When the 2007-2008 University of Delaware Residence Life indoctrination program became the subject of withering public attention before it was quickly "suspended" by its president, FIRE received dozens of emails from students and RAs about ResLife's coercive administration of the program. I am amazed that senior administrators still seem willing to trust ResLife to administer a new indoctrination program, watered down but chock-full of a social and political "sustainability" agenda that goes far beyond UD's environmental initiatives.
Today we publish for the first time an email from an RA who apparently feared retribution from ResLife and chose to remain anonymous. The RA warns us that "Residence Life will most likely re-name their current practices and continue to force RAs to push their agenda in the residence halls. They dedicated their department to forming the minds and opinions of students who live in the Residence Halls and will not give up on their rhetoric so easily."
Here's the whole email:
Subject: comments from RA at UD Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 20:51:58 -0400 From: UD RA To:
As an RA at UD, I would like to say thank you exposing the Residence Life department and revealing the ideological re-education that they force us to deliver. President Harker called for this program to be stopped and reviewed, but please do not think this alone is "victory". The department of Residence Life will most likely re-name their current practices and continue to force RAs to push their agenda in the residence halls. They dedicated their department to forming the minds and opinions of students who live in the Residence Halls and will not give up on their rhetoric so easily. They will challenge us, as is their way, to come up with new and innovative approaches to programming and curriculum which deliver their messages in thinly veiled form. Even though they claim to assess and collect feedback from students and staff, this information never alters their ideology or impacts their ideological agenda. Any RA who criticizes or opposes a viewpoint presented by the department is usually required to adopt their viewpoint or resign from the position because they can't "connect" to the department's curriculum. Please follow up with the school's residence hall department to ensure that the methods and practices and ideological stand are truly reworked so students are given options and choices instead of answers and values.
-Anonymous
UD RA, you nailed it.
I encourage those who applied to be RAs and hall directors next year to let us know, in your own words, what ResLife has asked of you regarding next year's program.
I also encourage members of the Faculty Senate to read the accounts above and read last year's curriculum— the "confrontation training," the "delivery strategies," the "strong male RAs" hired to break the "resistance" of males by "combat[ing] male residents' concepts of traditional male identity," the personal questions about students' sexual awakening, the questionnaires about which genders, races, and ethnicities each student would date or befriend, the "treatment" metaphor for students' incorrect values, attitudes, and beliefs, the immediate notification of the police (day or night) for "Any instance that is perceived by those involved as being ... oppressive," the activities in which students were instructed to act out the worst stereotypes they could think of—then ask themselves why they think ResLife can be trusted with anything like the current proposal.
A misunderstanding that FIRE occasionally runs into is the idea that if someone is exercising their freedom of expression in a non-spoken way, such as a posted display, it is a legitimate expressive response to deface or destroy that display as a countervailing exercise of freedom of expression. This idea is simply wrong. What brought this to my attention was this YouTube video from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, which shows a textbook example of something that is NOT a legitimate expression of opinion:
Simply put, tearing down someone else's display is not expression—it's vandalism. The same goes for tearing down posters with which you don't agree—another illegitimate form of "expression" that FIRE often hears about. Students who engage in such activities can and should be punished, as the marketplace of ideas cannot survive when those opposed to an idea or expressive act are allowed to destroy all traces of it.
One other aspect of this video bears mentioning: at the very beginning of the video, the main person tearing up the crosses, identified in the video as Roderick King, says, "In 1973 it was made a constitutional right for a woman to have an abortion...Since it's a right, you don't have the right to challenge it." Nothing could be further from the truth—Americans have the right to speak out for or against any and all public policies in the United States. Hence the irony that the First Amendment protects even the speech of those who would try to abolish it. In a truly free society, it could be no other way.
Speech codes were the topic of today's nationally syndicated comic strip Mallard Fillmore. FIRE and some of our cases have been the subject of Mallard Fillmore's commentary many times in the past, and we're always very thankful for creator Bruce Tinsley's attention to our work.
