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Campus climate of free speech
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by Virginia Zignego
Thursday, November 6, 2003
A recent U.S. Senate Committee hearing addressed concerns that intellectual diversity is becoming a decreasingly prevalent idea on college campuses nationwide.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire, the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and other Senators and witnesses discussed various issues they said might be restricting or diminishing free speech in the college scene.
President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni Anne Neal testified at the hearing and said it is important to foster a free exchange of ideas on campuses.
“The essence of a college experience is the free exchange of ideas. When students feel fearful or unwilling to speak out, this undermines the education a college should provide,” Neal said.
Neal said that if a faculty member openly expresses his or her political opinions, it can be intimidating for students, but other, greater factors are playing the larger role in this lack of intellectual diversity.
“Studies have been done on the political affiliation of faculty and don’t conclude that it affects the university climate. The issue is students’ right to academic freedom,” Neal said. “There are numerous examples where the robust exchange of ideas has not occurred.”
Both Gregg and Neal agree that the free speech is vital to students’ college education. Neal referred to Thomas Jefferson in relation to the importance of intellectual diversity.
“Jefferson spoke about the life of the mind and how important it is to follow truths wherever they might lead,” Neal said.
In regards to the University of Wisconsin’s free-speech climate, Donald
Downs, a UW political science professor, said the campus free-speech climate has improved over the last few years.
“Student groups and coalitions of faculty have done the most to preserve free speech at UW,” Downs said.
Downs also said he would like to see an institutional commitment to teaching freshmen the principles of open discourse so they learn to deal with speech they find upsetting.
Neither Sen. Gregg nor ACTA are in favor of legislative action specifically regarding this aspect of free speech. Joshua Shields, spokesperson for Gregg, said the Senator does not believe there is a legislative solution, but the purpose of the Senate Committee hearing was to shed light on the issue and raise public awareness.
Although Downs said that various student groups and faculty are more appreciative of free speech than they were a couple of years ago, he still recalled recent examples of free-speech issues.
“In the early 1990’s, the problem was with faculty. Now, most problems come from students or groups shutting down speakers, and then there was the public debate when The Badger Herald printed David Horowitz’s speech,” Downs said.
A UW senior majoring in journalism who wished to remain unidentified said she sometimes feels that a professor’s political affiliation does affect the climate of a class. She pointed to the war in Iraq as an example of this.
“Almost all of my professors have expressed their views on the war in
Iraq, and I don’t really feel that there’s room for disagreement. It’s usually presented in a context where the professor doesn’t expect discourse,” she said. “I’m not for or against Iraq or Bush, but it’s looked at as common sense, like ‘Of course Bush is an idiot,’ not that half the population elected him or anything.”
