Don't Fear the Protests! Free Speech on Campus Needs to Apply to Everyone

Writing for the conservative/libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation, Timothy Snowball writes against “Campus policies” that “even restrict students from simply questioning someone else’s beliefs, if the questions could be perceived as offensive by a potential listener.” Readers of this blog know that, I like most communication professors, strongly support free speech on campus. On the one hand, Snowball’s essay is one more step in what I perceive to be semi-irrational conservative paranoia. I worked on college campuses for decades, and students in my classes and most of my colleagues' classes freely expressed, agreed with, and argued about whatever opinions they wanted. On the other hand, today’s colleges and universities do fear to sponsor controversial speakers, courses, and ideas. University administrators are constantly aware of public perception, which they think directly affects their financing or reputation.

Sir Christopher Wren Building, College of William and Mary

When I was in college from 1969-1973, at the very conservative, mostly-segregated College of William and Mary in Virginia, the college routinely invited controversial speakers from every perspective. I heard presentations by such liberal firebrands as William Kuntsler and Julian Bond. While I was studying for my master’s degree at the very liberal Northern Illinois University, the university invited an American Nazi to speak in an auditorium and give his views. In the 1960s and 1970s, universities thought it was part of their mission to expose students to many opinions, perspectives, and political views. But no more.

Libertarian speaker Charles Murray can usually give his university presentations uninterrupted, but at times protestors have shouted him down. We’re seeing protests against campus speeches by conservative Candace Owens. Too often, however, conservative leaders think that free speech means that they should be free, not that liberals should also be free to say what they think. Lulabel Seitz was one of several high school students whose speeches were cut off when they strayed into controversial territory of which their conservative school administrators disapproved. Conservatives protested against Linda Sarsour’s commencement speech at the City University of New York. Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA sponsors a despicable “Professor Watchlist” that calls out professors who they think are expressing liberal opinions. For example, they criticize Chapman University’s Catherine Cruger for teaching with a feminist perspective. Turning Point USA’s devotion to free speech seems to be very one-sided indeed.

Universities today are much less likely to invite controversial speakers or sponsor controversial classes because they fear exactly the kind of criticism that Turning Point USA dishes out so freely, or the kind of protest that a Charles Murray speech often invites.

So, yes, schools need to be much more open to diverse perspectives. But for that to happen, liberal and conservative firebrands need to calm down when a controversial speaker appears. It is fine for them to question the speakers, disagree with them, or engage in protest that does not obstruct the speaker. Universities' trustees, state legislatures, and political pundits need to remember that, when a school sponsors someone who causes controversy or conflict, they are doing their jobs and are not necessarily endorsing the opinion in question. Tolerance was a fundamental value of our nation’s founders. That’s why the First Amendment exists. As they become more intolerant, schools merely reflect society’s pressures, and the very groups that protest loudly for freedom of speech often become free speech’s greatest enemies.

In his essay, Timothy Snowball quotes Edward R. Murrow: “We are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.” I agree, with the caveat that we are not descended from either fearful men or women. Yet, for conservatives' critiques to have force, they need to extend to others the tolerance that they expect to receive.

P.S. William and Mary today is thoroughly integrated. Good for them. 

Photo by William D. Harpine, all rights reserved

Mike Pence Spoke for Gun Control and the Right Wing Didn't Howl in Protest ... Because They Trust Him ...

Mike Pence, White House photo

Conservative Republican Vice President Michael Pence spoke at the Law Enforcement Roundtable in Indiana yesterday and he more or less, quite hesitantly, endorsed modest gun-control proposals. Why? Does anyone care? Why did he give the speech at all? Why did the right-wing gun rights crowd not erupt in fury? Because of credibility, that’s why.

The speaker’s credibility is what persuades people. Of the three ancient modes of persuasion, logic, emotional appeals, and credibility, credibility has always stood foremost. Credibility, however, is not simple. That’s because credibility is a matter of the audience’s perception. It’s not really whether the speaker really is trustworthy, but whether the audience thinks he or she is trustworthy. Different audiences will trust different speakers. Conservative Republicans find Pence credible. They trust him not only to tell the truth, but to share their views.  

Look at it this way: when Barack Obama proposed background checks for gun owners, conservatives accused him of trying to confiscate America’s guns to disarm us and enslave us. National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre protested Obama’s 2013 background check proposal in these words: “A background check. A check that will always be far from universal, will never make our schools or streets safer, and will only serve as universal registration of lawful gun owners — the real goal they’ve been pushing for decades.” LaPierre continued: “In the end, there are only two reasons for government to create that federal registry of gun owners — to tax them and to take them.”

Now, let’s look at what Pence said during his speech, without eliciting a breath of complaint from the gun-rights crowd: 

“I’m pleased to report that our administration worked on a bipartisan basis in the wake of recent events to strengthen background checks.  We made a historic investment in school safety.  We directed the Department of Justice to ban bump stocks.  And we also have made historic investments in state and local law enforcement.” 

Strengthen background checks? Ban bump stocks? Those should be trigger points for gun-rights people. The National Rifle Association insists that they will not tolerate any expansion of background checks. Yet they are not complaining at all about what Pence said. So, what’s going on?

First, the National Rifle Association, which was once bipartisan, has transformed itself into a surrogate for Republican politicians. The NRA contributed to the campaigns of only four congressional Democrats in the 2016 election. No longer is the NRA primarily an advocate of hunting and self-defense. They are, instead, a partisan political force.

Second, Pence, as a Republican, can support background checks and not face the NRA’s ire, just because he’s a Republican: he’s one of their own. The gun-rights voters fear Democrats, no matter how much reassurance Democrats offer them. Elect a Democrat, and people start stockpiling guns for fear of confiscation. But gun rights people don’t fear Republicans. So, Pence can say the same things the Democrats say without inviting a backlash. That’s credibility’s power.

