Free Speech Loses Ground as Harvard Retracts Offers to Admitted Students – The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription)

Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvards president, told graduating seniors last month that the institutions theory of education requires students to be "fearless in face of argument or challenge or even verbal insult."

Suppose youre an incoming freshman at Harvard University, which in April reportedly rescinded admissions offers for the fall term to 10 students who had posted racist and obscene memes over the internet. Will the controversy make you more or less likely to speak your mind when you get to campus?

I think we all know the answer. And thats what troubles me about Harvards decision, which will fuel an already-tense atmosphere of censorship at colleges across the country.

Second, there is no constitutional issue here. The First Amendment bars the government not private institutions from restricting free speech. So Harvard has the legal right to retract admissions offers from the people who trafficked in these images. Whats more, Harvard, like many colleges, has a policy that acceptance may be withdrawn if the prospective student engages in, among other things, morally compromising behavior.

But that doesnt mean it was right to rescind the offers. By rejecting the offending students, the university reinforced the idea that students shouldnt offend one another. And thats inimical to free exchange and expression, which Harvard claims to prize over everything else.

Offense is always in eyes of the beholder. I don't want a university administrator making that judgment for us. Do you?

Yet the decision to turn away the 10 admitted students communicates exactly the opposite: Students should be afraid very afraid when confronted with controversial or offensive material, especially if it concerns the thorny question of diversity on campus. And instead of taking risks, they should keep their mouths shut.

Students hear that message, loud and clear. In a 2016 survey of over 3,000 undergraduates, more than half agreed that the climate on campus prevents some people from "saying things that might offend others."

More than two-thirds of the students seemed OK with that, favoring restrictions on racist and offensive speech. And its hard to blame them. Bewildered by the ever-mounting charges of "microaggression" and other forms of racial offense on campus, they want clear directives on whats truly offensive and what isnt. But who will determine that?

The students arent sure, of course, so they err on the side of caution. And the longer theyre on campus, the more cautious they become. In a 2010 study asking students whether it was "safe to hold unpopular positions on college campuses," 40 percent of freshmen "strongly" agreed, but just 30 percent of seniors strongly agreed, suggesting that college makes them warier than they were when they arrived.

Many people possibly, most people on campuses think thats all right: If youre harboring offensive ideas, you should be reluctant to express them. But theyre wrong, as Harvards own declarations remind us. Look again at President Fausts commencement address, which encouraged "unfettered debate" even in the face of insults. We wont get that if were always looking over our shoulders, wondering whom we are insulting.

That doesnt mean we should turn a blind eye to racism and other forms of bigotry, of course. The memes that the admitted Harvard students circulated were vile beyond measure, and they deserved every piece of condemnation that they received.

But the students didnt deserve to have their admission rescinded, which opens the door for all kinds of censorship in the future. Over the past few years, for example, some students opposing Israel have produced disgustingly anti-Semitic imagery: Stars of David dripping with blood, for example, or superimposed upon swastikas.

So if a Palestinian student was admitted to Harvard and was found to have circulated one of these images, would the same people who praised the university for turning away the 10 offending students also demand that the Palestinians admission be revoked? I doubt it. Offense is always in eyes of the beholder. I dont want a university administrator making that judgment for us. Do you?

And when that administrator is also someone who claims to support free speech over everything else, weve entered the theater of the absurd. The best reply to bad speech is always more speech, not less. Thats a lesson we all have to learn, over and over again, until we know it by heart.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author, with Emily Robertson, of The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools (2017, University of Chicago Press).

Read more:
Free Speech Loses Ground as Harvard Retracts Offers to Admitted Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription)