OnThe New York Times's philosophy blog,The Stone, Professor Ulrich Baerdefends学生抗议与他们意见相左的演讲者。Baer的核心论点是，公共辩论中的一些声音可能最终会将其他声音排除在公共辩论之外。当某人的话语使社会中的某些群体丧失人性时，就会发生这种情况。在这些情况下，贝尔认为学生抗议以阻止这些人发言是适当的。事实上，贝尔认为这是在最大限度地保护我们的言论自由权利，因为那些被非人化的个人再也不能平等地参与公共辩论。

I have a number of responses to Baer's proposal.

First, I think a version of this argument may end up backfiring. This would happen if we imagined our right to free speech as being "maximally honored" when we have the fewest number of voices being silenced. Suppose there are a group of bigots whose speech would dehumanize marginalized groups. If it turns out that the bigoted group is larger in number than the marginalized groups, then our right to free speech would apparently dictate to let the dehumanization continue. This suggests that we should either find a different conception of our right to free speech or find a competing value that trumps free speech in this context.

Second, I was skeptical of how often such student protesters are responding to speakers who actually dehumanize groups in the way described. Perhaps you can claim this about Richard Spencer, but it's a slightly harder case forAnn Coulter. Certainly Ann Coulter has made her share of degrading remarks, but you might think it's not that likely for her to show up to Berkeley and make such dehumanizing remarks.

第三，发表非人性化的评论和通过演讲的方式真正地非人性化是有区别的。关于这个区别，语言哲学家和政治哲学家之间有广泛的争论，所以我在这里只做个手势。

Finally, I think Baer's suggestion may lead to certain political deficiencies in those trying to fight against oppression and marginalization. That is to say, if the left on college campuses want to be able to adequately counter the right's arguments in a larger public context, the left needs to learn the right's worldview inside-out. They need to understand why people buy the right's arguments, and listening to them speak is a good place to start.

Anyway, that's just my two cents. Here's the link to Baer'sNew York Timesop-ed:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/what-liberal-snowflakes-get-right-about-free-speech.html