Opinion | The Moral Center Is Fighting Back on Elite College Campuses

David French

The New York Times

Mon, 04/17/2023 - 12:00 pm


William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming” has been called the most plundered poem in the English language, and it’s easy to see why. The poem, written in the immediate aftermath of World War I and during the height of the Russian Civil War, vividly captures the feeling that events are sliding out of control. Three lines in particular resonate in troubled times. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” writes Yeats. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”


When I read these words, dramatic, violent events come first to mind. The Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 is a prime example of the “passionate intensity” of one of the worst movements in American life. With each mass shooting, I think, “Things fall apart.”


But there are other ways in which the center finds itself under siege. The extremist attack on free speech (from right and left) degrades American democracy, and that attack is especially acute on college campuses, whether it comes from angry left-wing students who shout down conservative speakers, vengeful right-wing legislators who pass laws restricting free expression in the academy or the online activism that often demands that universities discipline scholars for engaging in provocative (but constitutionally protected) speech.


I’ve never interpreted the center in Yeats’s poem to mean something like a politically moderate middle but rather a moral foundation, the ideological core of a nation and its people. The United States is certainly a nation built through raw power, as so many nations are, but at its best, it’s also built around a series of ideas, a declaration that its center requires, at a bare minimum, the promises of the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech.


This isn’t a column about doom, however, but rather about hope. There is no question that the worst are still “full of passionate intensity,” and we do live in a precarious place in our national life. But there are also some signs that the center is fighting back on some of the most elite campuses in the country, that some of the “best” still do, in fact, possess the necessary convictions. I litigated free speech issues on college campuses for almost 20 years, and I’ve never seen such widespread, institutional academic support for free expression.


Let’s take Stanford University, for example. In the days and weeks since law students shouted down and disrupted a speech by a federal judge, the center has taken a stand. The dean of Stanford Law School, Jenny Martinez, penned a powerful, 10-page memorandum that mandated a half-day of instruction on free speech and legal norms, reaffirmed the school’s dedication to the Stanford Statement on Academic Freedom and declared: “Unless we recognize that student members of the Federalist Society and other conservatives have the same right to express their views free of coercion, we cannot live up to this commitment nor can we claim that we are fostering an inclusive environment for all students.”


Then there’s Cornell University. In March, the school’s undergraduate student assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling for trigger warnings in syllabuses to warn students of “graphic traumatic content” in course content. Cornell’s president, Martha E. Pollack, promptly vetoed it.


In a joint letter with Cornell’s provost, Michael I. Kotlikoff, she explained that the trigger warning policy “would violate our faculty’s fundamental right to determine what and how to teach, preventing them from adding, throughout the semester, any content that any student might find upsetting.” Moreover, the letter said, the policy would “have a chilling effect on faculty, who would naturally fear censure lest they bring a discussion spontaneously into new and challenging territory, or fail to accurately anticipate students’ reaction to a topic or idea.”

The faculty at Harvard University is also stepping up. In an opinion essay in The Boston Globe, Harvard’s Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras announced the creation of the Council on Academic Freedom, a coalition of 50 faculty members and several other Harvard employees “devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity and civil discourse.”


On Monday, Vanderbilt University will announce the expansion of its Future of Free Speech Project, run with Denmark’s Aarhus University and the think tank Justitia, which will include an international focus on free expression. I spoke to the project’s executive director, Jacob Mchangama, and he emphasized that American support for free speech can have a global impact in combating tyranny. He pointed to a piece he wrote in Foreign Policy noting that American legal standards have influenced foreign courts, specifically by enhancing press freedom. In our conversation, he made a point that’s critical in contemporary debates. “Free speech and equality,” he said, “are mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive.”

That’s four elite American academic institutions that have doubled down on free speech in just one month.


And we cannot forget the University of Chicago. Since 2014, it’s arguably been the single most influential academic institution in the United States supporting academic freedom. Its statement on free speech declares the “university’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral or wrongheaded.” A version of the Chicago statement has been adopted by almost 100 colleges, universities and state university systems, including Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University and the North Carolina and Wisconsin state university systems.


