A Board of Accreditation-Sanctioned Rant

I'm taking an English course at the local college this summer as part of my scheme to vacate school a year early. My slightly bizarre teacher assigned us an essay dealing with the topic Should universities limit the expression of ideas, academic and private, by students? I wouldn't mind if some of you had a read....it may be of interest. The incident it discusses can be found at

http://pr.caltech.edu/media/times.html

I'd like to hear your comments.

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In striving to best serve its learned function, what efforts may a university make to protect its members from the speech of others? Is it ethical, or even necessary, for a university to limit the free creation and dissemination of ideas? By examining an actual incident, as well as the professed purpose of a university, the following conclusion can be drawn: It is unnecessary and contrary to the purpose of a university to limit the personal conversations and expression of academic ideas of its members.
First, private discussions between students are not the university’s affair. In the Jinsong Hu case at Caltech, for example, the university had no right to question the private discussion between Hu and Wen, especially in view of the fact that the law already considered the circumstances doubtful enough to acquit Hu. Hu and Wen were both adults, conversing privately by email. Speaking completely formalistically, every part of the conversation between Hu and Wen was found by the court to have been conducted in a legal way (because the illegal conversation was found to have not involved Hu). Legality should be the practical criterion for what can be said privately between students. Any university policy that is contrary to or more stringent than the law does no more than embroil students in administrative megalomania, as was illustrated by Caltech’s ruining the career of a legally innocent man*. As long as a mechanism exists by which situations in a university may be measured against the law, university administrations should not interfere with private conversation among students.
Academic ideas must be tackled next. Consider the stated purpose of a university. According to “Etymology Online”, the word “university” is derived from the Latin “universitas magistrorum et scholarium”, meaning “a community of masters and scholars”. Examining the definition closely reveals one thing of interest here: the word “community”. This carries the connotation of a brotherhood or a society for the free exchange of ideas. And indeed it is true. Universities originated as organizations for the creation, rather than for the dissemination, of knowledge. Professors precede students.
Given this, it is clear that the university is really an erudite society, a ‘rational cult’ of sorts. Indeed every recondite idea formally forwarded in a university is done so with the understanding that in order to survive it must adhere to certain intellectual standards. It is taken for granted in a university that an idea must be planned, researched, and it must pass the most rigorous of logical tests. To maintain these intellectual standards, we have professors, instructors, and other guardians of reason to ensure that these principles are kept.
It is on these terms that the notion of suppressing students’ academic ideas because of offensiveness can be attacked. To maintain any kind of justice, the university must have definite, and publicly available, criteria that determine which ideas are offensive. However, these criteria are in themselves ideas put forth in the university, and the university would be hypocritical if they failed to submit their “offensiveness criteria” to the same rigorous process by which this essay will be tested. In other words, their policy on censoring offensive ideas must meet the aforesaid intellectual standards.
However, it is essentially impossible to meet this demand, because “offensiveness” is completely subjective. The state of being offended is a property of the person, and not the essay, book, or email that they find offensive. The offensiveness problem is even inherent in the nature of academic writing. A well-written argument (and academic writing is just that) is merely an upholding of one value at the expense of another. Therefore, sufficiently emotive holders of the denigrated value have the potential to become offended. Because of this inevitable predicament, the conscientious administrator, striving to create a definition of offensiveness worthy of a university, is forced to ban academic writing from the walls of his establishment. The absurdity is fairly clear there.
Censorship, then, has no place in the university. In personal interactions between students, the university has no place; that is the realm of the law, and not the community of masters and scholars. In evaluating the products of the students’ academic labors, the university must not take “offensiveness” into account, because it cannot practically be done without hypocrisy. Recent events illustrate the former, while the latter follows from the real nature and purpose of a university. In order to do justice to the ideals the university represents, and to the human responsibility of its students, a university must not inhibit their speech.

*NOTE: According to recent sources, Jinsong Hu’s career as a computer consultant and programmer is thriving, much, I suppose, to the chagrin of the officious flakes who expelled him.
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Hehe.

Interesting essay. However, I believe that a flaw in your argument is the assumption that "Legality should be the practical criterion for what can be said privately between students. " While it may be pragmatic, there is more than sufficient precedent for more restrictive guidelines governing private institutions such as universities, corporations and other environments in how individuals may act within the bounds of that institution. The argument is that, particularly in a university setting, you are not forced to be there, and if you are there of your own accord, then you implicitly agree to the rules of that institution, even if they limit your behavior more than if you were not there.

Additionally - you say that the university should abide by the decision of the judicial system which ruled him innocent - however, you neglect to mention whether the particular case is a criminal or civil case against him. In a criminal case, a defendant's guilt must be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt" before he is declared guilty. In a civil case, there is a laxer standard of judgement, that is a person may be judged guilty if there exists a "preponderance of evidence" supporting the claim. This explains why, for example, OJ Simpson could be acquitted in a criminal suit but found guilty in a civil suit. So which standard is the university to abide by? It seems like in the example you mentioned, Hu could probably be found guilty in a civil court, though probably not in a criminal one.

