Yesterday, Greg Lukianoff, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's director of legal and public advocacy, testified about campus speech codes before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Lukianoff's testimony offers an excellent brief on how colleges and universities go about restricting expression, showing how speech codes get written into harassment and conduct policies and looking at the various tricks speech code authors use to make truly chilling rules sound innocuous and unexceptionable. The analysis is so good--so tight, clear, and pointed--that it is worth quoting at some length:

The current generation of speech codes come in many shapes and sizes, including but not limited to e-mail policies that ban ìderogatory comments,î highly restrictive ìfree speech zoneî policies, ìdiversity statementsî with provisions that outlaw ìintolerant expression,î and so-called ìharassment policiesî that extend to speech that may ìinsultî or ìdemean.î While they may not call themselves ìspeech codesî anymore, a speech code by any other name still suppresses speech.

FIRE has been combating speech codes as a part of its general operations for the last four years. We have come to the defense of thousands of individuals who have been the victims of rules and regulations that should have no place on our campuses. Drawing from that experience, we decided to undertake a colossal program that seeks to catalog the restrictive speech policies on every college and university campus across the country. The preliminary results of this massive research undertaking can be found on a public website, speechcodes.org. The websiteówhich, according to our research, is current through this past summerónow features nearly 200 hundred public and private colleges and universities. FIRE has rated each of the non-sectarian universities using a ìlighting schemeî: green lights indicate that we found no policy that seriously imperils speech; yellow lights indicate that a university has some policies that could ban or excessively regulate protected speech; and red lights are awarded to universities that have policies that ban a substantial amount of what would be clearly protected speech in the larger society. Of 176 rated universities only 20 have earned green lights, while 80 earned yellows. A distressing 76óforty-three percent of the institutions ratedóearned red lights.

Some of these red light polices are truly bizarre. For instance, Hampshire College in Massachusetts bans ìpsychological intimidation, and harassment of any person or pet.î Others are almost quaint, like Kansas State University , which bans the use of ìprofane or vulgar languageî when it is used in a ìdisruptive manner.î It has long been settled in constitutional law that free speech is not limited only to the pleasant or the pious.

Some codes are remarkably broad and vague, like that of Bard College in New York , which states, ìIt is impermissible to engage in conduct that deliberately causes embarrassment, discomfort, or injury to other individuals or to the community as a whole.î By banning speech that ìdiscomforts,î Bard takes a position that has been adopted by many colleges and universities: valuing and promoting peace and quiet at the expense of robust debate and intellectual engagement. To be sure, politeness is a commendable value, but it simply does not compare in importance to unfettered debate and discussion in a pluralistic democracy. Furthermore, it is not the place of college administrators to force students to speak in any particular fashion. Civility should, perhaps, be inculcated when a student is young, by his or her elementary school teachers and by parents. In college, it should be learned by example. Furthermore, conditioning speech on civility virtually denies the existence of justified moral outrage.

Other codes define the ìprotected classî of the speech code so broadly as to ban even the most basic forms of free speech. The University of California-Santa Cruz, for example, warns against speech that shows ìdisrespectî or ìmalignsî on the basis of, among other categories, ìcreed,î ìphysical ability,î ìpolitical views,î ìreligion,î and ìsocio-economic status or other differences.î One can only imagine what dreary places colleges would be if students weren't even allowed to express passionate political criticisms.

Still others dangerously trivialize society's most serious crimes in an effort to get at ìoffensive speech.î Ohio University 's ìStatement on Sexual Assault,î for example, declares that ìSexual assault occurs along a continuum of intrusion and violation ranging from unwanted sexual comments to forced sexual intercourse.î One should be very concerned about any university that cannot make a principled distinction between loutish comments and rape.

Most colleges, however, rely on this strategy: they redefine existing serious offenses to include protected expression. Hood College in Maryland , for example, defines ìharassmentî as ìany intentionally disrespectful behavior toward others.î While ìdisrespectful behaviorî may be rude, it certainly does not rise to the level of the crime of harassment. No one denies that a college can and should ban true harassment, but hiding a speech code inside of a ìracial-harassment code,î for example, does not thereby magically shield a college or university from the obligations of free speech and academic freedom.

A particularly pernicious brand of speech code goes beyond punishing what one says and extends to what one feels, thinks, or believes. Transylvania University in Kentucky bans ìoral, and written actions that are intellectuallyÖ inappropriateî if they touch upon a broad list of protected classes. Florida State University's ì General Statement of Philosophy on Student Conduct and Disciplineî states, ìSince behavior which is not in keeping with standards acceptable to the University community is often symptomatic of attitudes, misconceptions, and emotional crises, the treatment of these attitudes, misconceptions, and emotional crises through re-education and rehabilitative activities is an essential element of the disciplinary process.î All citizens should be very concerned when state universities, which often offer only a bare minimum of due process, take upon themselves the ìre-educationî of adult students and empower themselves to compel correct ìattitudes.î That is not worthy of a free nation.

Another kind of speech code is the so-called ìspeech zoneî policy, which limits protests, debates, and even pamphleteering to tiny corners of campus. FIRE has identified or fought these polices at over two dozen public universities. Until this past summer, Western Illinois University provided students with only one ìFree Speech Area.î This area was only available during business hours and had to be reserved five days in advance. Even within the ìFree Speech Area,î additional speech restrictions applied. Until FIRE intervened, Texas Tech University óa school with 28,000 studentsóprovided only one 20-foot-wide gazebo to be used as a ìFree Speech Area.î Protests, demonstrations, pamphleteering, speeches, and even the distribution of newspapers had to receive prior, official approval if they were to occur outside of the ìfree speechî gazebo and requests had to ìbe submitted at least six university working days before the intended use.î

If you want to see whether a given school has a speech code on its books, you can do so by looking it up at www.speechcodes.org. You can also look up any school you have in mind on the web and locate its codes for yourself--they'll be tucked into the policies on student conduct, sexual and racial harassment, hostile environment, discrimination, diversity, and free expression. Try it--it's a little bit like looking under a rock. You almost always find something, and it's almost always something kind of sickening.