But the answer to all this confusion can’t simply be to update campus bylaws. Rather, we need to come up with better forms of speech education, keyed to the very purpose of the university, that give students the tools to work through the hard cases themselves.
The treacherousness of the current moment has been building for some time. For much of the 20th century, free speech was a rallying cry for the left, a way of sticking up for Communists, anarchists, pacifists and student activists. In recent years, though, this hasn’t been the dominant story line. In the United States, it has been the political right that has taken on the absolute free speech mantle, at least rhetorically, and it is the left that been in the forefront of efforts to protect minorities from the harms of certain kinds of speech, from hate speech to microaggressions.
Now, abruptly, the sides have reversed once again. Left-leaning voices, in support of Palestinian liberation, have embraced academic freedom, demanding that universities protect unpopular speech and speakers. Meanwhile, conservatives have gone all in for book bans; prohibitions on teaching critical race theory, among other ostensibly radical ideas; and now crackdowns on a range of pro-Palestinian expressions.
Charges of antisemitism (some accurate, others a cover for efforts to stifle criticism of Israeli government policy or the war in Gaza) have helped make this new censorship palatable. The congressional hearings with the presidents of Penn, Harvard and M.I.T. were primarily political theater, an hourslong episode in our continuing culture wars. But already a backlash to this brand of conservative censorship has set in, led by organizations like FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Through all the flip-flopping on both the right and the left, the unsettled question of what the university is actually for has gone unaddressed.
But the sky really isn’t falling. Twice a week in my classroom, 40 or so students from different racial, ethnic, national, religious and political backgrounds have been trying hard to understand debates about the boundaries of acceptable speech in various places and times. They have been grappling with what those boundaries should be now, including for hate speech, sedition and more. Even as the topics have crept steadily closer to home, focusing on college presidents’ statements about Israel/Gaza and the language of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, these discussions have gone remarkably well. Students have waited their turn, listened to one another and, often, disagreed respectfully.