"Speech Codes" on the Campus

...Once speech can be limited in such subjective ways, more and more expression will be included in what is forbidden...

...There's no `politically correct' orthodoxy here...

...On this voyage of initially reverse expectations— with liberals fiercely advocating censorship of "offensive" speech and conservatives merrily taking the moral high ground as champions of free expression—the most dismaying moment of revelation took place at Stanford...

...Accordingly, when the First Amendment rights of those engaging in offensive speech clash with the equality rights of their targets under the Fourteenth Amendment, the First Amendment must give way...

...It is more racist and insulting," he emphasized, "to say that to me than to call me a nigger...

...One of them did say that the black students already considered the black faculty to be insufficiently militant, and the professors didn't want to make the gap any wider...

...These are the kinds of words that are "inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction, whether or not they actually do...

...An exception at Stanford was law professor Gerald Gunther, arguably the nation's leading authority on constitutional law...

...The three black panelists, including a Stanford student...

...Most of the latter did not get involved in the N.Y.U...

...Though it's not much written about in reports of the language wars on campuses, there is a strong strain of anti-Semitism among some— not all, by any means—black students...

...What is p.c...

...Others have a question about abortion...

...He has imposed a speech code on all the campuses in his university system...

...Like white liberal faculty members on other campuses, they want to be liked—or at least not too disliked...

...Khallid Abdul Muhammad...

...We have a new ecumenicism of those who would control speech for the greater good...

...strongly supported the codes...

...to white students is not necessarily p.c...

...And invariably, permissible speech will become more and more narrowly defined...

...On the other hand, a good many black student organizations on campus do not feel that Jews have to be protected from wounding language...

...That amendment guarantees "equal protection of the laws" to all, and that means to all students on campus...

...Stanford now has a speech code...

...The kind of chilling atmosphere they describe was exemplified last year as a case assigned for a moot court competition became subject to denunciation when a sizable number of law students said it was too "offensive" and would hurt the feelings of gay and lesbian students...

...The black student organization at Columbia University brought to the campus Dr...

...At a forum on free speech at Brown before he left, Shesol said he wished he could tell the new students at Brown to have no fear of speaking freely...

...The cheapest, quickest way to demonstrate that it cares is to appear to suppress racist, sexist, homophobic speech...

...That distinguished leader was invited to speak at the University of Michigan...

...There was little public opposition from the other students to the attempt to suppress the case...

...But it is thriving on college campuses...

...It is hardly a new idea, but the mix of advocates is rather new...

...A white student got up and said that the codes are necessary because, without them, black students would be driven away from colleges and thereby deprived of the equal opportunity to get an education...

...We have to teach them how to deal with adversarial situations...

...students...

...This is the thesis, by the way, of John Powell, legal director of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), even though that organization has now formally opposed all college speech codes—after a considerable civil war among and within its affiliates...

...The case concerned a divorced father's attempt to gain custody of his children on the grounds that their mother had become a lesbian...

...Many Jewish students have not censored themselves in reacting to this form of political correctness among some blacks...

...Quite the contrary...

...And many of them would have learned—like so many other university students in the land—that censorship is okay provided your motives are okay...

...For months, the black faculty, when asked their reactions, preferred not to comment...

...I've talked to many of them, and they no longer get involved in class discussions where their views would go against the grain of p.c...

...to black students...

...But that would appear to be a minority view among black students...

...The debate at Stanford ended when the president, Donald Kennedy, following the prevailing winds, surrendered his previous position that once you start telling people what they can't say, you will end up telling them what they can't think...

...In the course of a two-year debate on whether Stanford, like many other universities, should have a speech code punishing language that might wound minorities, women, and gays, a letter appeared in the Stanford Daily...

...It may happen in other places at this university, but I don't know about that...

...One of the myths about the rise of p.c...

...A black community college administrator from Colorado, she is a fiercely persistent exposer of racial discrimination...

...At the University of Buffalo Law School, which has a code restricting speech, I could find just one faculty member who was against it...

...This seems very elementary to me, but not to the defenders, black and white, of the speech codes...

...Signed by the African-American Law Students Association, the Asian-American Law Students Association, and the Jewish Law Students Association, the letter called for a harsh code...

