Politics of speech: When community and freedom are taken to extremes

Those of us who help lead colleges today regularly champion freedom of inquiry, thought and speech. Yet, just as strongly and passionately, we promote community and encourage mutual respect, tolerance and civility.

Do these values sometimes collide? Of course they do. There is an inevitable tension between freedom and community. Indeed, the paradox is that either freedom or community, taken to the extreme, can be toxic.

Excessive community may lead to cults that breed groupthink or tyrants. Excessive liberty can lead to bullying extremists who operate under the flag of "might is right," or perhaps equally debilitating, a "do your own thing" mentality, or even anarchy.

In the academy, we abhor racism and mean-spirited commentary, yet we are reasonably tolerant of criticism, dissent or even wrong-headedness. How do we reconcile our desire for both community and free speech? Frankly, it is never an easy proposition, and there is no boilerplate formula.

A liberal-arts college is engaged in the "liberalizing" and "freeing" arts, in encouraging everyone to question his or her own prejudices and examine different political, economic and cultural values with an open mind. We also challenge students to develop their own personal belief systems that just might be independent of those of parents, peers, professors and even most of society.

Colleges at their best promote questioning, reflection, discourse and debate. Better ways of understanding ourselves and our universe, we believe, will emerge from such methods. Good colleges purposely invite speakers who espouse a range of opinions. Some of the views expressed are plainly more agreeable than others, depending on one's own persuasions. Yet, if there weren't heated debates on campus, we wouldn't really be doing our job. For if there is any safe haven for contrarian or controversial ideas, it should be in America's academies.

But conflict and heated disagreements are inherently good only if we can learn from them without undermining our very human connection to each other. Unless one lives within a community where individuals are physically and emotionally free to hold and express their own independent or even iconoclastic views, there is really no point to freedom of speech. We need a sense of community as a basic prerequisite for freedom of speech.

Yet we can no more legislate community than we can legislate trust. Community doesn't just come about. It has to be nurtured, encouraged and honored.

Part of the essence of community is learning how to disagree and debate in a way that accepts general rules of the game and supports our ability to disagree, even passionately, without diminishing each other's physical safety and well-being.

Seldom does a month go by at any college without someone complaining, often with some justification, about an article in the student newspaper, a professor's political commentary, or a racist or homophobic remark heard somewhere on campus. This past year, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, colleges and universities across the country have witnessed examples of intemperate, threatening, and even violent incidents.

Intense passions sometimes translate strongly held beliefs into contemptible actions. And these actions cannot be tolerated.

As a college president, I write a letter each summer to incoming students and ask them to join us in a commitment to freedom of thought and expression. I warn that this may be unsettling at times and that all of us must have the courage to face some ideas we will regard as misguided or even stupid. The idea of free speech involves not only the freedom to speak one's mind, but also the notion that speech itself — the civilized exchange of ideas in a civil community — is to be valued, and free speech means allowing not just the free expression of those who agree with us, but also freedom of expression that we find wrong or even repugnant. It is in arguing against such mistaken assumptions or beliefs that our own values become clarified and strengthened.

I remind incoming students that an effective liberal-arts college must be open to a broad range of views and values. Thomas Jefferson once said of the academy that error can be tolerated so long as reason is free to combat it. Indeed, it is necessary to confront and counter "wrong-headedness" in a spirit of actively engaging each other — and in the spirit of authentic learning.

As legal scholar and educator Benno Schmidt emphasizes, freedom of thought is not always easy to embrace:

"It requires willingness to take the long view, the courage to confront the unthinkable without losing one's composure, and a willingness to trust that reason and good, if free to play their part, can overcome evil and insanity....

"Because ideas live, because imagination is the key to wisdom, John Stuart Mill was surely right to contend that if we give in to the urge to suppress that which is error — even very offensive and dangerous error — we lose a benefit as great as truth itself, namely 'the clear perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.' "

Suppressing the exchange of ideas, whether through censorship or disruption, threatens not only freedom of speech, but also the search for truth.

The challenge here is to encourage honest and frank exchange of ideas, yet do it in as civil and respectful a way as possible. Former Harvard University President Neil Rudenstine says we should "speak our views perfectly openly but in ways that are also consistent with the purpose of a university, where the fundamental motive is to learn and to understand, not to abuse."

University of Chicago anthropologist Ralph Nicholas aptly reminds us that:

"Nonsense should be criticized wherever it occurs, but we cannot always be as sure as we would like about what nonsense is. Declaring an idea to be foolish does not make it false. It is the work of academic people to try out new ideas and test them against competing views. Very few of them withstand testing, but those that do justify the effort — including failures. Genuine testing and probing can be done only in an environment of radical freedom for rival ideas."

Who decides what or who is right? Individuals have to decide for themselves. But the genius of the "liberalizing arts," as well as constitutional democracy, lies not in banning dissent and prejudice but in encouraging a robust examination of ideas. Ideas that stand on their own merit, subject to challenge, debate and rebuttal, will generally endure.

Hateful and stupid speech needs to be defeated by counterargument and debate as much as possible. Hateful or offensive actions are yet another matter. Actions that are physically intimidating and threatening directed at specific groups or individuals are unacceptable. We can and do regulate actions and some forms of speech through statutes punishing libel and violence. Still — and this is where the academy has a special obligation to promote debate, counterargument and learning — the presumption must lie in favor of "free speech" unless a compelling case can be made for its limit.

A civil community in which free speech thrives can be achieved if everyone is committed to the goals of understanding and to the search for knowledge. This happens when individuals and groups who disagree with one another are able to have candid discussions about their disagreements.

Colleges should lead the way in showing how all of us — inside as well as outside the academy — can be tolerant of dissent even in times of crisis.

Thomas E. Cronin is the author, co-author or editor of more than 10 books on American government and politics.