In publications from the nominally liberal Atlantic to the arch-conservative National Review, people who call themselves journalists lampoon student protesters for their “intolerance” and “illiberal streak” instead of focusing on the racism and discrimination that exist on college campuses against a backdrop of racialized police violence. On Facebook, Twitter, and in student publications, observers of the protests shriek about “left-wing authoritarianism.” Everywhere you look, there is someone outraged about perceived threats to their First Amendment rights. But the black students protesting at Yale and Mizzou aren’t threatening anyone’s freedom of speech. And the selective, sudden concern for free speech exposes the racism of those who respond to black students’ pain with complaints about political correctness.
In the New Yorker, where the editors seem to have kept racist writers in check, Jelani Cobb writes, “that these issues have now been subsumed in a debate over political correctness and free speech on campus—important but largely separate subjects—is proof of the self-serving deflection to which we should be accustomed at this point.” Cobb highlights how observers and writers, particularly white observers and writers, express far more concern about non-existent threats to freedom of speech than about the very real racism and discrimination that students of color experience on a daily basis. “This,” he writes, “is victim-blaming with a software update.”
Freedom of speech is protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment, which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…or abridging the freedom of speech or expression, or of the press” and so on. The key words here are “Congress shall make no law.” Making journalists leave a protest meeting, as students did at Missouri, or demanding that an administrator resign or apologize for insensitive remarks, as students did at Yale, are not First Amendment issues. No one’s right to freedom of speech is in jeopardy; no legislature has passed any law. No police have been mobilized to enforce the protesters’ will. The sad irony about the current debate is that none of the supposedly freedom-loving writers seem concerned by the fact that the black students protesting against racism are the ones whose rights—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—are constantly threatened by structural racism and police violence.
These same self-appointed defenders of free discourse are silent about the actual limits to free speech and expression at universities, especially private universities like Princeton and Yale. If someone pitched a tent and camped out in front of President Eisgruber’s office in protest of his administration’s policies, either public safety or the police or both would swiftly remove their tent from the scene. If someone who wasn’t a Princeton student were to do something similar, they would be arrested and charged with trespassing or worse. And yet none of the fair-weather First Amendment zealots react to these kinds of restrictions of speech and expression with apoplectic op-eds about the death of freedom of speech in higher education. No one publishes screeds describing university administrations as “intolerant” or “authoritarian”—though it would be completely reasonable to do so—for maintaining and justifying very real limits to free speech.
The selective concern for free speech exists on the national level, too, where constitutional rights are really at stake. When protesters and the press were targeted by the government and the police, the anti-PC civil libertarians were silent. Where were the ardent First Amendment defenders when police fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and smoke grenades at people in Ferguson? Where was the outcry when the Ferguson police arrested journalists trying to cover the protests? In 2011, where were the multiple articles in the Atlantic decrying the violent removal of nonviolent protesters from Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street? These instances of police violence were all violations of people’s constitutional rights.
“Tolerance,” Herbert Marcuse wrote in 1965, “is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery.” Western society, Marcuse argues, tolerates unspeakable atrocities every day and no one says anything. Administrators, professors, and students tolerate the workers’ rights violations the university pays for abroad and overseas. Administrators, professors, and students tolerate drone strikes that murder civilians, even American citizens without trial. And for years, administrators, professors and students have tolerated a racial state that systematically imprisons and murders African American people. But somehow, when the most marginalized and oppressed groups speak out against the injustice they face, university administrations and faculty suddenly find it necessary to defend themselves against charges of prejudice and negligence.
When students of color protest against the racism they experience on predominantly white campuses, the self-proclaimed defenders of free speech criticize them with vitriol. These free speech warriors would never denounce racism and racist policies as vociferously as they denounce the black students protesting them. The hostility shown to black students is totally absent from any of the discussions, if they even happen, about the restrictions of free speech and expression that universities, public and private, actually maintain. The selective free speech warriors that cry “free speech violations” intend to shut down conversation about the real issues at hand. Changing the subject to the issue of free speech has a much greater “chilling” effect on discourse than the allegedly “intolerant” student protests. It drowns out the voices, already straining to be heard, that are speaking out against racism. We must not allow these voices to be silenced by those who fear the power of their words.