Campus Free Speech in Polarised Times

A. Speech Battle on College Campuses

Freedom of thought, and liberty more broadly, is an ideal that can be realised through the rejection of intolerance and through openness to dialogue. Today, the freedom to express intolerant views has become a matter of struggle, requiring universities to consider their foundational values and common practices. Internally, universities are challenged to consider the price that some of their members pay for maintaining their commitment to 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. This freedom is central to research, to teaching and to learning. Speech protections are therefore necessary if researchers and their students are to make the kinds of contributions that society expects them to make, and for which they come to the university. At the same time, universities need to consider the uneven costs of hateful speech borne by some members of the community.

This is not the first era in American or global history when free speech was high on students’ minds and spilling over to the public debate. In the 1960s, anti-war and pro-civil rights riots took over campuses across Europe. In the United States, students were protesting the Vietnam War and the administration’s policies in rowdy, sometimes violent marches. Civil rights struggles had a significant presence and impact on college campuses, and free speech tensions revolved around students’ right to express unpopular and radical views.

The framing of today’s campus speech struggles is different. According toa recent survey, most American undergraduates believe First Amendment rights are secure. ¹ At the same time, nearly half think some restrictions on free speech are justified. Consequently, many students today frame their concern around the threat that certain views pose to themselves or their peers and their community, contrary to the common concerns in the late 1960s, when students were mostly concerned about threats to their ability to express their dissenting views. As the report accompanying the survey indicates, ‘Students do appear to distinguish controversial views from what they see as hate. Theybelieve colleges should be allowed to establish policies restricting language and behavior that are intentionally offensive to certain groups, but not the expression of political views that may upset or offend members of certain groups’. ² These sentiments are echoed, and the support for them are even stronger, in thefindings of an annual survey from the University of California, Los Angeles(UCLA). ³ Roughly 71 percent of this national sample of students agreed that schools should be allowed to place restrictions on offensive costumes, and racist or sexist speech on campus, up from 60 percent who agreed to the same restrictions in the early 1990s.

For some commentators especially on the right, this is a mark of political correctness, ‘snowflake’ vulnerability and an abdication of all that is right and good about American democracy. ⁴ Many on both the right and the left worry that the diminished value students attach to the protection of free speech indicates a dangerous slide towards authoritarian control of opinions, or a retreat to comfort that relies on rejecting any view that might disrupt the orthodoxy of the day. ⁵ These concerns, I will argue, are for the most part exaggerated. Clearly students are young and have more to learn about the centrality of speech protection to the stability of a tolerant and open democracy, and to the protection of minority views and groups. American students are woefully unprepared in terms of their knowledge levels in civics and history and do not get sufficient exposure to and discussion of constitutional rights generally and the First Amendment specifically. ⁶ However, critiques voiced by students, while sometimes ill-informed or problematic in some ways, are not wholly without merit, and they deserve attention and consideration rather than alarm over their supposed rejection of free speech. The generational shift in focus, towards voicing greater concern regarding potential harms caused by open expression particularly on college campuses, can contribute to the expansion and strengthening of open expression on college campuses (and beyond).

Within the diverse legal contexts in which global higher education institutions operate, 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. Many universities and colleges experiencea 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 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) students, or when students worry that their views might demean members of other minority groups on campus.

Universities and colleges are institutions with aims that go well beyond the general goals of a democratic republic, and it makes sense for them to be organised and managed based on additional principles beyond the broad legal and constitutional ones. Moreover, as diverse educational contexts, colleges indeed should be concerned about inclusion and about actively creating a sense of connection and belonging. All this does not mean that free speech is unimportant for the research, learning, and civic training missions of the university. It means, rather, that the implementation of free speech principles might reasonably look different on a college green than it does in the town’s square.

