Wednesday, September 6, 2017 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, September 6, 2017 // The Statement
5B
Free Speech in the Ivory Tower
b y J e r e m y K a p l a n, Daily Editorial Board Member
I“College students testify: Free speech under
assault on campuses” from Fox News, and “War
on campus: The escalating battle over col-
lege free speech” from CNN. These hysterical
headlines fuel the widespread perception that
millennial Americans on college campuses
are becoming increasingly hostile toward free
speech — at the alarm of their parents. Yet what
campus activists and student government lead-
ers actually want from their administrators is
frequently overlooked as conflicts and media
storms escalate. Increasingly, coverage of these
conflicts has placed rhetoric over policy, leaving
what students actually want out of the debate.
While these leaders and activists aren’t the
ones shaping final University of Michigan poli-
cy, their voices are felt across campus, and will
likely shape the coming generation’s perception
of the issue. This alarm has also reached Michi-
gan’s state legislature. State senator Patrick Col-
beck (R-Canton) introduced legislation in May
to strengthen free speech policies in public uni-
versities and colleges. If passed, the bill would
require that public schools to permit all speak-
ers on campus.
Recent events have certainly given the public
reason for alarm. In February, a planned speech
at the University of California at Berkeley by
former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos was
canceled after large protests turned violent.
The alt-right internet personality is famous for
harassing a transgender student by name at
the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, among
other provocations. A professor at Middlebury
College was injured in March after protesters
attacked her for escorting controversial speaker
Charles Murray, who has been associated with
quasi-social-Darwinist views, as they tried to
leave the event. And Michigan State University
recently denied a request to host an event of
white supremacist Richard Spencer’s National
Policy Institute — a key organizer of the deadly
August white nationalist march in Charlottes-
ville.
While these incidents tend to draw the most
derision from conservatives, the divide over
speech is also generational. Forty percent of
millennials believe the government should be
able to restrict speech offensive to minorities,
while only 27 percent of those ages 35 to 50 and
just 24 percent of those between 51 and 69 hold
the same view, a 2015 Pew Research Center poll
found. That this is a generational divide and not
simply a political one has implications for the
future of the debate. This isn’t an issue that will
get lost in the 24-hour news cycle — it is here to
stay, particularly for young people.
As such, this debate has increasingly impact-
ed the campus climate. In April of 2016, for-
mer New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
received a hostile reaction from some students
at the University’s commencement when he
labeled “safe spaces” dangerous because they
create a “false impression that we can insulate
ourselves from those who hold different views”
in his keynote speech. Last September, a debate
at the Michigan League organized by the Michi-
gan Political Union — a nonpartisan student
forum for political debate — discussing wheth-
er or not the Black Lives Matter movement was
“harmful to racial relations in the United States”
was disrupted by hundreds of protesters claim-
ing the event trivialized the lives of African
American students.
Underlying this contemporary debate is a
fundamental conflict: How can universities
ensure a welcoming campus environment for
all while guaranteeing a free exchange of ideas?
If a university’s mission is to create an inclusive
environment conducive to providing an educa-
tion for all, how should it approach the expres-
sion of free speech that may place students in
danger?
More practically, can some forms of speech
truly be objectively unacceptable and therefore
worthy of restriction on a college campus? If so,
who should be making those necessarily objec-
tive decisions? University administrators? A siz-
able portion of a campus’ community?
The University of Michigan, as a public uni-
versity with the legal obligation as a public
institution to protect free speech as described
in the First Amendment, has guidelines that
state it must do all within its power to protect
community members’ or invited speakers’ rights
to speak freely and to protect those who wish to
listen or communicate with speakers.
Other universities have announced modifi-
cations to their policies to deal with changing
tides. Texas A&M University announced only
recognized student organizations would be
able to rent space to host speakers on campus,
after a private Texan rented space Spencer in
December.
If the University decides that changes to Uni-
versity policy on free speech and expression
are warranted given recent events, the views of
activists and members of student government
will play a major role in their success. These
leaders play an important role in determining
the campus climate on any given issue, so the
views they hold should be accessible as the Uni-
versity navigates these waters.
