A Tale of Two Sides on Free Speech on College and University Campuses
The issue of free speech on campuses has raised a lot of controversies over the decades. The issue has been explored by various philosophers to include Immanuel Kant. The issue of free speech raises a polarizing debate revolving around censorship and absolutism, “This is a rigid and sometimes unyielding system, to be sure. Humans are frail and full of prejudices, prone to peddle stupidity (sometimes unknowingly) in the service of power.”1 Freedom of expression is a democratic right. Free speech on campuses is the only way that can be used to pass contentious viewpoints. Free speech as a form of expression is a debate of condition and principle and a subject of debate in its own rights. According to John Semley, there exists a way out of this polarizing debate between free speech absolutism and censorship.2 There are many difficult issues surrounding university free speech. Currently, the most pressing issue on free speech is more about creating a balance between unobstructed dialogue that focuses on making the various constituencies on campus feel included. Institutions of higher education have shifted from protecting free speech to promoting liberal belief. Instead of providing a platform for the expression of ideologies, and a much broader framework for disagreement, free speech has become a source of controversies and disagreement on colleges and university campuses.
According to John Semley Political correctness is among the factors stirring the debate on free speech in universities, “In the 1960s, the administration of UC Berkeley famously banned on-campus political activity in response to activism and rallies: students had, among other things, participated in campaigns to support registering African Americans in the South to vote.”3 This controversial issue dates back to the 1960s and continued to be heated as it entered a new phase in the new century. The year 2014 saw multiple campus speakers being disinvited from protests staged by students. New vocabulary to include safe spaces emerged to define the acceptable limits of speech, “…our campuses are now being torn asunder by people who advocate for “social justice” and “safe spaces” on the one hand and people who champion “free speech” and “facts and reason,” on the other.”4 In most of his writings, Kant sought to separate institutional rights and duties. “Kant who was not just a professor and lecturer but also worked in various advanced administrative capacities believed in a strict system of higher learning based on academic mentorship, the rigorous accumulation of knowledge, and the watchful protection of that knowledge.”5 Kant emphasizes the freedom to evaluate ideas. The system itself is a political one and Kant expresses his displease with the system “ the freedom from tyranny from uninformed, bad faith interference” and “ Scholars were entitled to tell their emperor to take a hike, not because of some reductive notion of freedom as an unchecked intellectual id but precisely because their thinking was subject to strict standards of inquiry that conferred their own kind of authority”6. This shows how the university as an institution has the autocratic authority to restrict and allows only what it holds as right.
Free speech is of fundamental democratic value in university campuses. Free speech allows students to protest against rules that prevent the inclusion of various students ideas that have been ignored and dismissed, “ Two decades later, another wave of free-speech debates took hold, as students in the 1980s and 1990s demanded that universities expand the campus’s intellectual franchise to include those who had been previously ignored or deliberately silenced and to expand the curriculum to account for these people’s insights and ideas…”7. Free speech can be utilized to act as the backbone of a revolution. Freedom of speech in universities promote the sharing of intellectual ideas and prevent the censuring of students who decide to share their ideas, “ Lindsay Shepherd, then a twenty-two-year-old graduate teaching assistant, made international headlines when she was censured for showing a clip of a public broadcaster’s current-affairs program in a Wilfrid Laurier University communication studies tutorial,…. Shepherd explains over the phone, months later, she ‘wanted to make a larger societal point about how something innocuous, like grammar, can actually be politicized.’”8 Free speech in colleges and universities will help in ensuring that opinions are valid, ‘In a university, all perspectives are valid’9.
When various ideas are expressed without limitation it could result in chaos. Shannon Dea, who is a philosophy professor at the University of Waterloo argues that freedom of speech, “isn’t for everyone to get their participation sticker and to be able to advance their own opinion.”10 Another drawback of free speech is, “freedom of expression on campus compromise the historical role of universities”11.free speech absolutism is subject to being used to hurt and marginalize other students, an incident where free speech was used to hurt other students happened in 2013 at Carleton, where a free speech wall was torn down by the universities students who claimed that the wall that had been erected for students liberty was being used to violate and attack LGBTQ students, “the free-speech groups set out to deliberately trigger certain students, who are, in fact, then triggered.”12 There have been several cases where student unions and university authorities refuse to set up a speech wall since free speech has been deliberately used to trigger a specific group of students, thus testing the limits of free speech, “…or no other reason than to test the permissible limits of free expression itself.”13. Students' misuses of free speech absolutism is the greatest drawback of free speech.
When students join campus, they are not familiar with the idea that they are being integrated into a community that is strictly governed by already set and rigid intellectual standards. According to Semley, “The great irony of today’s free-speech absolutism is that it smothers so much speech by making so many students (like transgender students in the wake of the Lindsay Shepherd incident) feel afraid or bullied”14. If free speech absolutism is adopted then those who will speak the loudest will always be the ones that have nothing to lose and are not subject to bullying, “ —if you can say what you will—then the people who will speak loudest will almost necessarily be those are most secure…”15. If free speech absolutism were to prevail on university campuses, students would have to recognize the acceptable limits of speech. The benefits of free speech absolutism have been unevenly distributed and can undermine other democratic values, “A focus on freedom of expression has a tendency to inflate its relative importance, such that it can supersede that other right”16.
Inconclusion, free speech absolutism is the only way that can be used to pass even the most contentious viewpoints. Instead of facilitating a much broader framework for disagreement free speech has become the source of disagreement. An immediate resolution of the much-polarized debate on free speech seems to be far from over since neither side can accommodate compromise. Immanuel Kant in most of his writings Kant sought out to separate institutional rights and duties. Free speech absolutism has benefits to include allowing the expression ideologies and evaluation of idea which agrees with Kant’s philosophy. Free absolutism has drawbacks that include allowing freedom of expression in universities compromises the historical role of universities and free speech absolutism is subject to being used to trigger the emotions of marginalized groups to include the LGBTQ community. For free absolutism to exist on university campuses students must recognize the acceptable limits of speech and maintain within those boundaries.
Notes
- John Semley, Are University Campuses Where Free Speech Goes to Die? The Walrus. March 27,2020.
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Bibliography
Semley, John. Are University Campuses Where Free Speech Goes to Die? The Walrus. March 27,2020. Retrieved from; https://thewalrus.ca/are-university-campuses-where-free- speech-goes-to-die/
