{"id":10492,"date":"2017-03-31T20:12:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T00:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=10492"},"modified":"2017-04-04T01:54:43","modified_gmt":"2017-04-04T05:54:43","slug":"a-middlebury-alum-digs-into-the-free-speech-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/a-middlebury-alum-digs-into-the-free-speech-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"A Middlebury Alum Digs Into the Free Speech Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

An idyllic hilltop retreat, where I spent four years of my life, has turned, it seems, into a national battleground.\u00a0 A controversial speaker, a campus protest, an injured professor, and conservatives and liberals alike have rushed to denounce a Middlebury College event as the latest horrifying assault in the growing war against free speech in universities and society at large.\u00a0 Except that this is not a war but an exhumation:\u00a0 an airing out of long-buried moral sins and intellectual shortcomings.\u00a0 The condemnation of student protesters, rather than a necessary reprimand of wayward youth by wiser minds, constitutes mostly attribution error<\/a>, failure to understand the motivations of students, protestors, and radical critics. \u00a0Similarly, the larger debate over free speech mischaracterizes the problems underlying student protests and colossally fails at offering solutions.\u00a0 Moving forward and escaping this self-satisfying, ever-frustrating debate calls for some creative reframing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What happened at the college on the hill?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago I received an email asking me to sign a petition.\u00a0 Addressed to Middlebury and signed by over 450 alumni, the petition<\/a> demanded that the college administration revoke its invitation to author Charles Murray to speak on campus.\u00a0 Murray, who wrote the 1994 best-seller, The Bell Curve<\/em>, and more recently Coming Apart<\/em>, won fame and wealth by highlighting and naturalizing statistical differences<\/a> between identity groups\u2014claiming, notably, that blacks and Latinos have lower IQs than whites, in general, which accounts for socio-economic inequality.\u00a0 Though The Bell Curve<\/em>, his most well-known book, was largely discredited<\/a>\u2014shown to be misleading<\/a> and dubiously sourced<\/a>\u2014it continues to be defended<\/a> and remains influential.\u00a0 The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies Murray as a white nationalist<\/a> and suggests that his work, based in \u201cracist pseudoscience and misleading statistics\u201d, has done enormous damage to the cause of racial and gender equality.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the email sunk into the swamp of my inbox, before I could give it much thought or attention.\u00a0 (I didn\u2019t sign it, but would have.)<\/p>\n

The school, meanwhile, apparently considered student and alumni demands to withdraw the speaker invitation, but ultimately the political science department (event cosponsor) and President Laurie Patton decided to welcome Murray.\u00a0 They did it, they said<\/a>, in the name of rigorous intellectual inquiry and \u201cthe free exchange of ideas.\u201d\u00a0 Some national publications saw the challenge and took up arms<\/a> in defense of free speech.\u00a0 The email I earlier received developed into a back-and-forth thread among college friends, debating the merits of unhindered expression even when it promulgates insult, racism, and vitriol.<\/p>\n