*****
To CSG President Anushka Sarkar, an LSA
senior, the administration has the right to limit
what speakers should be permitted on cam-
pus, taking student safety and reception from
the University community into account. Sarkar
believes some forms of hateful speech do not
provide educational purposes for students; spe-
cifically singling out white supremacists.
“There’s a strong distinction between having
John McCain speak at the University of Michi-
gan versus having Richard Spencer speak at the
University of Michigan,” she said. “There is con-
structive benefit of engaging someone who has
had a long career in policy and advocacy work
in views that oppose, perhaps your own. But
having Richard Spencer who is a neo-Nazi, por-
trayed as someone whose views oppose your
own is not going far enough. I do think there is a
line between what is acceptable to engage with
and what is not.”
For Sarkar and many of her peers, the Univer-
sity community at large has a right to determine
who gets to speak.
“If there is a small cohort of students on cam-
pus who believe that Richard Spencer should be
allowed to campus and speak about his views,
when those views threaten the very values and
safety of students on campus, there are things
of higher importance that need to be priori-
tized, such as the values and safety of students,”
Sarkar said. “The speakers that have been
rejected or shut down by the student body have
been in diametric opposition to our university’s
values and the safety and security of students.”
But some campus activists feel otherwise.
LSA senior Grant Strobl, the national chairman
of Young Americans for Freedom, an organiza-
tion dedicated to promoting conservative ideals
on college campuses across the country, finds
the policy to be sufficient in theory, but a failure
in practice. Strobl gained national prominence
when he protested the University’s decision to
allow students to specify pronouns in Wolverine
Access by making his own “His Majesty.” From
Strobl’s perspective, the University has failed to
fully enforce its own guidelines; notably, dur-
ing the contentious September 2016 MPU Black
Lives Matter debate.
“They basically took over the entire event,”
Strobl said of protesters. “The University in that
situation does have an obligation to ensure
that the original event goes as planned, and to
remove those protesters; they didn’t enforce
their own policy.”
According to University spokesperson Rick
Fitzgerald, the University has a high bar for when
to intervene in protests, and has not done so
in recent memory. In the case of the Michigan
Political Union debate, Fitzgerald said University
police were on hand, but did not intervene.
Strobl additionally believes the University
must ensure it is protecting all speakers’ rights,
entirely independent of what their ideas.
“If the University prides itself on being a
limited public forum where students can host
speakers, they have to protect speakers and the
event in a viewpoint neutral manner,” Strobl said.
“They just absolutely have to. Otherwise we go
down on the slippery slope of just banning peo-
ple we disagree with.”
Strobl believes the threat of violence in the
community should never be grounds for the
University to cancel a speaker, claiming protest-
ing a speaker with the intent to cancel an event
interferes with the speaker’s right to free speech.
University policy states that protesters may not
interfere with a speaker’s ability to freely express
their thoughts, or an audience’s attempt to com-
prehend them, but are free to protest outside an
event.
Strobl’s arguments were echoed by Nicholas
Fadanelli, president of LSA Student Government,
who also stated that protests should not be used
to silence speech some find objectionable.
“Individuals can protest and show their dis-
satisfaction, their disapproval or their plain con-
demnation of what a speaker might be saying,”
Fadanelli said. “But not to the point where you
have a rule of mob situation where events can be
shut down kind of on whim.”
But Fadanelli cautioned his position, adding
that inciting violence — including displaying
symbols associated with genocide — shouldn’t
necessarily be protected.
Vikrant Garg, a Public Health student and
organizer for the Students4Justice activist
group, sees the continued toleration of hate as
problematic on campus. He believes students
should have the right to take matters into their
own hand to not tolerate someone they consider
hateful.
“There’s a huge disconnect I think from a lot
of people not understanding that when you tol-
erate something that is inherently violent to a
lot of people in its language, (and) in its history,
it’s going to then continue to be violent against
those people, and then it’s going to escalate that
violence,” Garg said. “If what someone is saying
is really horrible, then I think that they (students)
should be shutting it down. And if in effect that
person can no longer be heard by the people
that came to listen to them, then good for them.”
