Embattled students at the University of California, Berkeley tried, but failed, to cobble together an event to be billed as “Free Speech Week.” Beginning Sunday, it was to feature several panels with controversial speakers. Provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, whose appearance at Berkeley over the winter prompted violent anarchist riots outside the venue, referred to it as “our Woodstock.”
The idea of free speech is simple. Students, professors, and administrators are all constantly exchanging ideas on campuses. If the market of ideas is free, the spectrum of ideas is vast and runs the gamut from reasonable to bizarre to dangerous. But dangerous ideas teach us about what is safe. Debate over what constitutes a reasonable idea, be it in politics or science or literature, is invaluable to the process of making that judgment.
Student activists fighting for free speech in higher education tend to be right-of-center today. (In bygone days, left-liberals were the most likely to campaign for free speech, but no longer.) That’s because conservative ideas, both mainstream and on the fringe, are overwhelmingly the targets of censorship. What was once the left-wing fringe, in contrast, is today’s campus mainstream and the academic establishment. Fringe leftists such as 1979 Lenin Prize winner Angela Davis are welcomed by universities and students. But even the most mainstream of conservatives, such as Ben Shapiro, are barred, even physically prevented from addressing willing audiences of students on campus. When such conservatives are invited to air their views, those who disagree with them are increasingly likely, in a fit of arrogant moral posturing, to pitch a fit, attack people, and property, or else retreat into the comfort of a coloring book or psychotherapy.
Increasingly, the very concept of free speech is rejected by self-styled progressives. Thus, the fight to open the marketplace of ideas is a necessary one. And it’s also completely separate from the fight to persuade people of the rightness of conservative ideas. To re-open this marketplace, advocates must prove to their skeptical peers that freedom of speech is valuable, something that is sadly no longer a given in academia.
The organizers of Free Speech Week ostensibly sought to include the full spectrum of ideas in their event, philosophically and in terms of value. Its website contains a list of nearly 100 speakers from the Right, Left, and center — celebrities, intellectuals, partisans — who declined to participate. In its final hours of life, it looked increasingly as though the week would include a smattering of speakers, mostly alt-right or Trump-friendly. Some, such as Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter, were probably worth listening to for their impact on politics alone. Others, such as little-known activists, had a lot less to offer on the merits.
That’s fine. In these censorious times, provocation is necessary. Being offensive is required precisely to the extent that people are trying to outlaw it. It will be time to wish exclusively for elevated, coherent, logical, and fact-supported debate only when our culture, or the campus culture, again takes the civilized, open-minded view that all opinions may be expressed.
But even if provocation is currently necessary, it is not sufficient. An ideal celebration of free speech would open students’ eyes to the value of a messy marketplace where even bad products serve a purpose in helping us to find the good ones and to understand what makes them stand apart.
Today’s campus defenders of free speech thus have a three-part task.
First, they need to beat back censoriousness by exercising their right to bring into the public square even ideas that offend. That’s what free speech week, and speakers such as Yiannopoulos accomplish.
Step two is to lay out a clear and coherent argument for free speech, tolerance, and open debate. The radicals reject these notions, and it’s not enough to merely assert that these notions are good and part of the American tradition. After all, the radicals largely see the American founding as an act of oppression.
The third step, and the best way to demonstrate the value of free and open debate, is to bring the most valuable ideas to the table. That means moving on from the Milos and the Mike Cernoviches, whose value is in their heterodoxy, and bring in the best thinkers and arguers, who can use open debate to change minds on issues of culture, politics, and philosophy.
You make the best case for open debate by providing excellent debate.
The cause of repairing and preserving the state of free speech in higher education is vital for the nation’s future. It requires effective fighters who can make their case persuasively. With Free Speech Week and all subsequent efforts on campuses around the country, students must bear this in mind.
