In my book out this week, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I write about the anti-free speech movement that has swept over higher education and how administrators and faculty hold a view of free speech as harmful. Now Harvard is again at the heart of a free speech fight after Lawrence Bobo, the Dean of Social Science, rejected views of free speech as a “blank check” and said that criticizing university leaders like himself or school policies are now viewed as “outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct.”
Bobo warns that public criticism of the school could “cross a line into sanctionable violations.”
In his opinion editorial in the Harvard Crimson, Bobo declares:
“A faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government — to intervene in Harvard’s affairs. Along with freedom of expression and the protection of tenure comes a responsibility to exercise good professional judgment and to refrain from conscious action that would seriously harm the University and its independence.”
The column adopts every jingoistic rationale used by anti-free speech critics today, including the invocation of the Holmes “crowded theater” analogy:
“But many faculty at Harvard enjoy an external stature that also opens to them much broader platforms for potential advocacy. Figures such as Raj Chetty ’00, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jill Lepore, or Steven A. Pinker have well-earned notoriety that reaches far beyond the academy.
Would it simply be an ordinary act of free speech for those faculty to repeatedly denounce the University, its students, fellow faculty, or leadership? The truth is that free speech has limits — it’s why you can’t escape sanction for shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.”
First and foremost, the ability of faculty to speak out on public disputes should not depend on whether you are more popular or visible.
However, it is the theater analogy that is most galling.
I have an entire chapter in The Indispensable Right that addresses the fallacies surrounding this line out of the Holmes opinion. It is arguably the most damaging single line ever written by a Supreme Court justice in the area of free speech.
I have previously written about the irony of liberals adopting the analogy, which was used to crack down on socialists and dissenters on the left.
One of the most telling moments came in a congressional hearing when I warned of the dangers of repeating the abuses of prior periods like the Red Scare, when censorship and blacklisting were the norm. In response, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-New York, invoked Oliver Wendell Holmes’ view that free speech does not give a person the right to yell fire in a crowded theater. In other words, citizens had to be silenced because their views are dangerous to others.
When I attempted to point out that the line came from a case justifying the imprisonment of socialists for their political viewpoints, Goldman cut me off and “reclaimed his time.”
Other Democrats have used the line as a mantra, despite its origins in one of our most abusive anti-free speech periods during which the government targeted political dissidents on the left.
Dean Bobo is now the latest academic to embrace the theater rationale to justify the silencing of dissent. At Harvard, he is suggesting that the entire university is now a crowded theater and criticizing the university leadership is a cry of “Fire.” It is that easy.
By punishing criticism of the school’s leadership and policies, Bobo believes that they can look “forward to calmer times” on campus. It is precisely the type of artificial silence that academics have been enforcing against conservatives, libertarians, and dissenters for years. It is the approach that reduced our schools to an academic echo chamber.
The reference to Professor Steven Pinker is particularly ironic. As we have previously discussed, Pinker was targeted for exercising free speech. In past controversies, most Harvard faculty members have been conspicuously silent as colleagues were targeted by cancel campaigns. It was the same at other universities.
As faculties effectively purged their ranks of conservative or Republican members, the silence was deafening. Others either supported such campaigns or justified them. Notably, over 75 percent of the Harvard faculty identify as “liberal” or “very liberal.”
Then the Gaza protests began and some of these same faculty found themselves the targets of mobs. Suddenly, free speech became an urgent matter to address. Fortunately for these liberal professors, the free speech community is used to opportunistic allies. Where “fair weather friends” are often ridiculed, free speech relies on “foul-weather friends,” those who suddenly see the need to protect a diversity of opinions when they feel threatened.
Bobo’s arguments are consistent with years of rationales for silencing or investigating dissenting faculty for years. It violates the very foundation for academia in free speech and academic freedom. The university is free to punish students or faculty for unlawful conduct. However, when it comes to their viewpoints, there should be a bright line of protection.
