Today, I had the pleasure of debating Professor Randall Kennedy on the question “Does Harvard support free speech and intellectual diversity?” I took the opposing view. Various readers asked for a link to the debate, which is included below.
Professor Kennedy and I obviously disagree about the free speech culture at Harvard as well as some questions such as the use of cancel campaigns to block speakers at Harvard. However, I appreciate the civility and substance of the debate. I have great respect for Professor Kennedy and I believe that we were both able to fully present our opposing views in the area.
Thanks again to the sponsors, including Harvard Alumni for Free Speech, the Harvard Federalist Society, The Steamboat Institute, and the Adolph Coors Foundation for a most interesting program.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Jonathan: I watched your debate with Prof. Kennedy. Nothing new in your positions. Everyone knows, especially those on this blog, your views that conservative students at Harvard and at other universities “self-censor” and faculties are dominated by liberals where conservatives have been “purged”. It’s an old claim by you that doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Bottom line. No one is preventing conservatives from speaking at Harvard. You are proof positive. No one at the debate got up to prevent you from speaking. No one walked out holding up signs protesting your presence on campus like: “Turley supports a convicted felon and wannabee dictator!”–or “Turley supports Dobbs and is anti-abortion”, or “Turley supports impeachment of President Biden”. Didn’t even see a large crowd of students outside the venue protesting with signs like “Turley is a rightwing Trump lackey!” One would have expected that to happen if Harvard did not welcome a diversity of viewpoints. That it didn’t happen is proof that Harvard does welcome even the views of someone as extreme right-wing as you!
Intellectually couched perhaps but I would say that was a very thorough tongue-lashing from someone smart enough to see the forest through the trees. And on the flip side of this, we see in Kennedy someone who’s desperately trying to defend the indefensible, and very likely for personal reason, he’s trying to protect colleagues from an inevitable retribution. You have to understand, too, there was a time in America where political speech and organizations were largely prohibited on campus. And for good reason, colleges and universities are not political organizations, they are, theoretically, institutions of “higher learning.” Understand too that much of this anti-free speech movement begins, or has originated, where? In the black community. Its attack on the so-called “Confederate flag” for example. Which many of our young having little knowledge of, and zero association with, any form of civil war, have for decades more typically viewed simply as a “rebel flag.” The problem with all of this is that the pluralistic America that acts to empower all cannot exist without its age-old cry, and demand, for “fweedom.” That originates, or originated, amongst Western Europeans some hundreds of years ago. We cannot remain free in a land where none are permitted to express an opinion. The constraints placed upon the general populous will act to constrain the judicial system as well, and what is left, will be purely totalitarian governance to the benefit of only the politically favored few.
If you are even casually interested in kinesics (body language), then the debate was fascinating because Kennedy’s body language contrasted sharply with that of Turley, as did their approaches to the debate. Turley argued; Kennedy asserted. Turley debated; Kennedy preached. Turley reasoned; Kennedy rationalized.
Kennedy either was dissembling or he is incredibly ignorant of the realities of academia, which is rife with petty complaints, self-serving cliques, and jealousy of one’s more successful colleagues. At least that is my conclusion after attending and teaching at both public and private universities, and it is hardly unique. Even Weber considered academics petty as well as pedantic. The problem was less pronounced during the 1960s, when I had my first taste of the academy, largely because faculties were largely conservative and moderate (or old-style liberal) rather than dominated by those, like Kennedy, who seem to believe that not only is the personal political, but that the professional should be as well. (See his views here, https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/03/randall-kennedy-on-why-critical-race-theory-is-important)
I have seen colleagues eased out because an arbitrary chair did not ‘like’ them, or a clique campaigned against them, or a dean colluded with a gaggle of professors to smear them unjustly. What I rarely saw were academics with backbone, or disputes that were handled impartially. I also became very aware that there was a caste system in the academy, and, yes, as Kennedy noted, Harvard and other Ivies are very proud not to be anything like the rest of America. Since I come from that other America, I consider that an arrogant boast which says everything one need know about Harvard and their peers.
