Free Speech at Berkeley:" University as Factory," An Argument from Analogy. (original) (raw)

Harassment, Bias, and the Evolving Politics of Free Speech on Campus

Journal of Social Philosophy, 2019

Academic freedom has been an important force for progressive social change since its articulation as the reason for independence from church orthodoxy in the middle ages. The cause of freedom of speech and inquiry took an important institutional step forward with the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915 by philosophers Arthur O. Lovejoy and John Dewey. Their goal was to create a collective voice to help protect academic freedom in universities after several incidents in which professors were fired for expressing their views on various political, economic, and social issues. 1 The AAUP has been a primary force for academic freedom and the protection of tenure, as articulated in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure 2 and subsequent commentary and interpretation of that important document. The AAUP has mainly been a force for progressive ideas, although its zealous support of all tenured faculty against any charge of misconduct at times conflicts with that. But the debate over academic freedom and free speech in the academy has taken a strange turn in recent decades. Consider some of the major events in the history of the academic freedom debate in the twentieth century: In the 1930s, professors were fired for being suspected communists and for supporting labor unions. This censorship of the professoriate (and other cultural creators) reached a crescendo in the 1950s with the House Un-American Activities Committee led by Joseph McCarthy. These struggles centered on the right of professors to express views contrary to that of the government. Students protesting the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights dominated the debates in the 1960s and '70s, with students often being suppressed, sometimes violently by both their universities and the government. Their exercise of speech and protest was fundamentally about the right to be heard, to have a voice in university governance regarding important matters like supporting an immoral war or racial discrimination. In the 1980s and 1990s, women faculty were introducing feminism and the history of women's writing and thought into the canon. They were then sometimes denied tenure or promotion on grounds

Dynamics of Free Speech on Modern College Campuses

2019

In March 2017, Charles Murray--a highly controversial author and academic--visited Vermont’s Middlebury College. His visit was met with students protests; the protesters shouted Murray down, and, ultimately became violent, attacking Murray and injuring a Middlebury professor. The administration doled out discipline to 67 students.Some felt the Middlebury Administration lost control of the situation, and their efforts to reign in the chaos amounted to little more than a semi-random disciplinary response that fell short of imparting societal values on students in need of such a lesson. A Middlebury political science professor, critical of the college’s response stated: “[this] was an institutional failure...Students do not understand the value of free speech” (Saul 2017). After the penalties were handed down, Charles Murray criticized the leniency of the sanctions saying, “They will not deter anyone. They’re a statement to students that if you shut down a lecture, nothing will happen ...

THE MISEDUCATION OF FREE SPEECH

Virginia Law Review Online, 2019

Despite being promoted by politicians, civil libertarians, university administrators, media outlets, and scholars, the narrative of widespread liberal intolerance and suppression of conservative views on college campuses is a myth. This false narrative of the campus free speech crisis is harmful for two primary reasons. One is that, in Orwellian fashion, it is used to justify the imposition of laws and policies that severely restrict students’ right to protest—censorship in the name of free speech. The impact of these regulations is not likely to be evenly distributed but will instead further chill the speech of already marginalized groups. The false narrative of liberal intolerance has particularly vilified the responses of women, nonwhite men, and sexual minorities to the provocations of far-right speakers and other situations seemingly calculated to incite campus conflict. The second harm inflicted by the false narrative of the college free speech crisis is that it undermines the legitimacy of the university as a free speech institution. This is particularly alarming in our current historical moment, when our nation’s leaders have demonstrated open and sustained hostility to free speech and the Internet has been used to degrade every value the right was intended to protect: truth, autonomy, and democracy. While individual universities doubtless often fall short of the ideal, the university as an institution serves to inculcate free speech values in their students and faculty and provides a uniquely valuable model for the cultivation of free speech norms in a broader context. The myth of the censorious campus distracts us from the very real threats to free speech posed by our nation’s leaders and delegitimizes the university’s ability to fight them. The university model of free speech, which at its best encourages research, reflection, and self-improvement, is needed now more than ever to compete with the Internet model of free speech, which at its worst rewards ignorance, impulsivity, and self-satisfaction.

Speech on College Campuses: Methods, Motives, and Movements

2017

Are campus movements concerning free speech—from Berkeley in the 1960s to the campaign against political correctness today—really about speech? Are movements really concerned with civil liberties on campus or are their calls for free speech excited by partisan motives? While free speech movements are never purely driven by civil libertarian concerns, they should not be considered simply partisan either. Campus speech movements have frequently united activists across the ideological spectrum, which suggests that these movements aren’t only sectarian in nature. It also confirms that these movements are in fact about speech, because those advocating for it have a wide range of motives, but free speech is the point of agreement. However, this is not to say that there aren’t ulterior partisan underpinnings in these pushes for free speech. Table of

The Relation Between Academic Freedom and Free Speech

Ethics 130/3 (2020): 287-319, 2020

The standard view of academic freedom and free speech is that they play complementary roles in universities. Academic freedom protects academic discourse, while other public discourse in universities is protected by free speech. Here I challenge this view, broadly, on the grounds that free speech in universities sometimes undermines academic practices. One defence of the standard view, in the face of this worry, says that campus free speech actually furthers the university's academic aims. Another says that universities have a secondary democratic function, which cannot be fulfilled without free speech on campus. I identify shortcomings in both types of arguments.