A few Sundays ago, I had a surprise with my breakfast. There, on the front page of The New York Times was an article by Diana Jean Schemo (“New Battles in Old War Over Freedom of Speech”, 11/25/01) concerning post-9-11 debates over free speech. Following a surge in complaints about speech in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, many have begun to question the value of the numerous speech codes put into effect on campuses over the course of the 1980s and ‘90s. For critics of the codes, Schemo wrote, the sudden increase in complaints is “an inevitable consequence of the speech codes themselves, which they say have shaped the campus as a therapeutic environment where students are protected from discussions that make them uncomfortable.”

What was surprising about all this was not so much the article itself, which was short and cautious, as the fact that it had appeared at all. While the systematic (and selective) violation of free speech on campus is hardly new, articles about it in The New York Times and other organs of the liberal elite most certainly are. Schemo’s article, in this respect, was just another indication of how much things have changed since Sept. 11. As Thor Halvorssen, executive director for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), recently commented in an interview with Boundless: "Note well how remarkable it is that publications as politically diverse as The Weekly Standard, The Nation, The National Review, The New York Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, all seem to come to the same conclusion: that something is very wrong with the way our colleges and universities are legislating speech and behavior through speech codes and arbitrary punishments meted out without due process in a selective manner."

Halvorssen should know. As director of FIRE, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit group that monitors campus civil liberties abuses, he has been at the center of many of the recent controversies involving free speech. According to Halvorsen, post-Sept. 11 violations have differed from earlier cases only in number, not in kind. Time and again in recent years, university administrations have punished speech deemed “offensive” to “sensitive” groups --primarily, blacks, Latinos and gays -- while doing nothing when those same groups offended others. “A wicked and intolerably duplicitous aspect of this thinking,” says Halvorssen, “is that it is applied with an inconceivable double standard … I cannot remember the last case of someone being prosecuted in a campus tribunal for ‘offending’ a born-again Christian or ‘offending’ someone with ‘incorrect’ views.” That double standard is alive and well. With rare exceptions, post-9-11 attempts to prosecute speech judged “offensive” have focused on students and faculty who deny that the United States had somehow invited the terrorist attacks. Here are just a few of the cases recently taken up by FIRE:

*On Sept. 22, Zewdalem Kebede, a political science major at San Diego State University (SDSU), confronted (in Arabic) a group of Saudi Arabian students who were expressing delight at the success of the terrorist attacks. To his credit, Kebede reproached the Saudi students for their bad taste and odious views. In the eyes of SDSU’s administration, however, Kebede’s actions were tantamount to an assault on the Saudis’ free speech. After being subjected to a disciplinary hearing, the administration sent Kebede a formal “letter of admonishment” in which he was warned to avoid similar confrontations in the future at the risk of “severe disciplinary measures.” No action was taken against the Saudi students.

*On Sept. 18, Kenneth Hearlson, a professor of political science at California’s Orange Coast College, led a class discussion of the Sept. 11 attacks. During the discussion, Professor Hearlson questioned the weak response of the Islamic world to the terrorist attacks and criticized a campus student group, Hizb-ul-Haq, which had earlier posted fliers comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Following Professor Hearlson’s class, four Muslim students accused him of publicly blaming them for the terrorist attacks. “You drove two planes into the World Trade Center,” one of the students recalled Hearlson saying, “you were the cause of what happened on Sept. 11.” Within two days of the class, Professor Hearlson found himself on administrative leave with pay, barred from setting foot on campus, where he has tenure and has worked for 18 years. Fortunately, some students had taped the lecture on the day in question. On examination, it was revealed that Hearlson had not made the remarks of which he had been accused. Fully 11 weeks later, Orange Coast’s administration -- now deeply embarrassed -- agreed to reinstate Professor Hearlson. They have yet to apologize or admit their error, however, and, so far, no action has been taken against the students responsible for the false accusations.