Of course, this criticism is likely to trigger another common fallacy used to rationalize speech controls: as a private university Harvard is not subject to the First Amendment and thus this is not a true free speech issue.
As discussed previously, free speech values go beyond the First Amendment whether it is a controversy on social media or campuses. For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech objections to social media or academic censorship by stressing that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies or institutions. The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government or corporations.
The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies. This threat is even greater when politicians openly use corporations and universities to achieve indirectly what they cannot achieve directly.
Dean Bobo’s desire for “calmer times” would come at too high a price for free speech as well as Harvard.
Another great American, Justice Robert H. Jackson, wrote what the Harvard dean should have quoted:
Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. . . . As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. As governmental pressure toward unity becomes greater, so strife becomes more bitter as to whose unity it shall be. . . . Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.
West Virginia State Board of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 640-41 (1943).
Thank you.
I posted a different version of this argument above – Jackson was far more succinct.
Censorship CAUSES greater strife it does not fix it.
As a retired academics and former member of AAUP I assure you that those Harvard administrators are wrong and setting themselves up for lawsuits which they will lose.
We keep repeating the absurd mindset captured by the US Army officer’s comment after a 1968 engagement in the Vietnamese war: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
Taking a step back, it seems me that, with much talk on campus about student “safe spaces”, elimination of microaggressions, and a clear desire for “calmer times”, the universities have unquestioningly striven for the Epicurean notion of happiness: ataraxia (freedom from mental disturbance). This is in contrast to the Stoic’s notion that happiness comes from finding life purpose, acceptance of fate, and living a moral life. I happen to think that success in life is more angled toward the Stoic vision.
It’s as good as him saying, outright, that all of the criticism against him is accurate. He just doesn’t like it.
Right, you’re only free to say what we tell you you can say.
Newsflash-Emerson College in Boston has just announced a marked decrease in Freshman enrollment for the fall semester and this appears to require some rollback in services and staff. They have apparently had large pro Hamas and anti Israel demonstrations these past few weeks. Myself I never heard of Emerson but pricy with Tuition of $55,000/year and room and board $20,000/year. Waiting for enrollment figures for Harvard. One can hope.
GEB,
That is good news.
Yes, one can hope.
GEB. Go woke, go broke. Independent Bob.
Bobo’s talents could be applicable in foreign affairs.
Bobo would be tickled to death by having Putin & Glorious Supreme Dear Divine Leader Kim Jong Un drive him around in a limo. Pssst…There’s even a booze bar in the limo.
Wow, those guys look pretty good for two leaders supposedly both at death’s door.
Glorious Dear Divine Leader may be sending NK boots on the ground into Ukraine. Stay tuned! Wait till Ukraine troops post NK dead bodies on social media.
Well Social Science is not really a science since it is more like a studies program or just “magic”. To elevate it to Science is Presumptuous if not outright ridiculous. It has neither the discipline or veracity of outright science. Of course much of what is often said in scientific circles these days is about as malleable as social studies and exhibits none of the discipline of real science either.
You do a study with a rigid set of rules and stated assumptions to test a hypothesis or to find a disconnect in the science you are studying so that you can then build a new and better hypothesis that will explain your observations and more accurately predict what your future observations should be. Science is always ongoing with better and better hypotheses developed as you work to get closer to perfection.
And no science I know is “settled”.
Also the name BoBo makes me wonder if I should place less seriousness to his screed since it seems he has committed a boo-boo in his condemnation of free speech. Science dies in silence.
It’s in there now and I just can’t get it out of my mind,
My driving teacher in high school was a Mrs. Bobo. Let me tell you, she knew how to hit that brake on her side of the car.
It seems that long held rights like free speech are not as guaranteed as we once thought. That leads me to wonder what other long held guarantees might be questionable now. Specifically tenure. Those in academia who feel it’s their duty to restrict others rights might be better served to consider their own futures.It is time to rethink the permanence of tenure.
Good teachers are very valuable in our society, however they should be constantly evaluated. Permanent job security allows one to easily overstep his or her bounds. Bobo is obviously in this category.
