that is the biggest failure IMO. They were not ready to defend free speech vigorously enough - to repudiate the speech codes that seem to have popped up on so many campuses.

Free speech at a university should be extremely broad and allow all sorts of offensive, vile, nasty, awful speech. Even explicit calls for genocide, ethnic cleansing, violent revolution, etc - those should all generally be protected speech - not punishable for a student at a university. Its vile, awful, hateful speech that - nevertheless - we should not punish more than the public condemnation and shame that comes on the individual who talks in such a fashion. They all should have been ready to say that so much speech - anti-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, anti-Putin, anti-Ukraine, racists, anti-racist, LGBTQ affiming, anti-LGTBQ, etc - all of this speech must be protected at our universities. That we cannot and should not worry about protecting students from being "offended" or "upset" by other speech. That students may hear things they believe are incredibly hateful, awful, vile and they need to be ready to hear that speech and stand, speaking on their own when necessary. This must be allowed at our universities - except in the extremely extremely narrow circumstance when it actually crossing into the real definitions of true threat or incitement.

Employees might have somewhat less speech protections - but intellectual / academic freedom should allow most faculty to say almost anything they want about a political topic - again as long as it not a very clear true threat, explicit incitement or direct harassment of specific individuals.


[Post edited by RML Hoos at 12/07/2023 11:39AM]