Harvard Panel on Campus Free Speech

Now available for viewing on C-Span

On December 12, I participated in a timely panel discussion at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on "Free Speech, Political Speech, and Hate Speech on Campus." The panel included Jeannie Suk Gersen, Nadine Strossen, and Erica Chenoweth, and was moderated by Tomiko Brown-Nagin.

A recording of that event is now available for viewing on C-Span here.

From the C-Span description.

Scholars from Harvard, Princeton, and New York Law School discussed campus speech amid the Israel-Hamas war at an event hosted by Harvard University. Topics included fostering a culture of mutual respect for disagreeing viewpoints, distinguishing between protected hate speech and harassment and bullying, protests on college campuses, and whether universities should take a stance on controversial issues. Prior to this event, Harvard University President Claudine Gay and other university presidents received backlash and calls for resignation due to their congressional testimony on antisemitism on college campuses.

Comments

[Longtobefree]

A little less talk, a little more action.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Twenty years ago, it was said that there was more free speech on the editorial page of the New York Times than in the Harvard Faculty Senate.

I doubt that anything has improved....

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I'm sure that with all those prestidigitous legal experts this subject came up, but there's a federal law against advocating genocide, so why haven't arrests been made? We're assured that there was, in fact, advocacy of genocide.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Massachusetts has a law against blasphemy.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

We’re assured that there was, in fact, advocacy of genocide.

What do you think, "From the river to the sea" means?

[David Nieporent]

See Brandenburg v. Ohio.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Yes, in previous comments I've speculated on how the university presidents could have handled the congressperson's question:

"Yes, of course, our university regulations forbid advocacy of genocide to the same extent federal law does. I won't claim that we go *further* than federal law, and I see that as a matter internal to the university which is outside the federal government's responsibility."

[The Margrave of Azilia]

That is, going *further* than federal law isn't the federal government's responsibility, duh, even assuming they have the right to demand universities *copy* federal law.

[Michael P]

If you're referring to 18 U.S. Code 1091(c) as "federal law against advocating genocide", you should check the case that David Nieporent pointed you at, as to the threshold between "incitement" and more generic advocacy.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

This is my point - getting out a good sound-bite about how the feds are demanding more strict supervision of speech than the feds themselves do.

The presidents' sound-bite should be short and simple, and the can get in to Brandenburg in the follow-up questions.

It might also save their butts vis-a-vis the trustees and alums.

[Bwaaah]

The Harvard host opens imploring people, in this "fraught time," to be "generous listeners." She then goes on to speak, and speak, about particular peoples who, apparently, must be spoken about, even though doing so seems irrelevant to the forthcoming debate.

(She beats, and beats, the drum of the undeniable equivalence of Palestinian and Jewish suffering (and throws in Harvard student suffering in a nod to a victim-of-the-day). We have all heard these messages, this drumbeat, ad nauseum, since October 7. More generally, we have all been hearing these messages for decades. )

It is, in part, an answer to the questions raised about speech by the university presidents in their testimony before Congress. It is, I think, an opening shot across that bow that screams, "We are Harvard! Our morals will not be corrupted! You WILL hear our unyielding rejection of [the] hate[s] [with which we concern ourselves]!!!"

The Gods of What Matters are speaking to me. And all I'm wanting to do is listen to an academic debate about free speech. I'm at the 5 minute mark, with no end in sight for her demonstration of fealty...I mean message of concern.

It's ingrown now. At the classy universities. At the New York Times. At most publicly traded corporations.

Thank god for this: pretty much all they ever do is talk. That's the only thing they're good at. They're followers. All of their power is manifested through their committees. Their statements begin with, "We..." They are the vacuous, self-appointed, repetitive arbiters of righteousness.

Let each of us speak as clearly, and as freely, as they do. And let us all not loose ourselves in blah, blah, blah.

[Bwaaah]

The spiel ended up being 8 minutes long. The introduction to the debate was another 3. But I'm now 30 minutes into it, and despite the hairs going up on the back of my neck when a panelist, a former president of the ACLU, spoke, it's looking like a panel of people who have substantial regard for free expression, and concern about restrictions.

Whittington did a good explanation of why unfettered expression is important to the university's mission.

So this is just to say that the panel discussion (not debate as I mistakenly described above) about free speech begins at around 12 minutes, and it does indeed look like well-considered stuff.

[Bwaaah]

Keith was good. He encouraged tolerance in and of all viewpoints, wide latitude in speech, and school administrators to go neutral on politics (to refrain from taking positions on issues of significant controversy).

Nadine Strossen (former ACLU president) was pretty brilliant at succinctly articulating the legal contours of the first amendment for a layperson, and despite some dutiful hemming and hawing, indicated a strong preference for the academy to provide as much latitude as the first amendment.

None of the panelists tried to defend speech restrictions, per se. But the moderator, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, and one of the panelists, Erica Chenoweth, both seemed quite uncomfortable with the potential risk of full 1A latitude, i.e. hurt feelings (a.k.a. "harm").

With the exception of Keith, it was painful to see the need of the panelists to always speak from the voice of the coddler. They could not emphasize enough the need to provide "safety to our students." Repeatedly, Brown-Nagin and other panelists emphasized not just the importance of being permitted to speak, but of exercising the good judgement to NOT speak. It was kind of like an offer of a bargain: we'll let you say whatever you want, and we expect, as a matter of good behavior, that you won't.

They can talk all they want about free speech. They're so careful, so sheepish, so not willing to take the chance of saying the slightest thing wrong, that it screams to the room, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY, ALWAYS, AS I DO.

It's almost as if propriety itself has become the dominating force in the academy. If there's a person out there with a spine, he must be slouching.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Have mandatory medieval-style public disputations among the students.

Of course, as in the Middle Ages, some things should be off limits - which in the modern context would mean no advocacy of slavery, Jim Crow - or genocide.

But all the issues which are bona fide in dispute in the society should be up for grabs.

Not even medieval metaphysics could get more intricate than "how many women have penises"?

[Bwaaah]

One of the suggestions made by a panelist (that was endorsed by another) is to have students argue with each other, as you describe, but most essentially, to expect students to advocate for positions with which they disagree. And not to hide behind weak arguments, but to advance the strongest, most plausible arguments.

(the thought of it makes some shudder)

I would most importantly include fascism, slavery, genocide and all the best of the worst of us in history. It's too easy to dismiss horrible dangerous movements as being obviously wrong, and therefore, obviously avoidable. But that ignores the mechanisms of slippery slopes and competing influences, including non-specific fears of your neighbors which are supported by frightening realities. Do we think there's something different about German people that made them susceptible to Nazism?

A big lesson of genocide in history seems to be that most of us, are capable of participating in its machinations. I don't see us working on understanding that.

Who could possibly justify genocide? (gimme a break; there's a useful story that begins with us having tasted fruit from a forbidden tree, and then having been cast from the "garden"; we're not in Kansas anymore; grow up)