Of course, speech codes are no laughing matter, as our report Spotlight on Speech Codes 2007 aptly demonstrates. Our report concluded that 75% of colleges and universities surveyed in FIRE's speech codes database, Spotlight, maintain policies that restrict protected speech on campus. Even more unfortunate is the fact that only 2% of colleges and universities surveyed were free of speech codes. To top it all off, as our recent press release concerning Shippensburg University's speech code reveals, even when students or faculty go to federal court to protect their free speech rights and win, universities are still more than willing to ignore injunctions and the law itself to enforce these unconstitutional speech codes.
So even though the comic gave me a chuckle as I was reading my morning paper The Bulletin, quickly thereafter I was reminded about the harsh, cold reality of the actual state of free speech on college campuses.
Posted by Sean Clark on May 8, 2008, at 10:50 a.m.
In a press release today, FIRE announces that a complaint has been filed in federal court today by attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) against Shippensburg University. The complaint alleges that Shippensburg University has dishonestly reinstituted unconstitutional policies in violation of the terms of a 2004 legal settlement reached with members of FIRE’s Legal Network.
The settlement in 2004 came after the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction against the university, ordering Shippensburg’s then-president, Anthony F. Ceddia, not to enforce unconstitutional provisions of Shippensburg’s code. The settlement ended a lawsuit brought by Legal Network attorneys David A. French and William Adair Bonner, and it was the first of a string of victories for our Speech Codes Litigation Project.
As FIRE President Greg Lukianoffsaid, “Shippensburg’s inexplicable violation of the 2004 settlement demonstrates a blatant disregard for the First Amendment and its own promises. By brazenly reneging on the terms of an agreement that previously saved it from an embarrassing defeat in court, Shippensburg has further tainted its tarnished reputation.”
Shippensburg’s earlier speech code banned expression clearly protected by the United States Constitution. For example, the college’s harassment policy defined harassment as “unwanted conduct which annoys, threatens, or alarms a person or group,” and outlawed “emotional abuse.” The code also violated the right of private conscience by requiring that “every member of the community” mirror the official views of the university administration “in their attitudes and behaviors.” In his preliminary injunction against Shippensburg in September 2003, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III held that many of these provisions “could certainly be used to truncate debate and free expression by students.”
The complaint filed today indicates that Shippensburg has reinserted unconstitutional provisions into current university policy, in many cases restoring language copied seemingly verbatim from the old policies. For example, the 2007-2008 edition of the Swataney, Shippensburg’s student handbook, mandates that “every member of this community” ensure that the official views of the university administration “will be mirrored in their attitudes and behaviors,” and once again prohibits “emotional abuse.” The complaint alleges several other substantive constitutional infirmities, including a challenge to the school’s harassment code.
Over the winter we reported on a rash of press censorship at universities across the country. One of the most troubling incidents occurred at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. As we stated at the time:
Quinnipiac University, for its part, has defended its restrictive policy of preventing the Quinnipiac Chronicle from publishing any new stories or updates on its web site until a new print issue appears. Moreover, Quinnipiac has threatened the student editor with discipline or even termination for publicly challenging the policy-since, the university's spokesperson says, the editor is an employee of the school and therefore is expected to show support for the university's policies-and, it seems, is expected not to criticize such policies in public.
In the last few months, the Quinnipiac Chronicle has debated severing ties with the university and becoming an independent publication.
This week, however, the Student Press Law Center reports that Quinnipiac administrators have changed the process for selecting subsequent editors. The Quinnipiac Chronicle's faculty adviser and student affairs adviser used to choose the editor-in-chief and managing editors, who in turn would select the rest of the editors. Now, the dean of students will select the Chronicle's editorial board. The editor-in-chief will be selected from a pool of students nominated by Quinnipiac's deans, and the rest of the editors will be selected from a pool chosen by the outgoing editor in chief and managing editors.
