Why is it that we praise student movements abroad, but don’t allow them at home? Or at least seriously curtail them so as not to offend certain groups?
In our schizophrenic society we hold up the students who risked life and limb agitating for more freedom in Tiananmen Square as heroes. But we restrict those on U.S. campuses through prohibitive speech codes that mock the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech.
Anti-abortion students at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County are the latest victims in this nationwide purge of potentially “harassing” speech, rendering what is supposed to be a bastion of academic freedom into a holding tank for the anodyne vocabulary of the working world.
At issue is whether UMBC restricted students’ free speech by forcing members of the campus group Rock for Life to move their display from a heavily trafficked area in front of the student center to increasingly remote areas of campus. The students filed a lawsuit this spring in U.S. District Court in Baltimore City alleging the school forced them to move locales because it disagreed with their anti-abortion message — portrayed in 6-foot-tall, 13-foot-wide photos of aborted babies, butchered children from Rwanda and other violent images.
Unpleasant, sure. But where in the Constitution does it say making people uncomfortable is illegal? We might add that this is a public school, funded with taxpayer dollars, not a private institution. What if the huge photos were of dead and maimed Iraqi children?
The school logically agreed Friday at a preliminary hearing to change parts of its speech code that “protected emotional safety” and forbade “intimidating” speech, and will allow people to protest on campus where they choose. But it refuses to modify its sexual harassment policy, which bans speech that “intimidates” or “harasses.”
Everyone’s idea of intimidating or harassing is different, throwing all sorts of speech into question. For example, would showing rated R movies with sexual innuendo and nudity like “Knocked Up” or “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” on campus meet those criteria? Or how about reading racy passages from literature? Should Nabokov’s “Lolita” be banned? Or how about the cleavage-prone Maxim magazine?
If the answer is “no” to any of the above, then the remnants of the sexual harassment policy should be shredded along with the rest of the speech code. Simple courtesy and the golden rule are far better guidelines for human interaction. Inventing new rights against being “harassed” or “intimidated” only creates a society of self-obsessed victims who place their comfort above fundamental rights of free speech and free expression. That’s hardly a culture taxpayers should be bankrolling.
