The president of neighboring Barnard College writes:
Now Is the Time for Colleges to Host Difficult Speakers . . . A commitment to nonviolent disagreement should be an obvious part of the fabric of our campuses, just as it is obvious that students need oxygen to breathe. Colleges and universities need to reconfirm our commitment to nonviolent forms of disagreement — even when we are confronted with voices that disparage or dismiss identities and worldviews. This is also a time to foster more disagreement, not less.
I agree. She continues:
Colleges and universities have long resisted polarization and monolithic thinking by invoking these commitments to open discussion and inquiry, and we must continue to do so. College campuses must remain places where students are able to ask and grapple with hard questions, especially those that are uncomfortable and even hurtful. Higher education’s role is not to erase conflict but to channel it into dialogue, debate and learning. To do so, educators and students must face ideas we find offensive and speakers whose words cause pain.
Again, I agree. But as law professor Paul Campos points out, this “commitment to nonviolent forms of disagreement” on the part of the Barnard administration is new. Until recently Barnard has been pretty aggressive about trying to suppress free expression:
Last year came this policy:
Barnard is mandating that students remove any items affixed to room or suite doors by Feb. 28, after which point the college will begin removing any remaining items, Barnard College Dean Leslie Grinage announced in a Friday email to the Barnard community. . . .
“We know that you have been hearing often lately about our community rules and policies. And we know it may feel like a lot,” Grinage wrote. “The goal is to be as clear as possible about the guardrails, and, meeting the current moment, do what we can to support and foster the respect, empathy and kindness that must guide all of our behavior on campus.”
“Support and the respect, empathy and kindness” by not letting people put notices on their doors, huh? This seems like the absolute opposite of “educators and students must face ideas we find offensive and speakers whose words cause pain.” Also, affixing items to your dorm room door is nonviolent! (I’m assuming these items aren’t poison-laden scratch-and-sniff cards.)
Also, notoriously, the Barnard administration attempted to cancel the showing of a controversial film on campus. So, yeah, colleges and universities–including Barnard College, which is a division of Columbia University, where I work–need to reconfirm our commitment to nonviolent forms of disagreement — even when we are confronted with voices that disparage or dismiss identities and worldviews.
In short, I agree with the Barnard president’s op-ed and I think it would’ve been much improved by an acknowledgment that it represents a major change in policy from the recent policies at Barnard College.
If you’re gonna talk about the value of allowing and even promoting nonviolent disagreement, you can at least talk about the difficulty of implementing such recommendations–difficulties that you’ve directly faced at your own institution.
Maybe the Barnard administration could also apologize to the students they hassled regarding the showing of that movie, and they could apologize to the students who they were hassling about messages on their dorm room doors.
We apparently live in the age of hypocrisy. Words and actions have always been imperfect matches, but nothing in my lifetime has approached the degree of hypocrisy I see daily. It bothers me almost more than anything else, perhaps because it requires a suspension of critical or rational thought. Clearly the Trump administration exhibits it daily, but it is not just a right/left feature. It seems that it is now sufficient to say one thing while doing the opposite – and then express anger if anybody points out the hypocrisy (for examples, just watch current governmental leaders around the world, including the US unfortunately).
Dale:
Indeed. I just hate to see it coming from the president of a college that’s associated with my employer.
Well, maybe the president of Barnard is just paying attention to which way the wind is blowing. After all, not long ago Elise Stefanik was having a happy time terrorizing college presidents, and now she is dropping out of politics to put more effort into being a mom. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer had to sit quietly and watch Mamdani get inaugurated as mayor.
This, clearly, is not the only point in time in America’s history that there have been polarizing ideas and politicians who use it for political gain. Since Columbia university was founded before America was, how was this handled previously? What was censorship and free speech like, say, during the Vietnam war at Columbia university? Were there similar attempts to censor speech and debate? If not, was the debate handled differently from the present?
I don’t know about Columbia, but UC Berkeley tried to shut down political organizing in 1964 to satisfy a Williams Knowland, a former senator and owner of the Oakland Tribune, so that students would not disrupt the Republican Convention in SF. The student response was the Free Speech Movement, which shattered the fiction that the campus was the private property of the Board of Regents, rather than public property, and (thanks to the Faculty Senate) led to rules that only the time, place and manner of speech could be regulated. However, a few years later, after many of us who had been active in the FSM had moved on, some students and hangers-on in the ascendent left decided that they should control who got to speak on campus. I don’t remember just how those episodes turned out.
