of the case of 'Hustler Magazine v. Falwell', detailed in the film 'The People vs. Larry Flynt'.<p>The court affirmed, unanimously, that with regard to public figures and organizations, people_do_ have the right to try to cause harm and damage to their reputations. And why shouldn't we? In the case of satire, that's exactly the point.
My chemistry teacher at school (that was in Europe) once lost it over someone who had vandalised an election poster. Elections were coming up, and someone had vandalized a poster from the Socialists. Dude himself was part of the right lunatic fringe himself, but (maybe because of that) the constitutional right of political expression was sacred to him.<p>And here in the US you need to engage in discussion with your betters about your right to political speech. It's disheartening, it really is.
meanwhile if a conservative posted a flyer the whole school and media and rainbow-hairs would be dancing in ecstasy cheering that the hateful bigot was removed
I think this is one of those extreme cases. The student should be admonished, his actions were presented as absolutely legitimate, and that could have caused harm. What if someone saw the flyer and decided to react violently not realizing it was just satire? While I’m all for speech being protected, in this case the student’s actions were reckless. Keep him from graduating? No, not that serious, but certainly a stern admonishment that satire is fine but don’t try and pass it off as truth.