You know President Trump’s recent executive order on campus free speech is already irking liberal university administrators.
University of California, Berkeley, Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and University of California, Irvine, Chancellor Howard Gillman took to the pages of the L.A. Times to unload on the executive order, calling it “unconstitutional” and denying the existence of the free-speech crisis on college campuses altogether. Union College President David Harris penned an op-ed unironically titled, “A Campus Is Not the Place for Free Speech,” in which he rejects the “purest form” of free speech on college campuses and calls on universities to regulate speakers.
To be clear: These university big-wigs are just plain wrong about what free speech is and the realities facing conservative students on their very own campuses.
Chemerinsky and Gillman take contradictory views of the executive order, claiming it “changes nothing” because, “Colleges and universities receiving federal funds already must comply with all applicable ‘laws, regulations and policies.’” Yet at the same time, they characterize the executive order as “disturbing” because “it doesn’t set clear guidelines for what colleges and universities need to do to comply, leaving them uncertain of how to ensure that their federal funding is not in jeopardy.”
But if, as Chemerinsky and Gillman admit, public universities are already bound by law to protect the First Amendment, why are they worried about losing federal funding? If their universities are wholly and earnestly committed to free speech, so much so that UC Berkeley fundraises off its legacy as the “Birthplace of the Free Speech Movement,” why are they so nervous? A guiltless person has nothing to worry about, and the same principle applies to universities just as much as individuals.
Moreover, Chemerinsky and Gillman assert Trump’s executive order is “unnecessary” because, “Every day on virtually every campus, speeches are given without incident, including some by very controversial speakers.” The key word here is “virtually.” Notably Chemerinsky and Gillman fail to mention the litany of occasions where controversial (conservative) speakers were barred from speaking on campuses, either by the red-tape tactics of university administrators or the more violent methods of those black-clad political terrorists collectively known as Antifa.
As president of the Berkeley College Republicans, I saw a number of my group’s invited speakers (Milo Yiannopoulos, David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, and Ben Shapiro) stonewalled by ad hoc administrative bureaucracy or entirely prevented from speaking by threats of violence and actual violence from armed mobs. Things got so bad that my group and the Young America’s Foundation sued UC Berkeley for violating our First Amendment rights. UC Berkeley settled the case and promptly issued a statement claiming the settlement indicated no wrongdoing on their part. But if defendants only settle legal cases they know they can’t win, this again raises the question: If you did nothing wrong, what do you have to worry about?
In answer to Chemerinsky and Gillman’s unfortunate question, “and what university doesn’t believe in ‘free inquiry’,'” they need only turn to Exhibit A: Harris’s aforementioned column, “A Campus Is Not the Place for Free Speech.”
“I oppose free speech on college campuses,” Harris confesses, “Free speech, in its purest form, is an exercise in what is achieved when a person yells a view and then leaves, after which someone with an opposing perspective does the same. The speakers do not grow as a result of the experience, and the audience has no opportunity to probe the opposing points of view.”
Harris seems to believe that campus speakers never make use of question-and-answer periods and that only people who agree with the speaker attend his or her talk. But if that were the case, why do conservative speakers often sell out whole auditoriums, face leftist protesters, and take questions from audiences that often fiercely disagree with them?
In addition to claiming that “college campuses and social networks tend to be more diverse than ‘real world’ neighborhoods and social clubs” and don’t require occasional encounters with unpopular points of view, Harris also makes the rather insulting observation that “the president and his supporters do not understand what actually happens on college campuses.”
No, Harris says, the president’s student supporters, many of whom have been relentlessly attacked and harassed online and on campus because of their beliefs, haven’t the slightest idea of just how the tolerant university environment really is. I suppose I would stand corrected, if Harris had mustered any evidence in support of his claim.
Attending President Trump’s signing ceremony for the executive order last month, I felt vindicated, and I knew many other campus conservatives felt vindicated as well, despite Harris’ assertions. If out-of-touch university administrators won’t be our voice, then Trump and his administration certainly will.
Troy Worden is a recent graduate in English and philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of the Berkeley College Republicans in 2017.