+1
Did you just invent this? Or is it something that happened?
Anon:
All things are possible, but I just made that up when writing the post. I’m glad somebody noticed it!
Sorry, Andrew… This one has the correct link for Jonathan Rieder
Barnard has a lot to answer for, e.g. their treatment of sociology professor Jonathan Rieder whose class was cancelled for offending a student:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrsv3wrzrLQ&ab_channel=TheGlennShow
This is a thoughtful analysis on how academics reckon with the damage wrought by wokeism. I am ambivalent about calling them cowards – no one wants to feel miserable on work.
https://mindingthecampus.org/2025/12/29/two-ways-of-reckoning-with-failure/
“…even when we are confronted with voices that disparage or dismiss identities and worldviews.”
So, what, all racists are now welcome? Who gets to draw the line for how much disparagement is too much? Clearly it would not be permitted to affix a swastika to your door, but who makes that call? I get the spirit of the president’s message and the blog post, but I’ve yet to see a good prescription of how to put the ideals into practice.
The problem is always, who gets to decide what is acceptable? I tend to the view that it is better to put up with assholes affixing swastika to their doors that to give someone the power to decide what is acceptable. The ACLU takes the same position, which is why it defended Nazis marching in Skokie back in the 70s. Europeans take a different view and make hate speech illegal, and many people here would like to do the same. I take the recent tendency to conflate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism as evidence in support of my position.
Surely there is a line. If instead of a swastika posted on the door, there was a sign reading “Death to J**ws”?
Or maybe not? I think one of the key divisions between “right” and “left” is if a neighbor to the anti-Semite were to complain they felt unsafe by the sign, a “right” valued person would say the neighbor should move to a different room or even dorm, that the burden is on the individual to find the circumstances in which they can live safely. Meanwhile, a “left” valued person would tell the anti-Semite to remove their sign because they have entered a social contract that should guarantee to all the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Being born and raised in Canada – though with some time spent living in the US – I’ve never been able to relate very well to the freedom-of-speech is sacrosanct tenet, especially since I haven’t witnessed any strong connection to individual liberty. (Perhaps because I’ve never wanted to spew or hear hateful speech). Despite what’s promulgated in some of the media, the only individual right being impinged up here is the right to make as much money as humanly possible, so naturally our country – and most of Europe, I guess, too – is a scary place for many of the powerful.
Banning hateful speech sounds all well and good until it is abused. There are many cases where the police have claimed hate speech protections. Protesting against the police now becomes “hate speech.” See the issue?
Not banning hate speech also sounds all well and good. There are instances of someone throwing up a “Death to J*ws” sign on their door, and now a Jewish person is dead. That’s also a major issue!
There is a long and tenuous chain between “Death to Jews/[any other group]” and killing a real person.
If somebody said “Kill this specific Jew right now”, that’s incitement to violence. Not even the 1970s ACLU would defend that, and rightfully.
There is a very simple solution to hate speech: organization and counterspeech.
There were huge countermarches by Jewish groups and left-wing groups against the Nazi marches in Illinois in the 1970s. That was correct.
Free speech does not just mean “speech I like”. If one person’s (even a Nazi’s) right to speak is denied, that starts a slippery slope which ends in there being no free speech at all. “I vehemently disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”. The ACLU actually had a Jewish lawyer who agreed to represent the Nazis for this reason. Many Jews agreed, for the reason that “they wanted to be able to see their enemies in plain sight so they would know who they were”.
https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-skokie-case-how-i-came-to-represent-the-free-speech-rights-of-nazis
“Central to the ACLU’s mission is the understanding that if the government can prevent lawful speech because it is offensive and hateful, then it can prevent any speech that it dislikes. In other words, the power to censor Nazis includes the power to censor protesters of all stripes and to prevent the press from publishing embarrassing facts and criticism that government officials label as “fake news.””
turn: How about “Death to Zionists”? Or “From The River To The Sea”? I found it pretty interesting how the latter slogan was recently sort of deemed by a certain faction to be a freedom fighter cry and not a terrorist call for genocide. A Jew who said a person putting it on their door was an anti-Semite, would not get much sympathy from the “left” (overall), in fact might even find themselves on the wrong end of the “safety” rhetoric. It’s the way this sort of stuff tends to be play out in reality which makes me very wary of it.