* the link required a log in to read the the article….lacking a pay pal account…
I posted it because I accessed it without paying. I am sorry you were unable to do so. The interview is quite informative. . . .
Kennedy is a dinosaur. Harvard imagines it’s training its little army. Unfortunately it’s soldiers just aren’t the best. It fails due to lack of authentic scholarship, ultimately, but what they lack in scholarship is bridged by loudness. “I’m not really smart but I can yell louder than you”. President Gay is an example of —> lacking authentic scholarship.
So it goes.
Nicely put. But Kennedy is merely repeating the Marxist talking points that have been understood and practiced for a long, long time. He can’t debate on anything substantive. Harvard is a cesspool of Marxist rubbish.
* Perhaps Kennedy just agreed to his side so Turley could offer his side.
One hopes so.
Read the link. PK thinks natural born citizen is bigotry. Anyone should have the opportunity to become president born as a citizen of a foreign nation etc. Just come in and run for office.
His educational pedigree is rarified. He’s a case of affirmative action no doubt but does have some interesting views.
BLM has decided the only freedom is to kill off all whites including Jewish people. In that way the whole world thank them for the genocide.
Let freedom ring. He’s answered his own question.
* will thank
Randall Kennedy is not a supporter of the constitution at all. What area of law is he in? Tax law maybe?
Stay out of those sinkholes. The most shocking report is Turley sent his son there?
Prof. Turley is defining a supportive attitude toward free speech as beginning with oneself in terms of being open-minded enough to entertain cognitive dissonance. This is the opposite of defensive thinking and know-it-all-ism.
That doesn’t imply being blown about like a feather in the wind — just the opposite. You can hold to your sincere beliefs, but don’t shield them defensively from critique — you’re confidence in your intellectual prowess allows you to expose your thinking to being tested — to being challenged — to being influenced.
When two persons of such mental resilience meet up and find themselves in disagreement, magic can happen. They can respectfully inquire about the other’s thinking, and respond with candor and trust when so probed. They can learn from one another. They can persuade (find their own thinking changed by the process). They have a chance to ascend to the 3rd stage of Hegelian conflict resolution (thesis, antithesis –> synthesis). They can collaborate to solve problems.
Prof. Randall’s final word — for Harvard to react defensively to criticism — to fall back on self-righteousness when challenged — is the poisoning of the well of open-mindedness and feee speech. Why?…Because defensiveness closes the mind to absorbing new information (which is a prerequisite to conflict resolution). It yields to more primitive, emotional ways of framing disagreement that propel one toward “us vs. them”, distrust of the other person, impugning their motives (oppo-branding), and taking up of more strident, militant tactics of opposition. Free speech toleration requires suppressing one’s defensiveness, which takes learned impulse control — or what earlier generations simply referred to as “courage”.
Prof. Turley brought reason and enlightenment to this debate. He framed the challenge of free speech as primarily a psychological disposition, a strong commitment to open-mindedness in the face of cognitive dissonance. With more time, he could have better linked hyper-defensive thinking to militancy, in which one yields to temptations escalating into intimidation, deceit and manipulation. We could use much more clarity on defining civility, and the red lines Prof. Turley believes separate it from “conduct”. For instance, what makes doxxing distinct from other forms of speech that “we don’t like”?
* Why didn’t Kennedy use Alan Dershowitz as an example Harvard’s fee speech? A professor at Harvard law for 30-40 years? He’s not allowed on campus. Is it because he’s a jew, supports Israel or believes in the constitution, Kennedy? All of the aforementioned?
Harvard’s a paupers graveyard .
I enjoyed that debate and the civility both displayed while representing vastly different views. Harvard would do itself a favor by heeding Johnathan’s observations and advice to students.
Impressive debate performance. The survey data before and after demonstrated your persuasive effectiveness. Your articles are consistently insightful, and I’ve read nearly all of them and will continue to do so. Appreciate your work.
Thanks for posting the debate.
Professor Turley was excellent, maybe a little soft on Kennedy especially when he literally kept defending conduct such as “deplatforming” someone merely by calling it a “form of expression”.
