Are ideologically embattled campuses finally turning over a new leaf?
On face value, the rise in First Amendment coalitions and campus review commissions surrounding free speech seems promising. However, university responses and coalition findings are more bleak.
One such example is Brown University’s Speak Coalition. The group is actively trying to address this issue, but even this well-intentioned group misses the mark.
According to its website, Speak Coalition is a “coalition of Brown students, organizations, and faculty, committed to promoting more engagement with politically diverse ideas by advocating that the University expose students to a variety of beliefs.” The website features a report highlighting how the vast majority, 94 percent, of speakers lean to the left. The research component of the report is compelling, but its conclusions and recommendations reek of biased “inclusion” rhetoric.
The report argues that the university should earmark funding for ideologically diverse speakers, but it also recommends that the campus host “less controversial, relatively moderate speakers” for lectures, reserving more controversial speakers for other formats like interviews and moderated talks, panel discussions, and debates.
The report additionally recommends providing a list of speakers to potentially concerned student organizations to ask for their input on how to make the events as productive as possible to reduce “the possibility of an event shutdown.”
This begs the question: What if the groups vow to protest or disrupt a “controversial” speaker? Asking for feedback gives the university an excuse to cancel a recognized conservative speaker. Moreover, it assumes that Brown students and faculty are all respectful and open-minded, which is probably not the case.
Another major issue with the report is that it ultimately blames speakers and the format of past events in its “failed case studies.” The report argues that the University of California, Berkeley, Free Speech Week “failed because it was intentionally controversial” and that “spectacle speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Steve Bannon, Ann Coulter and David Horowitz … should be avoided because they come to campuses specifically to provoke the student body.”
“We don’t want Ann Coulter,” Speak Coalition founder and Brown sophomore Greer Brigham told Inside Higher Ed. “No fringe speakers.”
Brigham has a more open-mind than most of his liberal peers, but he was also a proud Hillary Clinton volunteer in 2016. He admitted that he prefers more toned-down (low-energy), middle-of-the-road speakers like former GOP presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who visited the campus in April.
Despite the report’s moderate undertones, the university’s response to it is one of pure delusion. Brown spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said the report “lacks nuance” and “implies that a scholar, a researcher, an academic, injected their personal views into their scholarship, which contributes to erosion in public confidence. … It suggests that facts are just malleable expressions of belief.”
“SPEAK may want more speakers of a certain flavor and it’s their right to speak about that,” added Brown President Christina Paxson. “But if you look at our track record over the past six years, we’ve brought in a really interesting mix of people.”
Interesting? Yes. Ideologically diverse? No.
The university clearly doesn’t believe their speakers promote any viewpoint bias. Under this mentality, the university will continue to invite the same liberal speakers.
Speak Coalition deserves some kudos for shedding light on the truth about campus bias, but its discrimination against speakers who have staunch conservative views — and wider recognition — demonstrates a lack of understanding of how democracy functions. Rather than appeasing protesters by hosting boring speakers, universities should defend and protect the rights (and in some cases, the lives) of vibrant speakers who engage students before, during, and after events.