From that same link:
“We argued that the Illinois courts’ delays in ruling amounted to a long-term prior restraint against speech — something that the Supreme Court had consistently rejected in cases like the Pentagon Papers case, where the Supreme Court overturned an injunction preventing the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, classified documents about the origins of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.”
“…a state legislator introduced a bill in the Illinois General Assembly seeking to criminalize the “public display of racial hatred.” The proposed law used language so sweeping that it would justify, for example, criminal prosecution of a Black Lives Matter leader for making a speech blaming white racism for police shootings of African Americans.”
“an ACLU fundraising letter to the membership that I drafted…explained…”…the Nazis are not the real issue. The Skokie laws are the real issue.” It pointed out that the ordinances were so broad that, “Skokie had already used the same law[s] to deny the Jewish War Veterans a permit to parade.”
This is so tiring. Yes, Nazi ideology is (unfortunately) legal in the US, including calling for mass murder (it’s only illegal if it includes a specific threat but “Death to the XXX” is a legal statement under US law).
BUT that doesn’t mean colleges (and private colleges to boot) are required to *platform* Nazi ideology. There is absolutely no such requirement and people really need to stop making up this 5th amendment bullshit.
I agree with John G Williams.
Also: the Chicago Principles of Free Expression and the Kalven principle of institutional neutrality unless the issue affects the functioning of the university work pretty well.
https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/FOECommitteeReport.pdf
https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/KalvenRprt_0.pdf
I believe that institutional neutrality is the best that a university can aspire to. However, I see potential problems with this approach.
Firstly, is it fair to allow discourse to run rampant when it comes to questions of absolute truth? Should fringe conspiracy theories receive the same exposure as well-founded theories? Remember, it is much harder to debunk nonsense than to produce it. If we do not allow for equal exposure, someone needs to decide how truthful the content is. If we do, there is a danger of suppressing the truth and confusing discourse participants with nonsense.
My argument is based on the observation that neutrality is not absolute; it must be derived from other values. We can only have conditional neutrality, i.e. neutrality based on certain ethical values. Unconditional neutrality, or neutrality over *all* ethical values, is the empty set.
Example: During the Brexit campaign, the Leave campaign promised a bright economic future. However, any reasonable economist would say that there would be a high economic price to pay for leaving. The ‘experts’ claiming a rosy future for the economy were disproportionately featured. This misled the public into believing that economic growth would be a reasonable consequence of Brexit. Is this an outcome we would want to allow (open question)?
I am all for neutrality, but I firmly believe that it is not simple. I think that was the point of turn_of_the_90s.
The news is not neutral. People know this. This is different from allowing the average person to speak freely, on a campus or on social media etc.
Anonymous,
you missed my point. Neutrality requires a reference point. There is no such thing as an ‘absolutely neutral’ point. If we implement your argument and have no guardrails at all, we are defining neutrality as ‘every message has an equal right to be shown’. However, this is not the only possible definition of neutrality. For example, one could define it as ‘every true message has equal rights to be shown’, or ‘every non-insulting message has equal rights to be shown’. The latter is used by most forums, for example, as moderators do not want their platforms to be used to bully others. I am not saying that any definition of neutrality is superior to another per se; I am just saying that there are different perspectives on how to define neutrality beyond a completely hands-off approach.
Raphael,
didn’t John address this? He mentioned the European perspective on hate speech versus the American one. He said why he disagrees with it. I am in agreement with him.
It is the same thing with experts vs non-experts. That shades into questions about trusting the government and other such things. Do you trust Donald Trump’s government with the power to police “misinformation”? I don’t. I don’t trust any college administration to do the same thing either.
This is also included in John’s point.
> Neutrality requires a reference point. There is no such thing as an ‘absolutely neutral’ point.
