Recently, a friend asked me how I felt about what was “happening at Columbia, your alma mater.” The reference was specific to the Israeli-Palestinian war and related campus protests, but in thinking about the question, it clearly goes deeper and necessarily requires a clear vision about speech on campus generally. The current focus from the Middle East conflict is just an application of the conflicts over speech codes, Florida’s Anti-WOKE Act, safe spaces, and the innumerable and incessant skirmishes dating back decades.
Although I’ve been keeping something of an eye on the media on the subject, and even though it would take far more space, time, and calories to address the depth and nuance of subject than I’m going to devote here, I’m writing here because the many commentaries that I have read have failed to stake out two principles that I believe are necessary and largely non-negotiable to cultivate and maintain a healthy campus environment that promotes learning, growth, civility, and a respect for common, if imperfect, ground rules designed to work for the broadest set of stakeholders possible. The first principle is that universities should pursue policies that give broad protections for free speech on campus, while the second principle requires that universities be reluctant to discriminate against different viewpoints or adopt positions on various subjects at a university level.
I realize there is nothing terribly novel to those terms,1 but it seems notable that many writers—to say nothing of the university administrators who testified before Congress—can comment on campus speech without being clear that the principles are the best available tools, establishing common and aspirationally-neutral processes and guidelines for governing campus speech. Though the principles are pretty simple, their application will be at times challenging, and the results are objectively imperfect and subjectively frustrating. On the other hand, any other options inherently rest on viewpoint preferences (and therefore viewpoint discrimination) and focus directly on the exercise of power intentionally for some at the expense of others. Those are unhelpful and unsustainable principles, not to mention illiberal ones, for managing a campus environment.2
Applied to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflicts on campuses, as will be the case in any complicated matter involving human life and emotions, universities have no particularly attractive options, and there is no “right” outcome. But in seeking to protect speech based on these principles, even pro-Palestinian chants like “From the river to the sea…!” probably need to be protected in most instances. This means, too, that if a variation of the infamous 2017 Unite the Right protests were held on campus with chants of “Blacks will not replace us!” then those communications would similarly have to be protected.3 I cannot see a world in which there is a viewpoint-neutral means of allowing the Pro-Palestinian chants without also allowing the Unite the Right slogans, and outlawing everything that offends or upsets anyone seems like a fairly obvious non-starter because then nobody gets to say anything, ever.
The only way to allow some forms of speech and not others based on who is offended or hurt or demeaned by the speech is to grant power and status to some groups while denying it to others, and this can only inevitably lead to tit-for-tat exchanged based on which groups are in power. Look no further, obviously, than Florida and Governor DeSantis’s Stop-WOKE Act, which roots its prohibition of critical race studies in the “feelings” of Florida residents.4 The action of Gov. DeSantis and the Florida legislature with Stop-WOKE to prohibit critical race studies on Florida campuses violate both of the key principles for campus speech and demonstrate to anyone still willing to flirt with the notion of being able to identify which speech is “good” and which “bad” that the only answer is cleave toward viewpoint neutrality.
While I concede that plenty of people are emotionally affected by various forms of speech on campus, I am strongly suspicious that any attempts to distinguish prejudice against certain forms of speech as “hurtful” or “harmful” to members of certain campus communities are just exercises in viewpoint preference and ultimately power. We cannot regulate content based on the feelings or emotions that may occur for some, no matter how sincerely felt,5 because it would be impossible to do so for everyone.
However, a doctrine of broad protections for campus speech does not mean that just because speech is protected, it should be spoken. As Chris Rock said, “you can drive a car with your feet if you want to, but that don’t make it a good fucking idea.” Hopefully, campus speakers can identify that sometimes, you don’t have to be a jackass to make your point, and there is a lot to be said for having empathy and trying to maintain a civil and respectful discourse, yes, even when “the other side” is less interested in doing so.
The doxing that took place at Harvard, including by naming specific pro-Palestinian speakers on trucks driving around campus is an example of speech that is probably protected as a campus activity, but it sure seems obnoxious and unlikely to help improve any dialogue.6 While I agree with Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi that banning specific phrases from campus speech (e.g., “From the river to the sea” and “intifada”) would be and unhelpful prohibition on the exchange of ideas, I think Professor Khalidi either misunderstood or misrepresents the sentiments of 18 deans of Columbia who published a joint letter calling for sensitivity around the use of such phrases.7 The deans did not call for the abolition of the phrases, but urged different groups with passionate views to try to be thoughtful about others and to find ways to communicate more effectively, with the goal of maintaining and promoting effective, civil speech on difficult topics. The deans were cautioning against the use of protected speech as a tactic to protect uncivil behaviors.
