Liberals are displeased with President Trump’s new policy on campus free speech. “When you get into the possibility of punitive measures,” lifetime progressive activist Suzanne Nossell complained, “and the withholding of federal funds based on, you know, particularly kind of very vague definitions of, you know, an idea like free inquiry, that’s worrisome.”
Others absurdly argue that Trump’s executive order is authoritarian. But Trump is not telling universities what they have to do. He is merely placing conditions on federal funds, which is an entirely normal and proper thing to do. It’s reasonable to tell universities that the federal government will only fund institutions that hew to the American principles of free speech and robust debate.
We understand, in theory, the concern that some of Trump’s critics express. Politicians shouldn’t impose arbitrary or inconsistent conditions on recipients of federal money. And it’s possible, if one were to proceed a long distance from what the president is proposing, eventually to arrive at a kind of despotism. But to acknowledge that is not to indict what Trump is doing, but, rather, a reflection of the ungoverned imaginations of his critics. But it’s true that, as the role of the federal government grows, it can roil things and heighten the pitch and raise the stakes of the culture war.
The bottom line is that he who pays the piper calls the tune. Or, with more nuance, if you make yourself a client of the government, don’t complain if it makes a few reasonable requirements. It should not be onerous for places of higher education, which are supposed to foster intellectual inquiry and the competition of ideas, to embrace free speech, although it would be a wrenching change for many a college and university these days.
If for those who cannot make the giant leap and accept time-tested and admirable American values, here’s what we’d suggest: If you’re worried about Trump attaching strings to federal money, turn down the federal money and be independent.
Let’s reduce the parts of our society that depend on federal money. Both Republicans and Democrats have spent much of the past 75 years coiling federal tentacles around more pillars of the economy and society. Academia is increasingly subsidized through student aid and through grants from more than a dozen federal programs. Healthcare institutions are subsidized by more and more federal programs, with Obamacare the latest and most baneful instance. Large employers are increasingly on the public dole, especially from state governments eager to bribe them to relocate. We subsidize charities, abortion clinics, artists, hospitals, and everyone in between.
Reasonably, taxpayers get upset when recipients do objectionable things with their money. This causes a cultural backlash. Recall the National Endowment of the Arts-funded Mapplethorpe exhibit of a generation ago. Robert Mapplethorpe’s pornographic artworks were excoriated by the religious Right. If you read the Washington Post’s coverage of it these days, you’d think the likes of Sen. Jesse Helms were trying to ban the foul artwork. In fact, all the good senator was objecting to was that taxpayer money subsidize the filth.
Similarly, the ACLU has sued Catholic hospitals because they refuse to kill their unborn patients via abortion. The basis of these cases is that Catholic hospitals receive federal funds through Medicaid.
How to cool these culture-war fires? Have taxpayers fund fewer things.
Universities can create whatever speech codes they think their delicate students need, if those universities eschew federal funds. If you’re afraid this will put left-leaning universities at a disadvantage, then let’s roll back the federal programs that fund all of academia and put everyone on an equal footing.
