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SendPosted on 10/20/2003 11:50:39 PM PDT by Andy from Beaverton
College Lite: less filling, tastes great?
Andrew Grossman (archive)
October 17, 2003 | Print | Send
Listening to talk radio could get you expelled from Bucknell University. Really.
Students at Bucknell, in Pennsylvania, are prohibited from engaging in "bias-related behavior," that is, "any action that discriminates against, ridicules, humiliates, or otherwise creates a hostile environment for another individual or group because of race, religion, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, gender, language, or beliefs."
Few radio shows, even on NPR, could pass that standard. Forget about music, too, although classical and jazz could be OK. Just not Wagner, of course.
Although especially stringent, Bucknell's speech code is hardly unusual. Hundreds of universities and colleges have in place restrictions on what their students, faculty, and staff may say to one another or in public forums.
David Bernstein traces the history of campus speech codes and, more generally, the insidious effects of antidiscrimination laws, in his forthcoming book You Can't Say That (Cato, 2003). The first explicit codes, which began appearing in the 1980s, banned speech of a politically incorrect nature, that being anything upsetting to a racial, sexual, or ethnic group. These rules were often vaguely tailored and inconsistently applied. For example, the University of Michigan's rule banning speech that "stigmatizes or victimizes" with regard to race provided little guidance to students unsure of what they could and could not say.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a string of federal court decisions overturned speech codes at Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and other public universities. A 1992 Supreme Court decision, R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, provided further clarity: governments (of which public schools are an arm) may only ban "fighting words" and, even then, must hold all fighting words to a similar standard.
Instead of halting the spread of speech codes, the 1992 decision was merely a speed bump. Cajoled by a 1994 Department of Education ruling that held a school liable for creating a "hostile educational environment" by not banning offensive speech, school administrators redoubled their censorious efforts. Despite a recent about-face by the DOE, students still suffer today these hostile regimes.
Typifying them, Shippensburg University, a public school, requires its students to "mirror" university policy in matters of "racial tolerance, cultural diversity and social justice." Moreover, students may be punished if they "provoke, harass, intimidate, or harm another." One wonders if Shippensburg's rules allow for parliamentary debate or a model UN.
Though Shippensburg's speech code lives in its student handbook, the university has been enjoined from enforcing it by a federal judge, in response to a suit filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) on behalf of two students. This outcome was foreseeable; when public universities don't fold at the threat of legal action (as they usually do), common sense and the First Amendment prevail in the courtroom. Still, the resources that would be required to cleanse all public schools of their speech codes would be tremendous.
At an increasing numbers of private universities, speech codes have become a normal part of campus life. First Amendment claims hold no legal sway in private institutions and may even, as Bernstein suggests, guarantee private schools the right to restrict speech if they so choose.
Despite the lack of legal standing, FIRE has had some success on private campuses by "bringing the betrayal of liberty into the sunlight of public opinion." So long as alumni, donors, students, and parents influence universities and continue to disdain speech codes, extra-legal means will often prevail. To that end, FIRE has compiled a database of speech restrictions at hundreds of universities and made it available at speechcodes.org. Finally, parents, potential students, and others have the ability to look beyond the lip service that schools offer to "free speech" and see how schools really stack up.
Looking beyond matters of law and preference, the existence of speech codes threatens the vitality and viability of liberal arts education. By elevating comfort above intellectual diversity, scholarship, and debate, such restrictions necessarily chill on-campus discussion and promote self-censorship of new or unpopular ideas. When students and faculty are unable to talk about race or religion forthrightly, for example, they are unable to fully explore many great works of art and literature and are the poorer for it. They are unable to air their own preferences and prejudices and explore others' views and reach new conclusions. Even political speech is often threatened; could anything like the civil rights movement have fermented on campuses so burdened?
Worse, students taught to value comfort over intellectual freedom may learn to internalize these attitudes of censorship. In later life, will they be able to speak out in the case of government censorship or other violations of freedom?
Put simply, speech codes can have no place where intellectual development and exploration is meant to thrive. If something like Laura Schlessinger's radio show (offensive to feminists, lesbians, and relativists) is basically verboten, could Joyce's Ulysses (offensive to the Irish, Catholics, and women) or The Bell Curve (offensive to everyone, it seems) be next?
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The Insider's Update is a weekly column that focuses on important issues facing the nation and promotes the broad conservative principles of Townhall.com partners. Andrew Grossman is editor of the Insider magazine, which is published by the Coalition Relations Department of the Heritage Foundation.
©2003 Andrew Grossman
Gee, this statement sounds pretty biased to me.
Fight them back with their own foolishness. The more you force them to give specific examples of what is and is not acceptable, the more you make it evident that the speech codes are to prevent offending liberals - not minorities.
Gee, now that you have footnoted, I guess I'll have to retract my previous post! /sarcasm
It's actually an engineering school almost totally populated by conservative rich white preppy kids.
I agree with you, but would add the word conservative. Conservative white males are "the root of all evil" in the leftist agenda.
The terms racist/racism and sexist/sexiam are hostile leftist epithets, thrown out routinely when the target is white and male and conservative. But leftist white males, (the Clintons and Ted Kennedys of the world) are not so vilely treated.
Not all. Bill Clinton's sexual prey were all women, as far as we know. Perhaps he was homosexual in spirit, but not, apparently, in the flesh.
He certainly did the homosexuals a good turn when he first took office (sarcasm). If you recall, many homosexual military members voluntarily outed themselves on or soon after inauguration day because of Candidate Clinton's repeated promises to change the rules against homosexuals in the military. They were then discharged when Clinton flip-flopped on that promise. Why they continued to support him after that kind of betrayal is a mystery to me.
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