And Campus for All: Diversity, Inclusion, and Freedom of Speech at U.S. Universities
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AND CAMPUS FOR ALL Diversity, Inclusion, and Freedom of Speech at U.S. Universities 1 AND CAMPUS FOR ALL Diversity, Inclusion, and Freedom of Speech at U.S. Universities October 17, 2016 © 2016 PEN America. All rights reserved. PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Founded in 1922, PEN America is the largest of more than 100 centers of PEN International. Our strength is in our membership—a nationwide community of more than 4,000 novelists, journalists, poets, essayists, playwrights, editors, publishers, translators, agents, and other writing professionals. For more information, visit pen.org. Cover photograph: Chris Meiamed CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4 Free Speech Controversies on Campus SUMMARY 8 PEN America Principles on Campus Free Speech LEGAL FRAMEWORK 10 Free Speech at U.S. Universities A CHANGING 12 AMERICA A Changing Campus THE NEW 18 LANGUAGE OF HARM Microaggressions, Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces ENFORCING TITLE 26 IX Sexual Harassment and Free Speech SPEECH IN 32 A STRAITJACKET Concerns for Expression on Campus MORE SPEECH, 36 BETTER SPEECH Pushing Campus Expression Forward OUTSIDE INFLUENCES 42 The New Pressures of Social Media and Evolving Educational Economics CASE STUDY 46 YALE Chilling Free Speech or Meeting Speech with Speech? CASE STUDY 51 UCLA Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine Activists in Conflict CASE STUDY 58 NORTHWESTERN Problems with Title IX Investigations PEN AMERICA PRINCIPLES 62 ON CAMPUS FREE SPEECH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 76 ENDNOTES 77 accused of harassing students by exposing them to racism, INTRODUCTION sexism, colonialism, and sexual violence.12 Free Speech Controversies on Campus Alarm Bells for Speech The dean of students at the University of Chicago sends Recent incidents have raised significant concerns about the an open letter to incoming first-year students putting them heated climate for intellectual life on U.S. campuses and the on notice that the campus will not issue warnings before implications for the rising generation of college-educated controversial or upsetting materials are taught and will not Americans. Lawyer, writer, and cultural critic Wendy Ka- disinvite speakers as a result of student protests.1 miner, whose early work on pornography helped reconcile The University of Missouri’s football team goes on strike feminist concerns with free speech issues, has said: to protest what activists declare is the administration’s failure to address the pervasive culture of racism on cam- What we are seeing is not just phobias about language. pus.2 In the tumult, campus activists are recorded on video We have gone way beyond political correctness and shouting away a student photographer, declaring their are seeing a real decline in critical thinking. If you don’t outdoor gathering a “safe space.”3 know the difference between quoting a word and At Yale, a viral video captures a student screaming at hurling an epithet, then you don’t know how to think.13 a professor who was serving as her residential adviser, calling him “disgusting” for not supporting her views on In a widely read essay in The New York Times Sunday Re- whether the campus should deter the wearing of offensive view section titled “In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas,” Halloween costumes.4 published in March 2015, journalist and cultural critic Judith A Columbia student protests what she believes is the Shulevitz raised similar concerns for a generation at risk: university’s failure to respond adequately to her accusation of rape5 against a fellow student by carrying a mattress People ought to go to college to sharpen their wits with her everywhere she goes on campus as part of a and broaden their field of vision. Shield them from senior thesis project.6 The accused student files a federal unfamiliar ideas, and they’ll never learn the discipline lawsuit accusing Columbia of enabling the protest and of seeing the world as other people see it. They’ll be thereby depriving him of equal educational opportunities.7 unprepared for the social and intellectual headwinds An Oberlin assistant professor of rhetoric and compo- that will hit them as soon as they step off the campuses sition studies is accused of posting anti-Semitic material whose climates they have so carefully controlled.14 on her Facebook page and is suspended from teaching pending an investigation as activists around the country Kaminer, Shulevitz, and dozens of other journalists, call for her dismissal, citing the posts as evidence of a academics, and free speech advocates have expressed resurgent anti-Semitism on campus.8 A fund provided by genuine angst over what they see as coddled students’ a leading law firm to support student activities at Harvard intolerance for dissent and offense. Many have dispar- Law School is terminated after money from the account aged the proliferation of new concepts