The arrangement is ostensibly temporary, and the administration claims that in the future, the editor-in-chief will be allowed to select the other editors. But the intervention seems to demonstrate that the administration plans on keeping a tight leash on the paper to squelch inconvenient dissent. At any rate, the takeover was dire enough that current editor in chief Jason Braff and all the rest of the 20 applicants for editorial positions have withdrawn their applications for positions. They instead are planning to start a new Web publication independent of the Quinnipiac administration.
Remarking on her decision to leave the paper, Campus News Editor Jaclyn Hirsch said, "I wasn't willing to put myself in a situation where I felt open and free journalism wasn't the first priority." At a modern liberal arts college, she shouldn't have to.
Posted by Luke Sheahan on May 7, 2008, at 03:56 p.m.
The University of Delaware faculty member who ought to know the most about the new Residence Life proposal was fundamentally mistaken (if not outright prevaricating) in having said, as the Delaware News Journal reports, that the plan is simply a contribution to UD's environmental sustainability agenda. The truth, which Student Life Committee chairman Matt Robinson surely knows by now, is that the proposal goes far beyond environmental sustainability in order to push a highly developed social and political agenda.
As John Leo and Peter Wood have pointed out, this agenda is not unique to the University of Delaware but is central to a large "sustainability education" movement. In this movement, the three "circles" of sustainability include not just environmentalism but also education toward specific social, political, and economic goals. These goals include worldwide redistribution of wealth and a variety of deeply politicized agenda items such as those listed here.
Such social and political goals are central, literally, to the ResLife proposal. Only in the center of the three overlapping circles, in this diagram, can one find the proper set of thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, actions, and policies. UD faculty with a bit of extra time should read how ResLife defined sustainability in one of its rejected proposals, using the language of producing "ecologically sound, socially just and economically viable" institutions. ResLife already knows what counts as "socially just" and "economically viable," despite the protestations in the ResLife proposal that these topics are up for debate.
ResLife's goal is to change the thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, and actions of University of Delaware students to fit its ideological agenda. For the evidence, faculty with a lot of extra time can read last year's highly articulated indoctrination plan. A lot of it is pretty scary. As one ResLife administrator put it,
The environment is rich with opportunities to let students know what we consider important and leave a mental footprint on their consciousness. [emphasis added]
Whether or not one agrees with elements of this agenda, I again submit that it is inappropriate for any university worth its salt as a liberal arts institution to accept a very politicized agenda as institutional policy and then to press it upon students. Do the citizens of Delaware really believe that their state's flagship university should try to teach the future leading citizens of the state that only one set of thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, actions, and policies is the best? I can understand a religious school promoting a singular ideology, but not a public institution.
ResLife has not changed its ideology, its mission, or its promotion of its ideology in its latest proposal. Instead, ResLife has hidden all of this under the guise of "citizenship" values.
Today, I received a fundraising letter from the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development. The organization is a large consortium that works to create "a healthier environment with social equality and economic well being" and is "the lead organization for U.S. participation in the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development."
The organization explicitly asserts that it is trying to establish new norms in the United States through education:
The vision of sustainable human society resides in the common ground of economic growth and equity, conservation of natural resources and the natural environment, and worldwide social development. We are dedicated to creating a new norm within the United States. This new norm is that the public will be "literate" about the sustainability challenges, and have both the skills and the attitudes to participate in solutions. This new norm is a necessity to produce a sustainable future. [emphasis added]
ResLife is a part of this movement to change attitudes and norms. It works closely, it seems, with the Sustainability Taskforce of the American College Personnel Association. ACPA's big upcoming event is an Institute on Sustainability at Harvard University. The institute "will seek to create education and awareness for sustainability's triple bottom line: healthy social systems, healthy environment and healthy economy."
In some contexts, all of this activism would be perfectly fine from the point of view of the marketplace of ideas. Private organizations can advocate for whatever they want. It is totally unacceptable, however, for this activism to be pressed as a re-education program for University of Delaware students or students at any school that values diverse views on controversial issues.