I’m not a scholar however I am a lifelong armchair student of World War II Germany and the rise of the Nazi party and the mentality and propaganda that lead to it. And the arguments this professor Kennedy are making are strikingly and eerily similar to the nature and structure of the arguments made by the Nazis to justify and label their own prewar conduct and the conduct they employed to systematically seize power.
Like the professor they made excuses for silencing social democrats and other opposition party speakers at public town halls and meeting places they leveraged arguments that claimed lies and falsehood being the reason they had to censor or “deplatform” opposition speech.
It was frustrating to watch the convoluted contortions Mr Kennedy had to go through to defend his indefensible excuses for censoring opposing viewpoints, or how it wasn’t a problem that this self appointed “elite” group was an overwhelming majority echo chamber. He was fine with it. Since of course he’s one of the echoes.
But the way you drilled home the point, that “sure its fine as long as its your voice that’s not being censored”, I think can’t help but sit with the thinking students who hear it and I think you exposed the fact that he, your “esteemed colleague” was one of the major issues wrong with the college. Him and all those willing to weave carefully crafted cheaply gilded and cleverly contorted lies to explain away the same sort of propaganda and censorship seen in prewar Germany.
Professor Kennedy’s assertion that Dr. Gay’s testimony was appropriate and correctly defended free speech has absolutely no merit. Dr. Gay was asked, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?” She waffled and said it depends on the context. Yet, she offered no context or example where a frenzied mob calling for genocide of Jews wouldn’t violate Harvard’s Code of Conduct. Her liberal DNA would not allow her to answer honestly and yes, we do not allow bullying and harassment of students here at Harvard.
Final thought: Professor Kennedy seemed to think that raising his voice somehow added merit to his weak arguments. It didn’t.
Editorial correction: Her liberal DNA would not allow her to answer honestly and SAY yes, we do not allow bullying and harassment of students here at Harvard. That behavior clearly violates our Code of Conduct.
True, she was not asked if calling for the genocide of Jews is protected speech, she was asked if such behavior constituted bullying and harassment…. And her response? “It depends.” In what world, would calling for the genocide of Jews depend? We don’t even need to answer this question because, history.
This was a great debate. Since I read Prof Turley’s book, I am already biased towards his arguments. But it seemed to me that Prof. Kennedy was poking straw men and avoiding serious academic introspection. Prof Turley, very politely but firmly, called him out on it.
* Harvard teaches CRT and DEI. Harvard pushes the student body into white man bad and Jewish people are white. It pushes the radical left agenda. They justify it. Donors will withdraw and eventually it will collapse. The judicial system will collapse and you’ll be any 3rd world second class citizens. States rights may save something.
Take it or leave it. Yes, lawsuits and troubles will follow.
I still believe conservative thinking can win the day, but only if conservatives renounce and marginalize the small-thinking, cult-like, tribalistic zealotry and expediency of our strident fringe — “the ends justify the means” wing.
You know what I’m talking about….”the left cheats, and we’re not going to unilaterally disarm”, meaning “we’ll cut corners of civility and authenticity in order to fight them”. The problem with militancy is that it backfires by stiffening the resolve of its opponents, and their determination to prevail “at all costs”. The adversaries drive each other to greater heights of suspicion and paranoia through their ethical overreaches.
In normal politics, both partisan sides listen to legitimate criticism coming from the opposition, and then figure out how to address their own negatives. Bill Clinton was a master of addressing his party’s negatives — for example working to end a permissive welfare state by imposing workfare requirements, and addressing deficit spending by working to achieve a balanced budget (the last time we had one).
Trump set back our cause at the end of his term by refusing to face reality about losing the election, and plotting to mickey the Electoral College. A great deal of trust was squandered, and he doesn’t seem to care. After all, he is free to go on TV and talk candidly about what his team did in late 2020, and why they thought it was the right thing to do. But, he doesn’t have the courage to admit to himself he lost, and voting fraud was way too miniscule to affect the outcome. Untrustworthiness is his major negative. Unlike normal politicians, he won’t address it, even though the opportunity exists to do so and improve his chances on Nov. 5th with remaining undecideds.