The core mission of the university should guide the response of higher education institutions to the internal struggles over free speech. To clarify, in the United States the law requires viewpoint neutrality and thus permits expressions of bigotry and bias, whereas in the rest of the democratic world basic democratic norms of equal dignity are usually enforced through a variety of laws that forbid and punish hate speech. These legal frameworks provide the context in which universities operate, but they are not the only context that inform our approach to open expression – it is not enough to simply look to the law (or the courts) to determine speech policy in higher education, rather universities should ensure that their values and goals are reflected in their practices.

Academic freedom is meant to protect researchers from political, institutional and other pressures as they work to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. I will not enumerate here all the protections it provides but will focus for the purpose of the current discussion on main aspects relevant to speech protection. ⁷ For instance, academic freedom is meant to protect free inquiry in the search for knowledge. The goal of the advancement of knowledge in certain ways limits free speech, because it precludes in the context of research certain forms of speech – for example, it precludes plagiarism or mischaracterisation of the results of research, even if those are protected by free speech. Still, academic freedom uses mechanisms like tenure to protect professors who may not be penalised for pursuing controversial lines of work and expressing unpopular views.

Various types of speech are legally prohibited or regulated both on and off campus. Courts have recognised, for example, that harassment of one student by another can limit the harassed student’s access to educational opportunities. ⁸ Other forms of speech that constitute threats or defamation can also be legally regulated. Attempting to clarify the boundaries that limit acceptable expression, some schools have adopted speech codes that list certain forms of speech that should be avoided on campus. Policies that forbid offensive speech, that list specific words or forms of expression that should not be used and that limit protests and demonstrations to specific areas or times, are all forms of speech codes. In recent years ‘acceptable use’ policies of technology platforms as well as an evolving response to hateful speech represent their regulatory efforts to restrict expression online. Organisations dedicated to First Amendment protections like FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) ⁹ use an expansive view of speech codes, defining them as ‘any university regulation or policy that prohibits expression that would be protected by the First Amendment in society at large. Any policy –such as a harassment policy, a protest and demonstration policy, or an IT acceptable use policy –can be a speech code if it prohibits protected speech or expression’. ¹⁰ Speech codes should indeed be seen as infringements on free expression and academic exchange, and at least as importantly, as ineffective ways to deal with speech concerns on campus.

Speech codes illustrate the ways that colleges attempt to respond to the unique challenges that they face around free speech. However, speech codes and legal regulations are no substitute for an ongoing, clear commitment by college leadership to create and sustain an environment conducive to open expression. While such an environment must operate within the boundaries of legal requirements, a more nuanced, responsive and relational approach can often accomplish what a hundred regulations cannot. Any time (and especially in times of political and social tensions) a college can affirm in the broadest possible terms its commitment to the principle of free expression, and demonstrate its willingness to devote resources, including staff, to upholding this principle, the college should do so. This is what its mission of expanding the boundaries of knowledge and transmitting this knowledge to future generations entails.

The university’s historic mission, as noted, requires broad speech protections so that unpopular and unorthodox views can be voiced and considered, allowing mainstream, popular and orthodox views to be questioned and tested. Contemporary struggles regarding the boundaries of legitimate expression at universities need to be understood and addressed in light of the expansion of this mission, and the changing social and political environment in which it takes place. To illustrate, consider the role polarisation and diversity play in shaping the social world in which young people today are brought up.

The current generation lives in a polarised political sphere, and their views are shaped by this polarisation as well as by the diversifying societies they inhabit. Polarisation is evident today in many democratic countries, and in the United States is suggested to be the result of greater ideological commitments, changes in the composition of both political parties, and other developments make up the conditions for a more polarised public sphere. ¹¹ Polarisation, as well as increasing geographic separation by ideology, ¹² results in limited exposure of young people to competing worldviews and to increased distrust of those who hold them. ¹³ This distrust results in an array of political problems, but for the current discussion it is important to note two of them: distrust results in reluctance to engage with those who do not share one’s views because of an assumption of negative motivations or character, an issue that is of special concern in the context of a residential campus that aims to create a community of living and learning together; distrust also tends to support entrenchment, which runs counter to the open-mindedness that undergirds the search for truth in which universities are engaged.

