At least for the time being, we have internet on the ship (we’re still in port), so you’re not rid of me yet.
Today’s non-travel post is on a subject dear to my heart: free speech on college campuses. In particular, the website RealClear Education has published a survey of “expert” opinion about which colleges should be lauded for their free speech codes, and which criticized for their deficiencies. You can read the survey’s results and the names of the experts by clicking on the screenshot below, and there’s a pdf of the full report here.
From the RCP report:
We originally invited 70 academics, pundits, and policy experts to participate. About half were recognizably on the left end of the political spectrum. Some of them accepted. Panelists such as Jonathan Haidt, Gregory Lukianoff, and Jeffrey A. Sachs, for instance, are certainly not political conservatives.
Nevertheless, a majority of the 22 invitees who ultimately completed our survey are recognizably on the right side of the political spectrum. This imbalance is itself instructive. A recent Pew Research Center study showed that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to be worried about professors bringing their political and social views into the classroom (79% to 17%). Republicans are also far more likely than Democrats to believe that colleges are too concerned with protecting students from views they might find offensive (75% to 31%). The greater number of conservatives who agreed to participate in our panel reflects the greater concern conservatives have about campus speech. There are several identifiable libertarians on our panel as well.
There is an obvious reason for the special concern about the campus speech climate among conservatives. They are often outnumbered and underrepresented among the faculty and administration, particularly at elite schools. However, political liberals are increasingly raising concerns about censure on campus as well. On the other hand, there are those who say the entire notion of a campus speech crisis is overblown.
. . . We conducted the survey in September 2019. Panelists were asked to name up to five schools that serve as positive role models in the areas of free speech, viewpoint diversity, and open inquiry.
So here are the ratings of the 22 experts. As the caption notes, each expert could select up to five colleges or universities that have particularly “positive” speech codes, i.e., policies promoting free speech. The scale at the bottom gives the number of experts selecting a school.
As you see in the first plot, the University of Chicago was by far the leader in the free-speech race, with 18 of the 22 respondents selecting it as exemplary. Purdue was second with nine votes, followed by Princeton and UVa (a tie with four votes each) and then Arizona State University and Claremont McKenna College, selected by three experts each. The rest of the chosen schools got a miserable one or two votes.
And here are the losers. As I expected, Yale leads the pack by several lengths: 8 votes for “a need to improve”. Another Ivy League school, Harvard, follows with 6 votes, then Williams College, which I just visited, and then a three-way tie, with DePaul University, Liberty University (an evangelical Christian school), and Oberlin College getting four votes each. This would have been close to my ranking, except I’d put Evergreen State up with DePaul et al. And although most of the respondents fall on the right-hand side of the political spectrum, I don’t.
Williams College has been working on a new free-speech policy for several months, which was supposed to be issued several weeks ago, but all we have to date is crickets. That’s because, I think, the administrators are pondering how to somehow reconcile the irreconcilable: free speech and the kind of “inclusiveness” in which nobody ever gets offended. The concept of having free speech that never upsets, offends, or hurts the feelings of anyone is an oxymoron. The sooner that Williams realizes that, as well as the other schools who try to pretend that inclusiveness is fully compatible with free speech, the better. As always, the solution to offensive free speech is not censorship, but counter-speech.
As for Harvard and Yale, it’s shameful that two of America’s best colleges are ranked so low. Granted, only 22 people were involved in these rankings, but these are people who have followed the controversies, including University of Chicago’s Geoff Stone (head of the committee that formulated our laudable free-speech policy), Jon Haidt of New York University, and Greg Lukianoff, head of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). They also include people who have been deplatformed, like Heather Mac Donald and Charles Murray, and thus have personally experienced censorship.
Each of the respondents issued a brief statement about free speech. I’ll let Geoff Stone’s stand for all of them:
Geoffrey R. Stone – professor, University of Chicago School of Law
“Free speech and open inquiry are essential to the mission of a university. The goal of a university is to seek the truth. The only way to do that is to encourage a wide diversity of views and to allow them to be tested critically and openly.”
OK, I’m confused, according to the ship tracker you are about a third of the way to Castro (and well out to sea!), having left last night. Or is this the magic internet trick of setting up a post the night before it drops? Happy travels.
Yes, all posts from here are scheduled in advance, sometimes a day in advance. But nearly all posts are scheduled in advance, as you can see from the posting times, though most (except for Hili) are written the day of posting–in the early morning.
On my vessel tracker (yes, I am stalking you🙂) I see you are past Concepcion) so you are well out to sea and able to post. Terrific for us.
That’s got to be satisfying, seeing U. Chicago 1st.