If these points are not yet clear to the University of Delaware faculty, I again urge them to investigate the matter and form their own conclusions.
Posted by Adam Kissel on May 7, 2008, at 02:35 p.m.
FIRE is very pleased that the University of Delaware Faculty Senate has delayed a vote on the deeply flawed Residence Life proposal for next year, as I requested. The campus now has a bit less than a week to genuinely debate it. I hope that sincere debate ensues and that Faculty Senate leaders and upper-level administrators do not try to keep pushing the proposal through.
I am told that students will be coming out to make their voices heard, and I hope that there is ample time next week for all points of view to be heard.
The Associated Press picked up the story, which has been published by the Delaware News Journal. The UD Review also has published an original article on the story, along with a photo of the students who arrived with literature in protest against the proposal. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has announced the news here. The point was amply made that in the proposal and for ResLife, sustainability is not just about the environment, as reported by the NAS:
Professor Matt Robinson, chairman of the Faculty Senate Student Life Committee, who presented the new Res Life proposal[,] offered the bold claim that, "The concept of sustainability, that's only speaking in terms of environmental." His attempt to package the new program as only conservation and environmental preservation, however, didn't persuade skeptical faculty members who had taken the trouble to read the details. They replied that the term sustainability is being used to sneak in "a curriculum of indoctrination" similar to the one President Harker suspended in November.
The student who spoke up also sent a letter to the Faculty Senate. Here are some thoughtful excerpts addressed mainly to those who defended the program:
You also argued that the definition of sustainability is limited to environmental aspects, but this is not shown anywhere in the plan. Additionally, RAs are taught during their intensive two weeks of training in the fall that sustainability has three components: environmental, social and economic. RAs are to implement this broad notion of sustainability into their position as an influential peer. Although the ResLife program was "shut down" RAs were never given a new definition of sustainability or told to limit their sustainability education with residents to include only environmental aspects. Furthermore, it is clearly illustrated in the current Spring Plan as well as the proposed plan for next year that sustainability is a highly politicized term with broad interpretations relating to a specific political id[e]ology.
You consistently claimed that the problem lies with the implementation plan which is different than the program plan. This is not the case. You can insert the word "optional" in the document hundreds of times, but that does not change the nature of the department. Regardless of how optional floor meetings and programs are, RAs are judged as successful or unsuccessful based upon their ability to get residents to do what ResLife wants...
You have engaged the student population very little throughout this entire process. Any student you talk to usually has a very strong opinion on the topic of Residence Life, yet only a select group of people were allowed to take part in the creation of a future plan. I am very interested in the future direction of the program and I am an active student leader on campus, yet I was never once invited to provide feedback or personal insight into the process of creating the proposed plan. Many other students feel this way as well.
I would like to make a few suggestions. [...] Students pay thousands to get a comprehensive education in the classroom, and if they are passionate about a particular subject, they can join a student group related to their interests. Each residence hall complex has a community council which can take charge of implementing programming that interests students without carrying a political agenda. Resident Assistants are not qualified to "educate" other students and they should not be burdened with such an impossible task as RAs do not even have a bachelor's degree.
As FIRE, the National Association of Scholars, and others on and off campus have argued, it will be a good thing if the proposal is rejected and ResLife continues doing what it reportedly has been doing this spring: running a traditional residential program that does not try to inculcate politicized values into students, a program that does not try to make students conform to ResLife's favorite thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, and actions. That seems to me to be what students want—not pizza parties where signs are posted that explain the impact of the party on the environment, not career counseling that pushes sustainability careers as the only ones that responsible citizens would choose, and not floor meetings where students are told they have to opt out of social time with their fellow residents if they don't want to be bombarded with ResLife's sustainability agenda.