In addition to the growing visibility and impact of polarisation on the United States, as on many contemporary democracies, many of these societies are becoming more diverse in ways that shape the boundaries of campus open expression and reorganises the ways in which struggles over acceptable speech play out. It is not only the broader society that is becoming more diverse as a result of various processes from immigration to gender expression; universities are increasingly diversifying as well. Long dedicated to educating elites, preparing the next generation of political, religious and economic leaders, in recent decades universities around the globe opened their gates to include members of groups that were never considered admissible. Women, and applicants who belong to racial and religious minority groups, along with those from all social classes, have changed the composition of the students and staff. These newer members bring with them new types of knowledge, and they reasonably expect that admission affords them not only access to the institution as it is, but also the opportunity to contribute to the university’s structures, practices and epistemologies. These expectations carry significant consequences for the particulars of speech protection within the university.

Why would changes in demographic makeup require that universities rethink the way they delineate and protect free speech? The response has to start from the question, ‘is the academy equally free for all its members?’ Decades ago, when newly admitted or promoted women in some institutions called for the expansion of the canon to include works and perspectives by women, their point was not just that excluding women authors from syllabi was harmful or offensive (though it surely reflected bias) but also that it reflected laziness of thought and resulted in poorer quality of both research and teaching. Assuming that the university could simply add women without any curricular changes ignored how the university’s mission was advanced by widening perspectives. Expectations about institutional relations needed – and still need – to change accordingly.

Today, the diversity of the campus community is not merely a result of changing demographics in the country, but in fact reflects an expansion of the university’s social mission. While maintaining its commitment to research and inquiry, the university has grown from an institution that serves a small segment of the population deemed eligible to become religious, political, economic and thought leaders to one that serves as an engine for social mobility and equal opportunity. Contemporary demands that high schools prepare all students to be ‘career and college ready’, a graduation rate that now possibly exceeds 80 percent, and the diverse pool of applicants creates changes well beyond the college admissions office. The evolving makeup of the community on campus requires attention to the ways in which members of groups that were excluded either formally or effectively in the past are incorporated into campus. To welcome and include members of diverse genders, races, income levels and other attributes and indicators, campuses should be responsive to the needs of relatively new populations. ¹⁴ Many colleges are learning to recognise that a part of the attention that needs to be paid to a diverse student body relates to speech and expression. The needed changes include rethinking the ways diverse views, perspectives and expressions are welcomed and responded to. 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 speak up and share their views – not just formally, but in practice and without being dismissed or silenced based on their identity – leads to an impoverished conversation. If instructors and university leaders cannot hear everyone, they cannot learn from everyone, nor ensure that they are teaching everyone.

Even a campus community that is relatively homogenous by some measures and calm in terms of the relational issues that give rise to free speech concerns still resides within the same diverse, polarised country. While the campus may serve as respite or ‘safe space’ to study and socialise, part of the campus mission is still to challenge students, to make them think, to expand their intellectual horizons, and to prepare them for their civic roles. To do so, even a more homogenous institution, and even ones whose mission is tied to a set of values (explicitly, as in religious institutions, or more implicitly, as in one promoting certain social views) needs to expose students to some of the tensions and disagreements that they might encounter beyond the institution’ gates. Presenting only a delimited set of views stands the risk limiting the ability of students (and others) to understand or argue for why they hold these views. As J.S. Mill famously notes, ‘However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration of however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not living truth’. ¹⁵

The leadership of the institution, as well as some of the faculty, may recoil from this suggestion, fearing the possibility of raising tensions where none exist. Clearly there is no need to generate artificial tensions or clashes, but students deserve the opportunity to grow and expand their perspectives. Preserving a false sense of security that comes from never having one’s views challenged or encountering diverse peers (or faculty) limits the benefits that college should provide. Addressing these challenges requires a framework that is aimed at protecting free speech for all members of the institution community in ways that support the development of an inclusive environment.