When Murray finally visited Middlebury on March 2, the usually abstract debate over free speech found concrete and provocative subject matter.\u00a0\u00a0 Over 400 students and visitors to the college protested and prevented Murray from speaking.\u00a0 He relocated and continued his speech from a private room (the college broadcasting via live video), but protests raged outside the room and Murray was physically and verbally harassed while exiting the building and leaving campus.\u00a0 Regrettably, a demonstration apparently intended to be peaceful turned violent, Murray was jostled and shoved, and the professor<\/a> who served as Murray\u2019s interlocutor was injured.\u00a0 Conservative bloggers and commentators loosed a twitterstorm of gleeful outrage.\u00a0 Major news outlets\u2014The <\/em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>, The <\/em>Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, The <\/em>Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>, Time<\/em><\/a>\u2014all covered the story. \u00a0And not only conservatives but even prominent liberals condemned the intolerance<\/em> of the student protestors.\u00a0 Times<\/em> columnist Frank Bruni claimed that the controversy was not \u201cjust about free speech\u201d but about \u201cemotional coddling<\/a>\u201d and \u201cintellectual impoverishment.\u201d \u00a0Bill Maher called the protesters \u201clittle f***ing brats\u201d and worried that \u201cliberalism is at a perilous point<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 My email chain, mirroring the dominant attitude of the nation, become more united in condemnation and more morose in prognostication.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Free speech, safe spaces, and liberalism\u2019s many groans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The episode at Middlebury is of a series.\u00a0 It brings to memory other recent speaker controversies at Berkeley<\/a> and University of Chicago<\/a>, as well as older incidents on university campuses.\u00a0 Of course it made me think of what happened here at HLS, one year ago:\u00a0 when in the wake of racist acts of vandalism, Reclaim Harvard Law, a group of frustrated students, mostly people of color, took physical control of a common space in the school.\u00a0 People opposed to Reclaim\u2019s tactics or detached from the issues for which the group advocated lamented the ousting of free discussion and diverse viewpoints from the occupied space.\u00a0 It reminded me, too, of hate speech debates<\/a> throughout the larger democratic world, where some countries increasingly criminalize<\/a> violent and offensive speech while others defend free expression against all constraints and impingements.\u00a0 The academy\u2019s and media\u2019s rallied defense of free speech is nothing new, history tells us, nor is the condemnation of protest as speech suppression.\u00a0 Frank Bruni\u2019s claim that meeting students\u2019 demands would lead to coddling and intellectual impoverishment further echoes the increasingly common complaints against trigger warnings and safe spaces, which many academics and critics describe as repressive and self-infantilizing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I believe that many of the commentators commit an attribution error when they characterize student protestors as fearful of tough ideas and wanting mono-ideological, \u201csafe\u201d existences.\u00a0 I doubt very much, for instance, that a low-income student of color at an overwhelmingly white, wealthy college, like Middlebury, has never experienced contrary views or challenging conversation there or on her way to get there.\u00a0 To provide some perspective, though many of Murray\u2019s objectors were African-American, African-American students make up a bit less than a majority at Middlebury:\u00a0 3.1% of the student body<\/a>.\u00a0 An op-ed<\/a> by Middlebury Professor Linus Owens and two of his former students briefly makes this point, while asserting that \u201c[c]ivil discourse on hard issues does happen here, primarily through the labor of students of color and working-class students. It is an insult to call these students sheltered.\u201d\u00a0 So Bill Maher isn\u2019t being all that fair\u2014or accurate\u2014when he derides student protesters (disproportionately low-income students and people of color) as \u201cbrats.\u201d\u00a0 He, and critics like him, misinterpret protestors\u2019 motivations and mindsets.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the intentional silencing of a voice\u2014even if, like Murray\u2019s, it propagates offensive and ill-supported ideas\u2014seems to be a real challenge to the principle of free expression.\u00a0 That principle forms the bedrock of liberal arts education, according to over 100 Middlebury professors who signed a Statement of Principles for Free Inquiry on Campus<\/a>.\u00a0 Limiting free expression undermines rational thought and leads to \u201cdogmatism and groupthink<\/a>,\u201d according to Cornel West and Robert P. George.\u00a0 And we must concede: \u00a0Bill Maher is right in seeing a danger to liberalism at large.\u00a0 At the center of classical liberal and neoliberal theory, with roots going back to John Milton and John Stuart Mill, early feminist thinkers (including but not limited to Mill) and abolitionists, is the notion of truth-seeking through the \u201cmarketplace of ideas.\u201d\u00a0 A society must invite and protect the unhindered expression of different viewpoints, which leads to revision, experimentation, innovation, and, at last, triumph of truth over falsehood.\u00a0 Failure to do so defies the essence of liberalism, resulting in tyranny, political and intellectual despotism, oppression of minority opinions, and proliferating ignorance, the argument goes.<\/p>\n

Demands to dis-invite a speaker, protests that drown out his voice, efforts to run him out of college and town:\u00a0 these really<\/em> do<\/em> threaten liberalism, traditionally understood.\u00a0 Nonetheless, liberalism can\u2019t be saved by simply telling protesters to pipe down.\u00a0 Just as liberal theory espouses free exchange of ideas, it also\u2014and partly for the same end (truth-seeking)\u2014deeply values diversity.\u00a0 Earlier in European and American history, liberalism\u2019s diversity value focused on political and religious pluralism. Since the 1960s, however, liberalism has turned its attention to also encourage minority groups historically disenfranchised and blocked from education to enter the great institutions of higher learning\u2014often to the financial benefit of those same institutions\u2014so that the perspectives of all colors, origins, and identities could contribute to the high pursuit of truth and civilization.\u00a0 At the very least colleges owe to those same groups the security they need to survive; failing to secure to them their<\/em> right and opportunity to speak undermines the diversity sought and may be itself <\/em>a suppression of free speech.\u00a0 To secure diversity and preserve diverse groups, some selection is necessary\u2014even American courts have prohibited obscenity, libel, and incitements to violence<\/a>\u2014and \u00a0total deregulation<\/em> would certainly undermine liberalism as much as its opposite.\u00a0 In the practice of universities and legislatures, then, the question of which opinion to prohibit\u2014or which speaker, like Charles Murray, is too noxious to host\u2014becomes a line drawing exercise: \u00a0a determination of if and when a statement, belief, or argument is contentious but acceptable, and when it crosses the line.\u00a0 Again and again, all sides defend liberalism, worry about its future, and silently wonder whether they must one day abandon its premises.\u00a0 The anxiety pregnant on every side of this debate is real and justifiable, for liberalism threatens to crack under the weight of its dual commitments to liberty and diversity.<\/p>\n