So, look, I don’t think we get clean, easy answers, no matter what, when we try to figure out exactly where to draw the lines on campus speech. And there are volumes more than can be said and argued about than I could explore here. But with all faults, the principles of free speech and university neutrality represent our best options. This policy choice means that at any given moment, various members of the campus community may in fact feel angry, hurt, dismissed, or even de-humanized. I’m sorry that people believe in the things that can make you feel that way, and I’m sorry they sometimes feel the need to share those things, and I’m sorry more people don’t try harder to be decent more of the time. Such are the carrying charges of a liberal society and university system that respects our rights to express ourselves and tries to balance and impossible array of competing interests and viewpoints. I just don’t think there is a better option.
Heck, if more universities took seriously a commitment to adhere to the Chicago Principles, I don’t know that we’d be having nearly the same level of dialogue now about speech on campus. https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/FOECommitteeReport.pdf
I acknowledge the many arguments about how liberal arguments for free speech just favor various existing power structures, including class, wealth, race, gender, sexual preference, religion, colonialism, imperialism, rape culture, etc. I’m not arguing against those arguments in depth here, but I highly recommend Yascha Mounk’s The Identity Trap for a methodical investigation of the “critical” approach and problems with the identitarian politics that the critical studies approach is frequently associated with. Professor Monck’s appearance on Making Sense with Sam Harris is also great, for the more aurally inclined.
Yes, I know the white supremacists in Virginia were chanting “Jews will not replace us,” but it seems like a very small leap to assume they feel similarly about Blacks and other ethnic groups. A quick note for the “From the river to the sea” crowd: my grandmother used to talk about knowing who you are by the company you keep, and if you are chanting the same stuff that neo-Nazis are chanting, maybe that should give you something to think about. If you and a neo-Nazi share a love of cheesesteaks or Taylor Swift, that may be just coincidence. But if your core ideological principles are the same as a neo-Nazi’s, maybe that merits some introspection.
https://www.flgov.com/2022/04/22/governor-ron-desantis-signs-legislation-to-protect-floridians-from-discrimination-and-woke-indoctrination/. “No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. Once we start legislating and banning speech based on feelings, everything is fair game. The only option is not avoid viewpoint discrimination as consistently as we can manage.
I want to be clear that none of this is intended to say to anyone that members of campus communities who belong to or are allies of marginalized, traumatized, or disempowered groups “need to toughen up” or “stop complaining.” While I believe that the impulse to protect these individuals is frequently taken too far, that doesn’t mean it is entirely misplaced. I realize a liberal, free-speech approach may result in burdens for the members of such groups for having to “educate” the privileged folks with respect to specific group concerns. I just don’t see how creating multiplying safe spaces with increasing numbers of rules, finely parsing speech codes to hand out discipline for certain content and context for speech (but not all similar speech), and shouting down speakers improves the overall education of the university’s community. I said previously that the solution is imperfect. I think the defenses of speech codes, safe spaces, and the enforcement of viewpoint preferential practices just don’t hold up against the downsides of such alternative policies. See, e.g., https://harvardpolitics.com/defense-safe-spaces/; https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/29/in-defense-of-safe-spaces/, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/opinion/trigger-warnings-safe-spaces-and-free-speech-too.html. I actually think the joint letter from the deans at Columbia does a nice job of emphasizing the need to use speech to promote empathy and learning as opposed to being a tool for division.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/us/harvard-students-israel-hamas-doxxing.html. I’ll admit that I really want to say that such doxing tactics are over the line. But if you don’t want people to know what you have said or done in public, then maybe you should either conceal your identity, or think about what you’re saying or doing publicly. I still find the doxing tactics to be obnoxious, but if the doxing is really about publicly-taken views (and not an exposure of privately-expressed ideas), the speakers are protected by laws such as slander and libel. If the doxing is a truthful reproduction of publicly-stated views… it’s obnoxious, but I am not sure it can or should be prohibited.
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/open-letter-to-the-columbia-administration/. You can compare the text of the Deans’ Letter to Professor Khalidi’s statement and judge for yourself.