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?

