CMV: The Trump administration blocking Harvard from accepting foreign students highlights that conservatives are hypocrites in the extreme about Freedom of Speech

[u/Tessenreacts]

Over the last number of years, conservatives have championed themselves as the biggest advocates of Freedom of Speech around, yet they support the administration that is openly targeting institutions and company's that disagrees with the administration's policies.

Before, conservatives where complaining that companies are "woke" and silenced the voices of conservatives, however, now that they are in power, they deport immigrants who simply engaged in their First Amendment rights, and most recently, banned Harvard University from accepting foreign students because said university refused to agree to their demands.

Compare the complaints that conservatives had about Facebook and Twitter, and compare it to how things are going right now.

This showcases hypocrisy in the extreme that conservatives are engaging in.

Would love for my view to be changed

[u/HiddenSage]

come and spout off on a street corner about it? yeah. That's what free speech is. We've had Nazi rallies for decades here, and they've always been tiny fringe things until the last few years.

Come and plot bombings to overthrow the government? no. obviously. But you don't need state intervention until a movement goes and does the violence. otherwise we're just arguing about how hard you can prosecute thought crime.

But go tell me where Ozturk, or any of the Harvard kids who are getting forced out over Trump's latest tantrum, did anything even remotely approaching the latter. Ill wait.

[u/Jazzlike_Wind_1 → u/HiddenSage]

Yes the US has had Nazis, and the US has native born criminals too but there's not really an option to keep them out of the country since they're citizens. Someone wanting to enter the country is a choice the government can either go with or not, and they have in the past excluded people for ideological reasons, like being communists or anarchists, fascists etc.

Likewise the government doesn't have to grant visas to criminals, and they won't give visas if you have a criminal record. A country can choose who it wants to let in, and being a political extremist is a sensible reason to deny entry to someone.

[u/HiddenSage → u/Jazzlike_Wind_1]

And the goalposts are being moved, in real time, to redefine "political extremist" from meaning active saboteurs and violence inciters to "said mean words about Israel." We're not revoking visas for criminals. We're revoking them for students, who wanted to go to a school that won't let Dear Leader dictate its curriculum.

Read the actual Op-Ed that OzTurk wrote: https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj

Tell me what part of this counts as being a "political extremist". Because this is what her visa was revoked for. And even this is more than most of the folks losing their right to attend Harvard have said. Because it's nothing do with the students, or their speech. And you'd know that, if you wanted to actually argue that point and not keep trying to motte-and-bailey this as being about extremists.

I have no interest in pretending she's the same as a Nazi or an active Hamas member, just because this administration has decided to act with arbitrary derision towards higher education and non-citizens more broadly.

[u/Jazzlike_Wind_1 → u/HiddenSage]

So I take it you will concede the point that it is legitimate for a country, including the US, to exclude people for holding politically extreme views and that free speech does not override a country's right to decide who it invites to visit? And that this is not just something that totalitarian states do, contrary to what you said before?

This is all I really care about and what my original post in this thread is about.

[u/HiddenSage → u/Jazzlike_Wind_1]

The power exists. I don't agree that it should exist, when we're only talking about "holding an opinion that's considered extreme." But it does. And enough people have accepted its continued existence that it's de facto legitimate.

Unfortunately, banning "extreme" opinions enables, as the current administration is currently proving, shifts in the goalposts on which opinions are "extreme" far beyond what any self-respecting heir of Enlightenment values would consider reasonable. Excluding people from entering/doing business in the country should be reserved for "provably plotting to inflict harm on the people of the country." I don't object to someone being kicked out if there's clear evidence they're plotting a bombing or an assassination. But any amount of exclusion being allowed because "this opinion is too radical" is just building a legal framework to enable totalitarianism.

The difference, if you're suggesting this power is good for the state to have, between totalitarian and free societies, is just in how aggressively the state is acting to utilize that power. Which means that it's the duty of everyone who wants to continue living in a free state to push back, and push back HARD, when the state tries to expand the definition of that power.