BY JOHN K. WILSON
The temptation to regulate free speech in the name of a higher good is a constant danger on the left, and the right. Too often, we ignore how centrist administrators and thinkers endorse censorship too easily, and how much power they hold. I think the greatest threats to campus free speech today come from right-wing legislators and wealthy donors seeking to suppress dissent and anxious administrators willing to silence controversial figures on the left or the right. But even well-intentioned arguments by leftists, conservatives, and centrists alike in defense of censorship help weaken the defense of free expression at a time when we need to make it stronger.
One important centrist thinker who defends speech restrictions, Northwestern business professor Eli Finkel, made an argument earlier this year in the Chicago Tribune that deserves a deeper analysis.
Finkel calls for more campus regulation of styles of speech that are “polluting, which undermines inclusive speech through actions, such as ad hominem attacks, that befoul the public sphere.” We should be wary of any metaphor that takes a physical danger to health, such as pollution, and applies it to free speech.
Ad hominem attacks are a good example of why we must protect polluting speech. Many ad hominem attacks are perfectly legitimate. I wrote an entire book that was an ad hominem attack on Donald Trump, arguing that he is a terrible person who should not be elected president. If we advise people, “Don’t cite Alex Jones as a source in your papers because he’s a crackpot, an idiot, and a liar,” we are making an ad hominem attack, and a reasonable one. Yes, many ad hominem attacks are misguided and destructive of intellectual engagement (especially the false ones aimed at me). But we imperil rather than improve our public discourse by banning ad hominem attacks.
According to Finkel, “Clear regulations are necessary to ensure that the most aggressive voices can’t drown out other viewpoints.” But clear regulations are often a tool used by the most aggressive voices to drown out dissent. A ban on bad styles is an invitation for censors to file complaints against every outspoken thinker. We need to teach the most aggressive voices to listen more and teach the most passive voices to speak more, but regulations often have the opposite impact, because the reluctant speakers are usually the ones intimidated by repressive rules. Clear regulations don’t teach virtues. Nuanced learning can’t be accomplished with a set of policies dictating social niceties. High-level reasoning cannot be created with rules and regulations. And good speech does not come from clear regulations.
Finkel asks, “Is there any compelling moral or civic reason why we should require that the ‘libtard’ in question— say, a supporter of abortion rights—endure personal invective as the price of admission to the public sphere?” Yes. Personal invective is an essential part of free expression, especially at a time when so many people think that political perspectives are personal invective. We already see people claiming that harsh criticism of Israel is antisemitic harassment. If you lower the bar from harassment to ban “personal invective” then anyone could consider a political opinion related to their identity “personal” and any clear viewpoint “invective.” Being called a “libtard” is pretty awful (and pretty rare on campus, I suspect). But an abortion rights supporter should realize the danger that their ability to criticize the anti-abortion movement would be limited by a ban on personal invective, if references to the Handmaid’s Tale and coat hangers are deemed punishable invective and activists who denounce the pro-life movement as “anti-woman” are banned.
Finkel wonders, “If sanctions against such polluting styles of speech produced a more inclusive marketplace of ideas, wouldn’t that be a worthwhile tradeoff?” No, because formal sanctions don’t produce a more inclusive marketplace of ideas. We already have very strong informal sanctions against polluting speech: People who engage in bad speech encounter harsh reactions, condemnations, and social penalties. The concern about self-censorship on campus is a result of the power of these informal sanctions against bad speech, and we need to find ways to reduce sanctions on speech rather than enhancing them. Using formal sanctions to encourage more self-censorship will only generate more repression, and less inclusion.
Finkel himself is not calling for massive censorship. Finkel claims, “If we find certain beliefs or behaviors abhorrent, we’re welcome to say so forcefully.” But that seems in direct contradiction to his assertion that “universities must set default policies against polluting styles of speech” including, disturbingly, an apparent ban on the words “libtard” and “cishetero.”
There is an inherent contradiction in Finkel’s approach: What Finkel calls “polluting” speech is often seen by its users as the opposite. Is racist speech polluting? Or is calling speech “racist” the pollution? Ultimately, the answer depends on which speech you think is correct and which speech you think is wrong. When it becomes a tool for imposing censorship, the “pollution” standard often is little more than the imposition of a dominant ideology. We shouldn’t allow the permissible tone of political speech to be dictated by whoever has the most power in a legislature or a university.
Finkel is right to warn, “Strong policies for protecting substantive speech are necessary in part because silencing is so tempting.” But this same logic applies to protecting “polluting” styles of speech, because censors will always be tempted to imagine that their enemies are polluters and the campus must be purified by silencing their bad speech. Once a university defines bad styles of speech as punishable, ideological interpretations of polluting speech will always exist. Every administration would pretend that they are not censoring bad ideas but merely bad styles of expression.
We don’t need to ban polluting speech in order to acknowledge the problems with it and work to remedy its harms. Finkel, as the cofounder of the new Center for Enlightened Disagreement at Northwestern, embodies that effort to encourage more thoughtful discussions. But colleges can fulfill our responsibilities by encouraging more reasonable styles of speech without imposing the correct attitudes. Universities have the capacity to educate without censorship, and to encourage better speech without banning bad speech.
John K. Wilson is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies and the forthcoming book The Attack on Academia.
