Protecting Free Speech for the sake of Truth

Conor Friedersdorf:

Were John Stuart Mill alive, he would say that silencing the expression of an opinion is evil. “It is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it,” he wrote. “If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

That tradition still has its defenders.

In the academy, they are worried about ongoing challenges to speech on campus. Many keep quiet. At American University, however, faculty leaders just took a stand. The faculty senate unanimously passed a resolution earlier this month reaffirming their commitment to free expression. Its language is refreshingly direct and unambiguous. “For hundreds of years, the pursuit of knowledge has been at the center of university life,” it states. “Unfettered discourse, no matter how controversial, inconvenient, or uncomfortable, is a condition necessary to that pursuit.”

The resolution inveighs against recent trends. “As limits, subtle or explicit, are increasingly placed on intellectual freedom in venues of public discourse, the academy is committed to the full expression of ideas,” it declares. “As laws and individual sensitivities may seek to restrict, label, warn, or exclude specific content, the academy must stand firm as a place that is open to diverse ideas and free expression.”

On those standards and principles, “American University will not compromise,” it vows.

The resolution adds, “American University is committed to protecting and championing the right to freely communicate ideas—without censorship—and to study material as it is written, produced, or stated, even material that some members of our community may find disturbing or that provokes uncomfortable feelings. This freedom is an integral part of learning… and an obligation from which we cannot shrink.”