Well, I’m putting up two talks today, but perhaps this is a lazy Sunday and you’d like some brain food. Submitted for your approval: an Intelligence² debate on the topic of free speech on campus. Held last Tuesday at Yale University, a hotbed of student authoritarianism, the topic is this:
Yes or no: free speech is threatened on campus.
The debaters:
FOR (i.e., free speech is threatened on campuses):
Wendy Kaminer, author, lawyer, and free-speech advocate. I have to say that I’m biased because I’ve read many of her articles and several of her books, and nearly always agree with her.
John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics of Columbia, author of several books on language, and a contributing editor of The New Republic.
AGAINST (i.e., free speech is not threatened on campuses):
Shaun Harper: Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and president-elect of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.
Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale and author of four books on philosophy. He’s also written several philosophy pieces for “The Stone” column of the New York Times.
Click on the screenshot to see the debate video (click on the “video/audio” tab to the right of the page where you’re directed). It’s an hour and a half long.
I’ll just give a very brief take. First of all, both in my view and that of the audience, the Kaminer/McWhorter team won, as they swayed more of the audience toward their side. Here’s the outcome (votes before and after the debate) from the website:
And this didn’t seem to be a debate about the motion at all: the sides were, as Kaminer noted at one point, talking past each other. Her side really did come to grips with the issue, while the Harper/Stanley team talked around it. That team made these points:
- Few colleges have any official policy restricting freedom of speech, so there’s no problem. That is wrong, as the Kaminer/McWhorter team noted, as as detailed in the Atlantic article noted below. And even if Harper and Stanley were right, there don’t have to be policies, but actions of students, administrators, or both that suppress certain areas of inquiry by demonizing them.
- The Harper/Stanley team said that there’s ample evidence for free speech, for the student protestors making demands at Yale and elsewhere are speaking freely. But that, of course, is not the issue, for many of those protestors are asking for restrictions on “hate speech”, safe spaces, and other concessions that squelch freedom of speech.
- Harper and Stanley sometimes seemed to call for restrictions on free speech that they construe as speech promoting racism, sexism, homophobia, or, as Harper said, the “lived experiences” that students have had. (Lord, do I hate that phrase!). They were somewhat disingenuous in maintaining that black students (the topic of much of the debate) don’t want speech codes, but consciousness-raising and recognition of their humanity. But as we’ve seen, many student demands are such as to place certain topics of discussion off limits. I believe it was Harper who said that we are “talking about effect of speech on oppressed and marginalized groups,” implying that that kind of speech is dangerous and that we have to take into account our words on such groups. Of course we should, but we shouldn’t automatically shut up when these groups tell us that they’re offended, or accede to all their demands.
The Atlantic has a nice postmortem on the debate written two days ago by Conor Friedersdorf: “The glaring evidence that free speech is threatened on campus.” I consider it a must-read, as it summarizes all the repressive incidents and speech codes that, say Harper, don’t or didn’t exist. It is the direct refutation of their thesis, and a good evaluation of the two sides’ performances.
Note that both Kaminer and McWhorter didn’t have all Friedersdorf’s data right at hand during the debate, but also said that they were aware of them. (There was simply no time for them to go into this kind of detail.) In this sense Harper and Stanley resembled creationists by denying that there was substantial evidence supporting the other side, performing a kind of “Gish Gallop.”
I’ll give just two excerpts from Friedersdorf’s piece, but do read the whole thing. After listing many of the schools (and believe me, there are lots of them) which have official policies restricting speech, he repeats a statement that Harper made:
“Wendy, it could be that maybe we’re talking to completely different students and hearing completely different things, because quite honestly, when we have students in our studies who are talking with us about the realities of race on their campuses… when we hear students of color unpack these painful stories and these microaggressions and stereotypes and other things that have happened to them, we ask them, ‘What is it that you want the institution to do?’ Never once, not once have I heard them say anything about a speech code.”
Well, Friedersdorf shows that’s hogwash:
. . . I fail to understand how any scholar who takes the campus climate and last semester’s protests as a core focus of their research could miss student demands to punish speech. The Wall Street Journal reported on a survey of 800 college students that found 51 percent favored speech codes. Yale protestors formally demanded the removal of two professors from their jobs in residential life because they were upset by an email one of them wrote. Missouri law students passed a speech code that Above the Law called Orwellian. Amherst students called for a speech code so broad that it would’ve sanctioned students for making an “All Lives Matter” poster.
At Duke, student activists demanded disciplinary sanctions for students who attend “culturally insensitive” parties, mandatory implicit-bias training for all professors, and loss of the possibility of tenure if a faculty member engages in speech “if the discriminatory attitudes behind the speech,” as determined by an unnamed adjudicator, “could potentially harm the academic achievements of students of color.”
At Emory, student activists demanded that student evaluations include a field to report a faculty member’s micro aggressions to help ensure that there are repercussions or sanctions, and that the social network Yik Yak be banished from campus.
Activists at Wesleyan trashed their student newspaper then pushed to get it defunded because they disagreed with an op-ed that criticized Black Lives Matter. Dartmouth University students demanded the expulsion of fraternities that throw parties deemed racist and the forced a student newspaper to change its name.
Need I go on?
Friedersdorf then goes after Stanley, whose performance in the debate I considered execrable, since he avoided the main issue and wanted to concentrate not on whether speech was threatened, but on issues of oppression and marginalization.
Harper’s ally in the debate, the Yale philosophy Professor Jason Stanley, didn’t perform any better. During portions the event, he claimed that folks on the other side, who say free speech is under threat, aren’t really engaged in a debate about free speech––he said the real debate is about racism and anti-racism and about leftism. In this telling, free speech is being invoked as a cover, in service of less-sympathetic agendas.
. . . the broader claim about free-speech defenders—which is lamentably common in public discourse on the subject—can be refuted a dozen different ways. Here’s one: Many college newspapers are struggling with free-speech issues that have nothing to do with race or leftism, as David Wheeler reported.
Or consider another narrow area of campus expression that is under threat: the formal speech, delivered to a broad audience. We’ll restrict our “threat survey” to a single year.In 2015 alone, Robin Steinberg was disinvited from Harvard Law School, the rapper Common was disinvited from Kean University, and Suzanne Venker was disinvited from Williams College. Asra Nomani addressed Duke University only after student attempts to cancel her speech were overturned. UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks participated in an event on his own campus that student protestors shut down. Speakers at USC needed police to intervene to continue an event. Angela Davis was subject to a petition that attempted to prevent her from speaking at Texas Tech. The rapper Big Sean faced a student effort to get him disinvited from Princeton. Bob McCulloch faced a student effort to disinvite him from speaking at St. Louis University. William Ayers was subject to an effort to disinvite him from Dickinson School of Law. Harold Koh faced a student effort to oust him as a visiting professor at New York University Law School.
That list includes speakers from the right and the left. It involves several controversies that have nothing to do with antiracism. How many examples are needed to persuade Stanley that there is a problem?
I think this question is rhetorical, as Stanley’s mind is closed. Over the past few months I’ve tried to document some of these threats, and they’re occurring on my own campus. Fortunately, the administration of the University of Chicago is committed to pretty much the same free-speech policy as the U.S. government: everything permitted except harassment of individuals, creating a climate of harassment in the workplace, or speech that directly incites physical violence. Here it’s the students who are trying to shut down discourse, demanding punishment of those who speak outside the box.
When you hear the term “hate speech,” you’re probably hearing a euphemistic call for restriction of free speech.
h/t: Cate
