The Comments Section

I've done a few pieces for Inside Higher Ed, and have been quite interested in the comments section, in which the critics have often unintentionally enhanced my case. (This was particularly true with the last piece I published, which discussed this issue directly.)

That said, I was particularly struck by the comments section in the recent Inside Higher Ed article by Greg Lukianoff and Azhar Majeed, which discusses the continuing attempts at institutions such as William Paterson, Suffolk Community College, and Washington State to punish students for speech that some on campus deemed"offensive." Such initiatives represent an outgrowth of the speech-code movement of the 1990s, which should have been discredited by now but instead has morphed into a variety of new forms.

Fighting attempts to suppress free speech on the nation's campuses has been the central mission of FIRE, of which Lukainoff serves as Director of Legal and Public Advocacy. FIRE has helped me out on several occasions, most recently in the call by Brooklyn's School of Education that I"stop" speaking publicly on issues relating to a new assessment scheme called"dispositions." In any event, you'd think that whatever Lukianoff had to say about speech codes would be taken seriously.

The comments section, however, provides some unusual critical views. An education professor from TCU finds the speech-code issue overhyped:"There will be regulatory abuses — always have been — the response is appropriately case-by-case, perhaps in time leading to generally understood parameters. But viewed in a macro & historic sense, these incidents are neither new nor apocalyptic. In a sense, these cases reinforce the complexity of commodious principles, such as the 'First Amendment' and the unending process of creating meaning, case by case." It would seem to me that the burden should be on the University that creates the speech code to explain why First Amendment privileges should be curtailed, not those who are victimized by the University's undertaking.

But this comment can't hold a candle to the stunning screed by Grover Furr, who charges

FIRE has a shameful history of falsely claiming suppression of free speech. A long FIRE article in the CHE of Aug. 1 ’03 about 'Speech Codes' similarly failed to give a single example of a 'speech code.' 'Freedom of speech' does not grant the right to publish dishonest and misleading material. Articles that make serious allegations without evidence to substantiate them, like this one by FIRE, do not merit publication.

One wonders whether Furr would hold his own writings to such a standard. If so, given that Lukianoff's reply pretty convincingly shows that Furr's response was at best wholly wrong and at worst deliberately deceitful, Furr's days in publishing anything would be numbered.