such as “trigger is used to support the purchase of pizza for an event warnings,” “microaggressions,” and “safe spaces.” Greg discussing “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights Movement Under Attack”; reports indicate that the firm in Education (FIRE), a leading libertarian free speech ad- did not want to be associated with programs sponsored vocacy group based in Philadelphia, teamed up with social by the event organizer, Students for Justice in Palestine.9 psychologist and NYU Stern professor Jonathan Haidt to These campus controversies raise serious questions write a September 2015 cover story in The Atlantic called about how rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, and “The Coddling of the American Mind,” in which they wrote: academic freedom intersect with the quest to address some of the most vexing challenges of diversity and inclusion The current movement is largely about emotional faced by students, faculty, and administrators. Students (and well-being…. [I]t presumes an extraordinary fragility sometimes faculty) at dozens of campuses have protested of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the invitations to campus speakers whose ideas or actions they goal of protecting students from psychological harm. find offensive, sometimes culminating in the withdrawal The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into of speaking invitations.10 Faculty and students alike have “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from drawn protests or been publicly shamed for emails, op- words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. eds, or posts on social media that are considered offen- And more than the last, this movement seeks to sive, distasteful, or even merely clumsy.11 Faculty say they punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even fear accidentally offending the most sensitive students and accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive confess to omitting controversial books from their syllabi— protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which every- books they had intended to examine critically—lest they be one must think twice before speaking up, lest they 4 PEN AMERICA face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.15 unrest that occurred at the University of Missouri and at Yale University, two outwardly dissimilar institutions, The ripple effects of these controversies are being felt shared themes of racial obtuseness, arthritic institu- widely. According to an August 2015 story in The New York tional responses to it, and the feeling, among students Times, recent campus contretemps touching on speech have of color, that they are tenants rather than stakeholders contributed to a flattening of or decline in alumni donations at in their universities. That these issues have now been certain colleges. The story describes alumni donors to institu- subsumed in a debate over political correctness and tions such as Amherst College in Massachusetts as troubled free speech on campus—important but largely sepa- by what they see as university administrators’ indulgence of rate subjects—is proof of the self-serving deflection to oversensitivity, incivility, and a disregard for traditions. As which we should be accustomed at this point.… The New York Times columnist Anemona Hartocollis reported: default for avoiding discussion of racism is to invoke a separate principle, one with which few would disagree Alumni from a range of generations say they are in the abstract—free speech, respectful participation baffled by today’s college culture. Among their in class—as the counterpoint to the violation of princi- laments: Students are too wrapped up in racial and ples relating to civil rights. This is victim-blaming with identity politics…. [M]en are being demonized by a software update.19 sexual assault investigations. And university ad- ministrations have been too meek in addressing Writing in November 2015 for The Hill, American Univer- protesters whose messages have seemed to fly in sity professor Jon Gould agrees, casting concerns about the face of free speech.16 speech as a media-fueled distraction from a more funda- mental and essential discussion of racism: At Princeton, there was a statistical drop in alumni dona- tions after students unsuccessfully demanded the removal In turning the attention to speech restrictions, we of Woodraw Wilson’s name from campus buildings.17 The miss the larger story of what led to student activism University of Missouri lost $2 million in alumni donation in the first place. Back in the 1980s, students of pledges due to much publicized student protests.18 color protested against the “’soft racism’ of jeers, affronts and slights,” and yet 30 years later, we’re Whose Speech Are We Talking About, Anyway? still talking about the same behavior. To be sure, Other journalists, advocates, and academics have countered we now have different names for it, like implicit that these free speech concerns are not only overblown bias and microagressions, but when the student but also misguided.