I’ve long admired big portions of the Chicago school of economic thought, primarily its reverence for the power of free markets. Bravo.
But I recently discovered two more insights from the Illinoisans. These might help in South Africa.
First, the University of Chicago Principles of Freedom of Expression. Published and adopted in 2014, this is perhaps the most robust and cogent expression of free speech at universities anywhere.
Here is the essence:
‘Debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.
‘It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose.’
Why is this so important? Aren’t universities bastions of free speech and debate? Some are. But many are now waging a growing war on it. The US especially is suffering increasing deplatforming of speakers, hounding out of academics, and coups to enforce particular opinions.
In 2017 Charles Murray was invited to speak at Middlebury College. He is a social scientist who does blazingly contested work. His 1994 book The Bell Curve explored, among other things, IQ score differences among the races. Here I deliberately make no effort to evaluate his views. That’s the point.
Murray was shouted out of the lecture hall and eventually delivered his talk remotely from a locked room. He was later chased off campus by an angry mob. Phone video footage captured the event.
Afterwards 177 college professors from across the country signed an open letter criticising the fact that the student perpetrators had been disciplined.
Principles aren’t there for people we like. They are there always – and ‘however offensive’ opinions may be to us, as Chicago says.
Enforcement of approved opinions
Across the pond, the ancient University of Cambridge recently dealt with an attempt at enforcement of approved opinions. A student-led movement tried to legislate that everyone ‘respect’ everyone else’s opinions.
Respect! What if I don’t respect your opinion? How can I bring myself to respect your heartfelt endorsement of communism when I don’t? Must I respect your view that all Uyghurs be re-educated in camps in China? What if you reckon George Foreman was the greatest heavyweight ever, while I know with great certainty it was Jack Johnson? I jest on this last one only to show absurdity.
Stephen Fry came out strongly against this campaign, calling it ‘muddled’. Toby Young’s Free Speech Union challenged it hard. In the end, the university settled for ‘tolerate’ rather than ‘respect’.
‘Tolerate’ doesn’t create wrongthink and demand any particular opinion. It simply says you can’t act improperly where you don’t like an opinion. That sounds fair.
Rhodes Must Fall at the University of Cape Town was a free speech issue. The towering sculpture of the long-dead Cecil John certainly never uttered a word. I mean speech in a broader sense of expression. Statues tell narratives just by existing in the place they are. Storming administration buildings, burning artworks and that notoriously malodorous defilement of the statue itself all amount to shutting down freedom of speech.
Applying Chicago, activists were entitled to regard Rhodes as a monster. Just like they were free to cherish him. Or to ignore him. Likewise, to acknowledge he was good and bad, and that statues aren’t there always to revere, but also to not forget. As with Murray above, I purposely make not even a start at evaluating the man myself. It means nothing to this argument.
Kalven Committee
The Chicagoan second principle comes from the Kalven Report. This explored and then codified the university’s approach to social and political issues. In short, it said that a university has a job to do, and that is precisely and only what it ought to do.
The job:
‘The discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. Its domain of inquiry and scrutiny includes all aspects and all values of society. A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.’
And the logical upshot they reach:
‘Since the university is a community only for these limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted. In brief, it is a community which cannot resort to majority vote to reach positions on public issues.’
A university simply is not designed or mandated to support or endorse any political or social stance or movement. Pick your political party or moral school of thought. The same rule applies. A university is a hub for any and all of these to act and to interact.
These parameters would help resolve myriad clashes at South African universities. To pick one: the University of Cape Town has contorted itself over calls to ban Israeli speakers on campus. Implementing such a rule is to take a political stance. Bluntly, you do or you don’t believe Israel oppresses Palestine.
Chicago says let them speak. And the very same for peaceful picketers on Jameson Plaza, opinion writers in the university newspaper, and guests who rebuke Israel as a human-rights abuser.
Flogging the point, my political stance on this is nowhere to be found in this piece. It would only waste space.
South African universities, schools, and businesses can learn from Chicago. Do what your entity is designed and mandated to do, tolerate opinions you dislike, debate freely, and do not violently hound professors off campus.
[Image: https://pixabay.com/photos/microphone-audio-vocal-speech-6616552/]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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