After last week’s violent riots at the University of California Berkeley that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking, it is heartening to see a public figure take action to defend free expression on campus. In North Carolina, Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest has announced that he will seek to pass the Restore Campus Free Speech Act, according to Stanley Kurtz.
Kurtz and the Goldwater Institute have published model legislation on which this act is based. Their proposal stands on the shoulders of three statements: Yale’s 1974 Woodward Report, the University of Chicago’s 2015 Stone Report, and the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Committee Report.
The model legislation calls on the Boards of Trustees of state university systems to acknowledge that “the primary function of an institution of higher education is the discovery, improvement, transmission, and dissemination of knowledge by means of research, teaching, discussion, and debate.” It makes provisions for peaceful protests that do not disrupt the function of the university, as well as for invited campus speakers to speak without interference. It specifies that those who do interfere with others’ right to free expression will be subject to discipline.
Conscientious enforcement of these rules will give teeth to universities’ verbal endorsements of intellectual freedom. Many college presidents and chancellors have paid lip service to the principle of free speech, but have not backed their statements up with concrete protections for the expression of controversial ideas. In light of that, the Restore Campus Free Speech Act is a valuable safeguard for the kinds of discussion and debate that a college campus is supposed to foster.
This proposed act also stipulates that, in accordance with the Kalven Committee Report, institutions of higher education may not take partisan positions, but are to remain politically neutral. If North Carolina institutions abide by this standard, they will set a compelling example for other institutions for how to resist the temptations of politicization.
Intellectual freedom on campus faces constant threats, and the only way to ensure its survival is to continually resist those threats and affirm its crucial importance.
North Carolina’s Dan Forest is not alone in these efforts. This week Virginia’s House of Delegates passed HB1401, a bill that affirms the application of the First Amendment’s to public colleges and universities.
The National Association of Scholars welcomes these bill and hopes that their enactment will spur colleges and universities to foster and secure the practice of free expression.
For more on what the NAS has said on intellectual freedom, see The Architecture of Intellectual Freedom by Peter Wood.
Image: Freedom of Speech (preliminary version) by Cliff / Creative Commons
