College campuses are supposed to produce the next generation of thinkers, innovators, and creators. Instead, many just provide a safe space that shields students from opinions counter to the dominant narrative. This type of culture has pushed conservative student groups into inviting controversial speakers on campus, for the stated purpose of furthering free speech and encouraging conversation. Of course, these speakers, including conservative commentators like Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, and David Horowitz, are met with heavy resistance when they try to speak. Outraged students call them derisive, hateful, and even harmful. Conservatives push back, saying they merely represent the view of the other side.
Everyone is missing the mark here. The noble cause of free speech is effectively advanced through working toward a culture of increased tolerance for different opinions. But this won’t get done when we’re intentionally invoking outrage with controversial personalities.
If the goal is to change minds — and it absolutely should be — the approach needs to be different. One of the hardest things anyone can hear is “You’re wrong,” and for this to come from the lips of a controversial speaker only compounds the difficulty of persuasion, provoking harsh resentment from the target audience. The results are hardly pretty.
When conservative author Charles Murray appeared at Middlebury College, Professor Allison Stanger was physically assaulted by demonstrators as she escorted Murray from campus. Similarly, protesters attempted to physically block the entrance to conservative author Heather Mac Donald’s lecture. This isn’t the speakers’ fault. It’s the result of a mind infected with radical theories. But we have to accept reality: Many college students struggle so badly to entertain opposing views that it’s unlikely they ever will while on campus.
For this, we can thank the poison of two core ideologies: social justice and its academic cousin, critical theory.
Too many critical theorists argue that speech can be a form of violence, and academics often propagate that idea through social justice programs. For example, Mari Matsuda, a critical race theorist at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii, argues that once “hate speech” is vocalized, it is an act of violence — even if no physical aggression takes place. Hateful language, she says, automatically degrades the addressee, and somehow constitutes a violent act.
Social justice programs that teach this kind of inane thinking are prevalent at most American universities. According to The College Fix, more than 100 colleges offer social justice programs, including schools like the University of California, Berkeley — which isn’t exactly famous for its friendliness toward free speech. Ideas like these promote confrontation and censorship, not dialogue. With this mindset ingrained in so many students, it’s almost useless for conservatives to host a famous-but-controversial speaker on campus.
This anti-speech attitude is dismaying, but it’s what we’re working with. We must approach the situation with care and savvy. That means picking the right people to bring to campus.
Just because a speaker is “pro-free speech” doesn’t mean they’re the right choice to advocate for the cause. In an extreme example, infamous alt-right figure Richard Spencer was heckled as a racist at a University of Florida speaking gig — and rightfully so. The usual defense of “He has every legal right to speak on campus” was tossed around in response. It was true, but his presence still didn’t add anything meaningful to campus dialogue.
Spencer is a white supremacist, and most folks don’t consider openly racist people credible. Yes, the First Amendment applies to him and his ilk. But when freedom of speech is associated with people like Milo Yiannopoulos (who claims that lesbianism is fictitious and that many gay men are pedophiles) or Spencer, it only looks less appealing than it did before to the leftist student conservatives hope to persuade. Student groups are better off just inviting respectable right-of-center thinkers to speak — folks who can challenge the dominant worldview on campus without spreading controversy just for controversy’s sake.
It might seem antithetical to the cause of liberty to change how we advocate for free speech merely because of other people’s intolerance for opposing views. But an element of realism is absolutely vital here. We must meet people where they are — it’s the only way to change minds. Impersonally engaging people through an infamous speaker who makes them feel alienated won’t make them reconsider their views, but engaging them on a personal level just might.
Speakers who start discussions and bring new ideas to campus are important for an educational environment. This is true even when they say things that are outrageous, false, or downright despicable, because it allows us to identify those things and expose them through debate. But while we’re trying to create environments that are friendly to free speech, we cannot rely on sheer celebrity or bluster alone. It must be, instead, a consistent effort to tolerate and understand different viewpoints. That’s the playbook conservative students should be using to win their battle for the free exchange of ideas.
Christian Watson (@OfficialCWatson) is a writer at Young Voices and a freshman at Mercer University.
