The case for vigorous, free-wheeling intellectual debates seems to be making a comeback on today’s campuses. This awakening is particularly evident in the growth of organizations dedicated to building a robust marketplace of ideas ruled by logic and evidence, not violent intimidation. Examples include the Academic Freedom Alliance, the Committee on Open Expression, North Carolina’s School of Civic Life and Leadership, College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, and Stanford’s Ad Hoc Committee on University Speech.
Unfortunately, the obstacles remain extremely formidable and go beyond just creating organizations. Consider the inherent biases of an intellectually open, reason-based marketplace of ideas. In the language of the campus left, this approach to uncovering truth “privileges” those skilled at articulating evidence-based arguments in the same sense that certain sports give an inherent advantage to those with distinct physical abilities. This inequality is built in, and to insist that such forums welcome the entire university community is akin to insisting that anybody could win a marathon.
Intellectual forums are the home-field advantage for those with high IQs, verbal fluency, and an ability to master vast quantities of complex material and quickly formulate convincing arguments. Even at top schools, however, these abilities are not uniformly distributed, especially when campuses recruit students who are not the best and brightest. The awkward truth is that those likely to excel in this setting are disproportionately white males in the same way that marathons favor Ethiopians and Kenyans. The bias is non-ideological—left-leaning participants can surely win in a free-wheeling, evidence-based debate, but these winners are likely to be white male lefties.
Creating a truth-finding mechanism that disproportionally rewards smart men on campus will not be widely popular with those deficient in these skills. On the other hand, a campus forum celebrating truth-by-rational debate does not automatically eliminate rival truth-finding approaches. Those disadvantaged by intellectual give-and-take can insist that they know “the truth” by virtue of their racial and ethnic identity. Or revelations from a holy book. Given alternative venues for discovering the truth, why should disruptive Hamas supporters participate in a debate-like forum based on logic and evidence? For them, religious dogma suffices as “truth.”
Can intellectual agoras possibly settle anything? Unlikely. The campus is not a New England-style direct democracy to adjudicate political disputes. What if there were a debate over racial preferences and the anti-preference side won decisively? Would it alter anything? No, for the simple reason that such forums lack any authority and can become little more than academically flavored entertainment. Nor is there any guarantee that winning arguments will change the minds of today’s students, and this assumes that people will pay attention.
Besides, why should anyone on campus express currently silenced taboo views in a marketplace-of-ideas forum? This marketplace publicly exposes who should be punished. What professor believing in genetic explanations of African American academic shortcomings will suddenly go public with this sacrilege? Why invite mass career suicide? A Soviet or Chinese model is more likely: “outed” heretics will be forced into these “debates” to recant errors, show remorse, and seek forgiveness conceivably as a condition for continued employment.
Ironically, creating an intellectual agora may only further silence campus heretics. The campus left is skilled at taking over everything, and this forum may soon become yet another instrument to advance its agenda. More importantly, spectators will now witness what happens to dissenters—academic versions of Chinese Communist “struggle sessions.” Not even the most distinguished, financially secure professor on the verge of retirement and about to relocate to rural Tibet will openly defend the Bell Curve before a hostile campus audience.
Will open forums help “unpopular” speakers like Charles Murray or Heather MacDonald? No, since these high-sounding conclaves, like all campus events, offer scant protection from fanatic disruptors. Recently, for example, more than 100 Yale law school students successfully disrupted a bipartisan panel on civil liberties by shouting obscenities and making obscene gestures. Ironically, one of the agenda topics was campus freedom of speech. Police had to escort the speakers from the building. A similar disruption occurred at SUNY Albany when protestors in an improvised boisterous conga line prevented a talk, “Free Speech on Campus.”
Nor will the truth always emerge from the vigorous clash of ideas. Debates on hot-button issues will not be comparable to boxing matches, where identical rules bind both fighters, so the best fighter wins. Academic forums cannot be level playing fields.
Academically defined victimhood renders a “fair” fight impossible. Picture a debate over the under-representation of women in cutting-edge physics with a white male relying on biological explanations and a female of color asserting bias as the explanation. Woe to the white male who forcefully cites copious statistical scientific data from IQ tests while mocking his opponent for stressing uncorroborated data on feelings. He may score endless debate points, but his white male demeanor guarantees defeat. Even believers in a biological explanation may be appalled by his aggressive “ungentlemanly conduct” toward women. The embrace of victimology, with its low-bar standards for the “oppressed,” can easily tip the scales.
Only with great difficulty can a “privileged” white male outargue those from protected racial, gender, and sexual identity groups. Try telling an African American that his deeply moving personal account of racist discrimination is misinformed. Recall the frustrated Larry Summers defending the mere suggestions that exceptional mathematical ability is largely found among men. Once “feelings” entered the discussion, it was unwinnable for Summers. Who wants to make anybody feel bad?
Further, add dog whistle insults only audible to the most thin-skinned. In a public discussion on the genetic versus environmental source of homosexuality, for example, the phrase “unnatural sex” may be deemed a “triggering” expression that creates a “hostile learning environment” and thus attacks the LGBTQ + community. The speaker using this phrase thus becomes a sinner, even though this terminology has existed for centuries. To the super-sensitive, tone of voice and involuntary body language may expose “hate,” but not everybody is equally likely to be a “hater.” Being offended is today’s heckler’s veto, and straight white males must walk on eggshells lest they inadvertently violate the countless informal and written rules governing personal interactions. Why would any white male participate in such a risky charade and speak frankly? The fix is in.
Finally, an intellectual agora cannot end the pervasive suppression of free speech on today’s campuses. Those issuing grand statements about academic freedom cannot enforce anything. A well-funded organization sponsoring conferences on “why free speech is fundamental to higher education” is powerless to alter what occurs in the classroom, the faculty lounge, or how students censor each other. Nor does anybody want an intellectual forum to possess this power.
Efforts at restoring intellectual openness cannot substitute for campus leaders willing to expel those who disrupt speakers or use the classroom to proselytize toxic ideologies. Sadly, a “Free Speech Center” might just be a bureaucratic gesture to escape tough choices demanding courage. There are reasons why such safe escapes from hard choices have become so popular; they allow administrators to do what they truly relish, that is, raising funds to hire yet more subordinates, expand budgets, attract publicity, and, if lucky, add yet one more building to the campus.
Image by Berit Kessler — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 481241227
