The Importance of Differentiating Between Academic Speech and Free Speech on College Campuses
A picture of the Old Well on UNC’s campus. Source for photo: UNC-Chapel Hill
At the start of the spring 2023 semester, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees voted to create a School for Civil Life and Leadership. In accordance with the university’s mission of establishing a free speech campus, the new school is tasked with responding to the evolving political isolation, polarization and distrust that has affected higher education nationwide. The school will also aid in the implementation of a new curriculum, Ideas in Action, that will primarily be targeted at improving the communication, listening, speaking and writing skills of future Tar Heel students while supporting American Democratic ideals.
Although it’s agreeable that better listening and communication skills can help alleviate some of the undue lapses in general communication failure, the creation of the new school also raises some academic concerns. For many universities and colleges across the United States the right to free speech plays an integral role in providing students with a liberal arts education. By exposing students to subject matter ranging from the social sciences to the natural sciences, the intent is to develop analytical reading, critical thinking and concise writing skills. This type of education also requires students to be able to discuss, listen, and at times be surrounded by controversial opinions. Yet, free speech and expression on university campuses should be distinguished between two realms: the first is academic freedom and the second is public discourse.
It is first important to define the realms of academic freedom and public discourse as it currently exists on many university campuses. In this case, academic freedom refers to the ability to write, submit and publish academic work. Public discourse pertains to free speech in public spaces as it relates to the freedoms and constraints of the First Amendment.
Much of the initial controversy for UNC-Chapel Hill’s new school has come from a place of seemingly political concern. Part of the Board’s reasoning for creating a new school is to prevent students from feeling as if they need to censor themselves in the classroom and on paper out of fear of being patronized by professors and faculty members. According to Trustee Marty Kotis, “Listening to the Faculty Executive Committee’s discussion clearly demonstrates why we need this school. Rather than discussing the merits of the idea, they were defensive and critical of the process — more concerned with who was driving the car, rather than where it was headed. The level of pearl-clutching and overall attribution of nefarious motives based on partisanship was appalling.”
But for many faculty members associated with UNC-Chapel Hill who have dedicated their careers to academia and higher education, their concern and curiosity about the new school is not unjustified. UNC-Chapel Hill already has a heightened tolerance policy for free speech on campus. Unlike many other universities, non-university affiliated speakers do not need sponsorship from faculty or student groups to legally exercise their First Amendment rights on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus or in their facilities. And the Board’s decision to further this particular free speech policy through the creation of a new school does call into question if the line between free speech and academic speech is being redrawn or even loosely done away with within the walls of the new school.
There is a common notion that academic freedom and public discourse work in tandem, this is called the standard view. According to this logic, the definition of academic freedom translates into general protected speech in any public setting. This view treats academic freedom as if it is a constitutional right by extension of the First Amendment, which scarcely limits the boundaries of academic freedom. And although relative academic freedom is inherently good, this type of loose treatment regarding the relationship between public discourse and academic freedom threatens the robustness of academic institutions nationwide. It also, by definition of upholding the First Amendment in academia, significantly lowers the standards to which academic work can be held.
It’s critical to acknowledge that academic freedom allows for faculty members to have autonomy in how they choose to bestow professional judgment and to be free from social, political or financial constraints in doing so. However, the dichotomy of public universities also requires that campuses serve as spaces for public discourse and that campuses should reflect a diversity of thought as a result of American Democracy in action. What ties these realms together is a consensus to take ideas seriously and to challenge ideological norms through exploration. While integrating these two realms appears to be the goal of UNC-Chapel Hill’s new school, to achieve higher levels of civil discourse in academic settings, the implementation of what would need to be at least a set of hybrid rules governing academic freedom using the jurisprudence of the First Amendment is not clear, much less possible. As a result, it can be rationally deduced that the rules of public discourse will likely be the dominant set of rules the new school will abide by in the academic realm of free speech, in order to further the university’s free speech mission.
During the first week of the fall 2022 school year, The Genocide Awareness Project, a pro-life group, set up large visual displays and signs with fallacious information protesting abortion on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. Their manifesto claims that one in three pregnancies result in abortion without citing proper sources. As a part of their protest, they flaunt enlarged images of bloody fetuses and body parts made to look like aborted pregnancies. But unique to many other free speech policies at other public universities, UNC-Chapel Hill’s policy on free speech allows unaffiliated groups to occupy campus facilities so long as the protests are Constitutionally permissible, and the Genocide Awarness Project does act within their Consitutional rights.
