The Free Speech Straw Man (Dissent Blog)

This article is part of a forum on “Free Speech on Campus.” To read contributions by David A. Bell, Jim Sleeper, and Anne-Laure White, click here.

This year, the Right revived a favorite straw man; his name is Free Speech. With each moment that students participated in uprisings, Free Speech’s heart beat a little faster and his spine straightened. According to the talking heads on cable news, he was devastated when students at Yale were asked to celebrate Halloween respectfully or simply asked for universities to consider their fear and anxiety in the face of racist and homophobic threats made against them. But Free Speech didn’t feel sad for too long. He repeatedly found an audience among those who scoffed at calls to improve campus diversity and equity. Free Speech found himself the topic of numerous editorials and think pieces. All in all, Free Speech had a splendid academic year.

For those of us who actually work on college campuses—rather than simply critique them from afar—the complexity of how to build and maintain our communities in the face of ideological and social discord is daunting. We know the arguments for respecting and valuing a myriad of opinions. Universities are supposed to exemplify the free exchange of ideas. But our ideas are only effective when they emerge from substance, not straw. Unlike other public and private spaces, the conversations on a college campus do not occur or grow in a vacuum. The speech that is expressed here travels across the expanse of our schools—from the mind of a student or a professor, into shared residences and libraries, and out into a watchful world, which sees us as either part of the problem or part of the solution.

Continue Reading: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/free-speech-campus-straw-man