I share this not to declare that the battle for free speech on campus is won. Far from it. The Stanford statement was in response to a student disruption. This month, the former N.C.A.A. swimmer Riley Gaines alleged she was assaulted after speaking at San Francisco State University in opposition to transgender women competing in women’s sports. There’s video evidence that Gaines was chased through the halls by angry protesters and that her event was disrupted by chanting, foot-stomping protests.


And disruptions like those we witnessed at Stanford and San Francisco State have occurred alongside hundreds of recent attempts to fire or punish scholars for speech that’s protected by the First Amendment or basic principles of academic freedom.


It’s important to emphasize that the fight over free speech on campus is not left versus right. Attempts to suppress ideas and stifle speech come from both ends of the political spectrum. The faculty and administrators at Stanford, Cornell, Harvard and Chicago who are making their stands aren’t a collection of conservatives taking on woke college students. Instead, they represent the moral and legal center of the American academy taking on the extremes.


Left and right tend to challenge free speech on campus in different ways. Left-leaning students have led shout-downs and disrupted events, while right-leaning legislators have passed or considered laws stifling the expression of controversial ideas about race and gender. Both sides have proved capable of mobilizing online outrage to punish professors who offend their constituencies.


The First Amendment cannot be tied to one side of our partisan divide. It’s not a Republican value or a Democratic value but rather an American value, and it’s a value that’s particularly important in the academy.


In 1957, during a previous wave of censorship aimed at eliminating “subversive” people from public employment, the Supreme Court issued its most ringing declaration of support for academic freedom: “Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.”


This language might seem dramatic, but it’s true. Free speech is indispensable to the American idea. It protects us from tyranny more thoroughly and effectively than any other constitutional right. As Frederick Douglass proclaimed after his own brush with mob censorship, “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.”


America’s most elite academic institutions can, in fact, demonstrate conviction. The “passionate intensity” of the extremes remains, but the center can hold. Douglass was correct. Free speech is the “dread of tyrants,” and sustaining that freedom — against left-wing protests and right-wing lawmakers — will preserve America’s democratic experiment. There is no path to American equality or justice absent the freedom of speech.


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https://silk-news.com/2023/04/17/opinion/opinion-the-moral-center-is-fighting-b…

Davidson College Republican and Davidson College Libertarian Presidents: We stand for free speech at Davidson

