Speech on Campus

How can we find rules that respect the university’s commitment to academic freedom while creating an environment where everyone can contribute to teaching and research in truly equal ways? A first step is to recognize that the campus controversies are not about offended feelings but about truth and equality in our democracy. A second step is not to overplay these controversies but realize the speakers are turned down routinely who lack qualifications or standing. The line can be drawn at speech that denies the humanity of some groups because it is non-scientific and advocates illegal actions under our nation’s laws.

What “Snowflakes” Get Right About Free Speech

How do we balance the university’s fundamental commitments to freedom of expression and to equality? With the help of philosophy, political science, legal scholarship, and common sense, it is possible to draw a bright line around ideas that do not merit further debate. These ideas suggest that some people are inherently inferior human beings. It is not necessary to include arguments about such pseudo-science in universities to maintain freedom of academic research. The student protesters who object to such speakers correctly point out that the standing and participation of minority students, faculty, and staff in the university are not just desirable and beneficial for the advancement of knowledge, but also legally mandated. The chapter concludes that the advocacy of white supremacy and its response in protest movements constitute the fundamental question facing our democracy today.

Free Speech Is Rooted in Equality

This chapter places Frederick Douglass in the pantheon of America’s Founding Fathers because the orator, statesman, and former slave exercised his natural right to free speech without waiting for the courts or legislator to grant this right to him. Douglass argues that disputing the humanity of an interlocutor does not qualify as speech as intended by the First Amendment. The chapter shifts the focus from free speech as American democracy’s bedrock principle to the equally critical and inalienable principle of equality. The discussion includes the concept that free speech must be rooted in equality, poses the question of whether free speech depends on one’s legal status, and reaffirms that inherent humanity is not up for debate.

From Skokie to Charlottesville

This chapter argues that the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in summer 2017, present a watershed moment when the general public realized that free speech can become weaponized to undercut discourse and destroy the social order. At a widely publicized event in 1977, a small group of neo-Nazis won the right, in a court decision, to march in a small town in Illinois. That legal decision set the cultural and legal precedent for the mainstream attitude toward hate speech for several decades. Critically, that legal decision was matched by public condemnations of anti-Semitism and racism by political figures all the way up to the US president. When a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017 and murdered or come to demonstrate a, the US president failed to unequivocally condemn these events. The chapter examines the assumption that tolerating hate speech does not mean condoning it in light of these two events.

A Slippery Slope, or Who Is to Draw the Line?

Is there reason to fear that any regulation of speech, which our laws have always recognized, will lead to the suppression of voices we currently like? Is the cost of having free speech the toleration of hate speech? This chapter relies on leading legal scholars to show that the slippery slope is not an argument, and that invoking it serves to shut down productive debate rather than identify a genuine risk. It is not only possible but necessary to draw a line regarding hate speech, and it is possible to define such speech.

An Unholy Alliance

Why do conservatives and progressives often join forces to defend an absolute notion of free speech, when they fundamentally disagree on many other points? This chapter traces the political concept of free speech back to its origins in philosophy, political science, and commonsensical self-understanding. It shows that conservatives mean something quite different when they talk about free speech from the concept used by progressives, and that the surface agreement can lead to political alliances that do not last. The discussion includes the relativism at the heart of free speech absolutism, the risks of suppressing hate, the concept of self-governance as a limit to bad ideas, and the progressive case for unrestricted speech.

Free Speech and the University

This first chapter identifies two problems with free speech in the college context. First, free speech creates a conflict when it interferes with the equality guarantees legally mandated for higher education. Second, free speech controversies undermine the university’s role as an arbiter of truth in society. When viewed in relation to equality and truth, the issues surrounding free speech take on larger significance. They signal a crisis for democracy not by prohibiting hate speech but by eroding the university’s purpose of making decisions over what merits debate and what is considered settled and widely accepted truth.