I strongly believe that once the members of the Faculty Senate carefully consider and debate the ResLife proposal, they will conclude that this is not a proposal that can easily be salvaged in a way that respects students' freedom of conscience and academic freedom. Again, I think the Faculty Senate should reject it because it is unworthy of a great university or any school that sees itself as providing a liberal arts education.
Be sure to read FIRE co-founder and chairman emeritus Alan Charles Kors' deeply insightful, elegant, and stirring account of his experiences in higher education over the last five decades. Examining the changes in academia he has seen over his lifetime, Alan writes:
Under the heirs of the academic Sixties, we moved on campus after campus from their Free Speech Movement to their politically correct speech codes; from their abolition of mandatory chapel to their imposition of Orwellian mandatory sensitivity and multicultural training; from their freedom to smoke pot unmolested to their war today against the kegs and spirits—literal and metaphorical—of today's students; from their acquisition of young adult status to their infantilization of "kids" who lack their insight; from their self-proclaimed dreams of racial and sexual integration to their ever more balkanized campuses organized on principles of group characteristics and group responsibility; from their right to define themselves as individuals—a foundational right—to their official, imposed, and politically orthodox notions of identity. American college students became the victims of a generational swindle of truly epic proportions. If that part of the faculty not complicit in this did not know that it was happening, it was by choice or willful blindness.
In March, FIRE reported that four protesters, two of whom were students, were arrested for disorderly conduct after a protest held by Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Alabama (UA) was deemed disruptive by the university.
The protest was intended to simulate disturbances the protesters attribute to the United States armed forces in Iraq. Dressed in military garb, the four protesters ran shouting into a UA building. Once inside, the "soldiers" staged a mock abduction of three other protesters dressed in headscarves, hustling them out the door. Then, outside, one of the demonstrators announced a speech to take place that evening on campus by a veteran of the Iraq War.
Today, the Tuscaloosa Newsreports that the four demonstrators have been acquitted of the disorderly conduct charge.
Tuscaloosa County District Court Judge issued the ruling Friday for the four members of the Students for a Democratic Society, including two UA students, after prosecutors finished with their witnesses, said Jenae Strainer, a UA student and SDS member called as a witness for defense attorneys.
"We cannot allow the disorderly conduct statute to be read so broadly as to make it a crime to engage in free speech," said Allison Neal, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Alabama, which represented the protesters. "This is especially true at a time when freedom of expression is so critical to our democracy."
The two UA students arrested must still face campus judiciary hearings, but the court ruling should bode well for them. FIRE will continue to monitor the situation.
Posted by Luke Sheahan on May 5, 2008, at 04:54 p.m.
This afternoon, the University of Delaware Faculty Senate is to vote on (or table till another time) a proposal for what I have described as another indoctrination program using evidence directly from the proposal.
I have sent an open letter to the UD faculty via the Faculty Senate in advance of the meeting. The text of it can be viewed here. I point the faculty to this evidence and say:
In this letter, I am asking each of you to read the 2008-2009 Residence Life Program Plan with the same level of critical engagement that you use when you are at your best in your field. I believe that if you do so, you will see why the proposal is unworthy of the University of Delaware for its unrelenting inculcation of a highly specific political agenda. Whether or not one agrees with elements of the agenda, a serious reader is likely to agree that this kind of "education" has no place in a residential program....
The ResLife directors are the same people who asked students when they discovered their sexual identity--in private one-on-one meetings with RAs. They gave students questionnaires regarding which genders and races they would befriend and date. They did much more with the explicit goal of pressuring all UD students to conform to ResLife's "correct" views on controversial topics. These are now the same officials who want to take every opportunity--one-on-one sessions with RAs, floor meetings, bulletin boards, parties, and even career exploration sessions--to pressure students to accept ResLife's ideology.
Again, I do not quibble with the merits of any particular ideology. But it is unworthy of a great university or any liberal arts education to begin with certainty about a wide variety of topics and then to embark on a program designed to pressure students to adopt them. Such re-education programs not only violate the Constitution and the canons of academic freedom, but they also are fundamentally at odds with the principles of a free society. Those who are so confident in their own ideology should let their ideas be tested and debated in the unique "marketplace of ideas" that a university offers, not empowered to declare truth with the imprimatur of the faculty....