The commitment to open expression and the commitment to inclusion are commonly portrayed as being in tension with one another, and indeed they sometimes collide as in the cases I mentioned, particularly around the expression of biased views that threaten to harm some members of the community. But overall, this is a false dichotomy and a misrepresentation of these two values – inclusion and freedom (especially freedom of expression) – as mutually exclusive. As values, they can readily align the importance of free speech protections to elevating the expression of marginalised groups is recognised; and when the centrality of diverse opinions to sustaining a rich and open discussion in which multiple opinions are raised is recognised. In fact, universities address both commitments at once by ensuring a robust and open inquiry in which all can equally participate. In cases of bigoted, biased and otherwise controversial views, speech can legitimately be seen as exclusionary and thus undermines the equal standing of diverse members of the community. Focusing on these marginal cases can be helpful to improve a university’s practice and its climate, but it also distracts from the fact that for the most part the two values go hand in hand, especially in the higher education context. In these marginal cases, inclusive freedom distinguishes between speech that is based in an effort to take intellectual risks, and to explore new (even unpopular) ideas; and on the other hand, speech that is causing dignitary harms – ideas that are silencing and marginalising, compounding existing forms of exclusion and discrimination. ¹⁶

It is helpful to unpack the concept of ‘harm’ in order to understand the claim that inclusion and free speech can coincide rather than stand in opposition, and to try and bridge the divide between those who seek to protect speech from attacks by advocates of inclusion, and those who seek to protect minority groups from attacks by advocates of free speech.

The notion of harm has been central to the liberal debate at least since it was articulated by John Stuart Mill, who noted that ‘. . .the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’.Harm to others is thus to him the only justified reason to limit the freedom of any member in a democratic community, although Mill is sometimes understood to have envisioned ‘harm’ as a more limited concept, and thus to have claimed that you still have a right to speak even if your words harm others. ¹⁷ As articulated by Cornel West and Robert P. George, two eminent scholars who represent opposing ideological views, ‘All of us should be willing – even eager – to engage with anyone who is prepared to do business in the currency of truth-seeking discourse by offering reasons, marshaling evidence, and making arguments’. ¹⁸ By this view, very few instances of speech can constitute harm, if harm even remains a relevant aspect of the open expression debate. There remain instances that are prohibited by law or doctrine, such as yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre, harassing or publicly making libellous statements, but other than these legally recognised harms, words cannot be limited for their impact. Mill frames this approach as he generally is understood to have permitted speech – as long as it does not devolve into action – to flourish, as the key way of permitting freedom of thought.

However, this expansive view of free speech – whether or not it can still effectively organise a democratic vision of free expression that can capture current technological and political changes – does not encompass fully the role of speech in higher education, particularly when accounting for the truth-seeking research mission of the university, and even more so when acknowledging the values and mission of the educational community on campus. Forms of expression (and behaviour) that were seen as mainstream when the campus was all-male or all-white, or when it was presumed to be all-straight, such as using casual sexist, anti-gay and racist language are being challenged by some as preventing members of these newer or newlyvisible groups from being recognised as full members of the campus community. While the possible impact of words can be part of the consideration, both immediately and in the aggregate through the accumulation of small harms, the tools that the university might use in response so such harms are varied, and surely include more than simple censorship. While some speech may be deemed harmful enough to lawfully censor or silence – again, libel, harassment etc. – speech that does not rise to this level but still hurts might still merit a response. Once the university, at the relevant levels of leadership, recognise the harmful impact of even legally permissible expression, it can develop a broad array of responses. These can mitigate the harms while maintaining its commitment to protecting a broad domain of free speech. Some staunch advocates of the First Amendment to the US constitution, or to expansively protected freedom of speech, insists that speech as such cannot truly cause harm, and that even offensive speech can be addressed through the use of ‘more speech, not enforced silence’. ¹⁹ This view fails to recognise power differences among speakers, as well as the accumulating and silencing effect of incessant denigrating, ridiculing or rejecting expression toward members of some groups (racial and ethnic minorities, women, sexual and gender minorities etc.). a university needs to recognise that some forms of expression are protected and lawful, but still merit a response if the campus is to maintain a welcoming and open climate in which all can participate in a learning and thriving community.