When discussing institutional neutrality the reference point is not saying anything. (“Institutional Neutrality is the idea that colleges and universities should not, as institutions, take positions on social and political issues unless those issues “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.” Instead, these discussions should be left to students and faculty.”)
The Brexit example is irrelevant. Institutional neutrality doesn’t take from all those reasonable economists the opportunity of saying that there would be a high economic price to pay for leaving.
Agreed that there is a problem. The question is, is the remedy worse than the disease?
When it comes to free expression and its suppression, I feel I have an unusual and credentialed success story. Many decades ago, I was anonymously accused of being antisemitic; a faculty committee was convened and I was (unanimously) declared innocent. However, it would be wrong to conclude that this was a triumph for right, truth and justice. My university was nervous that deep-sixing the insane charge (based on my quoting wardrobe color choice used by various ethnic groups as seen by the famous/infamous book, “Dress for Success”) would, as the popular phrase of that era might put it, “be counter productive”. Thus the the trial and my exoneration.
A few years later, I taught a course about antisemitism and it usually comes as a surprise to most, including me(!), that the term itself dates not from antiquity but from the latter half of the 19th century.
https://njop.org/the-origin-of-word-anti-semitism/
“it usually comes as a surprise to most, including me(!), that the term itself dates not from antiquity but from the latter half of the 19th century.”
I wonder why that would come as a surprise among a fairly well educaed audience of college students? Your remark indicates a big lacuna in historical awareness and a big teaching opportunity. If even a fraction of all the elite people claiming to be concerned about antisemitism were serious about it…
What also probably comes a a surprise to most of these people: that antisemitism as originally conceptualized expressed disdain both for Jews and Arabs, because both were constructed as “semitic” races according to 19th century linguistically informed race “science”.
Quote from the blog post: “If you’re gonna talk about the value of allowing and even promoting nonviolent disagreement, you can at least talk about the difficulty of implementing such recommendations–difficulties that you’ve directly faced at your own institution.”
I reason logic, reasoning, common sense, and discussing things might use some more attention and training and use in light of many current problematic issues, also at universities. A few years I came across cross a blog post (Geher, 2020) mentioning the troubles some scientists had in publishing their paper in a scientific peer-reviewed journal. The paper in question described a study about academic values in higher education. The academic values mentioned in this paper were “academic rigor”, “academic freedom”, “social justice”, “student emotional well-being”, and “advancing knowledge”.
I then wondered about this all some more, also in light of my continued wonderment regarding not having been taught much about logic and reasoning and all that stuff at university. I then wrote a (relatively strange or unusual) manuscript about this, in which the following section is depicted at the end which I would like to share here:
“In the later stages of the quest concerning scientific values, principles, and responsibilities I discovered the Trivium in Classical Education, and a paper titled “The lost tools of learning” (Sayers, 1947). Perhaps (parts of) the above fits nicely with the Trivium, where the three topics of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric are taught (and subsequently form the basis for further study). Perhaps it makes sense to try and identify, comprehend, organize, name, and express what the objects in question are
(Grammar), and to define words and terms before using them to compose arguments and statements involving them (Logic), and subsequently trying to speak or write effectively about them (Rhetoric). The English translations of Trivium (“three ways”, or “three roads”, or “the place where three roads meet”) coincidentally seem to fit well with the running theme of this manuscript. Being aware of, and making clear what the objects in question are, and defining (crucial) words and terms
before using them to compose arguments and statements involving them can create some sort of road location markers, and road signs at a crossroads of possible paths. These road location markers and road signs might be helpful in identifying where people exactly are, and where exactly they might take a certain path and assume, conclude, or do something. Making this all explicit for oneself, and others, could be helpful in trying to understand oneself, and others. This in turn might make for
better arguing why (not) to take a certain road, or where a certain road might lead to. Or it could lead to discovering new roads which could lead to elevated places that may provide a different, and perhaps better and/or more complete view of things. Or it could lead to sometimes following a certain road just to see where it might lead to, and what views might be seen and/or discovered by doing so.
