In a recent essay in The Atlantic, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger argues that free expression and the open exchange of ideas are still a trademark of higher education. Essentially, he insists that the narrative of a First Amendment under assault on campus is largely right-wing propaganda.
Despite qualifying his defense of higher education’s reputation by pointing out his decades of university leadership and his work as a First Amendment scholar, Bollinger is apparently no historian — or at least, not particularly observant of recent events on campuses across the country.
The “facts” on which Bollinger bases his thesis that the campus free speech crisis isn’t real are flimsy at best. “Universities are, today, more hospitable venues for open debate than the nation as a whole,” he claims. “At Columbia and at thousands of other schools across the United States, controversial ideas are routinely expressed by speakers on both the left and the right, and have been for decades.”
But I’ve spent the last three years traveling to embattled campuses. As part of my work alongside bold Young America’s Foundation activists nationwide, I’ve met with university presidents, communications directors, general counsels, professors, and everyone in between. Thanks to those discussions, I can tell you that subjective viewpoint discrimination, disparate treatment, and all-out censorship on campus are not isolated incidents.
Relatively recent situations at California State University, Los Angeles, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Evergreen State College, Middlebury College, and the University of Wisconsin are all examples demonstrating a larger problem.
Bollinger’s reference to speech that is “so offensive as to become intolerable,” and his defense of aggressive student reactions to said offensive speech, is emblematic of the way administrators regularly quash free expression. When they wield unbridled discretion in determining when this line into “intolerable” speech is crossed, free speech is inevitably imperiled.
This leads to the kind of discriminatory application of restrictions on speech that were a key point in Young America’s Foundation’s recently won case against the University of California, Berkeley, where a judge ordered the university to rework their “security fee” policies that charged conservative speakers prohibitive amounts and provided an opportunity for the heckler’s veto. Similar principles are also at issue in our ongoing lawsuits against the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida.
All too often, what administrators say and what they do are two very different things. This is true from smaller, private institutions like Grand Canyon University to public behemoths like Berkeley. In my dealings with university leadership, they almost always claim to protect free expression — but their shameful willingness to ban speakers and penalize students suggests otherwise.
First Amendment jurisprudence, contrary to Bollinger’s attempted muddying of the waters, has already drawn a very clear line on what speech is “acceptable” and what isn’t. The courts, not university administrators, are responsible for interpreting it.
The First Amendment should not be interpreted to “evolve,” as Bollinger suggests. It doesn’t change to protect fragile campus populations from being made to feel uncomfortable, nor does it only safeguard popular speech. It is in cases where speech is not considered “acceptable” where the First Amendment’s protection of expression is most vital.
Despite the narrative Bollinger is attempting to spin with this essay, those protections are still very much under attack on campus. The nonpartisan civil liberties watchdog the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education surveyed almost 500 colleges, and found that 32% of colleges clearly restrict free speech. In fact, only 7.6% have policies that clearly do not threaten free expression.
Additionally, Bollinger’s statement that “When students express concern and discomfort about speech that is hateful, racist, or noxious in other ways, they are doing nothing unreasonable” would be a fair point only if mobs of students were peacefully expressing their dissent, rather than wantonly shutting down speeches or assaulting speakers with whom they disagree.
It’s clear that Bollinger is attempting to discredit significant ongoing violations of students’ First Amendment rights when he calls calling them nothing more than “sensationalist incidents.” In doing so, he marginalizes the same students already fighting an uphill battle to enjoy the same freedoms as their left-wing peers.
Spencer Brown (@itsspencerbrown) is spokesman for Young America’s Foundation.
