What’s Fueling the Free-Speech Wars?

Kevin Van Aelst for The Chronicle Review

In an essay in The Chronicle Review, David Bromwich argues that students are leading an assault on free speech, and that faculty members and administrators are enabling them.

Mr. Bromwich, a professor of English at Yale University, writes that in previous generations, “conflict was said to be essential to the purpose of education, one of the things that distinguished a campus from a factory floor or a public-relations office.”

But things have changed, he argues. That’s in part because administrators “are reluctant to back the principle of free speech without a supplementary clause that gives equal weight to feelings of community. They often go further and signify, to those who cite altruistic motives for breaking campus rules, that deep down they sympathize with the rule-breakers. And, sentimentally speaking, they do.”

Some readers, like Marc Tracy of The New York Times, were struck by Mr. Bromwich’s tone. “Very harsh words from David Bromwich — not exactly a conservative — for shutting down of discourse on campuses,” Mr. Tracy tweeted. And Nicholas Christakis, a professor of social and natural science at Yale who knows a thing or two about campus speech controversies, tweeted approvingly of Mr. Bromwich’s take on “student mobs & the administrators who abandon duty.”

We wanted to know what Chronicle readers think is fueling the free-speech wars on campuses. We received about two dozen responses to a brief survey. Here is a selection of comments, some of which have been edited for length and clarity.

Most respondents took a dim view of college leaders.

Over nearly thirty years, the campus culture has produced weaker and weaker leaders, and a more PC faculty. This results in an easy takeover of campus culture by radical students.

—Anonymous

In many cases college administrations have less integrity than Bromwich credits them with. Their default position is not ideological, it is driven more by a pragmatic desire to minimize conflict and the potential for bad publicity. They are hoping that they can minimize the fuss and wait until this season of discontent passes. It won’t without a courageous and thoughtful response. Just look at Evergreen State for the shape of things to come!

—Chris, Drew University

In particular, many want administrators to take a tougher stand against disruptive protesters.

Even if administrators sympathize with a cause, they still need to help students express their views in constructive ways instead of permitting students to silence those who disagree with them. Not allowing disruptive protests does not need to mean that administrators are “against” students — allowing students to claim such extreme interpretations just reinforces sloppy thinking and fails to teach students how to participate in effective activism.

—Anonymous, University of Chicago

[College leaders] should actively and explicitly valorize the presence of diverse points of view among faculty and students.

—James, Nord University in Norway

Serious disruptions are a form of civil disobedience, and should be punished as student misconduct. That’s the thing about civil disobedience. You accept that you’ll get punished. That’s our system, for good reason.

—John, University of Wisconsin at Madison

At least one reader felt that the very idea of a speech war is wrongheaded.

Haven’t students always been protesting? Do we really need to isolate the few speakers who have been shouted down and turn this into a national free speech issue? I think not. What is the tipping point? I don’t know, but I do believe that we are living on a knife edge between the rational and irrational.

—Anonymous