Henry Reichman on Dealing with Controversial Speakers on Campus

I attended the Harry Crowe Foundation’s conference on Free Speech on Campus in Toronto last month. There was a great line-up of speakers who shared data, history, legal arguments, and general principles on academic freedom and free speech at universities. 

A consensus was that academic freedom, freedom of expression, and social justice reinforce one another. James Turk from the Centre for Free Expression at Ryerson University and former Executive Director of CAUT said, “Social justice is not possible without freedom of expression, and genuine freedom of expression is not possible without social justice.” Momin Rahman from Trent University concluded, “Equity and academic freedom are mutually reinforcing.” Samir Gandesha, Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, pointed out that “Insisting on too strong a distinction between free speech and academic freedom might open up the door for institutions to try to regulate who can and who cannot speak.”

Here are my notes from Henry Reichman’s address on controversial speakers on campus, a timely topic for many universities, including my own of UBC.  Reichman is chair of the AAUP's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure and author of the forthcoming book, The Future of Academic Freedom. His comments resonated with Turk's, who emphasized that censorship doesn’t work and is counterproductive, used against the already marginalized to silence counter speech. Turk also stressed that universities must be clear on protecting protest and supporting counterspeech on their campuses.

Reichman:

Universities will always have controversial speakers and protests against them. The rights of visiting speakers are important, but so too are the rights of the students who wish to protest their ideas. The Chicago Principles weigh much more heavily on the rights of speakers than on the rights of students. They contain no policies protecting protests, only policies punishing protests. Nothing in their policies defend faculty academic freedom.

We have to be very careful not to exaggerate the extent of the problem associated with outside speakers. A few have been shouted down and driven off campus; a few have been denied speaker’s rights. But this is not the greatest threat to academic freedom or freedom of speech on campus.

Freedom of expression is not a foundation of a university, freedom of inquiry is the foundation of a university.

What to do about controversial speakers depends on whether they are invited by faculty, administrators, students, or nobody at all:

• Speakers invited by faculty (fellow scholars, etc.) are protected by freedom of expression and by academic freedom.
• Speakers invited by administrators (e.g., donors, honorary degree recipients) are not just being brought as one voice in the free exchange of ideas, but to be honored by the university. In this case, a process needs to be in place so that the university community can agree that this is someone worth honoring. Student objections to commencement speakers often occur because someone is being honored and students’ views were not taken into account.
• Speakers invited by students and student groups: Why does the university have speakers invited by students, when students are there to learn, and not to teach? Three different scholars who have responses to this:
• Stanley Fish has an idiosyncratic view of academic freedom. He belongs to an “it’s just a job” school of thought. He has a crass definition of academic freedom and it does not involve faculty governance. Fish is of the attitude that students at universities do a lot of foolish things (homecoming, football games, frat parties) and that we should let them. 
• Robert Post is of the opinion that the First Amendment doesn’t apply well to universities, which have the mission of research and teaching, and that’s where academic freedom comes in. If universities want to have speakers, they have to think about how those speakers advance the twin missions of teaching and research at the university. If students invite speakers, some process needs to be in place for approval at the university. But we don’t theorize what advances teaching and research well enough to do this. 
• Frederick Lawrence says the response to bad speech is more speech, not shutting down speech. More speech is not just a response, but a moral obligation on the part of universities. If a racist speaker is invited to campus by a student group, for example, the university cannot respond with either shutting it down or letting it happen with no response. Instead, the university has an obligation to have more speech (e.g., protecting the rights of students to protest, giving platforms to counter speakers/marginalized groups and voices, making sure academic experts are heard, and debate). 
• Speakers invited by nobody at all: Some universities make money by renting out their lecture halls. That’s how Richard Spencer went to speak at Auburn University without being invited, for example: he just rented the room. Universities are not required to offer their facilities to anybody and should rethink these kinds of moves.