MESOPOTAMIA NEWS JACOBINE TIMES : THE DOWNGOING WEST IN PROGRESS !
Campus speech suppression is wrong — whether it points right or left / By Frederick M. Hess
Resident Scholar; Director, Education Policy Studies / STANFORD
AEIdeas EDUCATION – HIGHER EDUCATIONSOCIETY AND CULTURE – June 4, 2021
If there’s one essential mission for universities, it’s that they should cultivate an unfettered exchange of ideas. Yet, in a remarkable twist, free speech is under assault across American higher
education. Earlier this year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) studied 478 higher-education institutions and found that 86 percent have policies that prohibit whole categories of constitutionally protected speech.
Conservatives have been rightfully concerned that campus bureaucrats are using these anti-free speech policies to suppress right-leaning ideas. In truth, of course, the suppression of speech is a betrayal of higher education’s core mission whether it targets right or left. Just recently, at Stanford University, the campus censors trained their guns on a student for daring to lampoon the right. (This is not what we had in mind when we advocated a more even-handed approach to campus speech.)
Earlier this week, FIRE — which has done invaluable work defending campus free speech for both the left and right — sent a letter demanding Stanford cease investigating third-year law student Nicholas Wallace, who sent an email to his peers satirizing the Federalist Society and elected Republicans. Using the student listserv “law-talk” — whose stated purpose is “political commentary of any kind” — Wallace announced that the campus Federalist Society chapter would be hosting a conference entitled “The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection.” The email, sent on January 25, invited students to gather on January 6 — 19 days earlier — and:
…join the Stanford Federalist Society as we welcome Senator Joshua Hawley and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to discuss violent insurrection. Violent insurrection, also known as doing a coup, is a classical system of installing a government. Although widely believed to conflict in every way with the rule of law, violent insurrection can be an effective approach to upholding the principle of limited government. Senator Hawley will argue that the ends justify the means. Attorney General Paxton will explain that when the Supreme Court refuses to exercise its Article III authority to overturn the results of a free and fair election, calling on a violent mob to storm the Capitol represents an appropriate alternative remedy.
Stanford’s Federalist Society was not amused. On March 27, they filed a complaint with the Stanford Office of Community Standards. Rather than dismissing the complaint as superfluous, Stanford administrators seemed to take the Federalist Society’s side: Stanford sent Wallace a letter alleging his January 25 email may have wrongfully “impersonated” Stanford’s Federalist Society and attributed “false and defamatory beliefs to persons he listed on the event flyer.” Stanford then placed a hold on Wallace’s law degree, which, if not released, would have prevented him from graduating on June 12.
First off, the Stanford Federalist Society needs to grow thicker skin. It’s tough for conservatives to defend the importance of unfettered public discourse when future legal minds are complaining that satire runs afoul of the First Amendment.
But more to the point, that Wallace’s email would prompt any discipline is ludicrous. In fact, Stanford appeared to hold hostage his degree, which carries a three-year sticker price of $200,000, until they completed their investigation. But, as so often happens with bullies, Stanford backed down late on Wednesday and released the hold after FIRE made public what the university was doing.
Let’s be clear: The Federalist Society’s complaint was baseless. As FIRE noted, “The email was clearly satire that criticized Federalist Society leadership, not a sincere claim that Sen. Hawley and Attorney General Paxton would appear at Stanford to promote a riot… Satire might hurt the feelings of its target, but it is protected speech under the First Amendment.” FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh observed, “Satire is not defamation and no university of any caliber should investigate whether it should be allowed.”
As we’ve written countless times before, it’s a violation of foundational principles when universities seek to censor conservatives for voicing unapproved thoughts. But it’s equally problematic when universities seek to shut down protected speech that points the other way. Universities should be places where received wisdom is challenged, hard questions are asked, and new truths are discovered — and that should hold without regard to one’s political views.
Frederick M. Hess
Resident Scholar; Director, Education Policy Studies