Free Speech Issues Offer Real-World Challenges

Since the free-speech movement that began at Berkeley in 1967, academia has been beset by the complexities of free expression, namely, the limits past which free speech has no place in a civilization society.  This topic, of course, has come to a head recently, with campus uprisings at unlikley places like Middlebury College in Vermont, as well as the white supremacists’ march in Charlottesville.

I was reminded of this when I receive an invitation to a webinar given by my alma mater, Trinity College in Connecticut:

THE CONTOURS OF FREE EXPRESSION ON CAMPUS

Frederick M. Lawrence in conversation with William K. Marimow ’69, H’16

Frederick M. Lawrence is Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. A lawyer and civil rights scholar who is one of the nation’s leading experts on bias crimes and free expression, he has served as President of Brandeis University and Dean of the George Washington Law School and is currently a Distinguished Lecturer at the Georgetown Law Center.

William K. Marimow is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and longtime editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer who now serves as vice president and editor-at-large of Philadelphia Media Network. Marimow studied First Amendment law at Harvard Law School as a Nieman Fellow. He graduated from Trinity College in 1969 and served as a member of its Board of Trustees from 2008 to 2015.

Needless to say, it’s a very good thing that there are people on the case with thinking that’s far more sophisticated than my own.  Having said that, I thought I’d dash off a paragraph that lays out what I believe, with respects to the rights and duties of academic institutions in the U.S.

An institution has a duty to deny a platform to anyone whose words are tantamount to the commission of a crime.  Hate speech of all types at least teeters on the edge of this, and sometimes clearly jumps far across the line.  The expression of white supremacy is essentially a threat of bodily harm; anyone waving a swastika intends to communicate: If you’re not a white Christian, I/we wish to hurt or kill you.  That’s a crime in all 50 states, and any institution that permits this is, in my view, complicit in that crime.

An institution has the right to deny a platform to anyone whose positions are irresponsible.  This, of course, is a bit more nebulous, but a good example was embodied in a talk I heard at the University of California at Santa Barbara (where my daughter happens to be enrolled).   Here’s an excerpt from my letter to the director of the Institute on Energy Efficiency, the sponsoring organization.

Dr. Bowers:

Walter Cunningham’s lecture left me cringing, embarrassed for myself just being there, but more importantly, ashamed for your esteemed institution. 

Here’s a man whose principal claim is that climate scientists have abandoned science in favor of politics and popular opinion, but who comes armed with essentially no scientific support for his ridiculous claim. 

Also, here’s a man who impugns the integrity of each of the many thousands of the world’s most accomplished professionals who have spent their entire careers studying this quite complex phenomenon.  His suggestion that the entire world of climate science is corrupt is not only groundless,  but it’s a moral outrage.  I know many of these people personally, and his assertion here is so deeply offensive that I can’t believe I just heard it come out of someone’s mouth, especially at a place like UCSB.   If for whatever reason you want a climate denier on stage, please ask me next time; I’ll find someone who won’t dishonor your wonderful organization.

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Again, this discussion of duties and rights is just “one man’s opinion,” as they say.  I’m sure the folks at Trinity will present a much more compelling set ideas than my own.