MIT Faculty Senate Statement on Free Speech

College Fix (Jennifer Kabbany) reports that the statement was approved by the Faculty Senate by a 98-52 vote:

Free Expression Statement adopted by the MIT faculty 12/21/22

The influential 1949 Lewis Report observed that MIT's mission was "to encourage initiative, to promote the spirit of free and objective inquiry, to recognize and provide opportunities for unusual interests and aptitudes," and to develop "individuals who will contribute creatively to our society." With a tradition of celebrating provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, MIT unequivocally endorses the principles of freedom of expression and academic freedom.

Free expression is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of a diverse and inclusive community. We cannot have a truly free community of expression if some perspectives can be heard and others cannot. Learning from a diversity of viewpoints, and from the deliberation, debate, and dissent that accompany them, are essential ingredients of academic excellence.

Free expression promotes creativity by affirming the ability to exchange ideas without constraints. It not only facilitates individual autonomy and self-fulfillment, it provides for participation in collective decision-making and is essential to the search for truth and justice. Free expression is enhanced by the doctrine of academic freedom, which protects both intramural and extramural expression without institutional censorship or discipline. Academic freedom promotes scholarly rigor and the testing of ideas by protecting research, publication, and teaching from interference.

MIT does not protect direct threats, harassment, plagiarism, or other speech that falls outside the boundaries of the First Amendment. Moreover, the time, place, and manner of protected expression, including organized protests, may be restrained so as not to disrupt the essential activities of the Institute.

At the intersection of the ideal of free expression and MIT community values lies the expectation of a collegial and respectful learning and working environment. We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious. At the same time, MIT deeply values civility, mutual respect, and uninhibited, wide-open debate. In fostering such debate, we have a responsibility to express ourselves in ways that consider the prospect of offense and injury and the risk of discouraging others from expressing their own views. This responsibility complements, and does not conflict with, the right to free expression. Even robust disagreements shall not be liable to official censure or disciplinary action. This applies broadly. For example, when MIT leaders speak on matters of public interest, whether in their own voice or in the name of MIT, this should always be understood as being open to debate by the broader MIT community.

A commitment to free expression includes hearing and hosting speakers, including those whose views or opinions may not be shared by many members of the MIT community and may be harmful to some. This commitment includes the freedom to criticize and peacefully protest speakers to whom one may object, but it does not extend to suppressing or restricting such speakers from expressing their views. Debate and deliberation of controversial ideas are hallmarks of the Institute's educational and research missions and are essential to the pursuit of truth, knowledge, equity, and justice.

MIT has played a leading role in the continuing transformation of communication technology, and recent digital and networked modes of speech make our campus more accessible to all. At the same time, those technologies make our campus more disembodied and more vulnerable to the pull of ideological extremes. Although new modes of speech change the character of expression, such technologies need not and should not lessen our commitment to the values underlying free speech, even as we adapt creatively to meet the needs of our physical and virtual landscapes.

Generally sounds to me like a very good step.

Comments

[John F. Carr]

Good words. We'll see if they translate into good actions. Thirty years ago I went to watch talks by two speakers taking opposite sides on a controversial issue of the time. There were protesters at both events. At MIT the speaker was allowed to talk uninterrupted after the pre-speech protest. At Harvard the speaker was physically attacked and the crowd outside cheered when the assault got the speech cancelled.

[Area Man]

Sad this had to be said, as it should just be axiomatic. Even sadder that 52 members of the Faculty Senate voted against it. I have a feeling that they'll constitute a majority in the not-too-distant future.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

This commitment includes the freedom to criticize and peacefully protest speakers to whom one may object, but it does not extend to suppressing or restricting such speakers from expressing their views.

That section in particular surprised me.

I wonder what the 52 nays thought was wrong. Did any of them object that the statement didn't go far enough in upholding free speech, or that it should have been unnecessary?

From the linked article:

If MIT leadership is proud of the statement’s passage, they have not said so it publicly. A roundup touting the institution’s 2022 accomplishments, published a couple days after the statement was approved, does not mention it.

The statement did garner a bit of criticism from its supporters. Writing on his popular Why Evolution Is True blog, University of Chicago emeritus biology Professor Jerry Coyne took issue with the statement’s “slightly hedged” final version.

“The only objection I have is to … calling for ‘civility and mutual respect’, as well as ‘considering the possibility of offense and injury’. You simply cannot have free speech without offense and injury. Abbot’s invitation provoked precisely such offense and injury, with many people supporting his deplatforming,” Coyne wrote.

“… You can’t have free speech without harm, much though the word is much overused by the faux offended.”

[CJColucci]

I don't see why a college, public or private, can't have viewpoint-neutral, generally-applicable rules of decorum, which, by virtue of being rules of decorum, require speakers to consider offense and harm. For example, in a classroom discussion or public speech, you can take and defend the position that, say, homosexuality is an unnatural and perverse state and that, therefore, gay people have no rights that the rest of us need respect, and give whatever reasons one can muster for that view. That does not mean that you can call your opponents faggots or groomers.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

The problem is its subjectivity leaving a loophole big enough for a crowd of hecklers' veto.

[Cheerio]

For public institutions at least, the 6th Circuit (in Meriwether) recently ruled that “hotly contested” (i.e., non-consensus?) positions may not be imposed.