I’d point out in passing that there’s peculiar output from Hillsdale College – it sounds OK at first, then at some point – after the academic accoutrements wear off – there’s a strong undertone of religious apologetics and conservative / republican politics.
Always shocks me to see UC Berkeley, home of the student Free Speech Movement, rank so poorly such polls.
Guess schools that do not remember their own history will eventually be doomed to repeat it.
Hey, did you see my comments on Midsommar?
Also, curious about your thoughts on Burn After Reading. I just saw it for the first time in years because I remember trying to watch it twice and absolutely hating it both times. I still hate it. I think it’s a terrible movie and by far the Coen Bros. worst work. I’m a huge fan of Joel and Ethan, but I don’t just dislike that movie. I find it boring, I think every comedic moment falls completely flat, and the characters just annoy the hell out of me. I can see the good movie it could have been somewhere in its story, but I find it an absolute slog.
Eavesdropping here – but I also did not enjoy Burn After Reading, though I would, wanted to, but just didn’t. I’ve read a lot of Midsommar reviews, and think I would like it. The problem is, these days, I rarely have 90+ minutes to sit down and watch a movie. An episode of a show, mayhap, but harder to justify the time with something longer.
Eavesdrop away! Yes, something just feels so off about the movie. I can’t think of any other time where the Coen Bros. nose for comedy was so bad. Every joke, character, and ostensibly humorous situation just falls on its face, and this was perfectly encapsulated for me in the reveal of Clooney’s sex machine. The dildo going up and down — the camera lingers on it as if it’s getting funnier and funnier the longer it goes on — just made me sad that they took three quarters of the run time to set up a punchline so juvenile and stupid.
And yet, it has a 7.0 on IMDB, while the excellent and underrated Intolerable Cruelty has a 6.2. Not that I put much faith in the masses to get things right. I just don’t understand the appeal of Burn After Reading. I genuinely long for someone to explain it to me.
As I may have mentioned before, these days I try to see most films of general interest (or at least of general interest to me 🙂 ) in first run at the theater, though I tend to skip certain genre films — super hero and comic book movies, romantic comedies, kung-fu movies, etc. Horror movies fall into this categories. Such movies, I’ll see if a friend or critic whose opinion I respect recommends them. (They don’t have to recommended them as “great” films, just as containing something of interest a cinephile should see.)
That’s how I came to see Midsommar. I thought it had some interesting, genre-bending elements — and had some scenes unlike anything I’d ever seen before (which is something I’m always looking for in a film). That’s why I recommended it to you, since I know you have an interest in horror films. To the extent it is clichéd or derivative, that may have escaped me because of my general unfamiliarity with the genre.
I also found the direction and cinematography of Midsommar well done and interesting. I’ll admit, however, that the first time I see a film, I usually just let the experience wash over me without paying much attention to the technical aspects of the filmmaking. I’ve sometimes discovered that when, in a first viewing, some technical aspect impresses me, I’ll find on subsequent viewing that what I thought was so good was merely flashy or overly foregrounded. That may have been the case with Midsommar.
As for Burn After Reading, I liked it, but think it’s far from peak Coen brothers. Indeed, my favorite part of the movie is the two “Greek chorus” scenes between JK Simmons and David Rasche set at the CIA headquarters — scenes in which they recount and comment upon the rest of the action in the movie, but don’t interact with any of the film’s other characters.
For my money, the Coens have never made a truly “bad” film. I know many people, including seemingly most critics, pan The Ladykillers, but I rather like it. (I also think it’s Tom Hanks’s best performance — better than his Oscar-winning turns in Forrest Gump or Philadelphia, for example.) My two least favorite Coen movies are probably Intolerable Cruelty (which is a perfectly competent effort but which, aside from a few Coen touches, seems to me could have been made by many other directors) and Hudsucker Proxy (which, although I enjoy parts of quite a bit, and very much like the lead actors, has just never grabbed me the way Coen movies usually do, despite a couple of viewings). I’ve also seen Hail, Caesar! just the once so far, so haven’t really made up my mind about it yet.
“I’ll admit, however, that the first time I see a film, I usually just let the experience wash over me without paying much attention to the technical aspects of the filmmaking.”
I’m honestly jealous of people who can do this with every movie. I can and do simply enjoy the experience when a film doesn’t have too much going on in those departments, but, with a film like Midsommar, where the direction and cinematography are so prominent and such integral parts of the film, I unfortunately can’t turn off my analysis. I wish I could divorce myself from my constant analysis when it comes to movies like these, but I am unfortunately afflicted with analysis-itis.
