Free speech on campus — or lack thereof — was taken up by a Senate group last week.
The topic needs discussion and resolution. Unfortunately, the panel’s own discussion failed to live up to the hope that it might help produce a resolution, with senators often splitting along political divides — rather like the students, faculty and administrators at campuses they were scrutinizing. The Senate hearing comes after a recent rash of speaker cancellations at American campuses.
Students and faculty argued that colleges and universities still treasure free speech, and do not believe in cancelling speeches if violent protests can be avoided. However, if the threat of violence is too great, then cancellation is the best policy.
That way lies mob rule.
Yes, it is imperative to protect students’ and speakers’ safety. But every time a speech is cancelled under a threat of violence, protesters are being taught they can manipulate campus leaders and shut down free speech. They are being given lessons on how to undermine our American Constitution — indeed, our traditional American way of life, which is based on free debate as a foundation for democratic decision-making.
If the claim is true that the threat of violence, rather than disagreement with a speaker’s message, is the reason for cancellations, then the answer is to tamp down the threat through security measures and to severely punish those who do commit violence.
Unfortunately, some of the senators seemed to approach the problem from a partisan viewpoint. Republican senators blamed political bias and “political correctness” for the recent cancellations of mostly conservative speakers. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein blamed violence on “outsiders,” appearing to reject the notion that political biases at the institutions themselves, or violent tendencies among students, might be contributing factors.
Free speech, virtually by definition, is intended to rise above mere political considerations. The right to speak out should be open equally to members of all parties and no parties — to all political viewpoints, social viewpoints, cultural viewpoints, religious viewpoints.
It is a higher value than mere politics.
What’s more, it is one of the fundamental elements that make politics possible.
A partial definition of “politics” is “the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.”
Conflict can be settled by debate, and the reconciling of differing ideologies or by the triumph of the most persuasive argument: the path of reason. Or a decision can be imposed by violence: the path of brute force.
We are at the point where those of differing ideologies are choosing force over reason as a means of “settling” their differences.