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 A Way Back From Campus Chaos

    Protesting the world’s wrongs has been a rite of passage for generations of American youth, buoyed by our strong laws protecting free speech and free assembly. Yet the students and other demonstrators disrupting college campuses this spring are being taught the wrong lesson – for as admirable as it can be to stand up for your beliefs, there are no guarantees that doing so will be without consequence. The highest calling of a university is to craft a culture of open inquiry, one where both free speech and academic freedom are held as ideals. Protest is part of that culture, and the issue on which so many of the current demonstrations are centered – U.S. involvement in the Israel-Hamas conflict – ought to be fiercely and regularly debated on college campuses.

    The constitutional right to free speech is the protection against government interference restricting speech. In the real world, though, this can get messy, and nuance is required when free speech comes into tension with protecting academic freedom. The earliest universities to adopt the principle of academic freedom did so to thwart interference and influence from totalitarian states and religious zealotry. Student codes of conduct and other guidelines are meant to relieve some of the tension between free speech and academic freedom, as well as to ensure that schools are in compliance with government regulations and laws. During the current demonstrations, a lack of accountability has helped produce a crisis. It has left some Jewish students feeling systematically harassed. It has deprived many students of access to parts of campus life.

    For years, right-wing Republicans, at the federal and state level, have found opportunities to crusade against academic freedom, with charges of antisemitism on campus serving as the latest vehicle. The House of Representatives used this moment of chaos as cover to begin a legislative effort to crack down on elite universities, and lawmakers in the House recently passed a proposal that would impose egregious government restrictions on free speech.

    Schools ought to be teaching their students that there is as much courage in listening as there is in speaking up. It has not gone unnoticed – on campuses but also by members of Congress and by the public writ large – that many of those who are now demanding the right to protest have previously sought to curtail the speech of those whom they declared hateful. Establishing a culture of openness and free expression is crucial to the mission of educational institutions. That includes clear guardrails on conduct and enforcement of those guardrails, regardless of the speaker or the topic. Doing so would not only help restore order on college campuses today but would also strengthen the cultural bedrock of higher education for generations to come.

(Available in: https://www.nytimes.com. Acessed: July 2024.)