I agree about The Ladykillers. I never understood what critics hated so much about the film. I find the performances delightful, and especially that of Hanks. My favorite Tom Hanks performance is in Charlie Wilson’s War. That is a perfect movie to me! Plus, having Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman on the screen at the same time is an absolute joy. I believe PSH was the greatest actor of the last few decades and, unlike with most celebrity deaths, was quite devastated by his death (not only because of my love for his work, but because of how he died, as I dealt with heroin addiction many years ago).
I can certainly see why Intolerable Cruelty and The Hudsucker Proxy are not for everyone; the latter, in particular, is what I would consider a very niche film. Though I enjoy Hail, Caesar!, I think it is probably my second least-favorite effort of the Coen Bros. after BAR, but, unlike BAR, I still genuinely enjoy Hail, Caesar!. I love the performances, the story is kooky, and Channing Tatum sure can sing and dance!
I love Charlie Wilson’s War; the scenes between Hanks and PSH are pure magic, especially the first one in Wilson’s congressional office with the bottle of booze. (All the entrances and exits are like a Molière play. 🙂 )
Mike Nichols was one hell of a filmmaker (on top of his groundbreaking skit-comedy work with Elaine May early in their careers. May isn’t a bad filmmaker either, especially as a screenwriter, though her directing career sunk like the Titanic with the infamous Ishtar.) 🙂
Speaking of movies, Beej, this weekend I saw a very stylish new Italian import, Loro, set in and around the presidency of Silvio Berlusconi. Think Fellini by way of Scorsese with a dash of David O. Russell thrown in. Gorgeous cinematography, and one of the great entries in the sex&drugs&rock’n’roll oeuvre (although there isn’t so much “sex” involved as about a hectare of exquisite European flesh on display, and the rock’n’roll soundtrack gives way eventually to a traditional score and Italian folk singing).
As you know, I like to see movies cold the first time, knowing as little about them as possible, as I did with this one. There was something that bothered me about this movie, though, and I didn’t understand what it was until I read a bit about it afterward.
The director (Paolo Sorrentino) made the film in two distinct “acts,” meant to be released and screened separately. But, apparently to qualify for certain awards, the two acts were edited together into a single film (in a sense, I suppose, the opposite of what happened with Kill Bill). The melding of the two parts isn’t exactly seemless, as there’s some connective material noticeably missing, making the plotline a bit difficult to follow in spots. The result is also long, with a running time close to two and a half hours.
I won’t spoil it for you by disclosing any more, but by all means see it.
Oh, I’m very much looking forward to Loro! Please tell me it’s far better than Il Divo I found Il Divo to be all style and no substance, and that’s my biggest fear for Loro.
It’s more style over substance, but it isn’t substance-free. (There are some poignant scenes near the end, and a moral to the story, I think, though it’s by no means overtly moralistic.)
And oh là là what style!
It’s like 8 1/2 if you ran it through Casino and Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle. 🙂
SOLD!!!
But the Berkeley free speech movement was against suppression of (what was then) left-wing speech—such as, civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, etc. It was not about free speech in general, such “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” free speech.
Thank you for posting. My daughter is a junior HS student and I have passed this along to her to add to her research.
We will (not) look forward to Williams College finally issuing their statement that is partly inspired by the carefully crafted words of Geoff Stone. It may go like this:
“Free speech and open inquiry are essential to the mission of a university. The goal of a university is to seek the truth. The only way to do that is to encourage a wide diversity of views and to allow them to be tested critically and openly.
But…“
Thing is, I assume many of these schools are public funded institutions? Therefore, those schools should be forced to get on the free speech wagon. Or someone could just do like Trump does on everything and sue. Apparently, unless we get these places into court they can do whatever they want. It is no different than that other part of the first amendment – religion and separation thereof. Unless you take them to court for every little thing they get by with it.
You must be feeling rather proud about Chicago U being so far ahead. Maybe mixed with regret about the fact that it is so far ahead in the first place.
If I understand this correctly, the survey is not particularly informative. Schools that are famous/infamous for their free speech stance will get a high/low ranking. Schools that have a low free speech profile will be ignored even if they have a great or horrible stance.
What has Alabama A&M been up to that put them so high on the “needs improvement” list?
I want to know how Liberty U, Catholic U, and Harvard made it to the list of best schools for freedom of speech.
I’m glad Chicago is recognized for the quality of their policy, but it’s a bit of a worry that at least one leading voice doesn’t see how bad some of the others are.
Heather, you’re reading it wrong. Liberty U, Catholic U, and Harvard are on the list of WORST schools for freedom of speech.
They’re on the best one too.
That’s one thing that tells me that this poll is not terribly informative to a large degree – except for perhaps the bit about Chicago.
They only got one vote each, but they’re there.
Must be somebody who went to Harvard Divinity School!
Probably!
So UC Berkeley got two votes for best and two votes for worst. What’s going on there?