Academia’s free speech problem

By Matthew Gagnon

Last week, the rot in the academy was laid bare for all to see. On Wednesday, the presidents of Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, three of this country’s most prestigious educational institutions, testified on Capitol Hill in response to the apparent rise of antisemitism on college campuses. 

The hearing was long and tense, with all three presidents on the defensive as they sought to reassure Congress and the American people that their schools were not hotbeds of anti-Jewish hate. 

They did the exact opposite. 

It was the exchange with New York Rep. Elise Stefanik that grabbed the most headlines. In her questioning, all three presidents were asked whether or not students at their universities would be disciplined for statements calling for the genocide of Jews. All three equivocated. 

In one exchange, Stefanik asked Penn president Liz Magill whether or not calling for the genocide of Jews violated Penn’s rules or code of conduct. Magill answered, “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” adding later that it was a “context-dependent decision.”

The same question was repeated multiple times to each of the three presidents, and all three of them gave similarly bewildering answers.

The immediate and surprisingly bipartisan reaction was almost unified horror. A group of congressional representatives — 71 Republicans and three Democrats — authored a letter demanding all three universities terminate their presidents. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania condemned Magill’s comments as “shameful.” Even left-wing academics like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe went on the attack.

Damage from the hearing was so bad that all three presidents, particularly Magill and Gay were forced to try to clean up after their mess. Magill recorded a video apology that was so awkward and forced that some called it a “hostage video.” Gay released a statement, so corporate and homogenized that it must have been reviewed by hundreds of lawyers and public relations flacks. 

Since then, Magill has been forced to resign, while Gay remains under intense fire, including for new accusations of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation, adding to her problems.

But if I may, I think most people are taking their eye off the ball here, and are missing the real problem with the testimony offered by these three.  

The issue is much less with the allowance of what may be hate speech directed at any single identity group on campus, but rather in the maddeningly uneven manner in which speech is policed in America’s universities. 

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a professor at New York University, was clear in his evaluation of the problem. “As a professor who favors free speech on campus, I can sympathize with the ‘nuanced’ answers given by university presidents,” he began. “What offends me is that since 2015, universities have been so quick to punish ‘microaggressions,’ including statements intended to be kind, if even one person from a favored group took offense.”

It would be one thing if “contextual” attitudes about speech were evenly applied. Sadly, they aren’t. The decision to hem and haw about Jews while at the same time enthusiastically sanctioning students for minor transgressions aimed at other groups is indefensible.

The best way forward would be to entirely eliminate all speech codes from universities.

This was the reaction from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. FIRE actually attacked the university presidents for abandoning their university’s commitment to academic freedom and free expression, which they described as “already hanging by a thread.”

FIRE acknowledges, and even details boundaries to the First Amendment. Admittedly any call for mass-extermination of any group of people — Jew or otherwise — is very close, possibly over the line whereby speech is no longer legally protected. 

But again, the problem has less to do with what the line is, and more to do with the selective and hypocritical enforcement of it.

But as we sort all of this out, we do have a more fundamental question that must be asked.

Why are American universities seemingly attracting a radical and toxic group of hatemongers like a proverbial moth to a flame? Why are this country’s young people becoming simultaneously radicalized, with one in five 18 to 29 year olds now believing that the Holocaust is a myth, while also being so fragile as to not be able to cope with criticism?

It is an important question, because no matter what the rules about speech are on college campuses, we shouldn’t have to entertain possible consequences for speech that calls for ethnic extermination. Yet we do. Why? What have we done to our young people, and why is this debate even necessary?

Gagnon of Yarmouth is the chief executive officer of the Maine Policy Institute, a free market policy think tank based in Portland. A Hampden native, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C.