*On Sept. 15, Mike Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina’s Wilmington (UNC-W) campus, received an email from Rosa Fuller, a UNC-W undergraduate. The email, which Fuller addressed to the campus community in general, characterized the terrorist attacks as just retribution for American interference abroad. “The American ruling elite,” Fuller wrote, “in its insolence and cynicism, acts as if it can carry out its violent enterprises around the world without creating the political conditions for violent acts of retribution.” Fuller also requested that recipients of her email forward it to others in the interests of an “open, unbiased, democratic discussion.” After receiving the email, Professor Adams sent Fuller a brief, critical reply and passed her message on to others. Unhappy with this criticism -- and in spite of her professed desire for “open, unbiased, democratic discussion” -- Fuller contacted the University administration and demanded that she be given access to Professor Adams’ email account so as to pursue charges of “intimidation, defamation, and false representation.” After some hesitation, the administration granted Fuller’s request and, on Oct. 25, university officials accessed Adams’ account over his objections. Faced with a barrage of criticism for its actions, UNC-W denies any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the investigation of Professor Adams has been discreetly dropped.

In each of these cases, university administrators have been guilty of violating the free speech and academic liberty of their students and faculty. And yet, every time, they have claimed to be upholding these very principles. Their position, repeated zombie-like whenever their policies are challenged, is that, to defend the free speech of all, the free speech of a select few must be curtailed. This argument, so obviously contradictory, only goes to show the breathtaking arrogance and mendacity which rules at so many of our universities. While most administrations are only too happy pretending to be the champions of free inquiry, many devote themselves full time to ensuring that never happens. “In the abstract [these administrations] are the courageous protectors of liberty,” Halvorssen points out, but “in practice, they oversee an unbearable and unspeakable assault on these values. Many of them are not zealots. Instead, they are careerists. They will persecute and silence those with ‘incorrect’ or unpopular views.”

How did we get into this situation? Part of the answer surely has to do with the behavior of campus administrations. Like all bureaucrats, campus administrators like to make things easy for themselves. Since debate often means trouble, they’d prefer if it doesn’t happen and, all things being equal, will do what they can to suppress it. But administrators are only part of the problem and not the most important part. The real guardians of every college and university are its faculty. They are the ones who are supposed to ensure that students and staff alike respect the ideals upon which the institution is founded and they are the ones whose job it is to step in when these ideals are traduced.

That they no longer do so must be counted as one of the most insidious consequences of postmodernism. Sometime in the 1980s, the liberal humanist tradition died in our universities. It was replaced, at least in humanities and social science departments, by a new worldview. According to this worldview, all of culture is politics, all appeal to universal principle is little more than a thinly veiled will to power on the part of particularistic interests. The conclusions follow hard and fast. If the idea of principle is nothing more than an empty conceit, then principles such as freedom of speech and thought are worth invoking only when they suit the speaker’s interest. Since so many faculty were left-leaning to begin with, this worldview made it very easy for them to look the other way as those with whom they disagreed on political grounds were systematically excluded from campus. A generation ago, humanists and social scientists were the very people who stood up for free speech on campuses across the country. Having lost faith in free speech and every other principle, they now sit idly by as administrators do what comes most naturally to them: punish troublemakers.

Compared to earlier incidents, the cases of Kebede, Hearlson and Adams have each received a good deal of media attention. Indeed, the fact that campus administrations have in some cases acted to reverse earlier decisions is in large measure due to the unprecedented publicity which has accompanied their misdeeds. Impatient with those who reflexively blame America for Sept. 11, the national media, liberal and conservative alike, has been quick to condemn administrations who have gone about enforcing their absurd speech codes as if it was business as usual on campus.

And yet what happens when it is business as usual once again? How long will the recent consensus on speech codes last? Since September, the national press has shown itself willing to condemn double standards on campus when they happen to hold the same views as the victims of those standards. But this hasn’t always been the case and is unlikely to remain that way in the future. What happens next time someone with “incorrect” views is punished for exercising his rights? Will those today writing editorials condemning speech codes condemn those who continue to enforce them, no matter who the victim is? Or will we return to the dishonest, vulgar and intellectually deadening environment which until recently reigned on campus? Either way, we shall then see whether the return to principle supposedly occasioned by Sept. 11 has been lasting and deep or merely convenient.