What a disgrace that Dalhousie University is conducting a disciplinary investigation of a student for a Facebook comment along the lines of the title of this post. American free speech law has a lot of problems, but on this kind of issue it gets things quite right. As the U.S. Supreme Court said (in upholding the constitution right of a citizen to wear a jacket in a courthouse that said "Fuck the draft" on the back):
[M]uch linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated.
Fuck Dalhousie University!
(Thanks to Sergio Tennenbaum for the pointer.)
UPDATE: Several readers have written to let me know that Dalhousie has withdrawn its "complaint" against the student.
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