Freedom of Speech Under Fire?
A spirited defense of academic freedom from Saturday’s Washington Post takes up the dire Academic Bill of Rights. Peddled by controversialist David Horowitz and his cohorts, the ABOR is couched in the language of academic freedom while promoting its opposite. Claiming as its goal the "protection’" of students from "the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature," ABOR attempts to establish the right of external authorities to police what is taught by lecturers. As the author of Saturday’s op-ed put it: "ABOR's backers argue that professors presenting new ideas might "indoctrinate" or offend students. Their bill denies us the right to evaluate the merits of ideas and arguments for ourselves by banning "political" or "anti-religious" speech from classrooms."
Of course the bluster of Horowitz et. al. should not be taken too seriously. Their position is defensive—a recognition of the liberal hegemony that reigns within the university system. In fact, the threat to academic freedom today seems as likely to emerge from students themselves, as argued by Wendy Kaminer in this attack of those she calls "little authoritarians." Discussion is being curtailed, Kaminer argues, on the basis "that there is some right, some civil right, not to be offended, which trumps somebody else’s right to speak in a way that you find offensive." Anybody who has spent time on a campus recently will recognize this trend. Both left and right use the notion of offense to suppress arguments with which they disagree; liberals to suppress homophobic speech, Zionists to suppress criticism of Israel, pro-Palestinian groups to suppress Zionists etc. etc.
It is not hard to see how we lose out through this process. Arguments go unheard or unchallenged, and we undermine the notion of our own rationality by underestimating our ability to distinguish between good and bad ideas. Importantly though, this censorious climate does not amount to an attack on freedom of speech in a conventional sense (or the way that Horowitz’s Bill, should it gain more influence, might do). It is authoritarianism from below, not above. According to this fresh and insightful essay by Dolan Cummings, research director for the British-based thinktank, The Institute of Ideas, this last fact partially explains the lackluster defense of freedom of speech that characterizes recent times. Indeed, he argues, at a time when, in the West, most of us enjoy freedom of speech, we have ceased to value it as an absolute. He states that, “[b]izarrely, most of us, most of the time, have free speech in reality, but not in principle, in practice but not in theory.”
As we have argued before, people do not experience liberty as necessity today. This extends to the question of freedom of speech. But it would be odd to set out to defend freedom of speech in and of itself. It is an issue that has historically been contested as part of a broader political program. Such contestation took the form of the Protestant struggle against the hegemony of the Catholic Church in reformation Europe, an example Cummings brings up. More closely related to the topic of this blog, would be the original freedom of speech movement that developed at Berkeley during the 1960s. There, students organizing the anti-war movement found their political activities were curtailed by the university authorities. They were forced to create a broad coalition that addressed the new question head on. All of which is to say, a defense of freedom of speech requires that people have something of import to say. In the absence of broader political activity, the concept of free speech, indeed its very value, becomes difficult to discern.
Not that the ‘soft’ limitations on free speech are unproblematic. As John Kerry discovered this week, ‘supporting the troops’ is a prerequisite to being a part of any political discussion today. And we have written before about the way that the concept of security acts as a limitation on the contemporary political imagination. The problems for free speech of "little authoritarianism" will only best be understood and combatted, however, when we begin to push the current limits of political possibility. The boundaries of freedom of speech will become apparent when ideas once again take on a concrete aspect.
Of course the bluster of Horowitz et. al. should not be taken too seriously. Their position is defensive—a recognition of the liberal hegemony that reigns within the university system. In fact, the threat to academic freedom today seems as likely to emerge from students themselves, as argued by Wendy Kaminer in this attack of those she calls "little authoritarians." Discussion is being curtailed, Kaminer argues, on the basis "that there is some right, some civil right, not to be offended, which trumps somebody else’s right to speak in a way that you find offensive." Anybody who has spent time on a campus recently will recognize this trend. Both left and right use the notion of offense to suppress arguments with which they disagree; liberals to suppress homophobic speech, Zionists to suppress criticism of Israel, pro-Palestinian groups to suppress Zionists etc. etc.
It is not hard to see how we lose out through this process. Arguments go unheard or unchallenged, and we undermine the notion of our own rationality by underestimating our ability to distinguish between good and bad ideas. Importantly though, this censorious climate does not amount to an attack on freedom of speech in a conventional sense (or the way that Horowitz’s Bill, should it gain more influence, might do). It is authoritarianism from below, not above. According to this fresh and insightful essay by Dolan Cummings, research director for the British-based thinktank, The Institute of Ideas, this last fact partially explains the lackluster defense of freedom of speech that characterizes recent times. Indeed, he argues, at a time when, in the West, most of us enjoy freedom of speech, we have ceased to value it as an absolute. He states that, “[b]izarrely, most of us, most of the time, have free speech in reality, but not in principle, in practice but not in theory.”
As we have argued before, people do not experience liberty as necessity today. This extends to the question of freedom of speech. But it would be odd to set out to defend freedom of speech in and of itself. It is an issue that has historically been contested as part of a broader political program. Such contestation took the form of the Protestant struggle against the hegemony of the Catholic Church in reformation Europe, an example Cummings brings up. More closely related to the topic of this blog, would be the original freedom of speech movement that developed at Berkeley during the 1960s. There, students organizing the anti-war movement found their political activities were curtailed by the university authorities. They were forced to create a broad coalition that addressed the new question head on. All of which is to say, a defense of freedom of speech requires that people have something of import to say. In the absence of broader political activity, the concept of free speech, indeed its very value, becomes difficult to discern.
Not that the ‘soft’ limitations on free speech are unproblematic. As John Kerry discovered this week, ‘supporting the troops’ is a prerequisite to being a part of any political discussion today. And we have written before about the way that the concept of security acts as a limitation on the contemporary political imagination. The problems for free speech of "little authoritarianism" will only best be understood and combatted, however, when we begin to push the current limits of political possibility. The boundaries of freedom of speech will become apparent when ideas once again take on a concrete aspect.
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