He needs to think back to how he dealt with the Access Hollywood crisis weeks before the 2016 election. He did a national TV interview and gave a mea culpa and sincere apology. I think Hope Hicks convinced him he had to do it, or face likely defeat. An advisor like her is sorely needed at this point. Maybe Kellyanne?
“But, he doesn’t have the courage to admit to himself he lost,”
Pbinca, maybe he rightfully doesn’t believe he lost the election. Perhaps the left did cheat substantially, and censorship prevented the facts from being revealed. Every day, more proof emerges that the election was not secure, and hundreds of thousands of votes are in question (only 44,000 would have made Trump the victor).
Trump left office without a problem, though the left continues to claim otherwise, yet they are not censored. Remember, the one you talk favorably about left the White House peacefully with the silverware.
Thank you for the debate link. I really appreciated how you used your debate time to not only disagree with the laughable idea that Harvard advocates for free speech and has viewpoint diversity, but to appeal to the Harvard students to be brave and join the fight for free speech. Your arguments, along with the supporting evidence, clearly had an effect on the students as indicated in the final polling. Thank you for using your platform to add your voice to the save free speech movement, along with fellow advocates, like Nadine Strossen, Greg Lukianoff, and Alan Dershowitz.
JT is the Ricky Gervais of Academia. He points out what a joke acdemia has become since its flagship institutions have run aground on woke shoals. The bubble boys and girls who populate these oases from reality comprise the intellectual “elite” solely in their own mind. They are Potemkin intellectuals exhibiting all the trappings but not of the depth of real scholarship. They are in a stratosphereic death spiral and most of us are anxiously awaiting the crash.
Excellent debate!
* Kust started listening. Kennedy is recounting the Gay incident. He’s being intellectually dishonest. He has no need to tell the whole truth. Continue later..
* Just not kust
Oh Bravo on the invitation. That’s right. The purpose was to listen to a scholar in literature. Students were deprived.
Perfect
😂
Thank you, PT.
Great debate. My one take away from Professor Kennedy is he is an elitist and doesn’t want to give up that distinction. His comment about Harvard not needed to look like the rest of the country in any way says it all. It was a real Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” moment (and yes, I realize she never actually said that.)
I respect Kennedy too unless he has changed and headed further left and believes the nonsense you would need to believe take that position. Perhaps, as in many debates he just took a position he did not believe.
But don’t you have to take him at his word?
Professor Kennedy proves you can be highly educated but not smart or rational. He demonstrated arrogance and an uncompromising attitude. There’s no reason to disinvite guest speakers because you disagree with their position political or lifestyle, just don’t attend. Kennedy like all leftist can’t handle opposing positions because theirs is weak and can’t stand up to reasonable debate.
Let me clarify why academia has a monumental Left tilt. Most of academia parrots useless crap. I have 4 college degrees and am well aware of the nonsense, and it should take less than 2 years to train an engineer, not 4. Professors have a burning desire to elevate themselves because they are largely unaccomplished. ENVY is the root cause of the problem. Professors penalize students for “offending” opinions, not necessarily wrong, while taking inflated paychecks paid for by the students. Fascinating. Academia views itself as intellectually superior while lacking any contribution of value to society. I can count major inventions on my fingers. Someone just pointed this out to me. A higher percentage of black and Hispanic women attend college than white men, even though white men significantly outperform these groups on the SAT. However, the black and Hispanic female college dropout rates are higher than that for white males, so a higher percentage of white males ends up graduating than black and Hispanic females. Yet DEI rules. The future will literally deal with most of academia like Israel is dealing with Gaza. Bank on it!
If you haven’t already, you might want to read Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society.
The professor has no problem if Harvard faculty looks substantially different than the rest of America, being almost all Liberal. Would he have an issue if ALL of Harvard faculty were white?
I’d bypass Harvard altogether. It’s a propaganda mill.
* oh my gosh, we got it!
As a conservative I would certainly be hesitant to express my views in a class taught by Prof Kennedy, given the stridency of his comments. In comparison, the good nature and calm demeanor of Prof Turley would not make me hesitant to raise opposing views in his class.