Also, the Faculty Senate meetings can be watched live online via webcast. Since the ResLife proposal is at virtually the end of the agenda (see agenda section VII.3.E), you probably don't need to start watching at 4 PM, but the meeting may go more quickly than you might think, even though there is so much for the faculty to discuss.
To attend the meeting in person, go to 104 Gore Hall on the Newark, Delaware campus.
But never mind what's actually inside the book—it's got a picture of hooded Klansmen burning a cross on the cover! Following this nasty bit of anti-intellectual illogic, Sampson's workmates promptly freaked out. One coworker told Sampson that reading a book about the Klan was akin to ogling pornography at work.
Sampson was then charged with, and found guilty of, racial harassment. Fortunately, after letters from the ACLU and FIRE, IUPUI removed all records of this finding from his file and Charles Bantz, IUPUI's Chancellor, stepped up and admitted the school's mistake. Greg concludes his post:
Unfortunately, that makes Bantz something of a rarity among his fellow college bigwigs. Far too often, administrators dig in their heels when confronted with their abuse of student rights.
For example, take Brandeis University, named a recipient of a 2008 "Muzzle Award" by the Thomas Jefferson Center for Free Expression for finding a professor guilty of "racial harassment" for explaining the pejorative meaning of the term "wetback" in class. Or Colorado College where students have been found guilty of "violence" for publishing a parody of a feminist newsletter. Or how about the fact that most colleges and universities still maintain laughably unconstitutional speech codes?
Our latest installation of FIREside Chats features an interview with Hayden Barnes, the student at Valdosta State University (VSU) who was expelled for publicly protesting the school's decision to construct two new parking garages on campus. Hayden is currently embattled in a lawsuit against the university, VSU President Ronald Zaccari, and the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. In today's podcast, FIRE's Media Director Emily Guidry and Hayden discuss the school's arguments against him, his legal team's response, how the ordeal has affected him personally and how he hopes his case can help other students around the country. Be sure to check back every Monday for new episodes of FIREside Chats.
The University of Louisville maintains such a repressive speech code, it's hard to know where to begin. But since we have to dive in somewhere, let's start with the fact that Louisville "requires that public speech and discourse on campus shall be civil." For the sake of the legal profession, I'm hoping that Louisville's general counsel was out sick the day this crossed his or her desk, because there is just no way such a requirement could possibly be constitutional. As far as impermissible restrictions on speech at a public university go, this is a twofer: it's both vague (what counts as "civil," and who gets to define it?) and overbroad (uncivil speech is certainly protected by the Constitution).
Indeed, Louisville's prohibition of "uncivil speech," whatever that means, brings instantly to mind FIRE's victory at San Francisco State University (SFSU) from a couple months back. Why? Because in issuing a preliminary injunction against SFSU's speech code—which, like Louisville's, required students to be "civil" to one another—a federal judge held that SFSU's civility requirement was unquestionably unconstitutionally overbroad:
The First Amendment difficulty with this kind of mandate should be obvious: the requirement "to be civil to one another" and the directive to eschew behaviors that are not consistent with "good citizenship" reasonably can be understood as prohibiting the kind of communication that it is necessary to use to convey the full emotional power with which a speaker embraces her ideas or the intensity and richness of the feelings that attach her to her cause. Similarly, mandating civility could deprive speakers of the tools they most need to connect emotionally with their audience, to move their audience to share their passion. In sum, there is a substantial risk that the civility requirement will inhibit or deter use of the forms and means of communication that, to many speakers in circumstances of the greatest First Amendment sensitivity, will be the most valued and the most effective.
Enough said.
