INFORMAL PAPER, this should be ONE PAGE LONG AND PLEASE DO
NOT CITE!!
For homework please read the "How Free Should Free Speech Be?" section of your
book.
READING #1 "Should Neo-Nazis Be Allowed Free Speech" by Thane Rosenbaum on
page 165
READING#2 "The Unfree Speech Movement" by Sol Stern on page 168
READING #3 "Progressive Ideas Have Killed Free Speech on Campus" by Wendy
Kaminer on page 175
READING #4 "Universities are Right to Crack Down on Speech and Behavior" by Eric
Posner on page 183.
After you read all the essays, answer this question: Do you think Americans value
our Constitutional Right of Free Speech? Answer right into Blackboard. Remember: The
more detailed you are and the more specific you are, the better the grade. You should
also use the readings to back up your answer. This should be One page long, double
spaced
READING #1
SHOULD NEO-NAZIS BE ALLOWED
FREE SPEECH?
Over the past several
weeks,
free speech
has gotten
costlier—at least in
France and Israel.1
In France,
Dieudonne M’Bala
M’Bala,
an anti-Semitic
stand-up comic infamous for popularizing
the quenelle,
an inverted
Nazi salute,
was banned from
performing
in
two cities. M’Bala
M’Bala
has been repeatedly fined
for hate speech,
and this was not the first time his
act was perceived as
a
threat
to
public
order.
2
Meanwhile, Israel’s
parliament is
soon to
pass a
bill
outlawing the word Nazi for
non-educational purposes.
Indeed,
any slur against
another
that invokes
the
Third Reich could land the speaker
in
jail for six months
with a
fine of
$29,000. The
Israelis
are concerned
about both the rise of
anti-Semitism
globally,
and the
trivialization
of the Holocaust—even
locally.
3
To
Americans, these actions
in
France
and Israel seem
positively undemocratic.
The First Amendment
would
never prohibit
the quenelle, regardless of
its
symbolic
meaning. And any lover of
Seinfeld
would
regard
banning
the “Soup Nazi” episode
as
scandalously
unAmerican. After all, in
1977 a
federal court
upheld
the
right of
neo-Nazis to
goose-step right through
the town
of Skokie, Illinois,
which had a
disproportionately
large
number
of
Holocaust survivors
as
residents. And more
recently, the Supreme Court upheld
the right of
a
church
group opposed to
gays serving
in
the
military
to
picketthe funeral
of
a
dead
marine
with signs
that
read, “God
Hates
Fags.”4
While what is
happening in
France
and Israel is
wholly
foreign
to
Americans, perhaps
it’s time to
consider whether
these and
other countries may be
right. Perhaps
America’s fixation
on free speech
has gone too far. 5
Actually,
the United
States
is
an outlier
among
democracies
in
granting
such generous
free
speech
guarantees. Six European countries, along with
Brazil, prohibit the use of
Nazi symbols
and flags.
Many more countries have outlawed Holocaust
denial.
Indeed,
even encouraging
racial discrimination
in
France
is
a crime.
In
pluralistic nations
like
these with clashing
cultures
and historical
tragedies not shared
by all, mutual
respect
and
civility
helps keep the peace and avoids unnecessary
mental
trauma.
6
Yet,
even in
the United
States,
free speech
is
not unlimited. Certain proscribed
categories have always
existed—libel,
slander
and defamation, obscenity, “fighting
words,”
and the “incitement of
imminent lawlessness”—
where
the First Amendment
does not protect
the
speaker,
where
the right to speak
is
curtailed for
reasons
of
general
welfare
and publicsafety.
There is
no freedom to
shout “fire” in
a
crowded
theater.
Hate crime statutes
exist in
many jurisdictions
where
bias-motivated crimes
are given more severe
penalties. In 2003,
the Supreme Court held that speech
intended to
intimidate, such as
cross burning,
might not
receive
First Amendment
protection. 7
Yet,
the confusion is
that in
placing
limits on
speech
we privilege physical over
emotional harm.
Indeed,
we have an entire legal system,
and an
attitude
toward
speech,
that takes its
cue from a
nursery
rhyme:
“Sticks
and stones
can break my bonesbut
names
can never hurt me.” 8
All
of
us
know,however, and despite
what we tell
our children, names
do, indeed, hurt. And recent
studies
in
universities such as
Purdue,
UCLA, Michigan,
Toronto, Arizona,
Maryland, and Macquarie University in
New South Wales
show, among
other things,
through
brain scans and controlled studies
with participants who were
subjected to
both physical
and emotional pain, that
emotional harm is
equal in
intensity to
that experienced
by the body, and is
even more long-lasting and traumatic.
Physical
pain subsides; emotional pain, when recalled, is
relived.
9
Pain
has a
shared
circuitry
in
the human
brain, and it
makes
no distinction between
being hit
in
the face and losing face (or having
a
broken
heart)
as
a result
of
bereavement,
betrayal,
social exclusion, and grave insult.
Emotional distress
can,
in
fact, make the body sick. Indeed,
research has
shown
that pain relief medication can work equally
well
for both physical
and emotional
injury.
10
We
impose
speed limits on driving
and drugs because
we know that the
doing so
can lead to
accidents and
speech
be exempt
from publicwelfare
social costs can be
even
more
injurious? 11
“We impose
speed limits on
drugs because
we know
can lead to
accidents
and regulate
food
costs of
not
harm. Why should
concerns when its
driving
and regulate
that the costs of
not
and harm.”
food and
doing so
In the marketplace
of
ideas, there is
a
difference
between trying to
persuade and
trying to
injure.
One
can object
to
gays in
the military
without
ruining
the one
moment a
father
has to
bury
his son; neo-Nazis can long for the Third Reich without
re-traumatizing Hitler’s
victims;
one can oppose
Affirmative Action without burning
a
cross on an
African-American’s
lawn. 12
Of
course,
everything is
a
matter
of
degree.
Juries are faced with similar ambiguities
when it
comes
to
physical
injury.
No one knows
for certain
whether the
plaintiff
wearing
a
neck brace can’t
actually
run the New York Marathon. We tolerate the fake
slip and fall, but we feel absolutely helpless
in
evaluating whether
words
and gestures
intended to
harm actually
do cause harm. Jurorsare as capable
of
working
through
these uncertainties
in
the area of
emotional harms
as
they are in
the realm
of
physical
injury.
13
Free
speech
should
not stand in
the way of
common decency. No right should be so
freely and
recklessly exercised that it
becomes an impedimentto
civil society,
making
it
so
that others
are made to
feel less free, their private space
and peace invaded, their
sensitivities cruelly
trampled upon. 14
AT ISSUE: HOW
SPEECH BE?
FREE
SHOULD FREE
1. Rosenbaum waits until the end of
paragraph
his thesis.
Why? What information does he
paragraphs 1–5? How does this material
set
the rest of
the essay?
2. Rosenbaum develops his argument with both
deductive reasoning. Where
does he use
3. What evidence does Rosenbaum use to
thesis?
Should
he have included
so, what kind?
4. In
paragraph 11,
between regulating
food and drugs.
what points
(if
6
to
state
include
in
the stage for
inductive and
each strategy?
support
his
more evidence? If
Rosenbaum makes
a
comparison
free speech and regulating driving
and
How strong
is
this analogy?
At
any) does this comparison break down?
5. Where does Rosenbaum address
arguments against
his
position? Does he refute these arguments? What other opposing
arguments could he have addressed?
6. What point does Rosenbaum reinforce in
his conclusion?
What other points could
he have emphasized?
This op-ed originally
September 24,
SOL
STERN
ran in
2014.
the
Wall Street Journal
on
READING #2
THE UNFREE SPEECH MOVEMENT
This fall the University of
California at
Berkeley is
celebrating the 50th anniversary of
the Free Speech
Movement, a
student-led protest
against
campus
restrictions on political
activities that made headlines and
inspired
imitators around the country.
