Free speech at the university: a way forward

Universities are challenged today to reconsider the boundaries of free expression.

As places where knowledge is developed and disseminated, universities must provide freedom to inquire, question and probe established views and new visions without fear of retribution or silencing.

But some students claim that the price paid for free speech is too high, especially when universities defend biased and bigoted speech; at the same time, some politicians argue that universities fail to protect a broad enough range of views and opinions, especially conservative ones.

How should universities respond? I suggest an approach which I call ‘inclusive freedom’, designed to protect the core values and practices of the university.

Within the diverse legal contexts in which higher education institutions operate globally, many currently encounter a common challenge in pressure from students (and faculty) to limit speech protections and to restrict the speech of instructors, students and invited speakers.

As I advise universities in their efforts to develop policies regarding speech protection and to help them implement these policies and address tensions, I observe a pattern of concerns: students are calling for administrators to limit faculty who engage in speech that they see as offensive, for instance, anti-immigrant statements, racial bias or religious intolerance; in some places students raise concerns regarding the views of invited speakers, for example, when those are opposed to equal gay rights and thus might hurt their fellow LGBT students or when students worry that their views might demean members of other minority groups on campus.

Inclusive freedom

My suggested response is anchored in the core mission of the university. Today’s forms of diversity at the university – racial and ethnic, religious, class-based and national – reflects an expansion of the university’s mission.

The expanding reach of higher education, its increasing globalisation and the expectation that universities admit diverse students and prepare them for evolving market needs as well as for their democratic roles, all require rethinking the forms of knowledge we produce and the ways in which we disseminate it.

An inclusive freedom approach can offer an effective response to the challenge of educating more diverse students to their roles in a changing economy and a polarised political sphere.

An inclusive freedom framework continues to take seriously the importance of a free and open exchange of ideas as a necessary condition for the pursuit of knowledge and as a contributing condition to the development of civic and democratic capacities.

Expressing views, trying new ideas, freely exchanging perspectives and visions about a variety of topics, are necessary aspects of research as well as learning and therefore open expression is at the heart of our work.

Inclusive freedom lends similar weight to the related demand that all members of the university community be able to participate in this free and open exchange if it is to accomplish the goals of free inquiry, open-minded research and equal access to learning and to civic development.

Protecting free inquiry without taking steps to ensure that all members can in practice speak up and share their views, leads to an impoverished conversation. If we cannot hear everyone, then we cannot learn from everyone and we cannot ensure that we are teaching everyone.

The search for truth

Therefore we should respond to concerns about harmful speech not by using censorship and speech restrictions. There are other tools we can use and which are readily available to universities: education about the importance of free expression and equality; making space for activism; support for student voices, particularly those who are harmed or marginalised by some protected speech; and a clear expression of the values the university stands for.

Universities need to affirm their commitment to protecting the broadest possible range of views, perspectives and hypotheses in their effort to push the boundaries of knowledge. At the same time, our role is not to simply present a range of views but rather to develop and use tools for assessing and evaluating the content of speech, considering the truth value of statements, the relevance of arguments, the evidence and precedence available.

Today, many universities face external pressures to include certain ideological perspectives in the name of viewpoint diversity.

Allowing politicians instead of scholars to judge the quality of academic work undermines a key contribution of higher education, namely, its focus on knowledge production regardless of political expediency or ideological consideration.

Our ability to respond to the internal pressures from students and faculty who call on universities to limit harm to members of our community which biased speech might cause, as well as to respond to the external political pressure to regulate our members’ speech, requires insisting on the autonomy and independence of the university, and on its protection of expressive freedom and inclusion as key values.

This autonomy is viable to the functioning of universities and their ability to continue making social contributions in the face of mounting pressures.

I am often heartened by the work that universities take on to ensure that all voices can be heard in the face of internal demands from students that some speech be censored and of external demands from legislatures and other forces to limit student protest or other dissenting voices.

To remain committed to our core mission, universities must commit to protecting a broad boundary of expression, so that we can continue to push the boundaries of knowledge in the service of our countries and of humanity. We must do so without losing sight of the price paid by some of our members for certain forms of expression, especially in these polarised times.

We must take an active stance in support of all our members’ equal dignity, so that they are all able to contribute to our shared mission; and we must maintain our autonomy as we represent our institutions for what they are: among the most ardent protectors of open expression in democracies today.

Sigal Ben-Porath is professor of education, political science and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. This is an excerpt from a talk given at the annual Magna Charta Observatory meeting, October 2019.