The power to respond to the expression often resides at the hands of university leadership, but individual members of the university, and especially faculty and students, can still decide which speech and what views they engage with, and in what ways. Some speech may be deemed unworthy of one’s attention, even if this line is often hard to draw. Famously, when challenged to debate Sir Oswald Mosley, a leader of the British Fascist movement, Sir Bertrand Russell, declined: ‘the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us’, he said. Refusing or declining to debate certain ideas can be a matter of principle and can also reflect a value commitment that in itself merits expression.

Advocates’ calls to ‘de-platform’ (or to ‘cancel’) vile speakers might miss the mark when they seek to avoid perspectives that deserve or, at the very least, require dialogue –if some or many in society hold certain views, even reprehensible ones, avoiding them does nothing to challenge them. ‘Given the trends of cancelled lectures, ever-increasing calls to disinvite speakers, and ideological bullying on college campuses, we must take a stand for civil discourse and reasoned engagement. We must show that universities can host respectful conversations among people who disagree’. ²⁰ But clearly intellectual exchange is not the focus for everyone. Rather, progressive activists are concerned that voicing what they perceive – often correctly – as racially charged or even racist views, would harm members of racial minority groups on campus and therefore should be silenced. For them, standing for civil discourse and reasoned engagement, and even more so the commitment to respectful conversation, requires that speakers respect all their audience members, a stance that misogyny, homophobia and racism preclude.

This is the crux of the response leaders can and should offer to internal challenges they face from students (and faculty) who demand greater speech restrictions against biased and bigoted speech. When open expression is properly tied to the university’s mission, it protects everyone, and supports an inclusive environment. Restriction on speech threatens this inclusive environment. Therefore, universities should not respond to concerns about harmful speech by using censorship and speech restrictions (beyond what are local laws require), at least initially. There are other tools that can be used, and which are readily available to universities: education, activism, support for student voices, clear expression of values and support for inclusive freedom, both in statement and through our actions. The conclusion will include some related tools for realising this vision, but let me turn first to the related external pressures universities face in implementing an inclusive freedom approach.

B. Challenges to Campus Speech from Outside Actors

At the same time that mission changes and cultural shifts present these internal tensions around the boundaries of legitimate expression, universities experience a growing external pressure by politicians and organised groups to expand the presence of specific ideas in their classrooms and events.

In the United States as well as in other democracies, right-wing politicians and individuals who ascribe to conservative ideologies are taking steps to expand viewpoint diversity, and increase the presence of conservative views on campus, the attention given to them, and their acceptability within debates in classroom, organisations and campus events. Driven by concern about the documented relative paucity of conservative and right-leaning views in many universities, outside groups and public speakers advance the effort to diversify the views presented on campus. Their goal is often presented as an attempt to undermine perceived orthodoxies of thought and authoritative knowledge about politicised topics. The demands to expand viewpoint diversity are often presented as belonging with the effort to diversify the institution, this time along ideological and political lines and framed as a matter of protecting conservative speech from censorship and suppression by students or administrators. The pressure to diversify the ideological makeup of the campus can be a helpful way to both support students and faculty who endorse less common views, and to expose all students to the diversity of perspectives and ideologies held by their peers and colleagues, or in society more broadly. This is important for achieving some of the key goals of speech protections as well as for advancing some aspects of the core mission of the university.

Ideological diversity, and exposure to diverse views on social and political matters, can help students understand the breadth of opinions in the society they inhabit, which is an opportunity uniquely possible on a college campus (since high schools are less open to discussion and less diverse, as are faith organisations; and workplaces often do not encourage political exchange). This is important for fulfilling the civic mission of colleges and universities, as it can help students consider their own positions, and those of others, and have discussions in a supportive environment, in which learning and changing is part of the overall expectation.

Ideological diversity can help alleviate some of the effects of ideological uniformity, or the sense of uniformity that some perceive to be typical of certain campuses or departments. Particularly such sense of uniformity might promote demands for strict allegiance to an ideological camp, give rise to purity requirements and promote a gradual slide towards more extreme positions. By contrast, evident, outspoken ideological diversity can support students (and faculty) in learning to make the case for their views rather than simply assuming that everyone agrees on a certain point of discussion. Assuming that ‘we all agree’ on a topic can effectively silence individuals who disagree but will feel uncomfortable disclosing their views for fear of retaliation or ostracism, whether this fear is justified or not. Given the arguments presented in the previous section, that the demands of open expression at the university require not only the protection of presumed or hypothetical views but also the real opportunity for all to participate in an open exchange, it is important for the university to ensure that people holding minority views are openly heard.

The main critique of this argument for protecting the expression of minority and controversial views on campus has to do with the legitimacy of some of these views in an educational setting, and with the related politicisation of the struggle over the boundaries of speech on campus. I focus on these below, but first briefly call attention to an important institutional cost of the external demands to enforce ideological diversity, especially when those come from organisations and public officials who are devoted to this value. The cost of their intervention is sometimes paid in institutional autonomy, when supporters of ideological diversity try to impose specific speakers, rules or practices on a university; to the price paid when the mechanism to promote it is through shaming a particular instructor who is seen as unfriendly to dissenting voices; and to the price paid by silencing protesting voices who are opposed to conservative views or to these approaches to advancing them. ²¹

Beyond these institutional concerns, the public debate regarding ideological diversity is wrapped up in the fact that free speech and diversity have themselves become politicised. As such they are used in a partisan manner and as ideological markers in the culture wars, resulting in intense media attention, which exacerbates the tensions around otherwise mundane events. Whereas in the past a possible misstep by an instructor, or a divisive speaker, would gain some attention among interested students and blow over, today such an incident can feed days of news cycles, blogs and responses, and Twitter outrage. Often this cycle leads to additional political pressure to curb certain forms of speech, which are perceived as hate-based and demands on the other side to promote diverse views on campus. Universities ought to learn to manage and respond to these pressures from outside entities in ways that protect a productive environment for research and for learning, and that advances their mission to expand the boundaries of knowledge while education all their students to productively and respectfully engage in open exchange.

Around the globe, in democracies and authoritarian countries, scholars are put at risk as a result of their research, and student activism is stifled and punished. In the United States, a pattern of attempts to legislate restrictions on student protests, either broadly or in regard to specific political issues, is evident. Similar tensions around the boundaries of acceptable speech on college campuses are evident in recent years in many countries. In the UK, the ‘Prevent’ requirements limit some forms of expression and intervene in institutional autonomy, In India, laws that protect religious sentiments, including through the banning of books and films, have been expanded; In Israel as well as the United States, the expression of certain political views critical of the state of Israel is now punishable, and specific legislation and enforcement are targeting protests or other political expression on college campuses. In Brazil, the new government intervenes in higher education to prioritise some domains and defund others; in Hungary, certain subjects cannot be taught anymore, and a reputable university was driven out; in Ontario, Alberta and other Canadian provinces, universities are required to affirm a statement supporting free speech at risk of losing their funding. These are all illustrations of the shared challenges this era presents. Populist movements in many democratic countries promote the view that higher learning insidiously promotes ideologically skewed education. In this unique moment, expert opinion, knowledge and truth – all values that are foundational to higher education – are seen as standing in opposition to populist political visions. This perceived alignment between the university, as an ideal and as an actual institution, and a specific political ideology, thrusts the university into the public sphere in ways that are sometimes detrimental to its functioning. As a result, support for higher education is reduced, public funding is threatened– and, significantly, efforts to legislate curtailing, directing and censoring faculty and student speech as a way to rebalance political ideological expression.

