Grassroots/Hank Kalet

An Assault on Campus Speech

We are witnessing what I think is the biggest threat to free expression in my lifetime. That sounds like hyperbole, but I don’t think it is.

I’ve lived through the “wars” over political correctness and cancel culture, which were “tempests in a teapot,” to use the cliche, and not real threats and were more or less about people being mad that, were they to be racist or sexist in public, there might be push back.

The current climate is different. These earlier debates were about what might be acceptable to say in polite company or in public more broadly. They were about cultural and social mores and not hard-and-fast institutional rules. That is not the case with what is happening on college campuses today, where most of these battles have been and continue to be fought.

Take what is happening at Barnard College. As reported by The Forward, “Barnard students may no longer display messages on their dorm doors,” a move made in “response to the tense climate at the New York college since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.”

Some students at Barnard and Columbia University, of which it is a part, have placed signs on their dormitory doors charging Israel with genocide in Gaza and of being an illegitimate state. Jewish students filed a lawsuit, accusing both schools of failing to protect students from “pervasive” antisemitism and anti-Zionism. “Anti-Zionism is not merely a political movement—although many try to disguise it as such—but is a direct attack against Israel as a Jewish collectivity,” the suit read. 

The administration reportedly sent an email to students informing them of the change in policy, and told them (again, from The Forward) it was put in place to ensure that “everyone feels welcome and safe” at Barnard.

“While many decorations and fixtures on doors serve as a means of helpful communication amongst peers, we are also aware that some may have the unintended effect of isolating those who have different views and beliefs,” read the email from Leslie Grinage, the college’s dean.

The Barnard policy appears to cover all decorations and, as such, is neutral. As does American University’s new restrictions on the posting of fliers on campus property “unless those flyers provide details about events organized by student clubs or university-affiliated organizations.” Similar prohibitions have been put in place at Lehigh, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

Supporters of these kind of restrictions argue that order on campuses demand the curtailment of free speech rights, that in most of these cases speech is harassment.

“If free speech impedes another individual’s ability to learn, it’s a violation of that right to equal access,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. “At what point does one person’s free speech violate another student’s right or faculty member’s right to free thought, free speech, or academic freedom?”

This argument strips the phrase free speech of its meaning and puts universities in the dangerous position of policing what their students can say and what kind of protest is acceptable.

Photos of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 or Palestinian children killed during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza are political actions that universities should be protecting. At Rutgers, where I teach, these posters dotted the New Brunswick campus, often occupying adjacent spaces. They offered a dueling narrative that, when taken together, eloquently outlined what is at stake in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. The dueling fliers called attention to the humanity on both sides, though that may not have been the purpose.

Do we really want to ban these expressions on campuses, to tell students that their growing political awareness is less important than their test scores? Shouldn’t these debates be a part of their university experiences? I certainly think so, which is why I invite students in my journalism classes to discuss these issues and to cover them for class, to present on news stories from sources as varied as the Jerusalem Post, Al Jazeera, and the New York Times. And I ask them to question their own beliefs, not to change them but to challenge their foundations because if they do that their own commitments will be stronger.

Look, I get that free speech is not an absolute right. Direct threats and obvious harassment on campus — as when a student wearing a keffiyah (Palestinian head scarf) or kippah yarmulke (Jewish head covering) are verbally, but directly attacked as terrorists or murders — are generally not seen as protected speech. And in a classroom setting, the use of racial or ethnic epithets usually crosses a line.

Sorting through these issues often is not easy. There are slogans and phrases that make me uneasy, make others uneasy, but that are part of the larger discourse. The slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” leaves many Jews — including myself — feeling threatened, but it is not a threat. It is not, despite what politicians like Elise Stefanik argue, usually for self-serving political reasons.

The phrase, in fact, is one used often by the Israeli settlement movement, whose chief goal is to chase Palestinians from their homes in the Occupied Territories and ultimately create a Greater Israel.

But the hearer does not get to decide what can be said, should not be allowed to use hurt feelings to govern what others say and believe. If free speech is to mean anything, we cannot invite governmental and corporate institutions (higher ed falls into these groupings) to act as arbiters or to shut down debate. Governments are notoriously bad at policing speech and protest, because governments have their own motivations, their own reasons for quieting dissenters.

These new rules being pushed by American colleges and universities in the name of tolerance do no one any favors. They curtail debate and play to a minority of students and faculty who just do not want to hear arguments with which they disagree — including the posting of fliers showing the faces of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 or Palestinian children killed in the Israeli onslaught that followed.

Hank Kalet is a journalist in New Jersey and lecturer of journalism at Rutgers and is a member of the executive committee of Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union. Email grassroots@comcast.net. His blog, Channel Surfing, is at www.kaletblog.com. Twitter, @newspoet41; Facebook, facebook.com/hank.kalet.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2024

Populist.com