I thought that name sounded familiar: Bobo, the gorilla, Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, c. 1951~1968.
Iirc, Bobo along with Claudine Gay led the charge to destroy Roland Fryer on ludicrous charges, because they didn’t like his research, and then covered up their duplicity.
Long history of speaking power against truth.
OT FOX NEWS – NEWSFLASH
BIDEN WILL WIN
TRUMP WILL LOSE
– KARL ROVE
Place your bets now, chickenshit. RCP betting odds are 53% Trump, 31% Biden
Of course leftists dont want free speech.
Their critics will point out how absurd they are. They cannot have that!
Leftists also like to hi-jack the language. They have a knack for taking something insidiously nefarious and making it sound like it’s a ‘good thing’ to quote Martha Stewart. For example – Affirmative Action really means we know you can’t make it on your own merit so we’ll give you hand up. Or how about Planned Parenthood that has everything to do with NOT having a family. Minor Attracted Person – pedophile. I could go on…
BTeboe,
Well said.
Woke leftists of the Democrat party are the party of insanity, denial and delusion.
Just ask them to define what a woman is.
Apparently Bobo believes at Harvard, it’s far more desirable to silence critics, than to engage in the difficult task of proving them wrong.
Democrats use the ‘yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater’ line for literally every kind of speech they don’t like. You don’t want to get an experimental shot for a virus with a 99.9% recovery rate? You’re yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. Biden got hundreds of thousands more votes in PA than there are registered voters in the state? Fire in a crowded theater.
Harvard continues to embarrass itself and I’m loving every minute of it. At least when we have the next toilet paper shortage in the next manufactured crisis, we’ll have all those now worthless Ivy League degrees.
At least when my Alma mater embarrasses itself in paroxysms of wokism, as it frequently does, it does so at state school prices.
Biden got hundreds of thousands more votes in PA than there are registered voters in the state? Fire in a crowded theater.
No, he didn’t. You have the right to tell lies, but they remain lies.
So, we are at “The Emperor has no clothes” state of affairs?
I’m not entirely sure I agree with this one blog post. It’s common in ordinary companies to have, as part of the employment agreement, a requirement to not disparage the company, or even simply to just behave in a way that brings disrepute to it – for example, by going on an online forum and criticizing a customer in a nasty way while identifying yourself as an employee. It can be a firing offence.
I think this wouldn’t apply to _students_ – but it could certainly apply to non-faculty employees (e.g., technical staff) and so why not to faculty? In this particular instance “academic freedom” doesn’t seem as convincing an argument (except of course to faculty who want to take advantage of it).
Students are consumers whereas faculty are staff. I would believe insubordination could apply depending upon how egregious or inflammatory faculty statements are. Students have an open ticket!
He might have been referring to social media companies censoring certain viewpoints at the behest of the government, or perhaps in conformity with the views of their own left-wing CEOs.
OT, Good news!
Senate Democrats Jon Tester (D-MT) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) have added language to the annual defense authorization bill to require women to register for the draft!
Thats right! Not just your sons could be drafted for a Biden forever war, but your daughters too! I am sure it is all in the name of equality!
That’s sad that you think it’s a good idea for women to be drafted.
If it was meant as sarcasm, why didn’t you use the ‘/s’ symbol
as you recently recommended others should do? + Why OT, anyway?
time to TAX any non-profit where ANYONE gets $100k or more…so basically 90% of colleges, all hospitals, large non-profits, etc!
Defund Democrats!
Democrats are clearly fascists
Time to defund their central power
End all Federal Aid to cities, states, colleges and non-profits.
Also cut 50% of Federal Spending
Also a 5% tax on the GROSS of all Wall Street Transactions or moving money offshore. Time to take away wall streets central power and make it about INVESTING again!
Turley for President! Love this professor!
If Harvard wants the tax exemptions, government-funded scholarships, grants and all the rest of the privileges we bestow upon “institutions of higher learning” they can damn well respect the 1st amendment.