Concern for free speech can mask disdain for the autonomy of higher education institutions, as in the case of the March 2019 executive order from the Trump administration, instructing ‘institutions to foster environments that promote open, intellectually engaging, and diverse debate, including through compliance with the First Amendment for public institutions and compliance with stated institutional policies regarding freedom of speech for private institutions’. ²² This order resulted in a rule proposed by the Department of Education, which would revoke federal funding and threaten possible debarment for any universities deemed to have violated free speech on their campuses. Though this rule would be neutral to the content of speech, it represents another way in which the federal government has attempted to become further involved in the flow of ideas and speech on campuses. ²³

This is typical of what universities face in many countries now and seems to be a part of current struggles against elites in government, the media and higher education, questioning their epistemic authority and social standing. It stems from the tension at the heart of democracy, between the presumed wisdom of self-governing populations and the need for expert knowledge vetted and evaluated by learned elites. Institutions of higher education, transitioning as they are from a venerated ivory tower to a gateway for many into the professional middle class, represent this challenge, but they are also in a position to contribute to its alleviation. The boundaries of acceptable speech, and the permissibility of expressing ideological views – those based on nationalist and exclusionary ideology, as well as those based in values of diversity and inclusion – are issues universities tackle daily, and thus are able to take active steps in addressing them.

The university at its best is an autonomous institution at the heart of societies differently organised. It produces, examines, appraises and hands down knowledge by research and teaching. To meet the needs of the world around it, its research and teaching must be morally and intellectually independent of all political authority.

This vision, which has never been realised fully, and is under intense pressure now. In response to this pressure, 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, universities’ role is not to simply present a range of views but rather to develop and utilise tools for assessing and evaluating the content of speech, considering the truth value of statements, the relevance of arguments, the evidence and precedence available. Judging the content of speech within disciplinary boundaries and professional norms is an ongoing responsibility of scholars and along with this responsibility comes the additional consideration of the preservation of an environment conducive to learning, which is the responsibility of the university as a whole.

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. The ability to respond to the pressures to limit harm to members of the campus community, which biased speech might cause, as well as 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. Internal diversity of views and experiences, and practices and structures that support argumentation, consideration and evaluation, are vital for institutional stability and productivity.

While freedom, especially freedom of speech, is key to the mission of the university, it cannot fulfil this mission if it fails to ensure that all of its members can openly speak and be heard – in other words, without true inclusion, the protection of free expression as a way to maintain an atmosphere of free inquiry and learning cannot be realised. This is especially true when members of the community are silenced, or when some systematically refuse to listen to others based on their identities. Such failure to protect the free exchange of ideas is especially significant because it generates a conversation in which certain voices are consistently missing, and therefore certain perspectives, to the extent that those are related to identity, fail to rich the discussion and enrich it. The result is harm to those who are silenced or whose voices remain unheard when they speak, but also to the discussion itself, and therefore to the very idea and reality of a free exchange. If members of racial or religious minorities are consistently devalued and questioned, if women are consistently intimidated or ridiculed when they participate, then an atmosphere of free inquiry becomes impossible to maintain.

The university community has many tools to address concerns about the exclusion of people or ideas. Student clubs, departments or the administration can take steps in response to exclusionary speech, for example, by elevating the voices of those who are silenced and demeaned by such speech, by emphasising and enacting the inclusive aims of the institution, or by ensuring that there are groups, practices and conditions that allow for all to participate and be heard. Committing to ensure that all voices can be heard, university leaders need to adhere to the principles of open expression and inclusion, even in the face of internal demands from students that some speech be censored, and even in the face of external demands from legislatures and other forces to limit student protest or other dissenting voices. Such commitment requires a broad range of actions, which vary by type of institution, and by the population that the campus serves. In many cases it would include an active education about these values, in diverse settings from new student orientation to student organisations and event, shared reading projects and of course the classroom. Training and supporting faculty members in leading effective classroom discussions is another important context for this work. ²⁴ Beyond this type of work within their institutions, campus members and leaders can support inclusion and open expression by publicly representing their institutions for what they are: places in which those with diverse backgrounds, views and identities, come together to expand their own and society’s knowledge, and where open expression flourishes more than it does in most other contexts today.