an argument would be injurious to the person…. Because so many forms of scholarly inquiry today foreground people’s lived experience, there’s this kind of odd overtactfulness. In many ways, it’s emanating from a good thing, but it’s turned into a disabling thing.”
Kakutani went on to discuss other theories that range from the deep and thoughtful—including her argument that relativism and the broad acceptance of the “principle of subjectivity” make meaningful argument seem less important—to the somewhat silly—referencing Oprah Winfrey, 9/11, the popularity of the drug ecstasy, and “the often petty haggling between right and left, Republicans and Democrats, during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings and the disputed presidential election of 2000.”
Given the range and breadth of what she was willing to consider, it was striking to me that she never mentioned the fact that students and faculty get in trouble for expressing unpopular opinions. Surely even the vaguest fear of being punished for speaking your mind would have a more profound effect on the state of debate on America’s campuses than, say, the off-putting “spectacle of liberals and conservatives screaming at each other on television programs like ‘Crossfire’”?
Kakutani’s piece was one of several that came out around that time bemoaning the disappearance of debate and discussion on college campuses but failing to consider speech codes and campus punishments as contributing factors. For example, months earlier, University of Massachusetts Amherst student Suzanne Feigelson wrote an article in Amherst Magazine titled “The Silent Classroom” that gained substantial attention.64 Feigelson considered many factors that cause students to “stop talking in class about midway through freshman year.” She emphasized concerns about sounding stupid or redundant, classmates judging them, being embarrassed, or not being cool. Feigelson neglected, however, to examine the effect of the implicit threat of punishment for badly received statements of opinion. This is especially surprising given that Feigelson attended UMass Amherst, a college that has repeatedly punished students for clearly protected expression. The very same fall that Feigelson wrote “The Silent Classroom,” UMass received negative publicity for permitting a rally in opposition to a military response to the 9/11 attacks but refusing to allow students to rally in support of the newly minted “war on terror.”65 The students held a rally anyway, but their materials were reportedly publicly vandalized with no response from the university. Indeed, UMass Amherst maintains unconstitutional speech codes limiting expression both within the classroom and outside of it.66 Might not the detailed and explicit speech code banning classroom speech that is “clearly disrespectful” have something to do with a classroom environment where students are hesitant to speak their minds?
At the time these articles were published, I was in my first year at FIRE. I was neck deep in hundreds of case submissions dating back to the organization’s founding two years before, reading story after story of students and faculty members alike being punished for protected speech, and much of which—far from being “hate speech”—was remarkably tame by the standards of the larger society. If these commentators on student silence had bothered looking, they would have found numerous examples of campus censorship that were going on at that very moment.
In fact, 2001–2002 brought a brief jump in media awareness of campus censorship in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Some cases that received national attention included one at Central Michigan University, where students were told by administrators to take down pictures of American flags, eagles, and a San Francisco Chronicle article titled “Bastards” because they all purportedly violated the policy on “hate related items and … profanity.”67 At San Diego State University, a student from Ethiopia was threatened with punishment for chastising Saudi students who he said had expressed delight at the 9/11 attacks.68 The Saudi students apparently didn’t know that Zewdalem Kebede also spoke Arabic and could understand them. Despite the fact that Kebede was one student arguing against four, he was the one brought up on charges of being “verbally abusive.” Meanwhile, at UC Berkeley, the home of the free speech movement, members of the student government attempted to punish the student newspaper for running a cartoon that showed the 9/11 hijackers surprised to find themselves in hell.69 I would learn that characterizing speech critical of Islamic terrorism as offensive to all Muslims—which, if you think about it, is pretty offensive in itself—is a common tactic on campus.70
Even professors were not safe. A University of New Mexico professor was threatened with punishment for joking on 9/11 that “anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote.”71 The professor’s remark caught the attention of mainstream and conservative media alike, and he apologized profusely for his insensitive joke, but the incident led to his early retirement from teaching.72 Professors at both Duke and Penn were chastised by administrators for posting articles in favor of the war on terrorism, while professors at the City University of New York were threatened with punishment for holding a teach-in opposing a strong American reaction to 9/11.73
These were only a handful of the 9/11-related cases that affected faculty and students, right, left, and center. In spite of the media attention these controversies received, no one made the connection between the culture of silence (or, at least, excessive reticence) on campus and the fact that students were increasingly aware that they could get in trouble for simply expressing their opinions. Even the faintest threat of actual punishment is a far more efficient and effective way to stifle debate than the reasons suggested by Kakutani and Feigelson. A silent classroom is a natural—indeed, inevitable—result of an educational atmosphere full of speech restrictions and a culture that teaches students to shy away from controversy.
Speech Codes, Juan Williams, and the Danger of Honest Talk
Too few Americans know that campus speech codes are real and more numerous than they were in their supposed heyday of the early ’90s. The fact that students can get in trouble for “politically incorrect” speech is probably more commonly accepted, but is not regarded as a particularly serious problem. At Stanford, I knew many people who would applaud that practice. I also saw this attitude reflected among some of my fellow columnists in their ambivalent or even supportive reaction to NPR’s decision to fire the commentator Juan Williams in 2010.74
For those of you who didn’t follow the case, Williams is an African American civil rights historian and a journalist who had been working for National Public Radio since 1999. In a debate with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, Williams conceded that he felt nervous getting on a plane when he saw Muslims in traditional garb getting on, as well. Williams explained in his 2011 book Muzzled,
This was not a bigoted statement or a policy position. It was not reasoned opinion. It was simply an honest statement of my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims who professed that killing Americans was part of their religious duty and would earn them the company of virgins in heaven. I don’t think that I’m the only American who feels this way.75
Note that Williams made his comment while arguing against lumping all Muslims together with terrorists and against racial profiling. A major obstacle to getting a handle on both race relations and religious tensions is that people are afraid to be candid about how they really feel towards people of other cultures and faiths. Williams took a rare step and admitted to an alltoo-human fear, and for that he was fired from his job. The day after he was fired, NPR’s CEO, Vivian Schiller, told an audience at the Atlanta Press Club that Williams should have kept his feelings about Muslims between himself and “his psychiatrist or his publicist.”76 Schiller’s words sent a powerful message: “We don’t really want to know your real feelings, fears, and emotions. If they might offend, shut up.”
It is true that the situation at NPR is distinct from that on campus, because NPR can fire an employee for good or bad reasons, while public colleges may not legally expel students for their opinions. Yet the message sent by NPR is precisely the one that speech codes and viewpoint-based punishments send. And the result is cowed students, silent classrooms, and whispers in cliques rather than serious, meaty, honest talk.
As you will see, the problem goes