These are difficult times for free speech and academic freedom in American universities. The enemy is within and without. The forces that batter American institutions of higher learning are inside as well as outside. Unfortunately, in many cases the culprits are in the camp that presumably is on the side of free speech and academic freedom. That’s what makes the situation all the more perilous by muddying the waters.
The problem is not new but it came into full relief thanks to the ambivalent replies of the presidents of three elite universities during the recent Congressional hearings. As a result, an assortment of parties with an ax to grind took advantage of the public criticism of university leaders to go after the whole premise of higher education. That premise is that universities are the spaces where academic inquiry is free to explore every topic and students learn the art of critical thinking, develop their curiosity, and are trained how to debate ideas no matter how controversial. As such a university is one of the most important pillars of liberal democracy and human progress.
Those who don’t feel comfortable with this premise are found among conservatives, red states, and big money donors. (About the left’s culpability further down.) Conservatives denounce theories and scholarship by calling them woke if they find them offensive to their interpretation of history and social phenomena. They keep complaining that leftist faculty dominate the humanities departments and ask for their version of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), the same DEI they reject in other areas of academia and business. They also ignore a well understood fact that the preponderance of liberal faculty in the humanities has more to do with the choice of conservative students in favor of careers in Wall Street and business than with any deliberate plot to leave conservatives out of the humanities.
States dominated by GOP governors and legislatures have taken this conservative stance a step further by adopting laws that limit the scope of free expression and instruction. As someone wrote in the NY Times, they are especially fond of attacking three-letter words, like DEI, ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance Sustainability), and BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction). Florida and Arkansas lead the pack in this connection. But by doing so, conservatives contradict their own vocal opposition to government interference in the lives of their citizens. They also forget that dissent and diversity of ideas – intellectual, religious, and political – are at the very foundation of the Western civilization which conservatives so much cherish.
After decades of plastering their names on buildings and schools of mostly elite universities, now some big donors are threatening to withhold or withdraw their money unless university administrations toe the donors’ lines with respect to what is admissible speech on campus. The fact that their opposition to student demonstrations has emerged in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not prevent good faith people to see that what is under attack are fundamental principles of free speech and expression. Cancelling prospective jobs of protesting students, publicizing their names, and putting pressure on university administrators to cancel lectures by pro-Palestinian speakers should not be condoned as rightful action justified by the donors’ identification with one of the parties. Nor should we fail to see the double standard applied to the exercise of free speech under the First Amendment. While wealthy donors are attacking free speech in academia, they also defend unfettered speech, theirs included, on social media. The sad thing is, however, that contrary to the student protests, the free for all exchanges on social media have been responsible for the real deaths of young Americans.
Against this assault on campus speech and academic freedom, American universities must stand strong and defiant. But first, they must clean up their own act. The last twenty years, universities, especially private ones, have come to assume that speech and instruction are threats to the emotional fragility of students. Thus, they have gone along with student demands to cancel speech found offensive to minorities defined by race or sexual orientation, or to other causes dear to the left. To this effect, speakers with racist or anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ views as well as scientists who deny climate change have been either cancelled or disrupted. And course syllabi must include warnings (triggers) about material that some students might find emotionally disturbing.
Thus, universities have succumbed to safetyism, as Lukianoff and Haidt call it in their book The Coddling of The American Mind. Speech, open debate, and instruction must now be couched so that they protect the feelings and set of beliefs of different student groups. The policies of safetyism have given us “safe spaces” where students of like beliefs can exchange their views as in an echo chamber. Universities that adopt these policies forget that their social and intellectual mission is to train students in the art of democratic and pluralistic politics that demand openness of mind and countering arguments they despise with better arguments. Universities forget to tell their students that when democracy falls and authoritarianism takes over there are no “safe spaces” for any of us.
Above all, though, universities must reject the encroachment of donors into their academic affairs and should not allow donor money to influence their mission. If they do, then liberal arts are no longer a path to a liberating education and academic scholarship becomes the handmaiden of powerful interests.
Not all campus speech will please everybody. I, like others, understand that some of it is ridiculous, offensive, and outright contemptible to many people inside and outside academic institutions. But suppressing it by either suspending student groups or muzzling their voices is even worse. Our constitutional right of free speech is impartial to pleasing or offensive speech. After all, there are reasonable guardrails to keep speech accountable when and if it becomes harassing and hurtful to individuals.
In true democracies, freedom of speech and thought should be protected and empowered in every space of human activity. But not more so than within the halls of universities.
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