December 6, 2007

Campus Speech Codes Abound, Report Says

Many colleges and universities maintain unconstitutional speech codes, according to a report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, echoing a report the group issued a year ago. The group, known as FIRE, asserts that 75 percent of the 346 colleges it surveyed maintain policies that restrict speech protected under the First Amendment. Recently, FIRE has successfully challenged speech restrictions at several institutions, including Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania and Texas Tech University. —Eric Hoover

Comments

1. If it were not for FIRE and organizations like it, our colleges and universities would be PC bastions, structures in which dissent, open inquiry, and vigorous debate would be distant and fading memories. There is much, much profound irony in this fact.

   — Edward    Dec 6, 02:47 PM    #

2. What used to be called the “totalitarian left” has become the left on free speech issues on campus.

   — Dick    Dec 6, 04:30 PM    #

3. FIRE’s report is a fraud.

   FIRE is a right-wing group funded by the Bradley Foundation and Richard Mellon Scaife, who also fund many other far right-wing groups and individuals, like David Horowitz and his group.

   I checked Montclair State University, where I work, on FIRE’s website. Here’s the link:

   http://www.thefire.org/index.php/codes/1005

   NONE of these statements and policies constitute a “speech code” or anything like one. Take a look!

   The 2nd Amendment applies to government institutions. Ask yourself: would behavior such as FIRE describes as a “speech cde” at MSU be tolerated in, say, a city hall? A police station? The capitol building of a state?

   These are all government buildings, just as those at Montclair State, or any State university or college, are.

   FIRE also says that private colleges should not have “speech codes”, though the Constitution does not require them there.

   Would the kind of speech and behavior cautioned against here at MSU and listed on the FIRE web page above be tolerated in any business office you have ever worked at?

   The “facts” in FIRE’s database do NOT demonstrate the existence of any “speech code” here at Montclair State.

   The FIRE report is a right-wing fraud. No doubt its purpose is to convince the public that “political correctness” and “the left” rule in higher education.

   — Grover Furr    Dec 6, 04:33 PM    #

4. Ed: Dissent, open inquiry, and vigorous debate were alive and well in academia long before FIRE came along. FIRE’s bellicose grandstanding creates a false polarity between free speech, as it defines it, and basic standards of civility, which FIRE has decided are an infringement on your and my right to be as disrespectful, hurtful, and bloody minded as we please. That’s the real irony.

   — Steve    Dec 6, 04:36 PM    #

5. Surely FIRE would benefit from lessons in the rules of civility; equally surely Dr. Churchill got singed because academic censorship, veiled as it may be, does exist. Surely, therefore, a golden middle ground could be found if we applied our contentious minds to finding one. Shall we?

   — Dag von Lubitz    Dec 6, 04:48 PM    #

6. The radical left wants to restrict free speech and impose Big Brother controls over thought and conduct. Fortunately groups like FIRE are resisting that movement, which is more widespread on American campuses than elsewhere.

   — Bob Sarbane    Dec 6, 05:15 PM    #

7. The radical RIGHT wants to restrict free speech and impose Big Brother controls over thought and conduct. Fortunately groups like FIRE are supporting that movement, which is more widespread on American campuses than elsewhere.

   — Jeff Ehney    Dec 6, 07:11 PM    #

8. The College at which I work was attacked by this group and my name and those of others at the college were posted on their website even though the group had heard only one side of the incient. Our Honor Principle, which is a 100 year old tradition and part of our mission, is considered to be anti-free speech as is a policy on sexual harassment and other forms of harassment. The group takes an extreme view on free speech issues. Go to the website to see how colleges that you are familiar with are rated to get a sense of the way policies and practices are evaluated. Is it really likely that 75 percent of colleges are anti-free speech? What is their definition of “unconstitutional”?

   — Mary    Dec 6, 08:14 PM    #

9. Montclair State defines free expression as “each of us can feel free to express ourselves in ways that promote openness within a pluralistic and multicultural society.” I think that FIRE is right on target about that one.

   — Adam Reed    Dec 7, 02:15 AM    #

10. The radical left wants to restrict free speech and impose Big Brother controls over thought and conduct. Fortunately groups like FIRE are resisting that movement, which is more widespread on American campuses than elsewhere. (Thanks Bob)

    (Look no capitals, Jeff. I don’t have to scream louder to make my point, I just rely on thoughtful people. Hmmm.)

    — Bob's Right    Dec 7, 07:26 AM    #

11. Grover Furr baselessly attacking FIRE?

    Here we go again.

