The Spirit of Free Speech

Students at Brown confronted the President. If you skip to the end I made her acknowledge that the work these students are doing is uncompensated labor. At first, she refused to even acknowledge that.

Posted by Martez Files on Thursday, December 3, 2015

Some strong and reasonable pushback from a young reader, Keiko Tsuboi:

It seems a majority of your emailers are very critical of the recent student movement. I am a current sophomore studying at the George Washington University. As one of these students supportive of the movement, I thought I could offer some perspective. One of your readers lamented:

The First Amendment, at its core, is a protection for unpopular ideas. The corollary to that is that one should never assume that someday your ideas won’t be the ones that are unpopular. Censorship is a dangerous game in a world where power and influence are ever-changing, and lasting change isn’t enforced—it’s persuaded, thoughtfully legislated when necessary, and a function of time. Forcing someone to be a “better person” by any standard doesn’t make them better. It just makes you an oppressor in your own right.

No one is arguing for the dismantling of the First Amendment. What I see is some readers reducing the valid criticisms lodged by student of colors to this tired narrative of pampered college students, safe spaces, and coddled minds. Worse, they view it as larger crusade against the First Amendment, or that students are violating the nobler artifices of higher educational institutions that the previous generations so valiantly protected.

What a grave persecution complex.

If I have a particularly negative experience with an employee of a store, I should not be told their manager that by vocalizing my negative shopping experience that I am violating his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Similarly, if I repeatedly call the attention of university administration to troubling practices or prevailing attitudes that impede my access to a positive academic experience, I should not be met with a dismissive “Well you need to stop censoring Johnny’s right to freedom of speech…”

It is disappointing at the least, that university administrators and faculty members must cite freedom of speech to qualify the behavior of insensitive students and faculty. Here’s a particularly poignant quote from xkcd:

I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you’re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it’s not literally illegal to express.

Yes, the behaviors or attitudes held by students, professors, or faculty are not literally illegal to express. That being said, that is not the end of the discussion and should not be the extent a university administration’s responsibility to protect students of color or create a culture that is more conducive to equality.

Those of the older generations view the recent student protests as a part of some larger attempt to censor free speech, or impose a sectarian view on administrators that are simply trying to do their job. They have woefully missed the point. These new student activists are exercising their freedom of speech, previous conditions that their older counterparts deemed fair and just have been held up to the light; unfortunately they no longer suffice.

As a university, you can no longer actively recruit people of color to attend your university, while bragging about it to shareholders, while shirking the responsibilities that come with treating those students as members of the community. If you misunderstand the cultures of your students of color, learn, and if you lack the resources to support these students, acquire.

For details related to the video embedded above, see this writeup from Emily Shire on the most recent flashpoint in the campus protests: Brown University students dissatisfied with a new $100 million initiative from the administration intended to “doubl[e] the number of faculty and graduate students from ‘historically underrepresented groups’ (which effectively means ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities) by the 2024-2025 academic year and establishing ‘professional development workshops on race, sexual orientation and gender identity.’” The video shows student activists confronting Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson.

But I mostly bring up Shire’s piece because it addresses the use of the term “free speech” that our reader rightly scrutinizes. Here’s Shire quoting a Brown professor:

“‘Freedom of speech’ is a little tough,” he said. ”It’s not the perfect phrase to use, partly because we’re a private institution and we’re not talking about government action. I like to use ‘freedom of expression.’ Universities are supposed to be places of freedom of expression.” The strong emotions, high sensitivity, and overwhelming desire for immediate administrative changes in regards to the treatment of “historically underrepresented groups” appears to override freedom of expression and open dialogue on campus.

Update from a reader who responds to the one at George Washington University:

I was disappointed to see your reader discussing the issue of free speech on college campuses where, in the same breath that she describes how she is not trying to curtail other people’s freedom of speech, she goes on to describe how she is trying to curtail other people’s freedom of speech. Here is a salient quote:

Similarly, if I repeatedly call the attention of university administration to troubling practices or prevailing attitudes that impede my access to a positive academic experience, I should not be met with a dismissive “Well you need to stop censoring Johnny’s right to freedom of speech…”

Yes, we should all strive to treat each other with dignity and respect and create communities where all parties feel welcome. However, the reader unfortunately misses the point: that it is largely the responsibility of the student to create their own positive academic experience.

Short of incitement to violence, there is nothing Johnny can say that infringes upon your reader’s right to a positive academic experience. If Johnny is saying something you don’t like, you have every right to either fight back with your own ideas or ignore them. This is why hate speech is protected speech in the United States. Everyone has the right to show sympathy for the KKK, deny the Holocaust, or go on similarly racist diatribes—and in doing so, destroy their reputation as a credible interlocutor.

Another quote from your reader:

Yes, the behaviors or attitudes held by students, professors, or faculty are not literally illegal to express. That being said, that is not the end of the discussion and should not be the extent a university administration’s responsibility to protect students of color or create a culture that is more conducive to equality.

What laws are there that universities are not upholding that would otherwise protect students of color and create equality between the students? This woefully vague criticism seems to be hinting at doing that which your first emailer claimed student activists are not trying to do.

I have been following this situation closely and what I’ve seen is university faculty attempting to silence media for the sake of a safe space, students silencing each other for saying that each person should be judged on the content of their character, and students who demand the removal of prestigious faculty over the horrors of seeing a transgressive Halloween costume.

Frankly, these students’ demands for safe spaces, for politically correct language, for their ideas to go unchallenged, and for the draconian punishment of those that cross the line are deeply worrying to those of us who are living in the real world. One of the main functions of universities now is to prepare students to enter the work force, where it’s the final product that matters the most instead of the feelings of the person who produced it. Sadly, I’m afraid these students are going to be in for a very bumpy ride once they exit their safe spaces.

Update from one more reader:

Your reader’s last criticism—that the students are somehow rejecting the “real world”—is really disappointing. If that is his understanding of the real world, where humans function solely as cogs in a production engine and silly, soft things like emotional health and comfort are alien or unwelcome intrusions in that system, he’s going to be in for a very bumpy ride himself.

Is his office not a safe space? Let me rephrase: Are his co-workers free to harass one another without fear of reprisal from the employers? If one co-worker wore a costume to his office that was clearly offensive to the race of another co-worker, would there be no repercussions?

The reader retorts:

Regarding the reader who apparently believes I’m some sort of office robot, I think it’s a bit uncharitable for someone to assume I’m at the polar opposite end of the spectrum just because I'm not in their position.

The troubling point in your reader’s response to me is the implication that speech or behavior in universities should be sanitized to resemble a corporate office. For those who have worked in an office, I would challenge anyone to truly say they feel more comfortable expressing themselves openly and honestly in an office than on a university campus. In my office, we talk about football, the weather, and maybe the movies. We certainly are not covering topics such as social justice and identity politics.

One thing I’ve noticed is something that Greg Lukianoff mentions in his and Jonathan Haidt’s piece, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” If we look at the hippy movement of the ‘60s and second wave feminism through the ‘80s, the focus was on a rejection of puritan values, sex positivity for women, and overall personal empowerment for young people. Now, however, the campus protests seem to focus on the opposite: Students are demanding safe spaces that protect them from discomfort and speech codes that limit other students’ right to free expression. While the feminists and hippies were demanding that the administration stop intruding into their lives because they wanted the right to make their own choices, students now are demanding that university administrations do intrude into their lives to protect the “right to not be offended.”