Free Speech on Campus

Free speech issues have been intensifying on American campuses.

In February:

"Protests that erupted at UC Berkeley ahead of a planned Wednesday appearance by right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos caused $100,000 worth of damage to the campus." (CNN, 2017 Feb 2)

In March:

"Last week, a guest lecture at Middlebury College by Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was disrupted by hundreds of student protesters. Allison Stanger, a political science professor at the college, subsequently interviewed Mr. Murray at an alternate location on campus. As they left the second venue, they were violently confronted by masked protesters, and Ms. Stanger was injured." (NYTimes, 2017 Mar 7)

In early April:

"Administrators expressed disappointment and threatened discipline in the wake of a demonstration that disrupted a planned public event last week featuring conservative commentator and author Heather MacDonald at Claremont McKenna College....About 250 protesters on Thursday blocked the entrance to the Athenaeum, where MacDonald was scheduled to appear. Many chanted “black lives matter” and “black lives — they matter here.” (LA Times, 2017 Apr 9)

And in mid-April:

"White nationalist Richard Spencer's speech at Alabama's Auburn University was preceded by controversy and punctuated Tuesday night by protests, arrests and some violence." (NPR, 2017 Apr 19)

Critics of the protesters deride them as intolerant. For example:

"On American campuses, fragile thugs who call themselves students shout down and abuse speakers on a weekly basis. To read Heather MacDonald’s account of being pilloried at Claremont McKenna College is to enter a world of chilling intolerance." (David Brooks)

About a year and a half ago The Liberal Pulpit wrote about "Resolving the Paradox of Tolerance." We argued then that policies of tolerance should aim to maximize the overall climate of tolerance. Some intolerance can be tolerated in the interest of maximizing the overall climate of tolerance, while other intolerance cannot be tolerated.

"It is necessary to limit some hateful expressions. Otherwise, the powerful haters will create a climate intolerant of views different from theirs....The question to ask ourselves is: Does the intolerance in question threaten the overall climate of tolerance? If it is not of such nature or power to have a reasonably discernible chill effect on other viewpoints, then allow it (though do share your criticisms of it). But if the vitriol is driving out other viewpoints, then, in the name of tolerance itself, it should not be tolerated. Every limitation on expression damages the overall climate of tolerance....Sometimes not curtailing certain expressions damages the climate of tolerance even more." (The Liberal Pulpit, 2015 Dec 14)

Following this approach, the question would be whether the speeches by Yiannopoulos, Murray, MacDonald, and Spencer, had they proceeded without protest, would have done more damage to the overall climate of tolerance than not allowing them to speak would do. The issue, however, is better cast as one of acceptance and respect than of tolerance. So is the climate of acceptance and respect degraded when a university gives Yiannopoulos, Murray, MacDonald, or Spencer a platform for their views? Is it degraded more by protests that block or hamper these speakers' expression?

To lay the ground of approach to these questions, some considerations:

First, the Miltonian ideal is delusion. British poet John Milton famously said in 1644:

"Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"

The problem here is that there never was nor ever can be any such thing as a "free and open encounter." Long before Milton, Aristotle had identified ethos, pathos, and logos as the modes of persuasion. The speaker's ethos (character and credibility) in the eyes of a given audience, always an essential factor in persuasion, is a reflection of dynamics of power that have nothing to do with truth and that inherently tilt the playing field. Pathos (rousing the audience's emotions), whether prominent or subtle, done effectively or not, is also always a factor, and adds constraints to every encounter. The background knowledge and experiences that audience members bring with them place significant restrictions on their persuadability. These are not the constraints and restrictions of "the truth of the matter" or "the way reality is," but tend more to be the constraints and restrictions of confirmation bias, ego defense, wishful thinking, and other manifestations or tools of power. If you had been imagining that invited speakers at universities are part of a system of "free and open encounters" from which Truth can never be "put to the worse," I urge you to stand disabused.

Second, "free marketplace of ideas" is not at issue. These speakers -- and, indeed, any speaker invited to speak on a college campus -- are not presenting otherwise unavailable thoughts. Rather they are further publicizing ideas they have already published. Moreover, the prominence of the internet ensures ready access to all manner of offensive expression. Given online connectivity, the free market of ideas can be in no danger, and has never offered so wide a range of wares so easily to so many.

Third, dehumanizing or delegitimizing groups of people reduces free speech. We cannot remove ethos from public discourse -- and, insofar as we can coherently imagine what that would be like, we wouldn't want to -- but we can reduce barriers to access to ethos based on group membership. Free speech is maximized when all members of a given community can participate as fully recognized members of that community. Speech that functions to diminish the character and credibility of others because of their membership in a racial, ethnic, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious group diminishes free speech.

A campus speaker who denies the holocaust, or who explicitly supports white supremacy, or who claims that trans people are really men and women in disguise (as Ben Carson has done) invalidates the humanity of some people. That's an overall reduction in the climate of acceptance and respect, and, as such, reduces free speech.

When our prestigious universities were populated entirely with middle- and upper-class, white, presumptively straight males, a guest lecturer committee would have been hard-pressed to find a speaker to invite to campus who would threaten the humanity, legitimacy, or belongingness of any portion of their audience. The world was so ordered as to make possessors of whiteness, maleness, and wealth so secure in their belongingness as to be unthreatenable. While the world is still largely ordered that way, universities now strive to be inclusive and diverse -- to be a home to members of groups not so secure. If the members of those groups are required, as a condition of entering discourse, to first defend their human worth, then the university has not provided all its members equal access to public speech.

These, I think, are the issues to which to attend in considering who to invite to speak on campus. Yiannopoulos and Spencer do more damage than good to campus free speech. As for Murray or MacDonald, I don't have an opinion on whether it would be better to debate them or not invite them -- but, since I'm a middle-class straight white cis-male, my own opinion on that is not the important one. We must listen to those whose human worth is more in jeopardy.