However, this is skirting the main issue - whether it is right for a university to limit or restrict the speech of its students or faculty above and beyond the restrictions that are already imposed by government (like threats of violence, incitements to riot, etc.) My gut (libertarian) reaction is no, of course, I think all restrictions on free speech are bad. Your point about the arbitrary nature of deeming speech "offensive" is well taken - given the inherent subjectivity of what is offensive and what is not, there doesn't seem to be any reasonable or rational basis for determining what forms of speech are acceptable or unacceptable beyond what the law has already designated.

Anyone else?

-mike

Thank you for an interesting reply. his case was a criminal one, and the university's decision was likely to avoid a civil suit by the alleged victim.

Originally posted by legionnaire
I think all restrictions on free speech are bad. Your point about the arbitrary nature of deeming speech "offensive" is well taken - given the inherent subjectivity of what is offensive and what is not, there doesn't seem to be any reasonable or rational basis for determining what forms of speech are acceptable or unacceptable beyond what the law has already designated.

Anyone else?

-mike[/b]

Originally posted by legionnaire

Originally posted by bbarr
So if I were to email all the black students at the University of Washington and claim that they were intellectually inferior in virtue of their race, the University ought do nothing? Would it make a difference if I cited the book "The Bell ...[text shortened]... this academic patina obscure that my aim in the email is hateful?

Originally posted by royalchicken
That's right. The university has no business meddling with private emails that express ideas outside of some academic forum. The law should nail you, though. However, if you wrote a well-reasoned, empirically substantiated p ...[text shortened]... I haven't read "The Mismeasure of Man". Do you recommend I do?

Originally posted by bbarr
So if I were to email all the black students at the University of Washington and claim that they were intellectually inferior in virtue of their race, the University ought do nothing? Would it make a difference if I cited the book "The Bell Curve" and argued against the Gould's claims in "The Mismeasure of Man"? Does this academic patina obscure that my aim in the email is hateful?

Originally posted by legionnaire
However, I would argue that in addition to being a place of study, a university is also a place of discourse, and that in order to ensure proper discourse a university has an obligation not to restsrict any sides of a particular argument.

-mike

As I deal with SPAM at work I wanted to add something to the conversation.

I think that people do not have the right to e-mail their ideas, good or otherwise, into just anybody's inbox. Free Speech does not give you the right to forceably tell me your opinion. Under normal circumstances I have every right to walk away, turn the radio station, turn the TV channel or whatever. But when it comes to e-mails, if someone wants to spam you they are hard to stop and if you do manage to block them, you usually have to manually delete the messages anyway.

SPAM is becoming illegal in some states and is defined as unsolicited mass e-mailings. Clearly all of the Black students didn't ask for your e-mail. I would state that the University would have rights to protect it's students from spam as they would be protecting the image of the University and their 'name' could be damaged by allowing it to continue.

Originally posted by ChessNut
As I deal with SPAM at work I wanted to add something to the conversation.

I think that people do not have the right to e-mail their ideas, good or otherwise, into just anybody's inbox. Free Speech does not give you the right to forceably tell me your opinion. Under normal circumstances I have every right to walk away, turn the radio station, turn th ...[text shortened]... ting the image of the University and their 'name' could be damaged by allowing it to continue.

Originally posted by bbarr
I'm not sure I see a disanalogy between the mode of communication in my example of unsolicited emailing and, to take an example from here at the UW, screaming in Red Square about the vengeance of God. In both cases the message comes to you unbidden, and in both cases the messages are relatively easy to deal with. With the emails you just press delete and le ...[text shortened]... your filters. With the rabid fundamentalists you just walk on by. Both seem equally invasive.

[i]Originally posted by legionnaire

I'm afraid of the slippery slope that we may encounter when we begin placing restrictions on speech based solely on the fact that we..... But as long as you restrict your message to your opinion, no matter how stupid, you have a right to air it.

With regards to the comment about the university having to be able to maintain a place of study, that's true, ...[text shortened]... rse a university has an obligation not to restsrict any sides of a particular argument.

-mike[/b]

Originally posted by bbarr
So if I were to email all the black students at the University of Washington and claim that they were intellectually inferior in virtue of their race, the University ought do nothing? Would it make a difference if I cited the book "The Bell Curve" and argued against the Gould's claims in "The Mismeasure of Man"? Does this academic patina obscure that my aim in the email is hateful?

Originally posted by kirksey957
Bennett, have you ever considered coaching the Chicago Cubs? Any thoughts on Dusty Baker and Jimmy the Greek? Kirk