Will Colleges Pay for Free Speech?

I’m deeply offended at the thought of anyone burning the American flag. As a lover of this country, it stings to imagine someone desecrating the symbol of the country that has brought immeasurable benefits to millions from around the world, including my fellow Jews and other minorities.

And yet, in 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the flag was protected by the First Amendment because it was an expression of speech. Offensive and hateful, yes, but speech nonetheless.  

Being offended by speech, in other words, is the price we must pay for the amazing privilege of being able to speak freely. But as improbable as it sounds, this invaluable freedom is now under siege in the one place where you’d least expect it: academia, the supposed bastion of free thought and free inquiry.

Instead of protecting free speech, universities today are increasingly protecting feelings. What matters most is not the right to speak but the right to not be offended.

Instead of protecting free speech, universities today are increasingly protecting feelings. What matters most is not the right to speak but the right to not be offended. Of course, not all offenses are created equal: Those with leftist sensibilities evidently get priority protection.

This troublesome assault on free speech is the subject of our cover story this week. In her essay, Karen Lehrman Bloch examines how this phenomenon has become more and more ingrained in university culture. Among others, she speaks with Harvard Professor Steven Pinker, who says:

“Universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past. It has been stoked by viral videos of professors being mobbed, cursed, heckled into silence, and sometimes assaulted.”

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of those angry hecklers. What is going through their minds as they confront speakers whose views they abhor?

The first thing is obvious: They believe they have a right to not be offended, and they won’t even allow others who may not be offended to listen.

The second thing is less obvious. Self-righteousness, fragility and anger have obliterated from the hecklers’ minds one of life’s most precious traits: curiosity. Anyone whose views they can’t stand triggers not curiosity but outrage and a war footing.

So, if you despise JK Rowling because you’re convinced she’s transphobic, anything or anyone associated with her must be shut down. If you can’t stand federal Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan because of his conservative views, you’ll join the mob that shut him down when he was invited to speak at Stanford Law School. If you’re desperate to get the dean’s attention when you want to silence speakers, you go over-the-top and call the speech “violence.” 

Sadly, there are enough of these examples to fill a book. They all speak to a new environment where feelings come before freedom; where speakers and professors must walk on eggshells and censor themselves for fear of being mobbed and cancelled.

Where does the Jewish community fit in all this?

For starters, in its fight against antisemitism, American Jewry must be careful not to join the speech killers. Instead of countering offensive speech with censorship, we ought to counter it with more speech.

As Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis famously wrote in 1927, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Just as we can’t force America haters not to desecrate the flag, we can’t force Jew haters not to spew their venom. By all means, let’s use the law to combat antisemitic violence and incitement to violence. But rather than trying to silence every offensive voice, let’s use our own voices to expose lies and haters while encouraging the deeper, more vibrant debates that will move our country forward.

Jews must rise above the emotional skirmishes of censorship and become champions of old-fashioned free speech, regardless of ideology.

Let the woke hecklers be the crybullies who can’t tolerate having their feelings hurt. Being heirs to a tradition of Talmudic disputation, Jews must rise above the emotional skirmishes of censorship and become champions of old-fashioned free speech, regardless of ideology.

As you’ll read in Bloch’s essay, there are rays of hope. Among them, Harvard Professor Pinker has helped launch the Council on American Freedom, a faculty-led initiative devoted to upholding three principles: Free inquiry, intellectual diversity and civil discourse. 

For this new movement to gain traction, it’ll need to inject true ideological diversity in college culture and resuscitate the very ideal of free speech. This ideal demands that hecklers don’t get a veto on who gets to speak. Students must accept that they don’t have the right to not be offended, either by a controversial speaker or a flag burner.

Yes, our constitutional freedom even protects the right to burn the American flag. But it also protects the freedom to safely engage in the difficult, messy and argumentative search for truth that is the lifeblood of any healthy society or university.

That freedom is priceless, but are universities willing to pay for it?