BY SUSAN E. RAMLO

Free Speech *Conditions Apply by Fukt, Flickr

Academics and other university stakeholders are often unaware of their biases, privilege, and naivety regarding free speech issues on campus. An eighty-year-old research method called Q methodology (“Q”) revealed this in a continuation of my 2018 research.[i] Institution-A (the focus of this study) has been struggling with declining enrollment, financial troubles, and revolving top leadership over an extended period of time. Yet, whereas some participants indicated a speech crisis exists here, others in the previous study had very different views about the institution’s situation. My study found that this discrepancy and administrator overreach (administrators adhering to a corporate model of censorship) are not isolated to Institution-A. All campus stakeholders (faculty, staff, administrators, trustees, students, and alumni) must comprehend that their power position can impact their subjective viewpoint to create perspectives of privilege as well as perspectives of crisis. We must be aware of privilege relative to race and gender while accepting that tenure also provides privilege. This is imperative as the number of contingent faculty grows, whether adjuncts or non-tenure-track full-time faculty.

Within Q, participants sort items (typically 40-60 statements) concerning a topic and then the individual sorts are grouped statistically in a way that identifies distinctive viewpoints. This single-case Q study involved a participant who sorted the same statements as in the earlier study,[ii] which included:

• Faculty’s inability to “talk back” on my campus has created a crisis of knowledge production and forward movement for my college / university.
• Freedom of speech and inquiry does not absolve us of responsibility. Speech is rarely without consequence.
• Feelings should not trump scholarly analysis.
• Before we have a conversation about civility, ground rules, and freedom of speech, it is incumbent upon all of us to think about the identity positions from which we make certain claims.
• Tenure is vital to protecting academic freedom in the classroom.

This participant placed these statements into a grid with a continuum that ranges from “most like my view” (+5 column) to “most unlike my view” (-5) about speech on campus with the following conditions that were fixed within a timeline: Today (over a year later), Future, and When the participant was a new faculty member at Institution-A. The Ideal condition of instruction is predicated on Rogers’ Law: Self and ideal are most likely related.

The findings reveal insights regarding privilege, social justice, naïveté, and crisis in relation to speech on campus, especially at a troubled, mid-sized public university in the US. The participant represented the original study’s Speech Crisis view, which continues in this study to represent the concerning speech crisis at Institution-A. Characteristics of this crisis include administrative bullying of faculty, primarily by a specific upper administrator as well as his representatives within various colleges at Institution-A. Theoretical sorts from three of the previous study’s five viewpoints (Idealistic, Social Justice, Speech Crisis, Sage on the Stage, and Fox News) were also included within the analyses (Sage on the Stage and Fox News were excluded).

Four different viewpoints about free speech on campus emerged: Privileged (formerly called Idealistic), Naïve (formerly called Social Justice), Speech Crisis (essentially the same as the previous study) and Hope for the Future (unique to this study). Written reflections from the single participant provided new considerations about the original study’s Idealistic view now called Privileged based on the participant’s written comments. Most notably, the Privileged view is rooted within a sense of privilege whether that privilege was the result of whiteness, maleness, tenure, or non-exposure to speech restrictions. Those on this view do not acknowledge their privilege. This helps explain why, within Institution-A, those represented by the Privileged view appear to reject the idea that there is a speech crisis on campus. Likewise, on other campuses, this view represents those who have not experienced adverse speech situations on campus, regardless of the reason.

The original study’s Social Justice View, mostly represented graduate students, coupled with the participant as a ‘new faculty member’ sort. The participant’s reflection did not deal with social justice but, instead, with their realization that they had been naïve about regulating speech, especially hate speech, early in their academic career. She noted her earlier lack of importance regarding tenure, freedom of speech, and academic freedom. Thus, this view represents naivety about academic life rather than social justice. The true sense of social justice is represented in this study’s Hope for the Future perspective.

This view embraces the complicated nature of speech on campus, especially within the context of hate speech, racism, and white supremacy. Unlike the Naïve view, the Hope for the Future view rejects speech regulation as the solution to countering hate speech and the like. This view also offers the realization that academic debates and research are connected to the idea, even if it is subconscious, that whiteness and maleness is superior. Thus, the academy possesses biases that many do not see or accept. The participant had this to say about decision making at Institution-A:

Quantitative analysis without additional, thoughtful consideration is a mistake and has been a mistake that has affected my university. Yet feelings alone can be damaging as the provost has demonstrated repeatedly. Somewhere there is a balance between qualitative, quantitative, and subjective aspects of decision-making and I feel hopeful for the future in this regard.  However, various constituents will have to gain insight relative to these ideas and that includes faculty, administrators, and trustees.

Thus, we can see that shared governance and issues of free speech are interconnected on campuses.

Guest blogger Susan E. Ramlo is professor of general technology and vice president of the University of Akron AAUP chapter. Her research focuses on STEM education, subjectivity, and the methodological aspects of Q methodology and she primarily teaches the first two semesters of technical physics.

[i]  A variation of Q uses a single participant who sorts statements multiple times, each using a different condition of instruction. This is the situation within this most recent study which reveals important insights concerning speech on campus that can inform faculty, staff, and administrators within higher education.

[ii] This most recent study is now available online in the International Journal of Research & Method in Education: “Subjectivity as subjective-science: Campus freedom of speech as an intensive single-case study.” Although my earlier study involved multiple participants, Q’s creator, William Stephenson, often undertook single-case studies using Q to probe a topic. Certainly, research based on  individuals as well as very small groups of participants has led to important advances within social and behavioral sciences, including the work of Freud and Piaget.