March 19, 2025
By Gabriel Russ-Nachamie ’27 and Stephen Walker ’26 The Davidsonian March 19, 2025 Davidson’s public commitment to free expression is admirable, but recent anti-speech actions by the College contradict its guarantees to students and set dangerous pro-censorship precedents. This paradox threatens to stifle the open discourse we as a community all grow and benefit from. For context, a 2021 press release announcing Davidson’s commitment to freedom of expression states the College intends “to build a culture where everyone can participate and be heard” and acknowledges that “freedom of expression can’t exist when some people are barred from the conversation” solely on account of allegations that their speech is seen as wrong or offensive. Davidson’s pledge in the free expression statement itself commits the College to upholding protections of student expression for all because “Dissenting voices cannot and should not be censored.” Recent actions against the College Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter and its president, Cynthia Huang ‘25, threaten to undo these efforts in ways harmful to each and every one of us. In a letter published by YAF’s Davidson chapter, the College accused Huang of “Harassment” for publishing political content online and distributing pamphlets that “allegedly includes misinformation” promoting “Islamophobia” and “Transphobia” that made students report feeling “threatened and unsafe on campus.” Davidson offered to “resolve” the matter by forcing Huang to either admit responsibility for the alleged violation and agree to an “Accountability Plan” demanding action to avoid further sanction or a “Code of Responsibility Council Hearing,” which is reserved for actions constituting “serious prohibited conduct in a single incident or a persistent pattern of less severe prohibited conduct,” according to Davidson’s student handbook. The content that triggered this response was political material responding to ideas and policies the YAF chapter disagreed with. It is wrong to classify disagreement as harassment simply because the disagreement “offended” students. The content in question was meant to spark discourse surrounding certain political policies and ideologies. According to Davidson’s own standards, this content should be protected speech. The content that Huang faces potential sanctions for did not explicitly or implicitly promote any action against specific people or groups on account of their identities. For example, the pamphlet from YAF notes the link between Islamic fundamentalist theology and Hamas. However, this is not “Islamophobic” but a historical and scholarly argument about justifications of violence that rely upon religious interpretations. In fact, Hamas is an acronym that stands for the “Islamic Resistance Movement” and the group uses Islamic theology to justify their actions. Discussing the impact of religion on violence, whether it be Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, is protected speech and not bigotry. The club did not in any way target students and the material was freely available for anyone to engage with or ignore. Serious political disagreement on issues always has and will continue to offend individuals who dislike competing opinions. However, a small group of students being “offended” never justifies institutional backlash against political speech. We are not the only individuals or groups concerned about this restriction on speech. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan national organization dedicated to protecting free speech for all Americans, recently sent a letter to President Doug Hicks ‘90. FIRE urged Davidson to drop the charges against the YAF chapter and change its policies to align with the Chicago Principles of free speech, commonly known as the Chicago Statement which Davidson has allegedly committed to upholding. Adjudicative bodies should not base their decisions purely on perceptions motivated by personal feelings and biases. These actions by the college against YAF risk violating Davidson’s commitment to ensuring free speech and robust debate among students. No threats or harassment against students were included in YAF’s content, and anybody who does not like what they have to say is not being forced to engage with their content in any way. The only discernible motivation for going forward with sanctions is that YAF is a political minority that has questioned political orthodoxies in a way that is upsetting to others. The College’s Commitment to Freedom of Expression was made to protect this type of conduct. The Commitment directly states, “Davidson College’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate, discussion, and deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even most members of the college community to be offensive or unwise.” Sanctioning YAF for political arguments violates our rights as students and has dangerous implications. The aforementioned press release announcing Davidson’s commitment identifies “self-censorship” as a problem for Davidson and a motivator for its creation of the Commitment to Freedom of Expression statement. When students see that the only person who has spoken out against the majority in a political debate is facing sanctions because others did not like the content that student shared, said administrative action sends a message that dissent is unacceptable. This potentially triggers more self-censorship among all those who may disagree with this and countless other political ideas. As the presidents of the Davidson College Republicans and the Davidson College Libertarians, we stand for the free speech rights of all Davidson students. As a leading liberal arts school receiving taxpayer dollars, Davidson has publicly committed itself to upholding free speech rights for students and faculty. We call on the College to uphold its proclaimed principles and reject punishing students and political clubs for speech that some might disagree with or find offensive. We call on the College administration to change the Code of Responsibility to align with the Chicago Statement, as FIRE argued is crucial for Davidson in its letter to President Hicks. Finally, we firmly reject the anti-intellectual, adolescent mindset that has motivated the support for YAF’s censorship. Unwillingness to coexist with peers you may disagree with is unbecoming of students at such a prestigious institution like Davidson. You can’t take away your peers’ rights just because people’s feelings are hurt. Gabriel Russ-Nachamie ‘27 is an economics and mathematics double major from Lincolnton, NC and can be reached for comment at garussnachamie@davidson.edu. Stephen Walker ‘26 is a political science and English double major from Philadelphia, PA and can be reached for comment at stwalker@davidson.edu. https://thedavidsonian.news/1063/perspectives/davidson-college-republican-and-davidson-college-libertarian-presidents-we-stand-for-free-speech-at-david son/

Jeff Bezos Note to the Washington Post

February 26, 2025
"I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:"

