Campus Protests and Free Expression

Komi Frey
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: From 2016 to 2022, most University of California campuses participated in an experimental program, funded by the state Legislature, to use diversity, equity, and inclusion statements as the first cut in faculty-applicant pools. According to UC’s guidelines, the purpose of diversity statements is for applicants to explain what they have done and plan to do to serve underrepresented-minority people on campus — specifically, African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics/Latinos.

By making political values the sole criterion at the initial hiring stage, UC-faculty searches strayed from the American Association of University Professors’ bedrock 1915 “Declaration of Principles,” which states that scholars have a duty to remain neutral and not act in the interests of any particular segment of the population.

James Kirchick
New York Times

Excerpt: The tentative, lawyerly answers given last week by three university presidents at a House committee hearing investigating the state of antisemitism on America’s college campuses have generated widespread revulsion across the partisan divide. When none of the presidents — representing Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania — could muster a straightforward reply to the question from Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” amounted to “bullying or harassment,” many prominent Democrats joined Republicans in denouncing the testimony.

But two wrongs don’t make a right. If the problem with campus speech codes is the selectivity with which universities penalize various forms of bigotry, the solution is not to expand the university’s power to punish expression. It’s to abolish speech codes entirely.

Naomi Schaefer Riley
Commentary

Excerpt: In the wake of the October 7 massacre in Israel, University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill declined to comment because, she said, she didn’t think it was the role of college administrators to express an official view on controversial political issues. And she noted that “as a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission.”

Thanks to some vocal donors who are closing their wallets and some employers who want nothing to do with these students once they graduate, those administrators who have spent the past decade making life uncomfortable or worse for those with views that do not conform to the latest campus fashion are getting a taste of their own medicine. This is not the resolution that Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott favor. In their new book, The Canceling of the American Mind, they worry that “for some on the right, a false sense has arisen that the way out of Cancel Culture is More Cancel Culture.”

Eugene Volokh
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason

Excerpt: This question has been in the news recently, in light of the recent House Committee hearings on "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism." A few thoughts on my part:

[1.] There's no "advocacy of genocide" exception to the First Amendment, or to the contractual promises of student free speech that many private universities rightly implement.

[2.] Indeed, as I've argued before, it is important that students be free to debate what is proper to do in war, and what wars are just. War involves mass killing, in some wars by the millions. I think some such killing is atrocity and some is just. But different people draw the lines differently, and that is a matter that is quite rightly up for debate.

Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Delegates to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges may vote on Tuesday to require the examination of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as a condition of accreditation, according to Belle Wheelan, the group’s president.

If that vote is successful, it could set up a clash with state politicians who describe DEI efforts as violating legal bans on racial preferences and a way to enforce liberal groupthink on college campuses.

Julian Adorney
Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism

Excerpt: In the wake of Hamas' brutal attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, many prominent individuals and groups leapt to defend Hamas. Thirty-four student groups at Harvard cosigned a petition saying that they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence." At the University of Pennsylvania, protestors chanted, "Israel, Israel, you can’t hide: We charge you with genocide." Columbia University professor Joseph Massad called the terrorist attack "awesome," and Cornell professor Russell Rickford said of the attacks, "It was exhilarating. It was energizing. . . I was exhilarated." (to his credit, Rickford has since apologized).

But some on the right have gone too far. They've gone beyond simply refusing to associate with the protestors and have tried to exert social pressure to get others to refuse to associate with them as well. In other words, they've been attempting to cancel the protestors.