Besides considering limits to speech, higher education policies must also look to promote constructive, open dialogue. Many faculty and students say evolving social norms and campus speech policies of recent years have had a chilling effect on free expression that is stifling education and inquiry, according to Keith E. Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University, and Jeannie Suk Gersen, John H. Watson Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
The two scholars lead the Academic Freedom Alliance, a national organization of college faculty who are pushing back on speech policies that limit academic freedom.
“The more we expand what we think of and are willing to treat as disciplinable harassment, discrimination and bullying, the less space there will be for free inquiry and exploration of ideas,” Suk Gersen said.
“Many of us, myself included, became concerned in the last several years” about “the slow erosion of academic freedom” that has “started to feel unbearable” in the last two years, she said.
It is “incredibly common” for students, “regardless of their political leanings, to say in the privacy of office hours, ‘I would never speak my mind; I would never raise my hand in class to actually express a viewpoint even if I know some who might agree because other people won’t agree with me and then I might be subject to some kind of shaming campaign or ostracized.’”
Teachers are changing course syllabi and eliminating topics such as gender, sexual assault, and racial discrimination. “But now, it’s too risky even if they’re not espousing any viewpoint,” Suk Gerson said.
The whole point of these policies is to ensure everyone has access to educational opportunities, said Erica Chenoweth, Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School. She said there have been “some egregious instances in which people have been bullied out of the institution” and harassed over their viewpoint or speech. “And so, there needs to be sort of a minimum standard so that everyone has access to the opportunities of academic freedom.”
Fostering a culture of mutual respect on campus will involve more than settling on a code of conduct everyone can live with, said Chenoweth, who led a Kennedy School working group that recently completed a two-year effort that examined ways to have serious, respectful conversations about divisive topics.
“And the answer is that you have to really intentionally build not just a culture of mutual trust and respect, but also the skills to have these types of conversations — to convene them, to facilitate them, and to recover from them,” said Chenoweth, who urges less confrontational debates and more small group discussions in intimate settings where people can offer their genuine views and concerns.
“At its core, the purpose of the University is to create new knowledge, to talk about ideas, and to prepare the next generation of leaders to go out and build a true world. I think that that means that we have a responsibility to practice that well here,” Chenoweth said.