USC canceled its valedictorian speech: What the university got wrong. – Slate

On Monday, Andrew Guzman, the provost of the University of Southern California, sent aletterto the campus community announcing the cancellation of the speech by the student valedictorian. Concerned with the intensity of feelings around the Middle East and accompanying risks to security, he wrote, tradition must give way to safety.

There is no question that universities have a duty to maintain campus safety during graduation ceremonies. Campus administrators are responsible for the safety of tens of thousands of students and their friends and families at a very public venue during this period. They want everyone to share a memorable moment of recognition of accomplishment, and to be safe while doing so.

Yet the provosts letter sounded all too familiar to me. For six years, I served as the United Nations principal monitor of freedom of expression worldwide. In that role, I repeatedly saw governments shutting down public speech to prioritize vague assertions of national security or public order over the rights of its citizens.

This context helps us understand why USCs decision is so troubling. For as much as Guzman asserted that the decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech, he failed to demonstrate the necessity of this draconian measure. As such, the action is clearly an interference with free speechthe question is whether it was justified.

The student selected as valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, earned the honor, the result of a faculty recommendation that Guzman himself approved. With nearly perfect grades, a major in biomedical engineering, and a minor in genocide studies, Tabassum presents the kind of profile that any university would be thrilled to celebratehardworking, successful, committed to science and society, engaged in the life of her campus.

And like so many young people today, she has thoughts about justice and the wider world of which she is a part. Specifically, she supports the pro-Palestine activism that has grown across the world, especially on college campuses. This is obvious because she linked to a pro-Palestine website on her Instagram page and liked posts from a campus organization favoring Palestinian rights.

Many find those websites, and those views, objectionable. Thats fine: Everyone enjoys the right to disagree and object. According to reporting in theLos Angeles Timesand elsewhere, those associations and views caused pro-Israel groups to launch a campaign against her, and some unnamed individuals to issue threats.

The USC leadership caved to these efforts. Asserting that Tabassum had no entitlement to speak, as the provosts letter emphasized, is beside the point. USC pulled her from the podium because, it appears, it concluded that thereactions toher views and associationsperhaps her valedictory speechcould somehow threaten public safety or disrupt commencement. Even Guzmans letter makes this plain: He made sure to note that the criteria for selection did not include candidates social media presence, implying that he would not have approved her as valedictorian if he had known her views.

The question is not whether the university has a significant interest in a safe celebrationit obviously does. The question is whether it has shown that the steps it took were necessary and proportionate to ensure that kind of environment. And here is where USC administrators have failed. They did not demonstrate that it was necessary to cancel Tabassums speech. They did not show, or even allege, that Tabassum would use the moment to incite any kind of disruption.There is no evidence that the university considered what a security arrangement might look like to protect Tabassum and all participants at graduation. There is no evidence that it considered or offered alternatives to canceling her speech altogether.

In short, Tabassum has been penalized while those making the threats have secured a victory. USCs choice came with obvious costs, depriving Tabassum of a speaking role and her classmates of hearing one of their most academically successful members.

USC gave opponents of Tabassums views the hecklers veto. The lesson seems to be: If you dont like a speaker, complain and threaten disruption to get your way. The risks to campus free speech are obvious. Once a school starts down this path, there is no end to political tests in which university administrators bless certain viewsthose that do not stir up intense feelingsand reject others. That is the path of campus authoritarianism, something American students have been fighting against since at least 1964.

Schools like USC will forever face pressure to pick students without a political backstory, without convictions or passions that spark dissent or make some uncomfortable. Universities face increasingly strident calls, inside and outside their campuses, for them to limit speech on grounds that have nothing to do with their academic missions. Now, more than ever, members of campus leadership must stand up for their students, their faculties, and their communities in the face of threatsand not only teach but practice the centrality of freedom of expression in democratic societies like ours.

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USC canceled its valedictorian speech: What the university got wrong. - Slate