I
played
a
small part in
the Free Speech
Movement, and some of
those returning for the reunion
were once my friends,
but I
won’t be joining them. 1
Though the movement promised greater
intellectual and
political
freedom on campus, the result has been the
opposite. The great irony is
that while Berkeley now
honors
the memory
of
the Free Speech
Movement, it
exercises more thought
control
over
students than the hated institution that we rose up
against half a
century
ago. 2
We
early-1960s radicals
believed
ourselves anointed as
a
new “tell it
like it is” generation. We promised to
transcend the “smelly
old orthodoxies”
(in George
Orwell’s
phrase)
of
Cold War liberalism and classbased,
authoritarian leftism. Leading
students into the
university administration building
for the first mass
protest,
Mario Savio, the Free Speech
Movement’s
brilliant
leader
from Queens,
New York, famously said:
“There’s
a
time when the operation of
the machine
becomes so
odious—makes you so
sick at
heart—
that you can’t take part…. And you’ve
got to
indicate
to
the people
who run it,
to
the people
who own
it
that unless
you’re
free, the machine will be
prevented from working
at
all.”
3
The
Berkeley “machine” now promotes Free Speech
Movement kitsch.
The steps in
front of
Sproul
Hall,
the central
administration building
where
more than
700 students were arrested
on Dec. 2,
1964, have been
renamed the Mario Savio Steps. One of
the campus
dining
halls is
called the Free Speech
Movement Cafe,
its walls covered
with photographs
and mementos of
the
glorious
semester of struggle. The university requires
freshmen to
read an admiring biography of
Savio, who died in
1996, written
by New York University
professor and
Berkeley
graduate
Robert
Cohen.
4
Yet
intellectual diversity is
hardly
embraced. Every
undergraduate undergoes a
form of
indoctrination
with
a
required course
on the “theoretical or
analytical
issuesrelevant
to
understanding
race, culture,
and ethnicity
in
American society,”
administered
by the university’s
Division
of
Equity
and
Inclusion.
5
How
did this Orwellian inversion occur?
It
happened
in
part because
the Free SpeechMovement’s
fight for
free speech
was always
a
charade. The struggle
was really about using the campus
as
a
base for radical
politics.
I
was a
27-yearold New Left graduate
student
at
the time. Savio was a
22-year-old sophomore.
He liked to
compare the Free Speech
Movement to
the
civil-rights struggle— conflating the essentially liberal
Berkeley administration with the Bull Connors of the racist
South.
6
During one demonstration Savio suggested that the campus
cops who had arrested
a
protesting student
were
“poor policemen” who only “have a
job to do.”
Another
student
then shouted
out: “Just like Eichmann.” “Yeah.
Very good.
It’s very, you know,like Adolf Eichmann,” Savio replied.
“He had
a
job to
do.
He
fit into the machinery.”7
I realized
years later that this moment may have been the
beginning of
the 1960s radicals’
perversion of
ordinary
political
language, like the spelling
“Amerika”
or
seeing
hope
and
progress
in
Third
World
dictatorships.
8
Before that 1964–65 academic year, most of
us
radical
students could not have imagined a
campus
rebellion.
Why revolt against
an institution that until then offered
such a
pleasant
sanctuary? But then Berkeley
administrators made an incredibly stupid
decision
to
establish new rules regarding political
activities on campus.
Student
clubs were no longer
allowed
to
set up
tablesin
front of
the
Bancroft Avenue
campus
entrance to
solicit funds and
recruit
new
members.
9
The
clubs had used this 40-foot
strip of
sidewalk for
years on the assumption that it
was the property of
the City of
Berkeley and thus constitutionally protected
against
speech
restrictions. But the university claimed
ownership to justify the new rules. When some students
refused
to
comply,
the administration compounded its
blunder
by resorting to
the campus
police.
Not
surprisingly, the students
pushed
back, using civildisobedience
tactics
learned
fighting
for civil rights in
the South.
10
The
Free Speech
Movement was born on Oct. 1,
1964, when police tried to arrest a
recent
Berkeley
graduate, Jack Weinberg, who was back on campus
after
a
summer
as
a
civil-rights worker
in
Mississippi. He
had set up a
table on the Bancroft
strip for the
Berkeley chapter
of
the Congress of
Racial Equality
(CORE).
Dozens
of
students
around
the police car,
preventing it
from leaving
the
standoff
ensued,
with
hundreds
spontaneously
sat
campus.
32-hour
A
down
of students camped
around
the car. 11
Mario Savio, also back from Mississippi, took off his shoes,
climbed
onto the roof
of
the police car, and launched
into an impromptu speech
explaining why the
students
had to
resist the immoral
new rules. Thus began
months
of
sporadic protests, the occupation of
Sproul
Hall on Dec. 2
(ended
by mass arrests), national
media
attention, and Berkeley’s eventual capitulation.
12
That
should
have ended
the matter.
Savio soon left
the political
arena,
saying that he had no interest
in
becoming a
permanent student
leader.
But
others
had mastered
the new world of
political
theater,
understood the weakness of
American
liberalism,
and
soon
turned
their
ire
on
the
Vietnam
War.
13
“But others
had mastered the new world of
political
theater,
understood the weakness
of
American liberalism,
and soon turned
their ire on the Vietnam War.”
Mario Savio at
campus in
a
victory rally
on
Berkeley
(December
the
9,
University
1964) AP
of
California
Photo.
The
radical
movement that the Free Speech
Movement
spawned eventually descended into violence
and mindless
anti-Americanism.The movement waned in the 1970s as
the
war wound
down—but by then protesters had begun
their infiltration of
university faculties
and administrations
they had once decried. “Tenured radicals,” in
New Criterion
editorRoger Kimball’s phrase,
now dominate
most
professional
organizations
in
the humanities and
social studies. Unlike our old liberal
professors, who dealt
respectfully with the ideas advanced by
my generation of
New Left students, today’s
radical
professors insist on
ideological conformity and don’t take kindly to
dissent
by
conservative
students. Visits by speakers who might not
toe the liberal
line—recently
including former Secretary
of
State Condoleezza
Rice and Islamism critic Ayaan
Hirsi Ali—spark protests
and letter-writing
campaigns by
students in
tandem
with their professors until the
speaker
withdraws or
the invitation is
canceled. 14
On
Oct. 1
at
Berkeley, by contrast, one of
the
honored speakers at
the Free SpeechMovement
anniversary rally on Sproul
Plaza will be Bettina
Aptheker, who is
now a
feminist-studies professor at
the University of
California at
Santa Cruz. 15
Writing in
the Berkeley alumni
magazine about the
anniversary,
Ms. Aptheker
noted that the First
Amendment
was “written
by white,
propertied men
in
the 18th century,
who never likely imagined that it
might apply to
women, and/or people
of
color, and/or
all
those who were not propertied, and even, perhaps, not
citizens,
and/or
undocumented immigrants….
In
other words, freedom of
speech
is
a
Constitutional
guarantee, but who gets to
exercise
it without the
chilling
restraints of
censure
depends very much on
one’s location
in the political
and social cartography.
We
[Free Speech
Movement] veterans were too young
and
inexperienced
in
1964 to
know this, but we do now,
and we speak with a
new awareness, a
new
consciousness, and a
new urgency
that the wisdom of
a
true freedom is
inexorably tied to
who exercises
power
and for what ends.” Read it
and weep—for the
Free Speech
Movement anniversary,
for the ideal of an
intellectually
open university, and for America. 16
AT ISSUE: HOW
SPEECH BE?
FREE
SHOULD FREE
1. In
your own words,
summarize Stern’s
Where
does he state it?
2. At
what point (or points)
in
the
appeal
to
ethos?
How effective
thesis.
essay does Stern
is
this appeal?
3. In
paragraph 4,
Stern says, “The Berkeley ‘machine’ now
promotes Free SpeechMovement kitsch.”
First, look up the
meaning of
kitsch.
Then, explain
what Stern means
by this statement.
4. Stern supports his points
with examples drawn
his own experience. Is this enough? What other kinds of
evidence could he have used?
from
5. In
paragraph 5,
Stern says that every undergraduate at
Berkeley “undergoes a
form of
indoctrination.” What does
he mean?