The free speech debate should not be characterized, therefore, as a war.\u00a0 While suppression and silencing threaten liberalism, so does unrestricted speech that (like Jefferson\u2019s tyranny of the majority) undercuts diversity. \u00a0The free speech versus safe spaces debate is much more like an exhumation of liberalism\u2019s long-held internal tensions:\u00a0 between the values of liberty and diversity, as discussed above, but also between words and actions, ideals and practices, ethics and sins. \u00a0Euro-American liberalism has championed individual liberty even when enslaving and exploiting masses of human beings, from indigenous tribes to African-Americans to foreign laborers to women the world-over.\u00a0 It has championed free market competition while distorting prices for the benefit of the powerful<\/a> and using force to secure economic gains<\/a>.\u00a0 It has sought diversity in universities and boardrooms and government while failing to guarantee adequate, liberating education and security to underclass groups it formerly marginalized and even presently exploits<\/a>.\u00a0 Liberalism celebrates multiculturalism\u2014recognizes that only multiculturalism will truly enliven that marketplace of ideas\u2014but then refuses to change its media and institutionally reproduces an inequality<\/a> that effectively prevents diverse peoples from joining in civil discussions and sharing their knowledge and experience.\u00a0 In short, liberalism\u2019s vision of justice and freedom is at odds with its history of sin and oppression\u2014history which it has never fully recognized or reckoned with.\u00a0 So we shouldn\u2019t be surprised when we see student protesters, with fierce anger and deep emotion, demand that a racist speaker not be given a platform; and it is not astounding at all that such a clash would lead to violence.\u00a0 The question is, what to do about it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Can what\u2019s missing be found?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to talk about the tactics employed by Middlebury dissenters to Charles Murray, nor about the violence.\u00a0 Were students right to protest?\u00a0 Should they instead have done it in a different way?\u00a0 Simply asked tough questions one-by-one?\u00a0 It seems evident that the tactics the Middlebury protesters employed, as activist and Middlebury scholar-in-residence Bill McKibben noted, simply didn\u2019t work<\/a>.\u00a0 And few, if any, people think the physical aggression and injury were positive outcomes.\u00a0 The violence committed by some protesters was, of course, disappointing and deplorable, but saying just that is pretty boring.\u00a0 The larger \u201cfree speech\u201d debate is slightly more interesting, but there is something missing from that, too\u2014a recognition of what\u2019s going on under the surface.\u00a0 The debate goes on and on, repeated every time there\u2019s a controversial speaker, a protest, an incident of offensive or inciting speech.\u00a0 And as suggested, the debate has little chance of resolution, since it represents a conflict between opposing values and practices within<\/em> liberalism itself.\u00a0 Rethinking and reframing the debate over free expression seems necessary.\u00a0 And we might start by realizing a historical truth about the liberal United States:<\/p>\n

We’ve never had freedom of speech in this country.<\/em><\/p>\n

The reason we\u2019ve never had freedom of speech is essentially this: \u00a0we’ve never had group equality and universal suffrage at the same time.\u00a0 In the epoch of the founders and early observers like Alexis de Tocqueville, perhaps we had the equality necessary to allow a certain class of citizens to voice their opinions and freely discuss; but we certainly didn’t have the suffrage needed to make that freedom a reality for all.\u00a0 Tocqueville linked the \u201cgreat freedom\u201d of Americans with their \u201cextreme equality,\u201d and noted how equal conditions (relatively even distribution of resources and education) gave all citizens a personal interest and role in democratic discussion and decision-making.\u00a0 The \u201ccitizens\u201d about which he wrote this description, however, included only the free, white, European men; so equality was limited to a small and privileged group. \u00a0The vast majority of American humans (women, slaves, indentured servants, and indigenous people) wholly lacked economic power and political agency.<\/p>\n