...Much expression that is free may deserve our contempt...

...Most are not pro-life, but they believe that fathers should have a say in whether the fetus should be sent off into eternity...

...It was against p.c...

...Among those—faculty, law professors, college administrators—who insist such codes are essential to the university's purpose of making all students feel at home and thereby able to concentrate on their work, there has been a celebratory resort to the Fourteenth Amendment...

...protest, but throughout the country many black students do support speech codes...

...Many, for instance, have questions about certain kinds of affirmative action...

...They are not partisans of Jesse Helms or David Duke, but they wonder whether progeny of middle-class black families should get scholarship preference...

...The chilling effects on speech of the vagueness and open-ended nature of many universities' prohibitions . . . are compounded by the fact that these codes are typically enforced by faculty and students who commonly assert that vague notions of community are more important to the academy than freedom of thought and expression . . . . This is a flabby and uncertain time for freedom in the United States...

...They invite such speakers as Louis Farrakhan, the former Stokely Carmichael (now Kwame Toure), and such lesser but still burning bushes as Steve Cokely, the Chicago commentator who has declared that Jewish doctors inject the AIDS virus into black babies...

...In the California code, a word becomes "fighting" if it is directly addressed to "any ordinary person" (presumably, extraordinary people are above all this...

...Usually, the leading opposition among the faculty consists of conservatives—when there is opposition...

...As college administrators change, so will the extent of free speech on campus...

...The black student rose and said that the white student had a hell of a nerve to assume that he—in the face of racist speech—would pack up his books and go home...

...At almost every college I've been to, conservative students have their own newspaper, usually quite lively and fired by a muckraking glee at exposing "politically correct" follies on campus...

...But Gunther did not have much support among other faculty members, conservative or liberal...

...One of the exceedingly few college presidents who speaks out on the consequences of the anti–free-speech movement is Yale University's Benno Schmidt: Freedom of thought must be Yale's central commitment...

...political correctness) is that, coming from the left, it is primarily intimidating conservatives on campus...

...We may well be moved to exercise our own freedom to counter it or to ignore it...

...But these people's tactics are obscuring the goals...

...Most are convinced they do need to be protected from wounding language...

...But he couldn't tell them that, he said, advising the new students to stay clear of talking critically about affirmative action or abortion, among other things, in public...

...He did not want to be categorized as a racist...

...So did the one AsianAmerican on the panel...

...On another campus, a political science professor for whom I had great respect after meeting and talking with him years ago has been silent—students told me—on what Justice William Brennan once called "the pall of orthodoxy" that has fallen on his campus...

...Gwen Thomas is an educator—an endangered species in higher education...

...During three years of reporting on anti–free-speech tendencies in higher education, I've been at more than twenty colleges and universities—from Washington and Lee and Columbia to Mesa State in Colorado and Stanford...

...That decision, however, has been in disuse at the High Court for many years...

...A liberal, he spoke only on condition that I 546 • DISSENT Debates in the Academy not use his name...

...They do not believe—as I have found out in a number of conversations—that an essential part of an education is to learn to demystify language, to strip it of its ability to demonize and stigmatize you...

...A Columbia student, Rachel Stoll, wrote a letter to the Columbia Spectator: "I have an idea...

...By and large, those most intimidated—not so much by the speech codes themselves but by the Madame Defarge-like spirit behind them— are liberal students and those who can be called politically moderate...

...They have to learn how to survive offensive speech they find wounding and hurtful...

...I'm against racism and sexism...

...But then so did Stanford law professor, Thomas Grey, who wrote the Stanford code, and Stanford president Donald Kennedy, who first opposed and then embraced the code...

...Although some of the faculty responded by insisting that you learn to be a lawyer by dealing with all kinds of cases, including those you personally find offensive, other faculty members supported the rebellious students, praising them for their sensitivity...

...Students are to be punished—and this is characteristic of the other codes around the country—if they use "fighting words" — derogatory references to "race, sex, sexual orientation or disability...

...I thought that should be said at Columbia Jewniversity...

...He said no more...

...Students at New York University Law School have also told me that they censor themselves in class...

