Free speech has suffered a lot of setbacks in recent years. College campuses are setting up “free speech zones” that limit where students can express their opinions without the risk of offending their more thin-skinned classmates. Expressing an opinion online or telling a joke that’s misinterpreted can actually get someone fired.
In the latest example, the Austin music, technology and movie festival known as South by Southwest cancelled two panels after receiving threats of violence. Members of each panel had been subjected to such threats in the past at separate events, but the previous events had stepped up security and moved ahead (including at one event that I attended).
Cancelling the panels rewarded those who made the violent threats. Because SXSW caved, it’s not difficult to believe future events might be targeted and cancelled.
But we can’t fault SXSW for wanting to wash its hands of the whole controversy. The threats of violence were directed at both panels, and according to the moderator and organizer of one of those panels, Perry Jones, SXSW coordinators were forced to spend an inordinate amount of time fielding questions and complaints about the two panels. What’s more, SXSW is a much larger venue than previous events that had received threats, with more than 70,000 registered attendees in 2015 (including me).
Still, the idea that free speech can be shut down with vague threats of violence months before an event is disheartening.
But most of the time it doesn’t take threats of violence to shut down free speech; it just takes a loud, vocal minority, as is the case on college campuses.
A recently released survey of college students by the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale University discovered that fully one-third of U.S. college students couldn’t identify the First Amendment as the one dealing with free speech. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) told surveyors that they supported disciplinary action against “any student or faculty member on campus who uses language that is considered racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive.”
And given how broad the definition racist or sexist has gotten (apparently the word “too” is sexist now), almost any speech that anyone doesn’t like can be brought for disciplinary action. Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis learned that the hard way earlier this year when she was accused of violating the anti-discrimination law known as Title IX because she wrote an article critical of campus “paranoia.”
Kipnis hadn’t denied anyone anything or done anything physically violent. What she wrote was not racist or sexist, but because some students deemed it offensive, Kipnis was brought before a disciplinary committee (she was eventually cleared).
The only way to stop the attacks on free speech is to stand up and refuse to be bullied. College campuses need to stop giving in to the most easily offended students, and organizations need to make clear that they will not stand down in face of adversity. Opinions that are merely unpopular (conservative students know this far too well) should not be shut down.
We all have opinions, and we expect to be able to express those opinions freely. But that freedom of expression must also be afforded to others, even those whose opinions we disagree with or think are invalid. In the case of GamerGate, online harassment can be a problem, just as unethical practices in games media is a problem. On college campuses, both liberals and conservatives have ideas about how to fix the country, and disagreeing with the other side’s ideas doesn’t give someone the right to silence them.
