‘Hate speech’ foes forget First Amendment is the law at MSU, too

[COMMENTARY] Michigan State University is in the middle of a major controversy over the limits of free speech on campus, a controversy that has been repeated at other universities for decades. The student leadership, Associated Students of MSU, has called on the university to adopt a hate-speech code in the wake of one student group, Young Americans for Freedom, bringing controversial speakers to campus.

The university spokesman, Terry Denbow, has said that MSU will not pass such a speech code. This week the president of the university, Lou Anna K. Simon, made a fairly strong case for maximizing free speech on campus. Here is the full text of her statement:

Continued -

An Open Marketplace for the Free Exchange of Ideas

I have written and spoken often over the past year about the university’s commitment to free speech and the First Amendment, most recently in response to concerns about controversial speakers and events on campus last fall. I feel compelled to write again because of the ongoing actions of groups and individuals to intimidate, threaten and ridicule fellow members of the MSU community, all under the banner of free speech.

I am particularly concerned about the number of students who have reported recently that they feel threatened and intimidated on our campus because of their political beliefs, racial or ethnic identity, sexual orientation, or religious practices. Just last week, members of ASMSU received death threats prior to a meeting they held to discuss a bill related to free speech (reported in The State News, Feb. 24, 2008). No matter the reason, threats of violence and attempts to silence those with whom we disagree by ridicule or humiliation are antithetical to MSU’s core values, and such threats have no place in an academic community.

I have said many times that a university should be an open marketplace for the free exchange of ideas. This in no way implies that we will not encounter ideas that make us uncomfortable or individuals whose views we find personally offensive. As I have said before, our freedom to impart our views is assured only if we recognize the equal freedom of others to impart theirs, even when–especially when–those views are at odds with our own. Attempting to suppress the free speech rights of any individual or group, especially by means that are intended to cause individuals to feel unsafe, undermines our efforts to encourage robust intellectual discourse.

We live in an increasingly violent world, as evidenced a few weeks ago in the shootings on the campus of Northern Illinois University. I’m sure none of us will forget the grief and horror we felt when hearing about this and other incidents of campus violence over the past year because it hits too close to home. A college campus should be a safe place–physically and intellectually–where learners and seekers come to expand their minds, dream big dreams and discern and refine their beliefs about the world around them. A university is a place where all forms of diversity should be welcomed and respected and where everyone should be able to express their opinions and ideas.

Free speech is at the heart of academic freedom and is something we take very seriously at Michigan State. I encourage individuals and groups to exercise their right to free speech in ways that enhance the intellectual discourse rather than using the protections of the First Amendment to attempt to silence the voices of others. Where the exchange or exploration of ideas turns into personal attacks or threats meant to intimidate or frighten others, any value gained by the discourse is lost. As we strive to educate the next generation of the world’s leaders, we must continue to keep an open dialogue about the challenges that prevent the free and safe expression of ideas on our campus and seek solutions that honor and respect the individual rights of every member of this community.

It’s a fairly strong statement in support of free speech, though in my view not strong enough. I would have liked her to address directly the actions of some MSU students to interfere with the free-speech rights of those speakers they disagree with, and to make it clear that such actions will not be permitted on campus and will result in disciplinary action or even prosecution where appropriate.

Let me be clear: Some of the speakers that the YAF chapter have brought in are vile, hateful and repugnant to me and to almost everyone else. I completely understand the strong emotional reaction to a bigot like Nick Griffin, who demands that all non-white Europeans be thrown out of England and who preaches white supremacy. That kind of bigotry must never go unchallenged or unanswered. But challenging and answering that ideology means exercising one’s own free speech to critique and condemn his ideas; it does not — must not — mean violating his own free-speech rights. This is the sort of thing I’m talking about, reported in the State News the day after Griffin’s speech in October:

Six people involved with the MSU Young Americans for Freedom’s speaking engagement Friday were chased by two suspects wielding sticks, bats and canes following the event, MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said. The two suspects, who were protesters at the event featuring the chairman of the British National Party, followed the six people from the engagement to the Wharton Center’s parking ramp, beating their weapons on the ground and yelling threatening comments, McGlothian-Taylor said.

