Two pieces on the necessity of free speech

It’s hard to get two people more different in background than my Chicago colleague and law professor Geoff Stone and former basketball great (and subsequently actor, filmmaker, author, and cultural ambassador) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Yet they agree on one thing: college students need free speech and the opportunity to have their ideas challenged in courses. And both have just written pieces in national venues promoting their ideas.

Abdul-Jabbar’s piece, “Ignorance vs. reason in the war on education,” is in Time Magazine online. A few exerpts:

Last month, a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote an article criticizing a Literature of 9/11 course for requiring reading that “sympathizes with terrorists.” The student hadn’t taken the class nor read the actual works, but relied on his personal research to form his conclusions. At Duke University, some students objected to the school’s Common Experience Summer Reading Program selection, Alison Bechdel’s powerful and moving graphic novel Fun Home, a musical adaptation of which is currently a hit on Broadway. They said that they found it pornographic and contrary to their moral beliefs because of its portrayal of homosexuality.

If these were isolated cases, we could just shake our heads sagely at youth’s age-old insistence on their Entitlement to Ignorance. . . But these students’ public attacks on required reading aren’t merely a hold-their-breath tantrum while they refuse to eat their vegetables, they are a reflection of a larger hostility in American society against education—and against educated experts.

Well, I think he goes a bit astray here, for the hostility isn’t against education itself, but against opinions that the students find uncomfortable. And Abdul-Jabbar goes even more astray when he blames this hostility largely on the Right. So while his first paragraph below in on the mark, the second misses its target:

The attack on education isn’t on training our youth for whatever careers they choose, it’s on teaching them to think logically in order to form opinions based on facts rather than on familial and social influences. This part of one’s education is about finding out who you are. It’s about becoming a happier person. It’s about being a responsible citizen. If you end up with all the same opinions you had before, then at least you can be confident that they are good ones because you’ve fairly examined all the options, not because you were too lazy or scared to question them. But you—all of us—need the process. Otherwise, you’re basically a zombie who wants to eat brains because you don’t want anyone else to think either.

That means this is a war on reason. And the generals leading the attack are mostly conservative politicians and pundits who have characterized our greatest thinkers as “elitists” who look down on everyone else.

I have to disagree. Yes, conservatives have long decried the liberalism of American professors (we are more liberal than, say the average American), as well as the “brainwashing” they claim it produces. And indeed, there are courses in which a particular liberal point of view is pushed that prevents or intimidates students from examining contrary opinions.

But the latest attacks on reason come at least as much from the Left as from the Right. It’s often the so-called liberals who attack the content of various courses, ask for “trigger warnings” on material they see as potentially offensive, and call for boycotting speakers whose opinions, because they disagree with the students’, are viewed as hate speech.

However, Abdul-Jabbar couldn’t be more right when he indicts students for their confirmation bias:

We seem hardwired to discard information that contradicts our beliefs. We have the Internet, the single most powerful information source and educational tool ever invented, but many of us use it only to confirm conclusions we didn’t arrive at through examining evidence. We go only to sites that agree with our position in order to arm ourselves with snippets that we can use as ammunition against those who disagree with us.

or when he says this:

The joy of college is arguing with others who are equally passionate and informed but disagree. It develops empathy for others and humility in yourself because you now will look upon your opponents not as evil idiots but as good people who want the same thing as you: a safe, loving, moral community. If you don’t want to read the books and develop the skills, don’t take the class. Don’t attend the college. Spend the rest of your life huddled among those who agree with you. But know that that is not thinking—it’s sleeping. Perhaps the Beatles said it best: “Please, don’t wake me, no, don’t shake me. Leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping.”

*******

One of the things that makes me proud to be at the University of Chicago is its policy on freedom of expression, codified last year by a committee consisting only of faculty (Stone was the chair). You can find it here. My heart swelled when its report came out and contained stuff like this:

Of course, the ideas of different members of the University community will often and quite naturally conflict. But it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. Although the University greatly values civility, and although all members of the University community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.

. . . In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose. Indeed, fostering the ability of members of the University community to engage in such debate and deliberation in an effective and responsible manner is an essential part of the University’s educational mission.

As a corollary to the University’s commitment to protect and promote free expression, members of the University community must also act in conformity with the principle of free expression. Although members of the University community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus, and to criticize and contest speakers who are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe. To this end, the University has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.

That’s about as clear as it gets, and casts shame on those schools, like Brandeis, Duke, and Northwestern, all of which, according to Stone and Will Creeley (vice president for legal and public advocacy for FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), have violated basic Constitutional rights by restricting student speech. Here’s a litany of violations recounted in their co-authored Washington Post piece, “Restoring free speech on campus“:

The past academic year offers a depressing number of examples of institutions of higher education failing to live up to their core mission. At Northwestern University, for example, Professor Laura Kipnis endured a months-long Title IX investigation for publishing an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which she discussed a high-profile sexual assault case. Just a few months later, her fellow professor, Alice Dreger, courageously resigned in protest over Northwestern’s censorship of a faculty-edited medical journal.

In a similar vein, Louisiana State University fired Professor Teresa Buchanan after nearly two decades of service for her occasional use of profanity, which the university suddenly deemed “sexual harassment,” and Chicago State University enacted a new cyberbullying policy to silence a blog that was critical of university leadership.

At Iowa State University, administrators censored T-shirts created by the university’s student chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. The Regents of the University of California are considering adopting a “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance” that would ban “derogatory language reflecting stereotypes or prejudice.” Other institutions are considering banning so-called “microaggressions” or requiring “trigger warnings” to protect students from having to confront potentially upsetting ideas and subjects. Still others have withdrawn invitations to speakers who have taken positions that some members of the community find unpleasant, offensive or wrong-headed — a practice President Obama criticized this month, saying that leaving students “coddled and protected from different points of view” is “not the way we learn.”

I’ve previously written about the University of California’s proposed policy, which is now being reworked, but the reworking promises to make it even more draconian after protests by both Jewish and Palestinian students against offensive statements. (See also lawyer Ken “Popehat” White’s take on this debate.) There has also been anti-Semitic vandalism at the UC, as well as vetting students for committees based on their religion; those are unacceptable, but any criticism of either Israel or Palestine that doesn’t incite violence—including criticism of Jews or Muslims themselves—should be allowed.

It’s time to stop this nonsense and put the First Amendment back to work on college campuses. It’s heartening, then, to read statements by Stone and Creeley like this:

Enough is enough. Our colleges and universities should redeem the promise of the new academic year by reaffirming their commitments to freedom of expression.

. . . Free speech and academic freedom will not protect themselves. With public reaffirmation of the necessity of free speech on campus, the current wave of censorship that threatens the continuing excellence of U.S. higher education can be repudiated, as it should be, as a transitory moment of weakness that disrespects what our institutions of higher learning must represent.

Other universities are adopting the Chicago statement or a modification of it. It should be a guideline for all universities that promote what we call “a liberal education.”

h/t: Diane G., Janet