Today, we have extended the suffrage to\u00a0almost\u00a0<\/em>all; but a quick look at relative power among groups shows a bitter and troubling picture of caste inequality\u2014one in which the opportunity for the oppressed to speak at the same level and to the same effect as a figure like Charles Murray is frankly absent (and this is a people group, the historically disenfranchised and their allies, versus one man!). \u00a0The point I’m making is this: \u00a0We can’t rationally talk of freedom of speech as if it’s a thing to be protected<\/em>, because we can\u2019t protect what we\u2019ve never yet had.\u00a0 We ought instead to think of freedom of speech as something to be attained<\/em>.\u00a0 And unless and until we establish some basic equality\u2014the very possibility that Murray’s work puts in doubt\u2014talk of freedom of speech will only describe a privilege of some, not the right exercised by all.\u00a0 Unless and until we establish basic equality, we will never have neutrality, that favorite virtue espoused by law and common defense raised by universities.\u00a0 Equality <\/em>is a condition of freedom<\/em>.\u00a0 Even drowned out by four hundred protesters, Murray’s voice was and is still louder than the students in that room and the people they advocated for.<\/p>\n

Framing this debate as one about free speech versus intellectual suppression confuses the issue, intentionally or inadvertently.\u00a0 This is a debate about whose speech is\u00a0valuable<\/em>, given scarcity of time and microphones. \u00a0It is a debate about how to voice competing ideas and perspectives and have each and all effectively heard<\/em>.\u00a0 It is a debate about how to ensure communities meaningful opportunities for democratic participation and political, economic, and spiritual development.<\/p>\n

There are things I like and things I dislike about “liberalism.” \u00a0But it gets it wrong\u2014and we crumple too\u2014to the extent it insists that individuals are the prime actors in social evolution and that peaceful discussion or authoritarian suppression are the only alternatives in the process of truth-seeking.\u00a0 The question of whether to bring a Charles Murray to Middlebury shouldn’t lead us to ask if his views are acceptable or if they cross the line; such a debate confuses the issues and fails to address the problems.\u00a0 A Murray invitation should lead us, rather, to ask who was\u00a0not invited<\/em>\u2014who never has been and probably never will be invited\u2014to Middlebury and places like it. \u00a0(What about that homeless veteran with PTSD who’s seen a great deal of human society, human variability, human good and evil\u2014who knows deeply what it means for America to be “coming apart”?)<\/p>\n

The Statement of Principles<\/a> from Middlebury professors, which extols unrestricted discourse as the highest priority and states that \u201cthe impossibility of attaining a perfectly egalitarian sphere of free discourse can never justify efforts to silence speech and debate,\u201d doesn\u2019t recognize the reality of liberalism\u2019s internal tension and America\u2019s historical dearth of free speech.\u00a0 In this way, the academy\u2019s and media\u2019s response to student protest reproduces the limitations of the debate.\u00a0 I am in agreement with Gustavus Adolphus College Librarian Barbara Fister, who criticized<\/a> the Middlebury Statement and suggested that we view truth-seeking as a conversation, in which debate is only a part and in which respect and caring are valued alongside rational argument.\u00a0 I\u2019m encouraged by efforts that seek not to demonize but to understand, not to entrench old battle lines but to develop creative new conversations and venues for exchange.\u00a0 We are all too often stuck in tired patterns of thinking, mindsets blind to the perspectives of others.\u00a0 The crisis of liberalism demands that we think, act, and, yes, speak, differently.<\/p>\n

There is a line in Dylan\u2019s \u201cThe Times They Are-A Changing\u201d:\u00a0 \u201cthe battle outside raging\/ will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.\u201d\u00a0 He addressed the line to congressmen, too stubborn and out of touch to respond to social movements of the day.\u00a0 Today, I wonder who\u2019s inside avoiding the battle.\u00a0 Is it the students, wanting protection from tough ideas and the comforts of \u201cemotional coddling\u201d? \u00a0Or is it the \u201cliberals\u201d\u2014the academics, the journalists, the buttressed political commentators with new mics, scripts, and millions in their audience\u2014bemoaning not the fearful realities of injustice and war, but rather the relatively meager attacks on their imagined state of free speech?\u00a0 Can we at last shake off our limitations and dream of truly freer, more equal discourse?\u00a0 It will take digging deeper, into our social problems and unresolved history\u2014liberalism\u2019s promises and profound failures.\u00a0 It will be difficult, but the free speech debate won\u2019t be resolved by us continually restaging it.\u00a0 It requires addressing the underlying conditions that spawn it.\u00a0 It demands that we recognize inequality and un-freedom<\/em>:\u00a0 the existential reality faced by so many. \u00a0How should we respond to outraged student protesters?\u00a0 Let\u2019s examine ourselves.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look deeply at our society and its strains.\u00a0 Finally, we need to start thinking more about genuine alternatives. \u00a0Solidarity and progress\u2014community bound not just by the ability to discuss but also the ability to love and heal and create together\u2014await somewhere outside the old debate between free speech and suppression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An idyllic hilltop retreat, where I spent four years of my life, has turned, it seems, into a national battleground.\u00a0 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