BY JOHN K. WILSON
This week, Arizona HB 2238 passed the state house education committee by a vote of 7-4. Stanley Kurtz (the mastermind behind these laws with the help of the Goldwater Institute) calls the Arizona bill the start of a “third wave” of legislation in the name of campus free speech, following earlier efforts to ban campus speech zones and impose mandatory punishments on student protesters. HB 2238 follows Kurtz’s proposal last year for an Intellectual Diversity Act, which I sharply criticized at the time.
The bill would force Arizona public universities to create an Office of Public Policy Events. Legislative mandates that micromanage colleges are a bad idea, and the details of the legislation are pretty awful, which is unfortunate because the basic idea is a good one. Colleges should do more to promote events with different opinions and spur free speech on campus.
This year, I’m a fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, which I think is a great model for what colleges can do to help promote free speech on campus. The National Center will be holding its annual #SpeechMatters conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Feb. 27 (register here), and it’s currently seeking applications for next year’s group of fellows (due March 6).
As part of my fellowship, I am organizing some events for a weeklong residency at UC-Berkeley in March, including Weds. March 4 at 7pm (a conversation with students about free speech at Berkeley sponsored by BridgeUSA);Thurs. March 5, 12:50-2pm (American Constitution Society discussion at the law school with Dean Chemerinsky and Prof. John Powell about hate speech and free speech on college campuses); and Mon. March 9, 6:30pm (an Art+Design talk at BAMPFA on “Freedom of Speech? Censoring Art on Campus”). I’ll admit that I wish UC-Berkeley had an office devoted to organizing events with different viewpoints, since it might have made it easier for me to organize more activities during my residency.
Legislators giving colleges a mandate (imposed, but not funded) to create some center is a bad approach to what universities should create themselves (funded, but not imposed, by politicians).
And the details of HB 2238 are disturbing. The primary flaw with the legislation is the demand for affirmative action for conservative speakers. According to the bill, “The Office of Public Policy Events shall prioritize inviting speakers from outside the university who hold perspectives on widely debated public policy issues that are otherwise poorly represented on campus.” This provision is clearly intended to say that this office is obligated to mostly invite conservative speakers to campus.
Then there is all of the unnecessary micromanagement, such as requiring a printed copy of the calendar of events organized by the center to be sent to various government officials, making the narrow topic of “public policy” the sole focus of these centers, and requiring every event organized to be videotaped and posted online. That’s an unnecessary expense and a barrier to holding events. Some small events could add greatly to the campus conversation, but the videotaping requirement increases the cost and may cause a center to scale back its activities. And one of the valuable things an event center can do is work with programs and student groups around campus to co-sponsor and help promote events, which won’t happen if the cost of taping every event gets in the way.
Not every bad thing on a college campus can be cured with a law or an Executive Order; not every good thing can be mandated by legislation. These kinds of intrusive laws have negative effects and unforeseen consequences when they try to impose government coercion above rational persuasion. The University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement is a good example of what can happen when campus leaders, faculty, students, and experts get together to work on these problems, and these voluntary centers will always be more effective at changing how universities operate and what people think than government-imposed attempts to compel conservative viewpoints.
The writer makes a sound argument. I would add a few factors for consideration, on an issue I’m involved with as an alum and college parent.
One, there has been an unbalanced ideological, political and policy environment on most college campuses (save for example Hillsdale College, or Caltech, whose only student protest in its nearly 80 year history was over the cancellation of Star Trek in 1968), even (or especially) in professional schools of law, management and so-called public policy. The heavy overweight of far Left (if I may) perspectives, may or not be ones that can be addressed by administrative or government policy, but such imbalance surely has an impact on how our young adults grow and mature intellectually. A group of new UChicago Ph.Ds and J.D.s I met with this year was an unsettling experience in the degree to which they merely mimicked or mirrored the speech and thought patterns of very trivial ideology from the academy (readers can view my monograph on law school reform and cognitive fidelity, in the UC Knowledge archives).
Two, the academy and its administration (I say “its” because that is where the vast majority of administration come from–and go back to) has to take most of the blame in this contention raised by the author, as they have overwhelmed the campus environment with very poorly thought-out positions, and combined with previous White House administration, used (and use) the college campus for ideological dissemination, political recruitment, and even curriculum design (e.g. area studies).
Three, this may all otherwise be a tempest in a teapot, in some dimensions, as free speech is free, precisely because it does not conform to codified law, but rather to natural law. The only legal policy consideration is actually one sustained by college administration because of 1. concerns over tort law liability, and triggering Title VI actions; and 2. managing expectations and preferences of corporate, federal and individual donors: free speech is largely about free cash flow.
Readers may otherwise appreciate my recent Opinion on campus speech codes (the “Chicago Principles”) written for the students, faculty and parents of the University of Chicago (below by link).
May I close by stating that ultimately, government–and universities–should get out of the speech business, and simply get out of the way (as the writer rightly calls it, of “micromanagement”). That judgment, and its complications, I raised in the Wall Street Journal, below, additionally. Thank you and Regards.
https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2020/2/7/chicago-principles-dissent/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-government-and-free-speech-on-campus-1510000926