However, Garg still feels that the University is
responsible for condemning hate speech.
“A community makes it known when some-
thing isn’t necessarily welcome, and a univer-
sity should follow suit and condemn something
when the community has condemned some-
thing,” Garg said.
The American Civil Liberties Union, among
other civil rights organizations, have raised
concerns about universities taking increasingly
restrictive policies on free speech. The distinc-
tion between “hate speech” and other forms
of “allowable” speech being pushed for by some
campus voices is a specific point of contention, as
there is no concrete definition of “hate speech” in
American case law that can legally be curtailed;
although such a distinction exists in many European
legal systems.
“When we grant the government the power
to suppress controversial ideas,” the ACLU web-
site reads, “we are all subject to censorship by the
state.”
If the University, with the power of the state,
gets to decide which speech is worth preventing to
maintain the safety of students, it will need some
framework to make that decision in an account-
able and democratic fashion, and in a manner that
would not undermine its mission as a place for the
free exchange of ideas.
University President Mark Schlissel issued a call
to students to consider their roles in addressing
hateful speech during his address at New Student
Convocation on Friday.
“Will you take the risk to speak out if your class-
mates are targeted?” Schlissel asked the freshmen.
“Will you reject a purposefully hateful speaker on
campus by protesting, by instead seeking produc-
tive dialogue, or by simply ignoring them?”
******
Among students, the clashing visions of free
speech were on full display this past spring when
resolutions were introduced in both Central Student
Government and LSA Student Government, calling
upon each body to take a firm stand in defense of
individuals’ rights to express opinions even in the
face of adverse reactions from elements of the com-
munity. A LSA Student Government resolution —
calling upon the LSA Student Government to release
a statement in support of free speech on campus —
passed unanimously in April. However, after much
debate, a similar resolution introduced in CSG failed
in a 31-to-5 vote, with two abstentions.
The author of the resolution, now-University
alum Deion Kathawa, felt that the characterization
of the resolution as contentious was an insult to the
idea of free expression itself, further alleging the
resolution faced procedural opposition from many
CSG leaders.
“My resolution was smeared as ‘contentious.’
With respect, I resent this characterization,” Katha-
wa wrote in The Michigan Review, a conservative
campus paper. “That there is not broad agreement
that free speech ought to be a universally beloved
value serves only to show how coarsened our shared
political life has become, how politicized even our
university — and universities across the country —
has become.”
Sarkar defended the result of the CSG vote, argu-
ing the resolution was redundant, as she believed
free speech has adequate protections on campus
already and that additional reaffirmations were
not necessary for advancing the body’s interests,
although she opened the door to considering a simi-
lar resolution in the future, as contexts change.
“The majority of representatives did not feel that
the principles of free speech at UMich were at risk,
nor did they feel that the right to freedom of expres-
sion was at risk,” Sarkar said.
Fadanelli chalked up the different results primar-
ily to the individuals who introduced the resolutions
in both bodies, and their backgrounds on the issue.
The resolution that came before LSA Student Gov-
ernment was introduced by sponsors known by the
assembly to hold political views across the political
spectrum, which helped convince the body of its
merits.
So far, the debates on this issue have largely
been confined to college campuses, periodically
spilling into the national consciousness; drawing
media attention and political fire. However, as
millennials increasingly enter the workforce and
broader society, the footprint of their views on
free speech will likely impact the national conver-
sation in more consequential ways.
File Photo/Daily
Social work student Lawrielle West leads protestors in a Black Lives Matter march from the Diag to the Michigan League, where an MPU debate was being held on Sep-
tember 27, 2016.
File Photo/Daily
English journalist Milo Yiannopoulos speaks on issues of feminism and sexism in a debate against freelance journalist Julie Bindel at the Michigan League Ballroom on
February 23, 2016.
How can universities
ensure a welcoming
campus environment for
all while guaranteeing a
free exchange of ideas?