June 25, 2019
By Jonathan Butcher
It’s a child’s game to pretend that when you close your
eyes, other people can’t see you. It’s also foolish to think that if you ignore
something you don’t like, it’s not really there.
Yet writers from the nonprofit PEN America try to ignore the
challenges—threats, even—to First Amendment rights and physical safety posed by
violent mobs, speaker shoutdowns, and other forms of censorship on college
campuses today. By doing so, they underestimate the damage done to postsecondary
education and disregard the poison injected into civil society when these
students graduate.
In the Washington
Post, PEN researchers said new state proposals to protect free speech on
campus “dampen [students’ right to protest] in troubling ways.” However, in their
seemingly innocent list of campus demonstrations such as sit-ins and walkouts,
PEN fails to include the student who committed physical
assault when faced with ideas with which she disagreed; violent
mob activity; and chaos
over a speech-related issue that drove professors into hiding at a
progressive public college in Washington state. Or the college
presidents who were chased off a stage. Or the state lawmakers who were shouted
down on campus. These are not innocuous examples of picketing on a
sidewalk. These behaviors put students, faculty, and any number of invited
guests including elected officials at risk of injury, along with violating
their expressive rights.
PEN argues that new provisions to restore free speech on
campus in states such as Alabama, Arizona,
and North
Carolina could “chill” discourse because students may face sanctions,
including suspension or expulsion, if they violate someone else’s right to
speak (similar proposals are also in place in Georgia and in the Wisconsin state
university system’s governing policies). These state proposals follow the
design of a 2017
Goldwater Institute paper authored by Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and
Public Policy Center, Jim Manley of the Pacific Legal Foundation, and myself.
The authors’ arguments fall short. They cite an example from Utah—which is irrelevant because that state has not enacted a proposal with the same provisions as those in Arizona and North Carolina. (And in this instance, in which students were detained and questioned for unveiling a banner at an event, police said the students who were involved were being disruptive.) The authors’ example from a private college in Wisconsin is also not applicable because private schools are not subject to the same provisions as public universities in that state.
PEN uses a recent incident at the University of Arizona to argue
that Arizona’s free-speech protections put students in “danger.” According to
PEN, protesting students “spoke from outside the classroom” and objected to a
talk by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. In fact, as I explained in
April for the Daily
Signal, student protestors were disruptive inside a campus building, where
schools already (before lawmakers enacted additional speech protections in 2016
and 2018) have the responsibility to maintain order. Stanley Kurtz covered this
episode for National
Review Online. The only students in danger or whose rights were jeopardized
were those listening to the speakers.
Meanwhile, PEN offers no alternative to these state
proposals. Today, the chaos on campuses around the U.S. have made students less
willing to discuss difficult topics. As
I wrote in this space in May, 68 percent of student respondents to a Knight
Foundation survey said “their campus climate precludes students from expressing
their true opinions because their classmates might find them offensive,” an
increase over last year’s survey. Sixteen percent say it is “always” or
“sometimes” acceptable to use violence to stop a presentation—behavior that is not
appropriate in adult life.
PEN’s statement that “dissent is crucial in the marketplace
of ideas” is correct and should be treated as more than just an aphorism. If we
want spoiled children to become entitled adults, then by all means, shield them
from the results of his or her decisions. And woe to the society that inherits
them.
Anyone who is lawfully present on campus, on both sides of
an issue, should be allowed to demonstrate as long as they do not interfere
with someone else’s attempt to do the same (Arizona states
this intent in the proposal). Adults on campus should not be training young
people to be college students—they must be preparing them for adulthood.
Jonathan Butcher
is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute.