Third, people care less about what the Vice President says. President President Trump came out in favor of gun control and faced instant backlash. Donald Trump has power. People care what he says. The Vice President does not have power. One of the Vice President’s functions is to send up trial balloons. Pence can talk about background checks and Trump can wait to see what the response might be. If background checks never become a formal proposal, well, that’s okay, because nobody cares what the Vice President says.

My former professor Kenneth Andersen and his colleague Theodore Clevenger, Jr. wrote an important article, "A Summary of Experimental Research in Ethos." They found that credibility is the combination of the speaker’s expertise, trustworthiness, and dynamism. What we saw with Pence’s gun control speech is that people more often trust the speaker when the speaker belongs to their own group. Conservatives don’t trust Democrats. But Pence is one of their own. A Republican like Pence can say the same things that a Democrat might say, and yet Republicans will trust him. They don’t fear that he will confiscate their guns and lock them in FEMA concentration camps.

Is Pence reliable on any topic? Not in my opinion. PolitiFact.com rates only 22% of his statements as true or mostly true. That’s awful. But he belongs to the conservative crowd, and that is why they trust him. So, that’s why Pence gave the speech. That's why he didn’t create an uproar, and that’s why no one should particularly care what he said. Paradoxical, no? 

P.S. If you're interested in Mike Pence, here's my post about a 2017 Mike Pence speech. 

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his magnificent speech “I Have a Dream” 56 years ago today, on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Since we are hearing dust ups in the press about crowd sizes, let’s note that the Washington Mall was packed from end to end for King’s speech. Americanrhetoric.com ranks this speech first among the great American speeches of the 20^th Century.

King’s speech was one event during the famous March on Washington. Given the year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, King’s speech was beyond question a major factor in making the larger public aware of the terrible injustices and cruelties of racial discrimination. Like most people of my generation, I attended schools that were either totally segregated, or integrated only in a token fashion. Although there is a long way yet to travel, King’s speech set the nation on the right road.

Many commentators note that King’s speech was a biblical exposition: that is text, moral ideas, and political project all came directly from his understanding of the Bible.  He referred to the biblical books of Isaiah, Amos, Galatians, and Psalms. Biblical language rang out throughout his entire speech, and it wasn’t just the language, but also biblical ideas about morality and justice that lay behind his rhetoric.

This is important because, during the past generation, the Christian Right has consumed Christianity’s political oxygen, distorting biblical morality beyond recognition and, in the process, driving too many decent people away from Christianity. For it is a terrible mistake to let biblical morality excuse injustice. Issues of economic and political inequality ran through King’s entire speech, and King’s argument against injustice arose from quotations and allusions to biblical morality. 

Let’s look at two of those allusions.

First, Amos 5:24. One of the Twelve Prophets whose widely-ignored writings are found tucked in at the end of the Hebrew Scriptures, Amos’ prophecy rails against economic and social inequality and injustice. As Lesli White points out in BeliefNet, “Throughout Amos 5 to 6, the prophet lashes out against those who have become rich at the expense of the poor and against public – but hollow – displays of piety.” So, when King quoted Amos, he tied the Civil Rights to a biblical imperative: “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’” King was responding to the many conservatives and moderate liberals who kept asking, “When will you be satisfied?”  King stated that African-Americans could never be satisfied until they were free from “the unspeakable horrors of police brutality,” signs that say “For Whites Only,” and so forth. He insisted on the full measure of biblical justice.

Second, Isaiah 40:4-5. The complete text, which King paraphrases closely, reads, in the King James Version: “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

In King’s speech, he referred to Isaiah like this: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’”

These passages metaphorically call for social and economic equality. The valleys – the low places are to be raised up. The mountain shall be lowered. And, in this equalizing, “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” Justice is to rollover the land “like a mighty stream.” That’s hard to misunderstand.

Different biblical moralities?

Conservative speakers and liberal speakers often quote the Bible, but usually quote different parts of the Bible. Being conservatives, they often focus on individual moral choices. As my friend and colleague, communication professor James Darsey, points out in an award-winning book, radically liberal speakers often quote the Hebrew prophets. As Darsey explains, "Particularly in the United States, with its early self-conception as the new Israel, the 'shining city on the hill,' the rhetoric of the Christian Bible has had an enormous presence in our public discourse." King  was a highly-educated Christian minister to whom the prophets’ words came easily. 

In contrast, conservatives often quote biblical passages that are judgmental or that regulate sexual behavior. They quote biblical injunctions that attack homosexuality or promise judgment against one's enemies. Thus, in an earlier blog post, I noted that Christian Right minister Paula White railed against Trump's political opponents by citing the Bible: “Let the counsel of the wicked be foiled right now.”

Yet, concern for the poor, the immigrant, the downtrodden, and the oppressed is fundamental to biblical morality and permeates the writings of the Hebrew prophets. Instead of offering harsh judgments of individual people, such arguments placed morality in a community context. The prophets often made morality an obligation of the entire community, not just of individual charity. It is likely that most of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s audience was acutely aware of the passages he was quoting and recognized them automatically. Recent exposés of police being filmed shooting unarmed Black suspects with minimal provocation should help us remember that King warned us about the horrors of police brutality two generations ago.

The interested reader can find many scholarly research articles about Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of biblical interpretation to prove his case. Most of the articles are behind paywalls, but your local library can probably find copies in its databases.

P.S.: I’ve blogged about speakers on the Christian Right and commented on their speech techniques.

P.P.S.: Sunday school classes in my own (liberal Protestant) denomination sometimes irritate me. You hear lots about the miracle stories in Genesis, and yet hear very little about the Bible’s moral messages. What we don’t say or teach is as important as what we do say or teach, especially when what we leave out is the core.