Does Stern make a
valid point, or
is
he
begging
the question?
6. Why does Stern discuss
Bettina
Aptheker
15–16?
Could he be accused of
making
hominem attack?
Why or
why not?
READING #3
PROGRESSIVE IDEAS
SPEECH ON CAMPUS
Is
HAVE
in
an
paragraphs
ad
KILLED FREE
an academic discussion of
free speech
potentially
traumatic? A
recent
panel for Smith College
alumnae
aimed
at
“challenging
the ideological echo chamber”
elicited
this ominous “trigger/content warning” when a
transcript appeared in
the campus newspaper: “Racism/racial
slurs, ableist
slurs, antisemitic language, antiMuslim/Islamophobic language, anti-immigrant language,
sexist/misogynistic
slurs, references to
race-based violence,
references to
antisemitic
violence.” 1
No one on this panel,
in
which I
participated,
trafficked in
slurs. So what
prompted
the
warning? 2
Smith President Kathleen McCartney had joked,
“We’re
just wild and crazy, aren’t
we?” In
the transcript,
“crazy”
was replaced by the notation: “[ableist
slur].”
3
One
of
my fellow
panelists mentioned that the State
Departmenthad for a time
banned
the words
“jihad,”
“Islamist,” and “caliphate”—which
the transcript
flagged
as
“anti-Muslim/Islamophobic language.” 4
I described the case of
a
Brandeis professor disciplined
for saying
“wetback” while explaining its
use as
a
pejorative. The word was replaced in
the transcript by
“[anti-Latin@/anti-immigrant slur].”Discussing the teaching of
Huckleberry Finn, I
questioned the use of
euphemisms
such as
“the n-word”
and, in
doing so, uttered that
forbidden word. I
described what I
thought
was the
obvious difference
between quoting
a
word in
the
context
of
discussing language, literature,
or
prejudice
and hurling
it
as
an epithet.
5
Two
of
the panelists challenged me. The audience of
300 to
400 people listened to
our spirited,
friendly
debate—and
didn’t appear
angry or
shocked. But
back
on campus,
I
was quickly
branded
a
racist,and
I
was charged
in
the Huffington Post with committing
“an explicit
act of
racial violence.” McCartney
subsequently
apologized that “some
students and faculty
were hurt” and made to
“feel
unsafe” by my remarks. 6
Unsafe? These days, when students talk about threats
to
their
safetyand demand
access
to
“safe spaces,”
they’re
often talking
about the threat
of
unwelcome speech
and demanding protection from the emotional disturbances
sparked
by unsettling ideas. It’s not just rape that some
women
on campus
fear: It’s
discussions of
rape. At
Brown
University, a
scheduled debate
between two
feminists about rape culture
was criticized for, as
the
Brown
Daily Herald
put it, undermining “the
University’s mission
to
create
a
safe and supportive
environment
for survivors.” In
a
school-wide e-mail,
Brown
President Christina Paxon emphasized her belief in
the existence of
rape culture
and invited
students to
an alternative lecture,
to
be given at
the same time
as
the debate.
And the Daily Herald
reported that
students who feared
being “attacked by the viewpoints”
offered
at
the debate
could instead
“find a
safe
space”
among “sexual assault
peer educators, women
peer counselors and staff” during
the same time slot.
Presumably they all
shared
the same viewpoints and
could be trusted not to
“attack”
anyone
with their
ideas. 7
How
did we get here? How did a
verbal
defense
of
free speech
become tantamount
to
a
hate
crime and offensive words
become
the equivalent of
physical
assaults? 8
You
can credit—or blame—progressives for this
enthusiastic embrace of censorship.
It
reflects,
in
part,
the influence of
three popular
movements dating back
decades: the feminist
anti-porn crusades, the poppsychology recovery movement, and the emergence of
multiculturalism on college
campuses. 9 “How
did a
verbal
defense
of
free speech
become
tantamount to
a
hate crime and offensive words
become
the equivalent of
physical
assaults?”