For instance, perhaps wandering down a certain road may lead to wondering whether learning about and honing (arguably) scientific and/or scientifically related things like logic, reasoning, and rhetoric by not only academics and/or scientists but also members of society at large might be very useful concerning tackling issues regarding social justice, emotional well-being, and
lots of other stuff. Or perhaps it could lead to further pondering about science, and the scientific method, and whether engaging in these things could possibly help achieve goals related to values like social justice, and emotional well-being (perhaps in some cases and/or to a certain extent without even explicitly trying). Additionally, it could lead to further thinking that if this could be the case, whether it could be of importance to make sure there are some places where people could be
educated well in matters of science, and the scientific method. And it could lead to thinking about whether it could be of possible importance to make sure the best thoughts, ideas, reasoning, hypotheses, theories, and research pertaining to these issues are produced. And if this is deemed important, it could subsequently lead to thinking about how to possibly achieve this. And, finally, it could perhaps even lead to wondering whether at both places of higher learning and society at large learning how to think might be more important and/or useful than learning what to think (cf. Sayers, 1947).”
Andrew, pretty funny I didn’t see you out complaining about the voilence when Palestinian students were attacking jewish students. That was cool, free speech!!! You’re one of the biggest Academic hypocrties on the planet and your blantant hypocrisy is just more evidence of the intellecutal dump that academia in general and especially the Ivy League has become. Though you’ve called out Columbia for it’s blatant cheating in academic rankings, youre every bit as much of a liar as your institution. You fit right in.
Regarding Nazis, swastikas and “criticism” of Isreal in general: If Palestian “students” had been able to refrain from violence they might have a “free speech” leg to stand on. But – unsurprisingly given the blatantly violent and barbarian nature of the groups they support – they established themselves almost immediately as “globalizing the intifada” thus declaring physical violence as their expreession of “free speech”. Sorry, once you do that consider yourself a target.
Anon:
I don’t get what you’re saying. You refer to my “blatant hypocrisy.” Just to check, I looked up “hypocrisy” in the dictionary: it’s “a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not : behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel.” What is it that I’m “feigning to be” or to believe? Also, you say I’m a “liar.” What was I saying that was a lie?
I can’t really figure out what you’re saying in your comment, but I’m guessing that you’re disagreeing with the statement from the Barnard College president. That’s ok–feel free to disagree–no need to make up stuff about me. You should be able to disagree with me without calling me a liar or whatever.
Since the claim was hypocrisy, perhaps this anonymous commenter could explain the fundamental differences between outer jihad – which lately seems to mostly take the form of intifada after Jewish conquest – and Zionism, because I am struggling with that.
Matt:
Yeah, it’s typical troll behavior for someone to come in with a rude attack and then disappear when asked for any substantiation.
“In short, I agree with the Barnard president’s op-ed and I think it would’ve been much improved by an acknowledgment that it represents a major change in policy from the recent policies at Barnard College.”
This pretend naivety (I assume it’s pretending) doesn’t get you any points. The fact of the matter is that you don’t agree with the Barnard president, and they don’t agree with you. What they are saying is that racist and fascist views should be tolerated on campus and those disagreeing with them should just shut up already, while views that the oligarchs in charge don’t like (whether questioning capitalism or opposing Israeli war crimes or opposing Trumpist fascism) will continue to be seen as suspicious and be suppressed.
They do not have a commitment to freedom of speech of students and faculty. Their revealed preferences (as you yourself have explained) prove that they don’t care the least bit. When they use these words, it’s to turn them into their opposite in the way of Orweillian doublespeak.
Piglet:
Ok, to be clear, I don’t know if I agree with Barnard’s president’s policies and I don’t have much of a clear idea about the Barnard president’s intentions or views. I do agree with the Barnard president’s op-ed and I think it would’ve been much improved by an acknowledgment that it represents a major change in policy from the recent policies at Barnard College. What is what I said in the post.
I don’t see how it’s naive or pretend-naive of me to say that I agree with a public statement and I think there are ways it could be improved. For me to agree with a particular statement by someone should not necessarily be taken as an agreement with the person’s positions more generally.
Just no nonviolent disagreement on doors. That’s still forbidden:
https://barnard.edu/reslife/community-policies#:~:text=Posting%20Policy,subject%20to%20removal%20without%20notice.
Specifically,