Arizona universities defend free thought, expression
Headwinds that shut down free expression have blown intermittently on American college campuses over the years. They are nothing new.
Keith Whittington first remembers feeling them after the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
Back then a gale force rushed in from the political right and silenced Muslim and Palestinian voices that broke with an early U.S. consensus on the war on terror.
Today the winds blow mostly, but not exclusively, from the left, silencing conservative thought and working to dismantle Western traditions of free speech and inquiry.
The moment is serious, said Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University and an important voice in a new and rising defense of speech.
“There’s a real risk of losing an entire generation on this front, and if you do that I think the consequences for the state of American constitutional law and for how we think the country operates more generally are potentially quite dire,” he said this week in an interview.
On Saturday, Whittington will deliver the keynote speech at the Regent’s Cup competition that will take place remotely through Arizona State University. The Regent’s Cup is the brainchild of Karrin Taylor Robson, secretary of the Arizona Board of Regents, and an enthusiastic believer in free inquiry.
The competition pits students from Arizona’s three major universities in speech and debate that emphasizes a civil but robust contest of ideals.
Whittington who authored the book “Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech;” said he is thrilled to get involved in the Regents Cup. “I think it’s great,” he said. “(It’s) exactly what you want. Getting students not only talking about these questions of civil discourse, debate and free speech, but also modeling it, engaging.”
In his book and interview he defends the American university as a place where much good is happening in the pursuit of knowledge. But a younger generation is emerging that does not value free speech. They are mixing with committed activists on and off campus and are actively working to suppress opposing voices.
In a nutshell, says Whittington, this is today’s challenge:
“It’s the classic and persistent problem that it is very hard to tolerate those who you disagree with. There’s just the constant temptation to want to suppress people who come to different conclusions than you do and who are advocating different ideas than you do.
“And that temptation has always been present, and it’s true about how democracy works in general, and I think it’s true about universities.”
The college activists “would like to be the only voice in the room. And if they have the opportunity, they’re perfectly happy to prevent any other voices from being expressed so that people might not be tempted to be persuaded by the alternative arguments. And that’s just deeply corrosive to what universities are all about.”
Whittington, who grew up in the agricultural outskirts of Houston before getting his undergraduate and advanced degrees from the University of Texas and Yale, said he’s optimistic the fever will break. “I don’t think we’re on the back side of this yet. I think we’ll get there eventually.”
That’s because the most ardent opponents of speech are in the minority, he said.
“It’s not a large set of people on college campuses, but its an active and vocal set of people ... who really would just like to make sure that there is going to be no chance that people are going to be persuaded to an opinion they disagree with. And that’s disturbing.”
The defense of speech begins with the broad middle — the greater number of students still receptive to the ideal of free expression, he said. But the arguments must be made now.
“There is a lot of illiberalism in the air.”