In the 1980s,
law professor Catharine MacKinnon and writer
Andrea Dworkin showed
the way, popularizing
a
view
of
free speech
as
a
barrier
to equality. These two
impassioned
feminists framed
pornography—its production,
distribution,
and consumption—as an assault
on women.
They devised
a
novel definition of
pornography
as
a
violation of
women’s civil rights,
and
championed a
model
anti-porn ordinance that would
authorize civil actions
by any woman “aggrieved”
by
pornography.
In
1984, the city of
Indianapolis adopted
the measure,
defining
pornography
as
a
“discriminatory practice,” but it
was quickly struck
down
in
federal
court as
unconstitutional. “Indianapolis
justifies
the ordinance
on the ground
that
pornography
affects
thoughts,” the court noted.
“This
is thought
control.” 10
So
MacKinnnon
and Dworkin
lost that battle,
but
their successors are winning the war. Their view of
allegedly
offensive or
demeaning speech
as
a civil rights violation,
and their conflation of
words
and actions,
have
helped
shapecampus
speech
and harassment codes and nurtured
progressive hostility toward free speech.
11
The
recovery movement, which flourished in
the late ’80s
and early ’90s, adopted
a
similarly
dire view of
unwelcome speech.
Words
wound,
anti-porn feminists
and recovering co-dependents agreed.
Self-appointed
recovery experts, such
as
the best-selling author
John
Bradshaw, promoted the belief that most of us are victims
of
abuse,
in
one form or
another. They broadened
the definition of abuse to
include
a
range of
common, normal
childhood experiences,
including being
chastised or
ignored
by your parents
on occasion.
From this perspective, we are all
fragile
and easily
damaged by presumptively
hurtful
speech,
and
censorship looks like a
moral necessity. 12
These ideas were readily
absorbed on college
campuses
embarking on a commendable drive for diversity.
Multiculturalists sought
to
protect
historically
disadvantaged students from speech
considered racist,sexist,
homophobic
or otherwise
discriminatory. Like abuse,
oppression was defined
broadly.
I remember the first time,
in
the early ’90s, that I
heard a
Harvard
student
describe herself as
oppressed, as
a
woman
of
color. She hadn’t
been systematically deprived of
fundamental
rights and liberties. After all, she’d been
admitted to Harvard. But she had been offended and
unsettled by certain
attitudes and remarks.
Did she
have good reason
to
take offense? That was an
irrelevant question.
Popular
therapeutic culture
defined
verbal
“assaults” and other forms of
discrimination
by
the subjective, emotional responses of
self-proclaimed
victims.
13
This
reliance
on subjectivity, in
the interest
of
equality, is
a
recipe
for arbitrary,
discriminatory
enforcement
practices, with far-reachingeffects
on
individual liberty.
The tendency to
take subjective allegations
of
victimization
at face
value—instrumental
in
contemporary
censorship campaigns—also leads to
the presumption
of
guilt and disregard for due process
in
the progressive approach to
alleged
sexual
assaults
on campus.
14
This
is
a
dangerously
misguided approach to
justice.
“Feeling
realities” belong in
a
therapist’s
office.
Incorporated
into laws and regulations, they lead
to the soft authoritarianism that now governs
many American
campuses. Instead
of advancing
equality, it’s teaching
future
generations of
leaders
the “virtues” of
autocracy.
15
AT ISSUE: HOW
SPEECH BE?
1. Should Kaminer
problem
she
have provided?
FREE
have given more background information about the
discusses? What additional information could she
2. Kaminer
devotes
the first six
to
describing a
panel discussion.
begins
her essay in
this way?
prepare
readers
for the rest
3. In
the
SHOULD FREE
paragraph 8,
function
of
paragraphs of
her essay
Why do you think she
How does this discussion
of
the essay?
Kaminer
asks two questions. What is
these questions?
4. According to
(para. 15)? In
Kaminer, what are “feeling
realities”
what sense are “feeling
realities” harmful?
5. Does Kaminer
discusses is
Could she be
man?
ever establish that the
widespread enough
to
accused
of
setting
situation
be a
up a
6. What does Kaminer
want to
accomplish?
Is
purpose
to
convince readers of something? To
to
action?