    First, FIRE is a non-partisan non-profit organization. To be clear: our defense of speech on campus is absolutely and unequivocally viewpoint-neutral. In the past few months alone, we have defended speech from all points on the political spectrum: from Rocky Mountain Collegian editor J. David McSwane at Colorado State University, who faced formal disciplinary charges after publishing an anti-Bush editorial (“Taser this… FUCK BUSH”), to Hamline University student Troy Scheffler, expelled for advocating concealed-carry rights for students; from Valdosta State University student T. Hayden Barnes, expelled for peacefully protesting the construction of a $30 million dollar parking garage on campus, to Indiana University–South Bend student journalist Robert Francis, punished for his review of a student production of The Vagina Monologues. Even the most cursory examination of our case archive – available online – demonstrates FIRE’s commitment to defending the individual rights of all students and faculty, from Ward Churchill to the San Francisco State University College Republicans.

    Second, as we’ve publicly (and patiently, given his seeming propensity for willful ignorance) explained to Mr. Furr at length in the past, FIRE defines a speech code in the most straightforward way possible: i.e., as “any campus regulation that punishes, forbids, heavily regulates, or restricts a substantial amount of protected speech.” The complete success of our Speech Codes Litigation Project – alluded to by Mr. Hoover in the article above – proves that our analysis of the constitutionality of speech codes is jurisprudentially sound.

    Accordingly, FIRE assigns Montclair State University (MSU) a “red light” – meaning that the school’s policies both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech – because several MSU policies facially restrict the rights of students to engage in speech protected by the First Amendment. For ready example, MSU’s “University Code of Conduct” states: “A student will be found responsible for harassment if he or she engages in intimidating verbal, written or physical behavior that is directed at an individual and… c) creates an intimidating, hostile, or demeaning environment for such pursuits, employment or participation.” This policy, while arguably well-intentioned, is both unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. Vague, because students are left to guess at what types of speech will be considered by the relevant authority figure to be “demeaning” or “intimidating,” creating an impermissible “chilling effect” on student speech; and overbroad, because the First Amendment protects vast swaths of speech that could be subjectively considered to be “demeaning.” Indeed, several sections of MSU’s code are strikingly similar to the San Francisco State University code recently struck down by a federal district court on First Amendment grounds.

    Drawing analogies between public universities – which the Supreme Court has identified as “peculiarly the ‘marketplace of ideas,’” stating that “the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools [of higher learning],” Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169, 180 (1972) – and “a city hall” or a “police station,” as Mr. Furr does here, is patently flawed and deeply problematic for obvious reasons. Public universities have both a legal and moral obligation to embrace free expression on campus – not only for purposes of compliance with the First Amendment, but also to ensure that students gain the exposure to the vast world of thought that a modern liberal education requires. Mr. Furr should be embarrassed: To equate a university with a police station for purposes of free expression betrays an exceedingly meager conception of what education should be.

    With regard to private colleges, FIRE respects the right of private institutions to determine for themselves what values are held paramount, consistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of assembly. However, we believe that when private universities make extensive promises of freedom of expression to their students and faculty in promotional materials, regulations, and student and faculty handbooks, they must then be held accountable for breaking those promises, even when their maintenance proves to be less than convenient. To do otherwise is to grant private schools the right to engage in a pernicious bait-and-switch to the profound detriment of both students and faculty.

    In publishing our second annual report on speech codes, FIRE advances no agenda other than our interest in cataloguing and publicizing the myriad ways in which our nation’s public and private institutions fail to fully protect freedom of expression on campus. We encourage all interested to examine the report, its methodology, and our case archive at our website, www.thefire.org.

    — Will Creeley    Dec 7, 01:59 PM    #

12. Little tyrants and idealogues exist throughout academia, on the left and on the right. They routinely make arbitrary and unconstitutional decisions that must be regularly challenged either by FIRE or the ACLU or any watchdog agency. That said, Universities are filled with pathological, self-centered haters and provocateurs of all stripes who demonstrate a total lack of civility and tolerance and, at some point, must be dealt with sternly when they intrude on the well-being of others.

    — marci    Dec 7, 02:27 PM    #

13. Why does Grover Furr continue to commit the package deal fallacy of appending “right wing” to any initiative aimed at exposing 1st Amendment rights violations? (And yes I mean 1st Amendment, not 2nd Amendment as Furr ignorantly demonstrates). I challenge him to demonstrate that FIRE is a right-wing organization through other means than association fallacies which are common among conspiracy theorists. Frankly, it is ironic that such erroneous assertions are coming from a graduate of an institution as prestigious as Princeton.

    — Aaron    Dec 8, 01:34 AM    #

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