No matter how much those students may think they were in the right, no matter how much they think they were taking a stand against hatred, what they were engaged in was simple thuggery. That kind of behavior should never be tolerated, no matter how repulsive we may find the views they espouse. That is not legitimate protest, it is using threats and intimidation. We must never allow that kind of behavior under any circumstances.

That isn’t the only incident that has taken place. When an earlier speaker was on campus, protesters repeatedly pulled fire alarms so that the building had to be evacuated and the speech could not go on. This, again, is an interference with the right of the speaker to speak and the right of the audience to hear what he has to say. Again, if MSU can identify the people who did that, they should face disciplinary action from the university.

The First Amendment contains no provision that says free speech is protected unless someone else thinks the speech is hateful, nor should any such exemption be written in the law. Hateful speech is protected. Unfortunately, some MSU students simply do not understand the law in this regard. In a recent article in The Lansing State Journal, we find this statement from an MSU student who has been directly involved in shouting down and disrupting speakers on campus:

Gabriela Alcazar was part of the crowd that shouted down Chris Simcox when he came to Michigan State University’s campus last April.

And she was one of many protesters ushered out of the lecture hall by police so Simcox, the co-founder of the Minutemen and a virulent opponent of illegal immigration, could speak.

“There’s a point where free speech is not protected,” said Alcazar, who is the president of Chicanos y Latinos Unidos at MSU, “when you go into hate speech, when you go into fighting words.”

But from a constitutional standpoint, this simply isn’t true. There has never been any exception made for speech that is deemed hateful, nor should there be. And the fighting words doctrine is far more narrow than Alcazar thinks it is. The doctrine cannot be so broad as to mean that any speech that makes someone mad enough to fight can be censored; if it was that broad, the First Amendment would be rendered utterly meaningless because virtually any controversial statement might provoke such anger.

The fighting words exception was first laid out in the Supreme Court case Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire in 1942, and it was worded quite narrowly. That ruling defined fighting words as “those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” Since that case, however, the Supreme Court has not upheld a single conviction under this doctrine, effectively rendering it obsolete.

In fact, in the most recent case involving the fighting words doctrine, R.A.V. vs City of St. Paul in 1992, the Court refused to uphold a conviction on this basis even for the act of burning a cross on the lawn of a black family. And that was by a 9-0 vote. If that isn’t enough to invoke the fighting words doctrine, it’s difficult to conceive of what could. For all practical purposes, the doctrine no longer exists (though the Court has never officially declared it dead).

In a free society, the proper response to speech that inflames us is the exercise of our own speech to criticize and condemn those ideas we despise. As a governmental body, Michigan State University is bound by the First Amendment and has no authority to decide which speakers can and can’t have their say based on the content of that speech. If the First Amendment does not mean at least that, then it means nothing at all.

Give to government agencies the authority to selectively allow or punish speech based on its content and we are no longer a free society. With whom would you trust such authority? Thomas Jefferson wrote eloquently and powerfully about the desire to have government punish unorthodox and controversial ideas and to enforce a uniformity of opinion:

Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature…Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

Let us not allow ourselves to indulge the understandable desire to use the power of government to stamp out hateful ideas. It is the nature of all government to constantly and gradually increase its power over its subjects. There is an old saying that when all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. Likewise, give government the power to punish hateful speech and the definition of hateful speech will continually expand until any speech that is likely to upset anyone is deemed unacceptable. Eliminate the constitutional protections against such coercion in the name of stamping out hatred and we will eventually find ourselves the victims of the very power we fought to give to the government.

In Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons” there is a memorable exchange between Thomas More and William Roper:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

And we must do the same for our own liberty’s sake. The law in this case, the First Amendment, is our best protection against the violations of liberty that inevitably come with government coercion of opinion. Weaken it in order to damage our opponents and we may find that it’s no longer strong enough to protect us as well.