What is
your reaction
to
her
READING #4
UNIVERSITIES
SPEECH AND
ARE RIGHT
BEHAVIOR
she
problem?
straw
her
move them
essay?
TO CRACK DOWN ON
Lately,
a
moral panic about speech
and sexual
activity
in
universities has reached a crescendo. Universities have
strengthened
rules prohibiting offensive speech typically
targeted at
racial, ethnic,
and sexual
minorities;
taken it
upon themselves to
issue “trigger
warnings” to
students when courses
offer content that
might upset
them; banned
sexual
acts that fall short of
rape
under criminal law but are on the borderline of
coercion;
and limited
due process
protections of students accused
of
violating these rules. 1
Most liberals
celebrate these developments, yet with a
certain
uneasiness. Few of
them want to
apply these
protections to
society
at
large. Conservatives and libertarians
are up in
arms. They see these rules as
an assault
on free speech and individual liberty.
They think universities
are treating
students like children. And
they are right.
But they have also not considered that the justification for
these policies
may lie
hidden
in
plain sight: that students
are children. Not in terms
of
age, but in
terms of
maturity. Even in
college,
they must be protected like
children
while being prepared to
be adults.
2
There is
a
popular,
romantic notion
that students
receive
their university education
through
free and open
debate
about the issues of
the day. Nothing could
be
farther
from the truth. Students who enter college
know
hardly
anything at all—that’s why they need an education.
Classroom teachers know students won’t learn anything if
they blab on about their opinions. Teachers are dictators
who carefully control
what students say to
one another.
It’s not just that sincere expressions
of
opinion
about
same-sex marriage or
campaign finance
reform
are
out of
place in
chemistry and math class. They are out of
place even in philosophy
and politics
classes,
where
the goal is
to
educate
students (usually about
academic texts and theories), not to
listen to
them spout
off. And while professors sometimes believe
there is
pedagogical value in
allowing
students to express their
political
opinions in
the context
of
some text,
professors (or at
least, good professors) carefully manipulate their students so
that
the discussion serves pedagogical ends. 3
That’s why the contretemps
about a
recent
incident
at
Marquette University isfar less alarming than libertarians
think. An inexperienced
instructor was teaching
a
class
on the philosophy of
John Rawls,
and a
student
in
the class argued
that same-sex marriage was
consistent with Rawls’
philosophy. When another
student
told the teacher
outside
of
class that he disagreed,
the teacher responded
that she would
not permit
a
student
to
oppose
same-sex marriage in class
because
that might offend
gay students. 4
While I
believe
that the teacher
mishandled the
student’s complaint, she was justified
in
dismissing it.
The purpose
of
the class was to
teach Rawls’
theory
of justice, not to
debate
the merits
of
same-sex marriage. The fact that a
student injected
same-sex marriage into the discussion does not mean that
the class was required
to
discuss
it.
The professor
might reasonably have believed
that the students
would
gain a
better
understanding
of
Rawls’
theory
if
they thought
about how it
applied
to
issues less divisive
and henceless
likely to
distract students from the academic merits
of
the theory.
5
Teaching
is
tricky.
Everyone understands
that a
class is
a
failure
if
students refuse to
learn
because
they feel bullied
or
intimidated,or
if
ideological arguments break out that have nothing
to
do
with understanding
an idea. It
is
the responsibility of
the professor to
conduct
the class in
such a
way
that maximal learning occurs,
not maximal
speech.
That’swhy no teacher
would
permit students to
launch
into anti-Semitic diatribes in
a
class about the
Holocaust, however
sincerely the speaker
might think that
Jews were responsible for the Holocaust
or
the Holocaust
did not take place. And even a
teacher
less scrupulous
about avoiding
offense
to
gay people
would
draw
a
line if
a
student in the Rawls class wanted
to
argue that Jim Crow or
legalization of
pedophilia is entailed
by the principles of
justice.
While advocates of
freedom of
speech
like
to
claim that falsehoods get squeezed out in
the
“marketplace
of
ideas,”
in classrooms
they just
receive
an F.
