Censorship by the free-speech generation

National Forum, Spring 1995 by Garry, Patick M

Thirty years after the beginnings of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, a generational turnaround on censorship seems to have occurred. The politically correct movement has replaced the free-speech movement, and the university is where speech is being most strictly regulated by what was once the free-speech generation. While feminist and civil rights groups previously used their speech freedoms to break down legal and social barriers, many have now turned against those freedoms by supporting speech codes.

Political Correctness and Free Speech

The suffocating effect of political correctness on free speech has been demonstrated by a number of books, the most recent being Richard Bernstein's Dictatorship of Virtue. According to Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, "on many campuses [there is] a culture of forbidden questions." Donald Kagan, a dean at Yale University, has said that at many colleges "there is an imposed conformity of opinion [with] less freedom now than there was [during the days of Joseph McCarthy]."

Not only is the politically correct atmosphere inhibiting free speech on college campuses, but in a complete reversal from the 1960s, First Amendment scholars are focusing more on finding ways to regulate speech than on how to free it. Most academic books on the subject of free speech are critical of Justice Black's absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment that was so popular on college campuses during the 1960s.

In Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech, for instance, Cass Sunstein argues that "currently American law protects much speech that ought not to be protected." Just as Franklin Roosevelt attacked economic laissez-faire, according to Sunstein, the United States must now combat the failure of laissez-faire in the free speech "market." In There's No Such Thing As Free Speech, Stanley Fish suggests that any marketplace of ideas inevitably will be managed by government. And in Only Words, Catharine MacKinnon argues that censorship is a necessary means for women to achieve equality in a male-dominated society.

Speech Codes

Speech codes reflect the most blatant and extreme reaction against free expression in the politically correct academy. Hundreds of colleges have adopted such codes. Donna Shalala, now Secretary of Health and Human Services, presided over the University of Wisconsin as it enacted one of the first university speech codes. Dozens of universities have introduced tough new codes prohibiting speech that leads to, among other things, a "demeaning atmosphere." The University of Michigan, for instance, enacted a code that punishes any speech that stigmatizes or victimizes an individual on the basis of any one of twelve criteria. And the University of Connecticut issued a proclamation banning "inappropriately directed laughter" and "conspicuous exclusion of students from conversations."

The justifications for these codes are the same justifications that have always been used by censors. They present the same arguments used in the 1960s to censor the political radicals. Take, for example, the arguments of Professor Stanley Fish, one of the leading proponents of speech codes. Speech that carries certain undesirable effects, he claims, should not be tolerated. "You must decide whether a university exists primarily as a soap box for free expression or whether it's a workplace based on tasks and obligations that are subject to certain constraints, including verbal constraints," Fish argues, clearly favoring the latter view.

Speech codes not only reveal an increasingly restrictive attitude toward free expression on college campuses, but also reflect a changing view of truth. As educators traditionally have adhered to the idea that truth emerges from a robust marketplace of ideas, free expression has been seen as vital to the pursuit of that truth. In recent years, however, the academic community has taken a more ideological or political view of truth. As Annette Kolodny, dean of the humanities faculty at the University of Arizona admits, "I see my scholarship as an extension of my political activism." And this ideological approach diminishes the importance of free speech. Because truth is predetermined according to one's ideological beliefs, the need for an uninhibited marketplace of ideas no longer exists. Speech is judged by whether it promotes or oppresses a certain politically correct ideology. Consequently, in the political struggles on campuses, tolerance toward speech deemed politically incorrect has declined.

In a politically correct educational environment, the search for truth through free speech is subverted by the belief that what is truth is what is ideologically acceptable. This ideological approach, which tries to attain truth through rules about what can and cannot be discussed, undermines the traditional cornerstone of American education--free and open debate. And by becoming more ideological and less tolerant, the university encourages a less civil form of discourse.