...Moreover, he or she who fires a fighting word at any ordinary person can be reprimanded or dismissed from the university because the perpetrator should "reasonably know" that what he or she has said will interfere with the "victim's ability to pursue effectively his or her education 548 • DISSENT Debates in the Academy or otherwise participate fully in university programs and activities...

...Jeff Shesol, a recent graduate of Brown, and now a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, became nationally known while at Brown because of his comic strip, "Thatch," which, not too kindly, parodied p.c...

...She started by saying, "I have always felt as a minority person that we have to protect the rights of all because if we infringe on the rights of any persons, we'll be next...

...A precedent has been set at, of all places, colleges and universities, that the principle of free speech is merely situational...

...Asked Gary Murikami, chairman of the Gay and Lesbian Association at the University of California, Berkeley: "What does it mean...

...A vigorous exception was a black Harvard Law School student who spoke during a debate on whether the law school should start punishing speech...

...He began his address by saying: "My leader, my teacher, my guide is the honorable Louis Farrakhan...

...A leading dissenter was a member of the conservative Federalist Society...

...And they've resulted in Brown no longer being an open-minded place...

...As a white Jewish American, I'll just stand in the middle of a circle comprising . . Khallid Abdul Muhammad and assorted members of the Black Students Organization and let them all hurl large stones at me...

...There were hisses from the audience...

...Reading the letter by this rare ecumenical body of law students (so pressing was the situation that even Jews were allowed in), I thought of twenty, thirty years from now...

...At most colleges, it is the administration that sets up the code...

...From so bright a cadre of graduates, from so prestigious a law school would come some of the law professors, civic leaders, college presidents, and maybe even a Supreme Court Justice of the future...

...At UCLA, a black student magazine printed an article indicating there is considerable truth to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...

...But unlike the white liberals, many honestly do believe that minority students have to be insulated from barbed language...

...Along with quiet white liberal faculty members, most black professors have not opposed the speech codes...

...They do not believe that the way to deal with bigoted language is to answer it with more and better language of your own...

...righteousness...

...He'd handled it before and he could again...

...This is not to say that these gags on speech—every one of them so overboard and vague that a student can violate a code without knowing he or she has done so—are invariably imposed by student demand...

...It is, indeed, the effort of a lifetime...

...On the Public Broadcasting System in June, I was part of a Fred Friendly panel at Stanford University in a debate on speech codes versus freedom of expression...

...Emphasis added...

...In the national board debate at the ACLU on college speech codes, the first speaker—and I think she had a lot to do with making the final vote against codes unanimous—was Gwen Thomas...

...At that forum, Shesol told me, he said that those members of the left who regard dissent from their views as racist and sexist should realize that they are discrediting their goals...

...to represent the father...

...As for providing a nonintimidating educational environment, our young people have to learn to grow up on college campuses...

...The black student then looked at his white colleague and said that it was condescending to say that blacks have to be "protected" from racist speech...

...It is not easy to embrace...

...Because there have been racist or sexist or homophobic taunts, anonymous notes or graffiti, the administration feels it must do something...

...When I talked to him, the professor said, "It doesn't happen in my class...

...The term "fighting words" comes from a 1942 Supreme Court decision, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which ruled that "fighting words" are not protected by the First Amendment...

...He'd been familiar with that kind of speech all his life, FALL • 1991 • 547 Debates in the Academy and he had never felt the need to run away from it...

...They're honorable goals," said Shesol, "and I agree with them...

...Consider University of California president David Gardner...

...From recent events and statements made on this campus, I gather this will be a good cheap method of making these people feel good...

...FALL • 1991 • 549...

...But universities cannot censor or suppress speech, no matter how obnoxious in content, without violating their justification for existence . . . . On some other campuses in this country, values of civility and community have been offered by some as paramount values of the university, even to the extent of superseding freedom of expression...

...Such a view is wrong in principle and, if extended, is disastrous to freedom of thought...

...The battle of the amendments continues, and when harsher codes are called for at some campuses, you can expect the Fourteenth Amendment—which was not intended to censor speech—will rise again...

...We don't put as many restrictions on freedom of speech," she said, "as we should...

...It reflected the letter and the spirit of an earlier declaration by Canetta Ivy, a black leader of student government at Stanford during the period of the grand debate...

...But there are other voices...