While schools such as UNC-Wilmington, Bucknell, and UNC-Chapel Hill tie themselves in knots trying--ever unsuccessfully--to reconcile their stated commitments to free inquiry (and, in the cases of all but Bucknell, their obligations to uphold the First Amendment) with their well-meant but ultimately misguided desire to ensure that no one on campus is ever exposed to views that might offend them or make them uncomfortable, others recognize that it is the obligation of a vibrant intellectual community to embrace the friction that arises when ideas are freely explored, tested, and debated.

Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren--whose name will be familiar to those who followed the Michael Bellesiles Debacle--sends an exemplary excerpt from the University of Chicago's Faculty Handbook:

The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. Its domain of inquiry and scrutiny includes all aspects and all values of society.Ý A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.

Universities should adopt explicit policies rejecting the right not to be offended. As a current graduate student in Sociology at the University of Chicago, I was offended by the way that some of Marx's ideas on economics were taught, particularly the labor theory of value--as if Marx's critique was sound economics, as if we hadn't had fifty million people killed by the collectivism of agriculture alone (a modest estimate not including the tens of millions dying in collectivist wars).Ý

The idea that I had a right not to be offended in class never even occurred to me, and would be one that I would find offensive to be offered.

UPDATE: A law student at Chicago writes:

As a regular reader of your blog, I often find myself reflecting on how fortunate I am to be a student here at the law school at the University of Chicago. The institution's commitment to free and open debate has been refreshing these three years. I was happy to see the school mentioned in your most recent post, and it reminded me of an email that we received in February and that I meant to send along to you at the time as evidence that not all was hopeless in academia. Although it's unfortunate to think that intelligent college students would have to be reminded of the importance of respecting the expressive rights of others, it's heartening to see the administration taking a pro-active stand in this way.

----- Forwarded message from Steve Klass -----
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 20:28:47 -0600 (CST)
From: Steve Klass
Reply-To: spklass@uchicago.edu
Subject: Interference with Freedom of Expression
To: All Students

----

Dear students,

Below follows a statement from the Provost, Richard Saller, and me regarding a long-standing University policy prohibiting the interference with freedom of expression at the University.

If you have questions or concerns related to this policy, please contact your dean of students or the Office of the Dean of Students in the University.

Steve Klass
Vice-President
and Dean of Students in the University

*****************************************************************************

With the upcoming elections and increasing interest in local, national and international affairs on the part of many in the community, it seems appropriate to remind ourselves of the special privileges and responsibilities that come with membership in a great university that is committed to the free pursuit, testing, and dissemination of knowledge.

Each of us here enjoys a freedom to study, think, write, advocate, and associate. Yet within our community that freedom also obligates each of us not merely to tolerate but to welcome and promote these freedoms for all. In the public or commercial world, it may be legitimate to seek to vanquish or weaken one's adversaries. In great universities such as ours, however, serious opposition is not only welcome; it is essential to what we are about.

These principles are enshrined in University Statute 21, which prohibits "conduct disruptive of the operations of the University, including interference with instruction, research, administrative operations, freedom of association, and meetings." The prohibition includes heckling speakers, and defacing, removing or obscuring announcements, fliers, posters, or other publications to prevent them from reaching their intended audiences. Interference with freedom of inquiry, teaching, and debate are viewed as particularly destructive to the University.

The University achieves its mission not by the subtractive process of silencing opponents, but by the additive process of contestation.

UPDATE UPDATE: Ralph Luker observes, "Perhaps Chicago can be free precisely because no one has ever doubted that it was serious about higher education. Not many of our institutions are undoubtedly serious. Many of them, therefore, feel the need to restrict speech."

I don't think university administrators hold the power here. The lawsuit industry does. I'm not happy to say this, but it's true.

If universities are going to be islands of free speech, then administrators will have to find a way around the machinations of the lawsuit industry. How they would do that is beyond my understanding.

Nor do I sense that university administrators have any desire to do battle with the lawsuit industry. In fact, they are on the side of the lawsuit industry. Here's why.

The left, to which they belong, has decreed that any social or political issue that can be defined as a "human rights" issue is beyond the purview of the democratic process or of majority rule. This is now the bedrock principle of the left. The reason of course, is that they have decreed the majority of Americans to be "bigots." Bigots cannot be allowed to vote on human rights issues. All human rights issues fall under the purview of litigation.

So, I see university administrators falling out on the other side. They do not want to submit to majority rule. They want all issues subjected to the litigation process. I see little hope that they will concern themselves with issues of free speech.

And the litigators... well, they can smell the money. What's the strategy for overcoming this?