So, they said a faculty member couldn’t be forced to act in accordance with progressive views on gender ideology…but, I’m sure they could be required to act in other ways deemed “civil” according to actual consensus norms…

[Cheerio]

I suspect that ‘considering the possibility of offense and injury’ doesn't really hedge very much if at all, as the full statement also explicitly affirms that harm is *not* a reason to censor (although it would be better if they didn't concede such a loose definition of "harm" in the first place).

[Beldar]

The only thing astonishing — indeed, astonishingly lamentable — is that 52 members of the MIT faculty voted against this rather anodyne statement, which ought to have been endorsed unanimously.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Perhaps those 52 would be happier on conservative-controlled campuses, where sacred ignorance, dogmatic intolerance, and political censorship prevail at the expense of education, academic freedom, reason, inclusiveness, and modernity.

[Cheerio]

"to express ourselves in ways that consider the prospect of offense and injury"

I'm always happy to rephrase things in ways that avoid/reduce offense, but oftentimes the goalpost keeps shifting so as to prevent the underlying idea itself from being expressed in any way.

So my rule is, if I ask "please tell me the non-offensive way to express this viewpoint," and I'm told "there isn't one..." well, then I know I'm not dealing with a good faith concern.

For example, I'm happy to use a different word/term/phrase to express my opposition to "globalism" -- but dammit, there has to be SOME way to express that position, or else you're just requiring everyone to be on the other side. At some point, you don't get to say "oh but it's because that's a 'code word' for XYZ..."

[Nelson]

"express my opposition to “globalism”"

That's called Marxism.

[Trollificus]

The real problem with limiting speech out of a concern for "offense and injury" is the wholly subjective nature of those things. Even as people are allowed to achieve transgender status through a simple "say-so", so are they allowed to claim "harm".

And frankly, for some values of "harm" and "offense", it seems more reasonable to adjust the delicacy of the offended than to demand speech conformance. Especially when the claims of harm are often pure assertion and hyperbole.

[Ed Grinberg]

Fully a third of the MIT Faculty Senate don't mind "if some perspectives can be heard and others cannot"!
(Hey, I bet I can guess their party affiliation!)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You prefer the censorship, dogma, nonsense, and discrimination that dominate schools controlled by conservatives and Republicans?

[Nelson]

Stop making assumptions about Republicans. Just because they are hostile to individual rights in general doesn't mean that these particular Republicans are hostile to them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonconformity in all things leads to insanity.

[Absaroka]

test, ignore

[Mr. Hook]

"Dr." Ed will be along to rebut you by relating any number of encounters with Trotskyite deans and department chairs that totally, definitely actually happened in which he devastated his opponents with his superior knowledge and logic.

[Cheerio]

C'mon, that's kinda like saying that when an Amazon location or two manages to successfully unionize, it's somehow proof that most of the other locations aren't systemically abusing their workers...

[Area Man]

Don't really know or care. It should be unanimously in favor of such resolutions at every institution of higher education. Or, better, such resolutions should be unnecessary.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Whataboutism, lmao

[Armchair Lawyer]

Why does it matter?

[John F. Carr]

The speaker who got to speak was Sergio Ramirez, VP of Nicaragua The speaker who got attacked was associated with the Contras. I forget his name. You could call it an MIT/Harvard difference or a conservative/liberal difference.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" Don’t really know or care. "

The Volokh Conspiracy -- and right-wing America in general -- does not seem much interested in the routine censorship, flouting of academic freedom, enforcement of old-timey speech and conduct codes, viewpoint-driven discrimination, teaching of nonsense, suppression of science to flatter superstition, collection of loyalty oaths, imposition of statements of faith, and other vivid, everyday abuses at conservative-controlled campuses.

Instead, the clingers nip incessantly at the heels and ankles of America's strongest schools, its mainstream campuses, and its liberal-libertarian institutions, hoping to avoid attention with respect to what happens to just about every educational institution conservatives get their hands on. Until conservatives show they can operate anything other than fourth-tier (or unranked) yahoo factories, I doubt better Americans will or should be interested in pointers from conservatives with respect to operating schools.

[Cheerio]

It's just as wrong in either direction, but the greater threat always comes from the side with more power to act on their authoritarian impulses at each given point in our history. At this moment, that's the left.

And as usual, you fail to acknowledge the (equally or more so) "religious" fanaticism of the radical woke-left, which controls far more institutions at present.

Hopefully we'll see more institutions take a path like MIT and Chicago...of saying a pox on both your houses, to fanatics right and left alike.

I believe in the equal value of every human so I won't use a term like "better Americans" -- but if I did, it would be for those who stand for true freedom and pluralism...with no religious fanaticism from either side.

[Nelson]

Hmmm. I thought it rhymed with SeDantis.

[John F. Carr]

That must be it. The name Adolfo Calero sounds right.

I got the story by word of mouth – no Twitter in those days – and the Crimson probably got the facts right.

This was at a time when the Soviet Union was widely admired in the West. Some of the protesters against Calero saw Nicaragua as a war between the US and USSR and were openly hoping for a Soviet victory in the Cold War.

[Ed Grinberg]

many played up a lot of Marxist revolutions as home grown revolts against autocrats we were propping up

Marxist autocrats are so much better than non-Marxist ones!
(Speaking of which, isn’t Daniel Ortega back as president of Nicaragua again, still as authoritarian as ever?)