This means that based on precedent set by the Supreme Court in the 1964 case, Garrison v. Louisiana, speech, no matter its content, is permissible unless a “reckless disregard for the truth,” with the intent to cause harm can be definitively proven in a court of law. And that the individual must be highly aware of the fact that the speech could potentially be false in order for speech to be suppressed, all of which is extremely difficult to prove. If academic institutions, including UNC’s new school, were to also reflect the Constitutional rules of public discourse within the realm of academic freedom, it would be impossible to logically justify the penalization and correction of students who fail to provide sufficient evidence in academic claims, much less subject students to academic consequences for fabricating statistics regarding political issues in order to further a personally held political belief.
Contrary to the standard view, Yale Law Professor, Robert Post, offers a different perspective on the meaning of academic freedom. He suggests that the very nature of academic work revolves around assessing and examining the quality of other people’s ideas and the strength of their arguments, and that the foundation of academic progress comes from critiquing a scholar’s claims, logic, argumentative structure and overall defeasibility. So, by virtue of subjecting academic work to rigorous scrutiny, not only does it produce reliable work but it also requires that judges be able to mark out and suppress speech to improve the accuracy of the content. This makes academic freedom antithetical to the rights bestowed by the First Amendment, but this is a good thing as it produces a competitive academic environment that breeds superior academic work.
The UNC-Chapel Hill Board has made it clear based on their mission to apply the full jurisprudence of the First Amendment to all of campus that they value all speech regardless of how controversial or inaccurate it may be. And based on the UNC Board’s push to transfer the university’s current free speech policy to the new school it’s quite clear that the Board holds a standard view on the relation between free speech and academic speech.
In accordance with the Board’s opinion, many right-wing politicians also believe that liberal arts education curriculums could lead to the stamping out of conservative ideology in universities and colleges around the county. Many supporters of this belief would argue that it is imperative that the full jurisprudence of the First Amendment be applied to both public and academic realms of universities. Although I acknowledge the fact that all students should not feel the need to censor themselves in class and students of all ideologies deserve an equal opportunity to express their opinions, I would like to offer my objection to the UNC Board’s solution to these issues.
Now, let's suppose the full jurisprudence of the First Amendment - or the Constitutional rules of public discourse - is applied to the new School for Civic Life and Leadership. Much like the Genocide Awareness protestors that are welcomed onto campus via UNC’s free speech and public discourse policy, if the Board is seeking faculty members dedicated to upholding the full jurisprudence of the First Amendment in the academic realm they will also, by virtue, need to approve of academic endeavors that promote claims and evidence such as the ones associated with The Genocide Awareness Project.
As stated previously, the academic realm of freedom is meant to correct the weakly argued claims and eliminate lousy evidence used to support academic work. In the new school, if this process is overridden by the rights of the First Amendment and academic work is instead subject to the content regulation precedent set by Garrison v. Louisiana, the academic material attached to the university’s name will significantly reduce the university’s academic credibility and tradition of superior academic achievement. Given the fact that the new school’s incorporation of the First Amendment in the academic freedom realm would allow for academic work that relied on fabricated or exaggerated statistics.
And while it’s easy to argue that fallacious academic endeavors wouldn’t survive even the new school’s academic standards, by integrating the rules of the public discourse realm into the academic freedom realm it would be hypocritical for the new school to draw and define their own regulations on speech regulation given that the academic standard is dictated by the incorporation of the First Amendment and the rules of public discourse.
Furthermore, if the University’s new school mission is to foster civil, namely political, discussion, it’s evident that members of the Board of Trustees do not frequent many, if any, social science classes at UNC-Chapel Hill. As a Political Science major and Philosophy, Politics and Economics minor, to say that respect, intellectual humility and meaningful discussion is lacking in current social science courses - where political discussion often occurs - is an insult to both UNC-Chapel Hill faculty and students.
Although at times students, including myself, have walked away from a class frustrated by a peer’s relentless attempt to advocate for a particular idea in a class discussion it doesn’t mean that controversial speech in class isn’t tolerated nor that the student it comes from isn’t respected. Frankly, no school can make students exercise intellectual humility and respect, those are virtues that have been instilled or not instilled in individuals long before they reach college age. And by suggesting that UNC-Chapel Hill is in need of improved civil political discussion, it discredits the academic strides and achievements of faculty and students that allow UNC-Chapel Hill to have a top nationally ranked Political Science department.
It is my opinion that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as many other universities nationwide, are regarded for their superior academic achievement because of the distinction made between the public discourse and the academic realm of free speech on university campuses. As things currently stand, by law all students enjoy full Constitutional protection from the First Amendment in their classes and in their writing. Rather, the UNC-Chapel Hill Board’s announcement of a new school appears to be a ploy to undercut the university’s strict scrutiny that is applied to academic work to further political interests. And the national perception of political suppression and censorship is merely the reality of scrutinizing academic work and eliminating poorly written and weakly argued ideas.