The Subtle Mechanics of Unfree Speech Revisted 16
“Our own FAU handbook says an employee may be terminated for questionable conduct, professional or personal,” trustee Robert Rubin said. “And what Professor Tracy said wasn’t?”“The Subtle Mechanics of Unfree Speech” first appeared at MHB on November 10, 2013, exactly two years before Florida Atlantic University administrators began threatening Professor James Tracy with “disciplinary action for constitutionally-protected speech on his personal blog. The observations below have a special resonance in light of not just the scrapping of Dr. Tracy’s tenure and livelihood, but also more recent developments, including calls by Israel government officials to censor and suppress the free exchange of ideas on social media.
But making comments that are embarrassing to a university is not grounds to fire a tenured professor, said Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which advocates on free speech issues.
“Professors are citizens, too. They have the right to espouse various ideas, even if they’re controversial, as long as it doesn’t impact their teaching and their students.” -Scott Travis, “It’s That Professor Again: FAU Egghead Who Doubted Newtown Massacre Questions Boston Bombing,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 24, 2013, A1.
In this vein FAU and numerous other US universities have implemented administration-sponsored, politically correct “free speech” programs that substitute for genuine academic freedom and free speech, a sign of more-than-subtle hostility toward critical inquiry and discourse that comprises the core of a genuinely vibrant intellectual environment. President John Kelly’s administration further confirmed the university’s hostility toward open exchange in 2015 by jeopardizing tenure and even reprimanding several professors for speaking to news media without obtaining permission from administrators to do so–a clear example of prior restraint. Kelly’s tendency to privilege public relations over free speech and academic freedom culminated in Tracy’s January 6, 2016 termination.-Ed.
The Subtle Mechanics of Unfree Speech
November 10, 2013
“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
A cascade of managerial and public relations blunders has prompted Florida Atlantic University administrators to introduce The Agora Project,
a broad initiative intending to promote “the practice of civility and
civil discourse in an environment of free speech, academic freedom and
open dialogue.”
Faculty valuing free
speech and academic freedom whose persistent efforts at cultivating such
through their teaching and research will likely be intrigued in hearing
of the Agora Project, an endeavor proffering “forums on the importance
of academic freedom, academic responsibility, and freedom of
expression;” the program even promises to “create workshops on how best
to practice civil and respectful interaction with others; and provide
opportunities to discuss, dialogue and debate matters relevant to FAU
and to our world.”
One is to conclude
that, left to their own devices, faculty members and students may never
arrive at a rational approach toward civility. Moreover, they may even
become suspicious in the event that they are force-fed such an agenda.
Indeed, after the Delphi-style exercise was presented at a recent
faculty meeting, a colleague quietly pulled me aside and remarked, “This
isn’t about civility. It’s about control.”
Will this individual
soon be vociferously questioning Agora? Likely no. Wouldn’t want to
“rock the boat” and draw attention to her/himself. Could s/he perhaps be
on to something? Likely yes.
Not coincidentally,
Agora was unveiled by university administrators in August 2013, a few
short weeks after a speech code issued by FAU’s Division of Student
Affairs was condemned by the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and subsequently revised. “Here at FAU,” the original speech code reads,
we encourage our campus community to exercise this cherished freedom in lively debate. In fact, we protect and promote that right. What we do insist on, however, is that everyone in the FAU community behave and speak to and about one another in ways that are not racist, religiously intolerant or otherwise degrading to others. (Emphasis added.)
FIRE countered that
such a policy could impinge on constitutionally-protected speech and
expression, possibly quashing not only academic discussion and inquiry,
but also protest and debate on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict under
the guise of “religious intolerance.”
In addition, an
injunction on “racist” speech might be used to discipline vibrant
exchanges on immigration and affirmative action. “And the prohibition on
‘otherwise degrading’ speech could apply to speech on virtually any topic that offends another person,” FIRE contends.
A cynic might conclude
that The Agora Project is a backdoor effort to provide the basis for
extending such criteria across each of the University’s
constituencies—faculty, students, staff—with their implicit approval
given the plan’s professed effort of consultation and engagement.
Along these lines,
perhaps the endeavor is an effort to assuage certain communities who for
some reason aren’t comfortable with or seek to discontinue open
discussion, debate, and social protest—all of which are to be
anticipated in a space devoted to the expansion of intellectual
horizons.
Of course, those in
the upper echelons of university oversight—the administrators and
trustees—who are pushing for prospective speech protocols are exempt
from such measures, as their actions and behavior are apparently beyond
reproach.
For example, last
spring then-president Mary Jane Saunders ran into a protesting student
with her Lexus sedan, fled the scene down the wrong way of a one-way
street, and was subsequently defended by FAU trustees while the police
investigating the incident discounted Saunders’ clear commitment of one
or more felonies.
In the wake of the
“conspiracy theory professor” and “stomp on Jesus” controversies, and
protests surrounding a deal that would name the university’s new
football stadium after a transnational for-profit prison outfit, dental
industry entrepreneur and Republican Party functionary Jeffrey Feingold remarked, “I don’t want [to] hear any more people say they think the lunatics have taken over the asylum.”
Feingold went on to criticize
continued use of a headhunting firm that identified administrative
candidates including Saunders because it allegedly produces “losers.” He
further suggested a remarkably bizarre and insulting conspiracy theory
that nonviolent campus protests by FAU students—the very children of
Florida taxpayers who’ve elected to attend FAU–may culminate in violent
terrorist attacks comparable to the Boston Marathon bombings!
Unsurprisingly, no media attention or faculty outrage is afforded
Feingold’s truly wacko theory.
One might ask, how is anyone given license for such behavior and remarks? Well, in January the ever-modest Feingold gave
FAU $250,000 to name the university’s Board of Trustees room after him.
“From those to whom much is given, much is expected,” he dictated.
Because we are a diverse university … that doesn’t mean that we tolerate bigotry or prejudice. You have to draw a keen distinction between free speech and hate speech. I think that [in light of] recent events at this university, we need a president that understands that and who will act decisively with respect to it.
In other words, a
principal holder of the institution’s purse strings asserts that the
ideal chief administrator should reprimand and perhaps even fire faculty
and staff who articulate extraordinary perspectives—ones that may
fulfill the arbitrary and Kafkaesque notion of “hate speech.” In
Agora-speak, this would inevitably involve violation of proposed
“respectful” and “civic” discourse with-a-twist etiquettes.
In the subtly forced
conversation on “civility,” “academic freedom,” and “respectful
interaction,” a more clear-cut definition of what exactly constitutes
meaningful exchange has been wholly lost, or, perhaps more fittingly,
supplanted. In reality, couldn’t such a discussion be targeting the
ideals that provide the basis for better understanding “something
important, something real” that “really bothers” certain individuals …
thus challenging them to consider an issue, an event, or a problem at a
far deeper level?
When a university
ceases to be a place where a wide expanse of “controversial” ideas and
dialogues can be spontaneously ruminated on, one can safely conclude
that it has made the transition from sanctuary and laboratory of free
thought and ideas to a mere appendage of the consciousness industry and
workhouse of the mind.
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