I
n the fall of 2017, I stood nervously
in front of the printers in Hatcher
Graduate Library, observing the
passersby and waiting for a hundred cop-
ies of full-sheet fliers to print out. Amo,
Cole and I — the three founding members
of the University of Michigan’s first free
speech advocacy group, Michigan Open
Discourse — had written and designed
these fliers for distribution across cam-
pus. On them in big, bold, capitalized let-
ters read, “LET SPENCER SPEAK,” in
reference to self-described identitarian
and white supremacist Richard Spen-
cer. And, underneath this bold request,
were bulleted points explaining why we
believed that Richard Spencer should be
given a platform to speak at the Univer-
sity. One of them read:
“Know thy enemy.”
Richard Spencer is a racist fraud, but
one with influence. We should rationally
confront and argue against his ideas in
the open, not shield ourselves from them
— not to mention that pushing Spen-
cer away only validates the persecution
complex of his impressionable follow-
ers, driving them deeper into radical
and dangerous underground movements.
Free expression, regardless of content, is
fundamental to the purpose of a univer-
sity setting, as affirmed by the bipartisan
Supreme Court majority in the 1972 Su-
preme Court case, Healy v. James.
Cole and I continued waiting for the
fliers to print. We both admitted to each
other that we were slightly uncomfort-
able printing them in a public setting like
the library, when they had such a conten-
tious demand plastered across the face of
the flier. Neither of us wanted to be asso-
ciated with the fliers, even though we’d
both endorsed their content, which was
relatively mild and apolitical.
Eventually, though, the hundred fli-
ers were printed, and the three of us
went to post them around campus. Even
though we were posting them up around
10 o’clock at night, when basically no
one was walking around campus, we
only managed to post a grand
total of nine fliers, mostly out of
fear of being spotted and associ-
ated with their messaging. We
had seen how most students on
campus reacted to Spencer’s im-
pending visit.
Spencer’s rumored visit to
the University’s campus sparked
widespread outcry among the
student body: Controversially,
some individuals posted “It’s
okay to be white” fliers at cam-
pus
buildings,
while
others
started a change.org petition
advocating that the University
deny Spencer’s request to speak
on campus. The Michigan Daily
even published a strong edito-
rial disavowing Spencer and his
views and decrying the idea that
he should be allowed to speak on
campus.
Amo, Cole, and I believed
Spencer should have been al-
lowed to speak, because though
his ideas are abhorrent and unin-
tellectual, we felt that he should
be confronted and dismantled in
a public setting — like a university, where
he would be subject to rigorous ques-
tioning from a skeptical audience. And
we further wanted to affirm his right to
free speech and expression while coun-
tering his bigoted arguments. This was
the motivation behind the designing of
these fliers, and it was our first initiative
through our organization Michigan Open
Discourse.
Expectedly, all the fliers were torn
down by the next morning. This is not
characteristic of conservative activism,
but it is certainly not an uncommon ex-
perience to be facing certain barriers.
Examples of this include widespread
social disapproval, as is the case on the
predominantly liberal U-M campus, to
promulgating conservative ideas. Often,
conservatives are mistreated, unjustly
maligned or have to face significant re-
percussions for simply espousing view-
points that don’t align with the prevail-
ing liberal orthodoxy.
In 2014, U-M student Omar Mahmood
wrote a satirical column for The Michi-
gan Review titled “Do the Left Thing”
mocking politically correct attitudes
among college students. In response, his
residence hall room was egged, he re-
ceived threats from fellow students and
he was let go from his columnist position
at The Michigan Daily.
A liberal activist who wrote a contro-
versial satirical column would not have
experienced the same type of pushback
from fellow students. There aren’t as
many barriers for a left-leaning individu-
al to espouse their viewpoints on college
campuses, especially at a University that
has more liberal-identifying students.
It’s clearly not uncommon to be mis-
treated or judged for having divergent
viewpoints or for taking a relatively radi-
cal stance like a conservative one, but it
is common to face greater scrutiny in or-
der to enact conservative changes.