6
“It
is
the responsibility
the class in
such a
occurs,
not maximal
of
the professor
way that maximal
speech.”
to
conduct
learning
Most of
the debate
about speech
codes,
which
frequently prohibit
students from
making
offensive
comments to
one another, concerns speech
outside
of class.
Two points
should
be made.
First,
students who are unhappy with the codes and values
on campus
can take their views to
forums
outside
of
campus— to
the town square,
for example. The
campus
is
an extension of
the classroom, and so
while the restrictions in
the classroom are enforced less
vigorously, the underlying
pedagogical objective of
avoiding
intimidation
remains
intact.
7
Second, and more important—at
least for libertarian partisans
of
the free market—the universities are simply
catering
to
demand
in
the marketplace
for education.
While critics sometimes give the impression that lefty professors
and cluelessadministrators originated the speech
and sex
codes,
the truth is
that universities adopted
them
because
that’s what most students want. If
students want
to
learn biology
and art history
in
an
environment
where
they needn’t worry
about being
offended or
raped,
why shouldn’t they? As
long as
universities are free to
choose
whatever rules they want,
students with different views can sort themselves into
universities with different rules. Indeed,
students who
want
the greatest
speech
protections can attend
public
universities, which (unlike
private
universities)are governed
by the First Amendment.
Libertarians might reflect
on
the irony that the private
market,
in
which they
normally put faith, reflects
a
preference among
students for speech
restrictions. 8
And
this brings
me to
the most important overlooked
fact about speech
and sex
code debates. Society
seems
to
be moving
the age of
majority
from
18 to
21 or 22. We are increasingly treating
college-age
students as
quasi-children
who need protection from some
of
life’s harsh realities
while they complete the larval stage
of
their lives. Many critics of
these codes discern
transformation but misinterpret it.
They complain
universities are treating
adults
like children.
The
this
that
problem
is
that
universities
have
been
treating
children
like
adults.
9
A lot of
the controversies
about campus
life become
clearer
from this perspective. Youngsters do dumb things.
They suffer from lack of
impulse control. They fail to
say
no to
a
sexual
encounter they do not want, or
they misinterpret a
no as
yes, or
in
publicdebate
they undermine their own arguments by
being needlessly
offensive. Scientific research confirms that brain
development
continues well into a
person’s
20s. High
schools
are accustomed to dealing with the cognitive
limitations of
their charges.
They see their mission
as
advancing the autonomy of
students rather
than assuming
that it
is
already
in place.
They socialize
as
well
as
educate
children
to
act civilly by punishing them
if
they don’t. Universities have gradually realized
that they must
take the same approach to
college
students. 10
One
naturally wonders why this has become
necessary.
Perhaps overprogrammed
children
engineered to
the
specifications
of
college
admissions offices no longer
experience the risks and challenges that breed maturity. Or
maybe
in
our ever-more technologically advanced society,
the responsibilities of adulthood
must be delayed
until
the completion of
a
more extended period
of
education.
11
Yet
college
students have not always
enjoyed
so
much autonomy. The modernfreedoms of
college
students
date back only to
the 1960s,
when a
wave of
antiauthoritarianism, inspired
by the Vietnam
War and the civil
rights movement, sweptaway strict campus
codes in
an era
of
single-sex dorms.
The modernspeech
and sex
codes have surfaced as
those waters
recede
back to
sea. What is
most interesting is
that this reaction
comes
not from parents
and administrators,
but from
students themselves, who, apparently recognizing that their
parents
and schools
have not fully prepared them for
independence, want universities to
resume
their traditional
role in
loco parentis. 12
If all
this is
true, then maybe
we can declare
a
truce in
the culture
wars over education. If
college
students are children, then they should
be protected
like children.
Libertarians should
take heart that the
market
in
private
education offers students a
diverse
assortment of
ideological cultures
in
which they
can be indoctrinated. Conservatives
should
rejoice
that
moral instruction and social control
have been reintroduced
to
the universities after a
40-year
drought. Both
groups
should
be pleased
that students are kept from
harm’s
way, and kept from doing harm, until they are
ready to
accept
the responsibilities of
adults.
13
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