The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
University Presidential Testimony Fallout
I have a new piece at The Dispatch on the antisemitism hearing in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the poor performance of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and MIT.
From the piece:
The presidents' bad hand in the hearings did not stem from a lack of hate speech regulations. Rather, it was due to the terrible track record that American universities have regarding principled free speech positions on campus. Harvard ranked dead last in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's (FIRE) annual campus free speech rankings, and Penn was just one slot above them. Universities all too often have a double standard when it comes to protecting free speech. It is all too apparent that, regardless of their written policies, many universities would not tolerate hateful speech directed toward other, more favored groups on campus. But they have faced more conflicting pressures when it comes to antisemitic speech and the October 7 attack on Israeli civilians. While legitimate time, place, and manner regulations on campus speech are strictly enforced against some, violations are frequently ignored when university officials think that the violators have their hearts in the right place.
As a result, appeals to principles of robust academic freedom and free speech principles from Gay, Kornbluth, and Magill ring hollow. If universities uphold double standards, then there is a strong incentive to make sure that your constituency is on the right side of the double standard. The political scientist Ted Lowi famously wrote of the "end of liberalism," in which classical commitments to neutral principles in constitutional governance had been replaced in the 20th century with an "interest-group liberalism" that simply implemented the results of bargains among competing political interests. In such a world, your interests would be unprotected if you did not have a seat at the table and sufficiently strong leverage in the negotiations.
To a worrisome degree, universities have embraced an interest-group liberalism model of governing. The diversity, equity, and inclusion apparatus is both an outcome and a reflection of that kind of internal spoils system. Jewish students and faculty are now insisting that their interests get a better piece of the pie, and universities know how to respond to such demands. Don't hate the player; hate the game.
Read the whole thing here. Behind a paywall, but if you don't subscribe to The Dispatch, you should!