But my favorite part (by which I mean the most hilariously unconstitutional part) of Louisville's code is their harassment section:
A person is guilty of harassment when, with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person, he or she:
(c) In a public place, makes an offensively coarse utterance, gesture, or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present.
Besides the anachronistic, Victorian-era prohibition of "offensively coarse utterances, gestures, or displays" and the hopelessly vague restriction against "abusive language," what really makes this section of the speech code amusing is the fact that Louisville isn't even trying to meet the legal definition of harassment in an education setting.
The best legal definition for peer-on-peer sexual harassment in the educational context was set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629, 650 (1999), and requires conduct or expression to be "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit." Obviously, Louisville's policy (which sounds more like the signs you see at zoos) doesn't even come close. Louisville's harassment policy also fails to meet the somewhat weaker definition of sexual harassment promulgated by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which prohibits "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it affects a student's ability to participate in or benefit from an education program or activity, or creates an intimidating, threatening or abusive educational environment." So all in all, it's about as far off the mark as can be.
For these reasons, the University of Louisville has earned our May 2008 Speech Code of the Month. If you believe that your college or university should be a Speech Code of the Month, please email speechcodes@thefire.org with a link to the policy and a brief description of why you think attention should be drawn to this code.
Following the attention given by the Delaware Association of Scholars to the University of Delaware Residence Life position called "Graduate Assistant for Diversity Initiatives," the university has removed the job description from its website.
Once again, such news confirms reports I have heard that ResLife officials are doing everything possible to run the same program they ran last year but with as much hidden as possible. That's the opposite of the new transparency that ResLife reportedly has promised.
In his post—which sports the excellent (and astute) title Surely Lucy Won't Yank the Football Away This Time!—Sanchez wisely points out that the heckler's veto is not only wrong on principle, it's lousy from a tactical point of view. As Sanchez writes: "How many times does this scenario have to play out before people start to recognize that it always ends up as a PR coup for the supporters of the silenced speaker?"
In reviewing responses to the incident postedelsewhere, Sanchez encounters the usual litany of defenses of censorship for "hate speech"—and answers them with skill and aplomb. He writes that the most common argument he received was "some variant of the idea that free speech and open debate are wonderful, but this particular fellow is so hateful or so irrational or so beyond the pale that his remarks don't count." In response, Sanchez gets it exactly right:
But the value of endorsing "free speech" as a general principle is precisely to avoid having to make these kinds of decisions about the merits of the speech, barring some very specific exceptions like "incitement to riot." Speech that isn't controversial, that isn't going to occasion protest, will never require us to invoke free speech as an ideal. Conversely, speech that is controversial—the kind of speech that might actually need the protection of that principle—is always going to be regarded as "beyond the pale" or "too much" by somebody... Everyone thinks they're right, and so everyone feels entitled to drown out the speech they dislike. You end up with the meaningless principle: "Free speech, except when we feel strongly enough about how terrible and wrong it is."
Well said.
Speaking personally, as someone who considers himself politically liberal, and as someone who does not hesitate to defend the rights of people politically opposite to me, it makes me want to pull out my hair when people I might agree with on other political topics attempt to justify censorship of speech they abhor or merely dislike.
Supporting free speech used to be virtually synonymous with being a liberal. But too often nowadays even the crudest repression is justified in the name of tolerance, diversity, or other nice-sounding-but-nonetheless-repressive rationales. Free speech is more important than a game of simple self-interest—but I have to say that I suspect these same pro-censorship advocates would protest vociferously if they encountered similarly bankrupt justifying rationales in the hands of their political adversaries.
Thank you, Julian, for defending free speech for what it must be: a principle bigger than partisan politics.
On May 5, the University of Delaware Faculty Senate is scheduled to vote on a fundamentally flawed, possibly illegal indoctrination program in the UD residence halls for next year.
