Charles Cohen, a professor of history, began by speaking for the majority report, declaring that "the minority report allows instructors to derogate students with impunity," but he was virtually alone in defending the majority. Indeed, most speakers opposed the notion of any code at all.
Ken Thomas, a psychologist, observed that in one generation Wisconsin had gone from standing for academic freedom to standing for political correctness. He noted that "speech codes are totally inconsistent with the sifting and winnowing tradition," adding that "guests on the Jay Leno show probably fear censorship less than UW professors."
Biochemist Lawrence Kahan reflected on the fact that he used the example of drunken drivers in his classroom: "If you are an alcoholic...you may feel this example derogates you on the basis of your disability." Ken Mayer, a political scientist, proclaimed a speech code similar to a flag burning amendment, calling them both inappropriate.
Movingly, Javier Calderon, a professor of music who described living under dictatorial regimes in Latin America, expressed his dismay that colleagues would limit their own freedoms, describing the Bill of Rights as something "precious." Silvia Montiglio, a classicist, expressed her confidence in students' intellectual powers and denounced the sponsors of speech codes as "ideologues."
The meeting changed everyone's sense of what was possible. In the campus paper, Downs observed that the Faculty Senate "spoke with the language of free men and women," and he noted that "we could become the very first university in the country to take back a code by a faculty vote rather than a court order."
Jason Shepard recalls: "I sat there in awe. I was so moved by it." It made him realize that there was a world in Wisconsin beyond the debates of the previous 18 months. "On the ad hoc committee," he says, "I was brainwashed into thinking that this was how the faculty thought. At the December 1 Faculty Senate [meeting], clear, rational thinkers analyzed the issues on the merits."
Lester Hunt, a senator, tells me: "I was completely taken by surprise. It was a sea change of public opinion. But no one was more surprised than the pro-code people." The meeting put abolition back on the table, at one extreme, and many authors of the minority report now felt that their position was a compromise that could satisfy everyone. Few truly believed that full abolition was a possibility.
A Niggardly Display of Evidence
The next meeting of the Faculty Senate, also for purposes of discussion, was on February 1. The pro-code forces tried mightily to win the argument about the requirements of harassment law and to discover campus cases that would justify the code. They did neither. Speaking for the majority of the ad hoc committee, Carin Clauss, a law professor adamantly in favor of a strong code, took up much of the meeting explaining both proposals, urging the greater clarity of the majority report, and insisting that the university would be exposed to dreadful liability if it did not have a code.
On January 27, Charles Cohen, the pro-code historian, had written, "as a spokesman for the Majority," to the dean and associate dean of students, asking for information about possible relevant "debasing and derogating expression in the classroom." The deans took their best shot, but most of their examples further alarmed anyone who cared about free speech: "Professor showed slides and made comments that made female students uncomfortable"; "Complainant feels faculty makes light of homophobia during lecture"; "Complainant reports prevalent homophobia and heterosexism in a language class"; "Faculty allegedly made insulting reference to the student's country (other than the U.S.)." Presumably, an insulting reference to the United States would not have been actionable.
Minority group leaders also had been searching for two months for incidents to relate, but their offering blew up on them. Amelia Rideau, a junior English major and vice chairwoman of the Black Student Union, told the Faculty Senate at its February meeting how a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word niggardly (she was unaware of the related controversy, the week before, in Washington, D.C.), and how he continued to use it even after she told him that she was offended. He was trying to explain its meaning--Chaucer used the term--but classmates, she complained, knew what it resembled. "I was in tears, shaking," she told the faculty. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid."
Rideau's plea was a reality check. If the proper use of a Chaucerian term while teaching The Canterbury Tales could be construed as harassment of a student who did not know the word's spelling or meaning, then the code was teaching some interesting expectations indeed. Many "abolitionists," as they now were called, believe that Rideau's speech, widely reported, was the turning point, setting the stage both for greater attendance at the March meeting and for the final vote. John Sharpless, a history professor, asked, "What other words are to be purged from our language? Thespian?"
On February 2, 1999, the Wisconsin State Journal editorialized, "Thank you, Amelia Rideau, for clarifying precisely why the UW-Madison does not need an academic speech code....Speech codes have a chilling effect on academic freedom and they reinforce defensiveness among students who ought to be more open to learning."
The Politics of Compromise
On the evening of February 1, Harvey Silverglate, who co-authored The Shadow University with me, addressed an eager audience on the Wisconsin campus, sponsored both by the student chapter of the ACLU and by the student Coalition for Conservative Leadership. He told them that a faculty speech code at a public university was "legally so absurd as barely to justify a debate" and that the selective enforcement characteristic of such policies undermines the essential doctrine of equality before the law. The vote between the majority and minority reports, he argued, was meaningless, because both positions were unconstitutional. There was only one option when it came to speech at the public University of Wisconsin: freedom.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.15.10 @ 2:50AM|#
jxdthdgh