I learned a few other things when I worked on a college campus for ten years. One notable item was that business and engineering programs often charge higher tuition than arts and sciences programs in large part because professors in those fields tend to come from industry rather than academia, and therefore command higher salaries than their Ph.D. counterparts in other disciplines. The same is true of law schools. This is of course a chicken-or-egg cycle in which those fields command high salaries so that the people in those fields can pay for their education which is so expensive because universities have to compete with industries that command high salaries.
The research generally supports my assertion that the left-leaning university phenomenon is more a product of self-selection than of bias in hiring. Right-leaning people don't flock to university environments like left-leaning people do. It's no surprise, then that right-leaning speakers, especially those who are more about entertainment than politics, have poor receptions at universities. Nevertheless, the right prefers to characterize this phenomenon as an infringement on said speakers' individual - and, in general, the right's - free speech. This recently-published column clearly and succinctly summarizes why I think that argument is bogus.
I appreciate being challenged, and my sharing of the above-referenced column on Facebook resulted in a challenge. Thoughtful arguments were raised by a person who disagrees, and I welcome the opportunity to respond. These six speakers are representative of the phenomenon I believe we are discussing.
Before addressing the questions, I would like to underscore the fact that the column focuses not on "conservatives" or "Republicans," but on "modern conservatism," otherwise known as the Party of Donald Trump. People who identify with what's generally known as the right really need to examine whether they want to identify with what this president stands for, in ideology and in deed. Those who continue to support - even revere - him are making a statement that they need to be prepared to be judged for.
Are Conservative Speakers Having their Free Speech Rights Violated?
The words "free speech" and "First Amendment Rights" are often thrown around without regard to the legal complexity of the concepts. That doesn't mean that one has to be a First Amendment scholar to have an opinion on First Amendment matters, nor does it mean that legal considerations are the only important ones when it comes to determining what kind of speech not only is, but ought to be acceptable. But people shouldn't condemn something as a First Amendment violation when it simply isn't one.
The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment guarantees that the government can't impose a criminal penalty on you for speaking on public property (except when they can). Therefore, before we talk about whether an exception applies, we have to decide whether the First Amendment is applicable at all. No First Amendment issue exists at all on the campus of a private college or university. This is what allows religious universities to exist, since a religious public university would be a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
On the campus of a public school, there might be a First Amendment right to speak; a large body of case law develops just how public universities are, and also when there are exceptions to the Free Speech Clause. An extremely oversimplified summary of the doctrine is that public universities are generally public property, but that does not mean that universities have to allow an unrestricted right to speak everywhere, at all times. I'd be happy to discuss this further with anyone who is interested.
Legally speaking, it is probably the case that no speaker who has been cancelled or shouted down has had their First Amendment Rights violated. The debate could certainly be had as an intellectual exercise, but I find it unlikely that a speaker of any political persuasion who has a speaking engagement canceled or shut down at a public university would be successful in a civil rights lawsuit. Exhibit A: today a judge rejected exactly that lawsuit with Berkeley College Republicans as plaintiffs. I'm sure we'll have much to discuss as the litigation goes forward.
If we're being honest, we're not really talking about a concern for civil rights, we're talking about who should have the power to decide which restrictions are appropriate. The person who inspired this blog post agreed that white supremacists shouldn't have a platform, so clearly she believes in some restrictions to what a public university might allow.
The controversies generated by the six controversial speakers referenced above do not exemplify suppression of speech; rather they are examples of free speech in action. The speakers were scheduled, and the university community spoke their opposition. In some cases, the opposition was significant enough that the sponsoring organization chose to cancel, or the speaker felt compelled to stop. In other cases, the university invested in security measures and the speeches occurred without incident. And please don't overlook the examples in the article I just linked of left-leaning speakers also having appearances cancelled.
John Stuart Mill's work is the origin for much Free Speech philosophy. One of the core tenets of that philosophy is that free speech is essential so that ideas can be freely exchanged in an intellectual marketplace, being evaluated on their merits rather than on the the status of the speaker. But Mill also recognized that ultimately, the marketplace settles on a product. It is important that challenges to the status quo not be suppressed on ideological grounds, but debate about whether the earth is spherical(ish) or flat is not supposed to be continued in perpetuity.
Ben Shapiro spoke at Berkeley. Milo Yiannopoulos didn't. This is not about conservative speakers being silenced; it's about whether you want Milo Yiannopoulos and other faces of "modern conservatism" to represent you.
No comments:
Post a Comment