As I wrote earlier this week, the plan should be rejected. This is because the program hinges almost entirely on a highly politicized "sustainability" education agenda, one in which ResLife has already determined the moral and political conclusions students are supposed to reach. The plan's "learning outcomes" are elaborated throughout the program in such a way that students will be pressured to adopt ResLife's very specific views about students' "responsibilities" as global citizens. The traditional materials of residential life programs are little more than an afterthought, thrown in at the end of the description of each month of the plan and shoehorned together into an appendix.
The bottom line is that the proposed program usurps the power of the faculty, puts education about serious and complex issues in the hands of people who have little or no formal training in education (student RAs, for instance), duplicates what the faculty already teach at best, and bombards and indoctrinates students with the agenda at worst.
But what does ResLife really mean by "sustainability"? John Leo nailed it, and I have written about it here. I will say it again: for ResLife, sustainability is not just about the environment. Documents written or promoted by Residence Life officials demonstrate that sustainability is a highly politicized, comprehensive agenda outlining "acceptable" positions on controversial topics such as affirmative action, gay marriage, abortion, corporations and worldwide redistribution of wealth.
That is a far cry from the University of Delaware's environmental take on sustainability here:
UD backs its commitment to sustainability with action in such areas as: administrative services, energy conservation and efficiency, dining services, transportation, procurement, recycling, water resources and information technology.
That's fine and good, a matter of administrative decision-making with little to no impact on pedagogical outcomes. No big deal. But when "sustainability" becomes a philosophical Trojan horse for a host of other pre-approved political viewpoints, things get problematic. The UD faculty should not let the university's environmentalist sustainability agenda be hijacked by ResLife's social and political agenda.
If you don't believe me, see for yourself. Today FIRE has put online a couple of pages from one of the rejected ResLife proposals. The pages are a short summary of ResLife's view of sustainability and diversity. For ResLife, the entire program must be viewed through "the sustainability lens." For ResLife, "citizenship" must be viewed as part "sustainability," part "diversity."
If an institution is sustainable, there is an emphasis on critical activities that are ecologically sound, socially just and economically viable. Sustainable concepts are implemented in curriculum, co-curriculum, and research so as to prepare students to contribute to society as working citizens. Activities embody responsible consumption of food, natural resources and energy and treat its diverse members with respect ... [ResLife document, drawing on the 1987 Brundtland Commission and University Leaders for a Sustainable Future]
[...]
The idea of justice is also a critical term ... in terms of how inequity and injustice diminishes not only those suffering directly, but the entire global collective.
[...]
To quote AAC&U, "educating students for a global future is no longer elective."
ResLife has worked very hard to hoodwink the faculty, using the university's own educational goals and initiatives as a cover for its own agenda.
The UD faculty will fall for it unless they read this document with the same critical eye they use when they do their regular academic work.
Joining FIRE, the Delaware Association of Scholars (DAS) has called on the University of Delaware Faculty Senate to reject the Residence Life proposal that is to be voted on during its May 5 meeting.
Since the DAS makes a few points not already present in my analysis here, we reproduce the release in full here.
I analyze the overall program goals, the seven "learning outcomes," the many ways that ResLife proposes to shape students' thoughts, values, attitudes, and beliefs, and the endless curriculum of "sustainability"—not just environmental sustainability, but a highly politicized set of social and political views—here.
If the faculty is intent on having a plan for the fall, this is not it. Try cutting half of the proposal out, and getting rid of the educational goals and intended learning outcomes, and the program might have a chance of being morally and legally sound.
Today we announced our victory for freedom of expression at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. This marks our momentous 125th public victory! So, we decided to take this time to share some numbers about FIRE's achievements with you.
Over the past eight years, FIRE has won 125 public victories at more than 100 colleges and universities whose total enrollment exceeds 2.2 million students. FIRE is directly responsible for changing unconstitutional or repressive policies affecting more than 1.3 million students at more than 50 of these universities.
It may be obvious, but it's still true—not one of these victories would have been possible without the support of our generous donors. In celebration of this landmark achievement, we are giving away FIRE mugs to anyone who donates $125 in May! You can make an