Litigation works both ways. FIRE has been pretty successful in using litigation and the threat of litigation against speech codes and other forms of administrative intimidation.

The other important strategy involves alumni contributions. As the general public gets a better idea of what's going on, I suspect that many of these contributions will be withheld. And when today's students graduate...if you had spent 4 years feeling restricted and intimidated, would you have inclinations to donate money to the institution that did it?

University administrators are usually deathly afraid of lawsuits, regardless of the potential source.

Maybe they will just have to realize that in today's environment they can be sued no matter what they do--and concentrate on doing things right instead of avoiding lawsuits.

The University of Chicago policy needs to become the "industry standard."

This is the most sensible thing I've seen coming from an academic setting in a long time. It would be nice to see this spread.

David is right. As I said in a previous post, the alumni need to exert adult supervision and encourage more Universities of Chicago.

I keep wondering what these keepers of the holy speech do when they have a new thought themselves which might be "offensive" to their other thought. Or do they have any new thoughts?

Not a problem, Joe. I think they (the keepers) fall into two major categories:

1)Dogmatic intellectuals, whose world-view is based on a system so closed that all of their thought processes are utterly predictable. No more likelihood of them having an original thought than of a very simple computer program doing the same thing.
2)Cowardly administrators, who have spent their lives evading responsibility and accountability, and who thus speak and write in euphemisms to insure against ever being challenged.

David, is it, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste"[NAACP], or is it, "It's a terrible thing to not have a mind" [Quayle]? I guess it's both. I await Alzheimer's so that I might communicate with them.

It's extremely heartening to hear someone make a robust defense of free inquiry. Particularly, it's good to hear someone point out that a university should explicitly reject the "right not to be offended." Nice to hear some sanity for a change.

Why is the University of Chicago so dedicated to free inquiry? One reason is that it has term limits for academic administrators and and thus ensures that corporate wannabe bean counters will not be deciding issues of teaching and research. The Alabama Scholars Association (www.alabamascholars.org) has been pressing for simiar five year term limits for higher educaiton in Alabama.

David,

Where else do administrators have term limits? It would be fascinating to correlate that information with the data collected at speechcodes.org...

Indulge me, please. You all have probably seen this, but it's so nice, let's look at it twice: "The author speaks about 'the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness, demanding liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, liberty of thought and feeling, absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological Ö [as well as] the liberty of expressing and publishing opinions Ö Secondly Ö liberty of tastes and pursuits, of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character, of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow, without impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as it does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty Ö follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite for any purpose not involving harm to others. Ö The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is a proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. Ö We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.' These inspiring words come from John Stuart Millís justly celebrated On Liberty." [Kekes, frontpagemag.com 4/2/04]
Likewise, being offended is not a disability. No one has to be offended, as though that is the end point of thought on the particular matter, though it is encouraged by speech codes.
However, speech codes can be disabling if backed up by punitive measures, which cannot so easily be ignored or dealt with through thought responses. The keepers of thought produce a disability they claim to prevent.

>While the U of Chicago faculty handbook offers
>some comfort about allowing expression of
>opinions that might "offend" someone's feelings,
>it should be noted that it follows the clichÈd
>idea that the business of the university is
>stirring up, challenging, and overturning all
>existing values and opinions (except of course,
>what most needs it, the PC pieties). In fact,
>most students (and I suspect, many faculty,
>especially outside their specialties) are
>grossly ignorant of the cultural tradition which
>has formed them and in which they live. The
>rise of multiculturalism has not helped them
>even to understand other cultures, since it is
>less about the hard work of understanding them
>than it is about using them to bash our own for
>its deficiencies as measured against some ideal
>standard.
>
>Students show up in the university and are
>immediately subjected to a withering assault on
>every value their parents have tried to instill.
> When I asked a friend whether he planned to
>send his children to our old college, a
>reputable Ivy, he asked "Why should I spend all
>that money to give them four years to try to
>teach my children to hate everything I believe
>in?"
>
>The U of Chicago statement seems perfectly
>compatible with the general left nihilism that
>plagues us. I guess you're not a modern
>intellectual unless you routinely deprecate
>everything, except the PC pieties.
>
>I wonder when our so called intellectuals will
>recover the courage to begin to acknowledge that
>some things are better than others, that
>wholesale and unconstrained criticism of western
>civilization is ultimately destructive of the
>values they imagine themselves to hold, and that
>our higher education in the arts, humanities,
>and social sciences has become a negative and
>destructive factor in the formation of our
>cultural life?