Reasonable rebuttals to conventional wisdom are important — even if they’re wrong, they force us to consider why we believe what we believe. As someone deeply invested in the cause of campus free speech, I’ve been eager to read recent articles questioning whether conservatives (and other anti-PC champions) have blown the problem out of proportion.
Some actors certainly have, some conservatives do practice selective free speech outrage (which is always maddening). The crazed student activists most often featured in viral videos do usually represent a minority of young people. But as Robby Soave of Reason points out, “what matters is whether their power to enforce their desire for censorship is increasing.”
Soave’s full argument is well-worth reading. He persuasively examines a wider body of polling data than others did in their efforts to downplay the problem. He also posits some of the perceived escalation in hostility may be attributable to the rise of news outlets dedicated to tracking the problem, like The College Fix, Campus Reform, and Red Alert Politics (now part of Washington Examiner). “Since vastly fewer outlets were reporting on these incidents prior to 2010, it may seem like they are becoming more frequent just because they’re getting more attention,” Soave suggests.
His most important point, however, was illustrated amid the dust-up over Christina Hoff Sommers’ recent lecture at Lewis & Clark Law School (downplayed in some recent works of skepticism) when the school’s dean of diversity and inclusion cut Sommers’ remarks short to move onto the question-and-answer session. The dean argues this was done as a matter of practicality, but whatever the motive, it facilitated a heckler’s veto, curtailing Sommers’ time to deliver the remarks she came to campus to deliver, and for which many students showed up to hear. Fearful of blow back, administrators often accommodate would-be censors, giving an inch, then flailing for answers (or sometimes applauding) when the activists take a mile. This is one incident. But consider what happened last spring at Evergreen State College. Or what happened to the Christakises at Yale. Or Charles Murray at Middlebury.
No, this is not happening at every institution of higher learning. But there is no shortage of ridiculous accounts like these, and they’re almost always worthy of substantive push back in the interest of pressuring universities to teach their students to approach disagreement more productively. Furthermore, there are people who have spent much of their careers in academia who argue the problem is worsening, Sommers included.
As Soave wrote, whether or not these instances are happening more frequently, the power of the vocal minority does seem to be increasing. In a GQ piece arguing that concerns about campus free speech are overblown, Mari Uyehara cited data from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, observing, “in 2017 there were just 29 attempts to disinvite speakers, out of 4,700 universities, and the majority of those that were successful came from the right, not the left.”
What those numbers cannot quantify is the frequency with which students were simply intimidated out of inviting right-of-center, or nonprogressive speakers in the first place. Nor can we possibly quantify how the threat of conflict, intensified by the ever-looming vocal minority, intimidates right-of-center and non-progressive students from expressing their viewpoints in and out of the classroom. On campuses where these eruptions go viral, those incidents are often boiling points of simmering tensions.
Uyehara conceded “no-platforming” is indeed “a terrible tactic for a number of reasons, for both academic freedom and the advancement of progressive causes,” but then decried that “the news of Sommers’s slightly curtailed lecture was hyped in at least 11 outlets, including Breitbart, the National Review, and two separate opinion pieces in The New York Times. Sommers herself tweeted about the event’s coverage at least 70 times and scored a Wall Street Journal piece out of the ordeal.”
But if not 11, what would be a more acceptable quantity? If we agree the tactic is wrong, is there a limit on how many people are allowed to say so and point out instances of it?
I’ll concede that these issues are probably more interesting to members of the media (comedians included) — many of whom graduated from institutions grappling with the problem– because free speech is more critical to their professions. We should be careful to keep that in perspective. But I suspect the reason these incidents generate so much coverage is simply a reflection of how many people agree they’re wrong and should not be repeated elsewhere. When these stories go uncovered, schools are free to accommodate protesters and avoid further conflict without pressure from stakeholders in alumni groups, donor circles, and local communities.
If the complaint is that (a) students as a whole are actually more tolerant of free speech than free speech proponents suggest and (b) the media’s coverage of campus free speech issues is out of proportion with the actual problem, I say this: (a) Skeptics should bear in mind that much of the problem is not conveyed by existing data and would be better assessed by visiting campuses and asking students, conservative or otherwise, how the threat of being targeted by the vocal minority keeps them from expressing their ideas, be it in class discussions, assignments, activism initiatives, speaker invitations, or dorm room conversations. And (b) without scrutiny from groups like FIRE, leaders like Sommers, and media outlets, the trend of “no-platforming” that just about everyone agrees is wrong may well get worse.
