Ralph Hexter is playing catch-up on one of the greatest challenges facing universities in this “vitriolic and polarized” time in national politics.
The interim chancellor of the University of California-Davis told the community last month he’s creating a work group of students, faculty, staff “and key campus constituents” whose mission is ensuring “invited speakers can deliver their messages unimpeded.”
That’s right – he wants to put an end to the threatened and successful disinvitations of perceived controversial speakers, sometimes backed by violence, as happened when UC-Davis thugs shut down Milo Yiannopoulos’s campus speech and “black bloc” thugs did the same on a grander scale at UC-Berkeley.
Hexter’s “Message to the Campus Community about Freedom of Expression” made clear several things to the self-appointed censors among students, faculty and staff:
1) UC-Davis is barred by the First Amendment from keeping away people based on their viewpoint. “We have for many years received demands from individuals in our community to ban invited speakers whose views they found objectionable, and those demands have recently intensified.”
MORE: Berserk Davis protesters force cancellation of Milo event
2) Protesters’ rights are not absolute. “[L]ike all expression, protest is subject to time, place, and manner restrictions,” he said, but protesters have pretended they aren’t bound by any rules. Hexter noted protesters “shouted down and for a time physically blocked the audience” from seeing one speaker last year, and in a gross understatement about the Milo fracas, he said they “managed to prevent the orderly entry of ticketed audience members” to the lecture hall.
3) The university “fell short” because it gave too much credence to people’s feelings. Hexter said he was “mindful” that UC-Davis observes its own “Principles of Community” and the university system’s “Principles Against Intolerance” (the subject of an earlier free-speech fight), and “mindful” that some speakers are “extremely upsetting” to others. It failed to “uphold everyone’s First Amendment freedoms” – and its educational obligation to allow “space and time for differing points of view” – because it put hurt feelings over the law.
To those protesters who selectively apply the First Amendment only when it suits then, Hexter said:
When we prevent words from being delivered or heard, we are trampling on the First Amendment. Even when a speaker’s message is deeply offensive to certain groups, the right to convey the message and the right to hear it are protected. This is essential to our values and to how we move forward in the months and years ahead.
MORE: Student editorial says Berkeley riots were ‘same freedom of speech’ as Milo’s
The work group is scheduled to provide its recommendations by May 31, the chancellor said. To help students pull off events that may draw protests, the university’s student affairs office and legal counsel set up a “Student Expression” page with advice over winter break.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education praised Hexter’s letter:
Most people have no problem with commonly accepted viewpoints. It’s the controversial ones that the First Amendment is intended to protect. Likewise, it’s up to all of us to resist the temptation to silence speech we find vile or repugnant. If our First Amendment rights erode, it will be from the fringes.
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