Universities struggle to find place in free speech debate
Good news for many of us – it”s still perfectly constitutional to be a jerk.
However, that is not what the University of California system was trying to address earlier this month when they rolled out the first draft of a “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance,” despite a consensus otherwise.
The proposed policy condemned “unwelcome conduct motivated by discrimination, or hatred towards, other individuals or groups,” and was a response to what many say is a rise in incidents of anti-Semitism on UC campuses.
In February, members of a Jewish fraternity at the University of California Davis awoke to find that their home had been vandalized with swastikas.
A little more than a week later, on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles, a student was nearly denied a position on the UCLA Judicial Board due to her affiliations with the Jewish community.
The drafted policy prohibited acts of violence or intimidation, threats, harassment, hate speech, derogatory language reflecting stereotypes or prejudice and inflammatory or derogatory use of culturally recognized symbols of hate, prejudice or discrimination.
The sweeping policy was, as these things tend to be, met with vehement criticism. Jewish advocacy groups claimed the policy didn”t go far enough to condemn bigotry.
On the other hand, proponents of free speech claimed the policy went too far.
Hannah Shirley
At the end of the first page of the draft, the policy explicitly reads, “This statement of principles applies to attacks on individuals or groups and does not apply to the free exchange of ideas in keeping with the principles of academic freedom and free speech.”
To be fair, inclusivity can be tricky – somewhere on the spectrum between spoon-feeding students political correctness and leaving disadvantaged and/or minority students alone on the plate to bat for themselves, there”s a way for all critical, curious minds of all politics and opinions to continue a productive conversation while being respectful and mindful to students of all backgrounds. Unfortunately, many universities are still struggling to hit this stride.
Earlier this semester, several professors in Washington State University”s Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies took some heat for providing a list of “banned” words on their syllabi, including “the man,” “male” and “female” and “colored people,” to name a few. The reason for this was that it would foster a constructive climate for discussion.
Both the WSU and the UC policies have the same goals in mind. To see where one went wrong, it”s important to think about what a university”s obligation actually is to its students.
I took a shot at boiling it down. The role of a university is to make higher education accessible to anyone willing to foot the bill. Is this pretty fair to say?
As a natural extension of this, it is a university”s job to ensure students are succeeding in their education and to minimize obstacles that might inhibit their success.
Micro-aggressions – toward students of any and all kinds of affiliations and orientations – are real and they are harmful. A student who does not feel safe or welcome on campus is less likely to engage with their community and, as every freshman orientation leader on every campus in America will tell you, students who don”t engage with their community are less likely to succeed academically.
Similarly, policing language has a way of shutting down the learning process before it really begins. In any academic setting, a fear of being wrong staunches education – that translates seamlessly to a fear of being racist, sexist, classist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic or just generally offensive.
Universities have an obligation to their students to address both sides of this coin if they want their students to be successful.
That”s the difference between the WSU policy and the UC policy – despite what critics would have you think, the UC Regents did not attempt to eliminate ideas or expressions of certain viewpoints. It merely sought to define unacceptable behavior in an effort to keep students on its campuses safe. Opinions, though they can be as hurtful as slurs and other hate speech, were rightfully left alone.
Following the controversy, the UC Regents withdrew the proposed policy in a meeting Sept. 17. They said they have plans to “go back to the drawing board.” Hopefully, it will just be to tie up the loose language that keeps the anti-bigotry statement from being airtight.
It will be interesting to see what UC comes out with in their next draft, but the issue isn”t confined to just a few campuses – it”s a national conversation that will continue to evolve, and for all those involved in higher education, it will be one worth keeping an eye on.
Hannah Shirley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @itshannah7