Former Governor Weighs In on the Future of DEI at Davidson

February 26, 2025
By James (Jim) Martin '57 The Davidsonian February 26, 2025 As a loyal alumnus, I love Davidson College. There are few things here that I don’t love. Perhaps you feel the same, for similar or different reasons. While privileged to teach chemistry here for twelve years, I got into politics as a Mecklenburg County Commissioner. For five decades since retiring from the faculty to become a member of the US Congress, I followed Davidson mostly in passive ways. My annual giving was modest until I was in a position to increase my donation and deliver a significant gift from Duke Energy while on its Board. This and generous friends endowed Professor Malcolm Campbell’s multidisciplinary Genomics Program and a chair in chemistry honored to support Professor Erland Stevens. While Governor of North Carolina, I received an honorary degree and spoke at graduation. All this is a self-aggrandizing way to say I’m part of Davidson College and fully committed to helping it become the best it can be. This was tested when our Trustees decided that the President and the majority of Trustees need no longer be Christian. I joined eleven other former Trustees in a statement objecting to what we believed would undermine Davidson’s tradition and Statement of Purpose. This angered some alumni, especially recent graduates. You might be amused at how many defended the change simply by denouncing us as “old white men.” This trifling trifecta of accursed identity was true, but ignored thoughtful reasoning. This drew me to an even smaller, unofficial group of concerned alumni, Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse ( www.dftdunite.org ). Since 2018, its founders had petitioned Davidson College to adopt the Chicago Principles on Freedom of Expression. Pleading from a conservative viewpoint, they got little respect. Even with support from hundreds of alumni representing a wider range of interests, ages and viewpoints, DFTD continued to be disregarded. In 2021, President Carol Quillen heeded a similar appeal from several faculty members, whose interests weren’t aligned with ours. She appointed me to a group of six chaired by Professor Issac Bailey to compose a Davidson vision for academic freedom of expression reflecting Davidson’s commitment to ideals of diversity. The resulting document containing every element of the Chicago Principles was deferred until the arrival of new President Doug Hicks. With his calm inspiration, earnest discussions among faculty won growing acceptance. In early 2023, “Davidson’s Commitment to Freedom of Expression” was affirmed by a nearly unanimous vote. DFTD found ways to support greater diversity of viewpoints on campus. A student chapter of Free Speech Alliance was founded and DFTD was pleased to provide funding for their and others’ invited speakers. This led individual students to entrust us with suspected violations of their academic freedom. Most alarmingly, we heard about several dozen academic courses with syllabi requiring students to confess themselves “oppressors,” repent and atone . . . religious conditions irrelevant to the subject matter. Ironically, DEI is Latin for “gods.” We learned from other students about an astonishing “mandatory” order that all Davidson athletes attend a one-sided, provocative documentary entitled, “I’m not Racist…am I?” Its message? If you are white, you are racist. If you’re non-white, you can’t be racist. Melanin matters. While we don’t object to anyone studying such controversial notions, we protested the coercive way highly partisan objectives were imposed as a condition for participating. After several months with no assurance that our concerns were taken seriously, we reported this to our subscribers. Our purpose was to bring about a remedy, not punish or accuse any individual as was making national headlines at other schools. We figured some may have felt they were doing what was expected of them. One of us mentioned this campus issue in an interview on Fox News. This exploded into far wider circulation than we had foreseen or intended. Faculty and administration were flooded with vile communications from hundreds of anonymous individuals. At the time, this threatened to damage the reputation of Davidson College as well as DFTD, likely among opposing factions. I see no consequent injury against the College today, and DFTD’s standing has become more respected or tolerated even among some who dispute us. We made a point to welcome Dr. Chloe Poston as DEI Vice President at Davidson. She listened to our encouragement to explore ways to reform those abuses. Was it fair, in the cause of including diversity, to blame students for past discriminatory practices for which they bore no personal responsibility? We were pleased to discover, not long after the fall term began, that every course whose syllabus had defamed students as “oppressors” had dropped the insulting indoctrination. To us, this was good news, reflecting a less divisive and more welcoming attitude on campus. We commend those among faculty, administration, and students whose thoughtful contributions led to these corrections. Other reforms may need attention. Do any departments still require DEI allegiance in ways that filter out conservative scholars? Do students or faculty still feel intimidated to self-censor their thoughts and questions? Will Davidson adopt institutional neutrality for ideological controversies? There’s now the question whether Davidson‘s more welcoming, less doctrinaire approach to inclusion of a wider diversity of attributes, cultures and viewpoints will survive the national backlash against DEI. The federal government has declared a campaign to eradicate any trace of it. Among our DFTD membership we’ve learned to respect divergent views among friends, but I can tell you there is division over this. Some are convinced the same old divisive malpractices will simply be continued behind new titles, concealing the enforcement of identity politics. Others trust that Davidson’s new approach can be a positive model for others. Davidson can demonstrate a standard of healthier assurance that every student, without regard to their culture, religion, attitude, politics or appearance, will be genuinely welcomed and encouraged to grow intellectually, socially and spiritually. Large universities with massive DEI staffing must choose to fold or fight. If Davidson can restore diversity’s original ideals without the partisan excesses, other elite colleges might choose to defend this more sensible approach. The Davidsonian 2/26/25 by Davidsonian - Issuu
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