Speech Codes, the AHA, and Academic Double Standards

It seems like only yesterday that American institutions of higher education began imposing “speech codes” and related policies on students, faculty, and staff. But twenty years have now passed since the speech code movement erupted in the late 1980s. So it is a good time to assess the status of this movement and its implications for higher education.

The new restrictions typically prohibited targeted speech that demeans or derogates individuals or groups on the grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, and the like. Code supporters envisioned codes as a primary means of fostering civility, equal respect, and a sense of security on campus. Codes seemed legitimate enough, for what reasonable person supports racial vilification and similar expression?

But a problem lurked beneath the surface from the start: how could the application of codes be limited to serious cases of targeted racial vilification and threats, especially in situations replete with political tension? Is it not the case that many controversial ideas and opinions about such things as race, gender, religion, and sexuality cause offense that many consider demeaning or derogating? If the mere expression of ideas and opinions deemed offensive became targeted by the censors, then intellectual freedom and discussion of controversial, highly charged topics would be compromised. After all, censorship in the past had often led to the stifling of politically unpopular thought. Why would it be different this time around?

Code advocates maintained that censorship would be more principled this time because it was motivated by progressive sentiments and thought, and because the target was the right, not censorship’s traditional target, the left. But the passage of time would show that censorship is a problem regardless of its politics and motives.

By the 1990s, administrators had begun using codes and similar measures to punish not only vicious, threatening speech directed at vulnerable individuals—the classic type of speech that crosses the line—but also to punish or repress speech simply deemed hostile to or incompatible with reigning notions of social justice and diversity. Numerous books and organizations have chronicled the ways in which codes and overly broad harassment policies have been used to stifle dissent from reigning progressive orthodoxies, thereby harming the vibrant clash of ideas that is the hallmark of liberal education. (See, for example, the litany of cases reported by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: <theFIRE.com>)

Despite evidence of the harmful effects of speech codes, they have remained prevalent in higher education for some interesting reasons. One reason is the internal politics of many universities. Code advocates have often been more vocal and active than resisters, who are sometimes reluctant to appear unsympathetic—however unfairly—to the goals of diversity and equality. Unfortunately, such reticence cedes the public argument to code supporters, giving codes an authority that can belie their actual underlying support. Equally important, reluctance to confront the free speech problem posed by codes hinders universities from developing alternative policies to promote diversity and security that do not pose threats to intellectual and academic freedom.

Also, speech codes differ from traditional forms of censorship for two reasons that resonate on many campuses. First, codes represent so-called “progressive censorship,” or censorship in the name of progressive causes. Historically, previous forms of censorship typically served the interests of conservatism and traditional morality—values many contemporary universities contest. But progressives, who often wield power at universities today, believed that they could harness censorship to further their own ends, transforming censorship into an ally rather than a foe.

Second, speech codes were self-imposed by forces inside of the university rather than by forces outside of the university. Because codes were self-imposed, supporters could deem them consistent with democratic self-government, as in Rousseau’s theory of the general will. Previous threats to free speech and academic freedom at universities had emanated from the government and other sources outside the university’s gates. McCarthyism and repression in the “Red Scare” period after World War I are but two examples of this traditional form of censorship against universities.

Despite these rationales in favor of speech codes, many free speech advocates warned that such thinking was short-sighted and hypocritical. As a matter of principle, free speech rights should be universal, applying to all relevant points of view—especially at universities, whose moral charter is to push the frontiers of knowledge. And from a practical standpoint, critics warned that it is unwise to be sanguine about any form of censorship for a simple reason supported by the experience of history: censorship principles that serve one’s cause today can be turned against one’s cause when the political winds blow in a different direction. For simple reasons of self interest (what Tocqueville called “self interest rightly understood”), support for free speech should not depend upon whose ox is being gored.

Today, the winds have indeed begun to shift. Though many critics had bemoaned the lack of intellectual diversity and freedom on many campuses, no concerted counter-movement has existed inside universities, other than a few exceptions, such as the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Instead, a new threat has arisen from outside, epitomized by the Student Bill of Rights, backed by the redoubtable writer-activist, David Horowitz, and Students for Academic Freedom. The SBR beseeches legislatures and political powers to encourage or require intellectual diversity and academic freedom on campus through a variety of political measures.

The rise of such movements as the Student Bill of Rights is a warning that higher education must heed. For many years now, numerous critics in the outside world have bemoaned the state of intellectual freedom and intellectual diversity on campus, but we faculty members have not listened, at least not sufficiently. Failing to reform ourselves on our own terms, we invite political powers from outside to intervene. But such power is to be feared in its own right. After all, the principles of academic freedom arose in the first place to protect faculty members and universities from outside pressure and power. Those who value academic freedom should be just as wary of the Student Bill of Rights as they are of threats to academic freedom stemming from within universities. We lose moral credibility if we fail to apply the same principles to ourselves as we apply to others. Denouncing the Student Bill of Rights while simultaneously supporting speech codes comes across as both hypocritical and self-serving.

Unfortunately, many practitioners of higher education remain obtuse to these concerns. One prominent recent example is the American Historical Association. A year ago the AHA had no trouble confronting the threat posed by the Student Bill of Rights, voting unanimously at its national convention to condemn the measure as a serious threat to academic freedom. So far, so good.

But this past January, this eminent organization turned the other cheek when asked to denounce campus speech codes. After presenting a set of detrimental code applications provided by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group of professors asked the AHA at its annual meeting in Atlanta to vote for a companion resolution condemning speech codes. According to Rick Shenkman, writing in the History News Network, “Historians critical of limits on free speech on college campuses had been somewhat hopeful that this year they could persuade their peers at the AHA Annual Convention in Atlanta to approve a resolution at Saturday's Business Meeting opposing ‘the use of speech codes to restrict academic freedom.’ But in the end the body approved a weak sister resolution critical only of free speech zones.”

To be sure, opposing “free speech zones” is important in its own right, as such policies are designed to limit free speech to restricted areas, leaving censorship free to reign on most of the campus. But such opposition does not begin to get at the heart of the matter. David Beito, a historian at the University of Alabama who was one of the sponsors of the anti-code proposal to the AHA, told Shenkman that “the vote was a defeat for his cause. Voting to condemn free speech zones, he said, was like voting to uphold motherhood. It was meaningless.”

If the AHA’s position is typical of higher education, we are headed into troubled waters. By condemning the Student Bill of Rights while supporting speech codes, we send a message that our commitment to academic freedom is selective and self-serving, thereby inviting further scrutiny and attacks. Why should powers outside the university believe us when we protest against outside threats to academic freedom when we remain insouciant about threats from within? In the long run, academic freedom will be secure only if it is anchored in principles that transcend political partisanship. It should not matter whose ox is being gored. Hey, is that not what universities are supposed to be about?

http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=13433 [1]