I spoke with Deion Kathawa, a former
U-M student and former editor in chief
of the independent, conservative news-
paper on campus, The Michigan Review,
to understand his experience as a conser-
vative activist. Beside his extensive set of
written clips for The Michigan Review,
Kathawa’s
most
important
initiative
as a conservative activist was propos-
ing a resolution to the Central Student
Government to do the following things:
affirm the commitment to freedom of
speech outlined in the First Amendment
and the University’s student code, com-
mit to “non-obstructionism” with respect
to campus events that involve controver-
sial figures, adopt a similar set of free
speech guidelines that the University of
Chicago adopted and commit to includ-
ing diversity of viewpoint in the Univer-
sity’s diversity initiatives.
“I felt that officials in the University
were not specifically committed to pro-
tecting the speech of other students at
this University, so I decided that I want-
ed to do something outside of rhetorical
advocacy,” Kathawa said. “I opted for
something in the official channels. … I
went, I proposed it, there was some par-
liamentary chicanery that pushed it back
a couple weeks. Eventually I got to say
my piece, people voted for it. It lost pret-
ty handily, 27-3.”
It’s telling that Kathawa’s idea, which
was simply to affirm the right to freedom
of speech in a number of ways and include
diversity of viewpoint in the University
of Michigan’s diversity codes and hiring
processes, was shot down by committee
members by such a significant margin.
Not that there is necessarily inherent
bias within these systems constructed by
students against conservative activism,
but there are certainly barriers prevent-
ing conservatives from achieving activ-
ism victories — the students and chan-
nels through which they have to operate
through are, naturally, more left-leaning.
In rare instances, conservatives do
achieve activism victories, though these
are long processes and require undertak-
ing difficult procedural manipulations.
I spoke with Amo, one of my fellow co-
founders of Michigan Open Discourse,
to highlight such victories. Amo is not
exactly conservative, but he has right-
leaning views.
Amo served as a plaintiff on the recent
Speech First v. Schlissel legislation. This
was a court case, filed by Speech First,
a free speech advocacy group, who was
arguing on behalf of several students
who’d been identified by the U-M Bias
Response Team as violators of its code of
conduct, meaning they had promulgated
some type of offensive speech, in the con-
text of harassing and bullying, and were
reported for it.
“A representative from Speech First
reached out to me and Cole and asked us
because we were at The Review,” Amo
said. “She thought that maybe we would
have some expertise … my angle on it was
that I had experience with a bad speech
climate at Michigan, and I had witnessed
conservatives being mistreated. I knew
that people didn’t want their real names
officially associated with the paper.”
Amo mentioned that this feeling ex-
tended beyond his work at The Review.
“I just felt that in my classes there was
a left-wing bias, and I didn’t necessari-
ly feel comfortable voicing my opinions
that were divergent,” he said.
The Speech First v. Schlissel court
case was settled, resulting in a victory for
Speech First, and the disbanding of the
U-M Bias Response Team (which would
later be replaced with the Campus Cli-
mate Support). The exact contention in
the court case was not over the Univer-
sity’s policy to reprimand individuals for
acts of bullying and harassment, but rath-
er over their definitions of these terms
that infringed upon protected speech.
This court case demonstrates that, even
though Speech First won the case, there
are systematic barriers in place that cre-
ate a campus environment that is un-
friendly to free speech and conservative
ideas. Evidence of this attitude within
the University administration includes a
U-M-sponsored “Bias Response Team,”
which works to create a campus climate
harmful to the right to free speech.
I also spoke with professor of Af-
roamerican and African Studies Angela
Dillard about conservatives, faculty per-
ceptions of conservatives and activism
among conservatives. The crux of our
conversation was a sentiment we both
agreed with:
“I think it’s odd to use the term mi-
nority group (to describe conservative
students on campus),” Dillard said. “I
mean they certainly are numerically,
statistically a smaller population of stu-
dents who self-identify as conservatives
on campus than who would self-identify
as liberals … (but) it’s a kind of political
and ideological claim in and of itself to
call conservatives a minority group.”
Dillard added that while it may not be
appropriate to define conservatives on
campus as a “minority group,” she ac-
knowledged the odd positioning these
students have within the campus culture.
Conservative
activism at the
University of
Michigan
BY NEIL SHAH, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
PHOTO BY ALEXIS RANKIN
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Wednesday, November 4, 2020 — 13
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com