Civic Learning on Campus: Bringing Political Science In Mini-Conference II: Speech under FIRE: Strengthening Free Expression in Higher Education

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Part of Mini-Conference

• Civic Learning on Campus: Bringing Political Science In Mini-Conference II

Session Description

In the wake of pro-Hamas protests following the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, the leaders of MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University braved a hostile December 5th congressional hearing on antisemitism on their campuses. When pressed on whether calls for committing genocide against Jews violated their university policies, all claimed vigorous protections for controversial speech, replying with variations of “context matters” (Jussim, 2023; Mounk, 2023).

This was the technically correct response, because unless speech calls for imminent violence directed at a specific person (e.g., “let’s kill Bill”), their policies protect it, and arguably should, since university students and professors must feel free to consider a wide range of ideas in seeking truth (Whittington, 2018).

The problem was not that the three leaders espoused the wrong policies; it was that all three institutions (but especially Harvard) have poor records defending faculty engaging in speech far less controversial than calls for genocide. In this way, universities may sometimes undermine pluralism. For example, Harvard effectively ousted a biology professor for claiming that sex was biological and mainly binary. Penn spent two years investigating Amy Wax, seemingly for the purpose of revoking her tenure because of her criticisms of affirmative action and controversial arguments against immigration from non-Western societies. MIT cancelled a talk on exoplanets (planets beyond our solar system) by University of Chicago Geophysical Scientist Dorian Abbot because in an unrelated Newsweek essay he advocated using academic merit criteria (Lukianoff & Schlott, 2023, 74-6; 205-7; Maranto & Reilly, 2022).

These are hardly isolated incidents. Just months before the infamous congressional hearing, Harvard earned the worst Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) rating for free speech ever recorded, coming in dead last at 248th in the U.S., just behind Penn’s 247th (Stevens, 2023). MIT ranked far higher (136th), but still well below the robust protections for speech and academic freedom professed by its president before Congress. (FIRE uses a combination of formal policies and student surveys.)

Quite simply, many professors and students are afraid to say what they think. This undermines research, teaching, and even democracy, which as the conference invitation points out, requires cultures of “deliberation, negotiation, and compromise.” As a professor at one of these institutions complained privately, for fear of speaking in public, their university "is worse than the FIRE rating since many professors are punished for their findings. And this is kept under the radar. It’s common for deans to tell professors they are fired, the professor says they will go public, so then the university pays them to go away." (October 16, 2023)

Seemingly, many U.S. colleges and universities, and particularly the most prestigious, are using bureaucratic enforcers to create the climates of fear more typical in hierarchical corporations or even authoritarian political systems, albeit without physical violence (Corn-Revere, 2021; Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018). Research, teaching, and democratic governance cannot work well in such climates. If we fail to tell these stories and hold leaders accountable, then behaviors which undermine teaching and research will continue to metastasize.

So what is to be done? We have assembled a panel of professors and other intellectuals to discuss ways to improve the climate for free speech and (relatedly) free inquiry at U.S. universities. Their initial ideas include restricting the scope of higher education bureaucracies which tend to reduce free speech, encouraging departments and whole institutions to adopt versions of the Chicago Principles on free expression and the earlier Kalven Report on institutional neutrality (which enables professors and students to speak independently of their institutions), developing courses and orientation programs on the history and importance of free expression, having regular campus debates to familiarize students with cultures of productive disagreement, reforming k-12 civics education to teach how First Amendment rights enable diversity, and developing free speech oriented faculty and student groups as happened at Harvard in early 2023 in reaction to administration actions there. Ideally, reforms will come from inside higher education rather than being imposed by outsiders.

References available on request.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Robert Maranto University of Arkansas

Presenters

• Jonathan Zimmerman University of Pennsylvania

• Greg Lukianoff FIRE

• Wilfred Reilly Kentucky State University

• Matthew Woessner United States Army War College

• Cory Clark University of Pennsylvania

• Elizabeth Weiss San Jose State University