After years of railing at the suppression of "non-'politically correct'" speech on college campuses, conservatives have turned the tables on their left-wing foes. With the vast majority of Americans supporting U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, it is now students on the left who find their speech unpopular. Have the conservative free speech champions now embraced the cause of protecting open debate on the war? Hardly.
Just as those on the left seem to be rediscovering the importance of free speech, many conservative pundits have mocked anti-war protesters who claim that open debate is being silenced. Some are advocating squashing the protest altogether. And so the battles over academic speech rage on.
The best evidence of this changed environment came from Robin Wilson and Ana Marie Cox in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In an October 5 article, they report "professors across the country have found their freedom to speak out hemmed in by incensed students, alumni, and university officials." In fact, they detail a number of war related controversies that have resulted in suspensions or leaves for faculty. Some incidents involve people charged with upsetting Muslim and Arab students, as Virginia Postrel points out, but more have been triggered by insensitive and/or controversial statements from left/liberal professors.
Much of the conservative commentariat, however, is unconcerned. These grizzled veterans of years of battle against "political correctness" who once railed against the Left's suppression of opposing views now dismiss such concerns. This is unfortunate. While the reflexive reaction of many leftists to the war is a ripe target for criticism, there is a real danger of suppression of opposing or critical views by the vast pro-war majority. Conservatives correctly argue that speech codes, campus pressure against dissenting views, and politicized tenure processes have had a chilling effect on speech in academia. Concerns for open debate seem no less valid today for those who question or criticize the war. But, unfortunately, the ranks of principled defenders of free speech and open debate on the right seem thin.
Thomas Sowell, a Hoover Institute fellow and syndicated columnist, is a case in point. In a recent column, he actively mocked the concerns elaborated in the Chronicle, arguing that the "self-righteousness of those who want to be exempt from criticism is incredible." Sowell laboriously constructs a straw man based on this supposed view, from which he eventually extracts this fiction: "Apparently anything short of uncritical acceptance of whatever asinine statements the profs make seems to them like a violation of the First Amendment."
John Leo, a prolific critic of "political correctness" who published a compilation of his columns called Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police, has gone in a similar direction. While he has repeatedly criticized attacks on free speech and the silencing of dissent in recent years, Leo's post-September 11 columns have been silent on these concerns. He has instead aggressively called for the "multicultural-therapeutic Left" to "be pushed to move away from sloppy multiculturalism and all-purpose relativism. Let the pushing begin."
Even more hypocritical, however, has been the offensive against the anti-war Left by conservative provocateur David Horowitz. Last seen stirring up controversy with college newspaper ads criticizing plans for slavery reparations (some of which prompted shameful displays from opponents), Horowitz has preached the dangers of closed debate on campus for years. But the current crisis has revealed his true colors.
Horowitz's website, FrontPageMagazine.com, has been a center of hysterical anti-Left discourse since September 11. In fact, it took the lead in publishing the first major call for the direct suppression of speech on September 21 with an article ominously entitled "America's Enemies Rally at UNC-Chapel Hill." The authors, two University of North Carolina students, condemn panelists at a campus teach-in who "stepped forward with one Anti-American libel after another," calling the event, "a shameful example of how state-funded universities are responding to the deadliest terror attacks in our nation's history." A box at the end of the article delivers the anti-speech goods: "Tell the good folks at UNC-Chapel Hill what you think of their decision to allow Anti-American rallies on their state-sponsored campus. Chancellor James Moeser can be reached at..."
This article was picked up and disseminated nationwide, first by conservative pundits (Leo, Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy among them) and later by the mainstream press. As a result, a political controversy has developed, with Moeser receiving hundreds of angry e-mails. While the chancellor has thus far stood strong, the incident is a reminder of the danger of attacks on free speech in state-funded institutions.
In a followup, Front Page Magazine denounced "UNC-Chapel Hill's Holy War Against America," continuing a pattern of equating domestic dissenters with terrorists. The site asserts that a recent teach-in featuring an interfaith panel shows how, "[l]ike Osama bin Laden, UNC-Chapel Hill has invoked the name of God in its ongoing campaign to undermine America's war effort."
Not surprisingly, Horowitz has personally inserted himself into the controversy. His new college newspaper ad calls on the anti-war left to "Think Twice Before You Bring The War Home." According to the former anti-Vietnam War protestor, the "blood of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and tens of thousands of Americans, is on the hands of the anti-war activists" who opposed the Vietnam War and thereby "prolonged the struggle and gave victory to the Communists."
Horowitz then discusses his activities as a radical leftist in the 1960s and 1970s, saying that like "thousands of other New Leftists" he "crossed the line between dissent and actual treason." The moral of the story: "this country was too tolerant toward the treason of its enemies within." Even as Horowitz argues for opening up debate (telling the Daily Tarheel, for example, that he wants to make UNC a "two-party school"), his invocation of treason and domestic "enemies" -- like Andrew Sullivan's imagined "fifth column" -- does much to silence a wide range of speech. He has even made wild claims of protestors helping terrorists, telling Scripps Howard that "Marxists and radicals" leading anti-war protests "will do things that can hurt people, [and] collaborating with a terrorist group is one of them."
The Left's regrettable history of suppressing speech -- however well intentioned it might have been -- has empowered a much more powerful conservative movement that is now moving to take advantage of the pro-war climate. Liberals, many of whom indulged campus restrictions on speech in the name of diversity, must now return to first principles -- namely, free speech and open, rational debate. In this way, we can both win the war on terrorism and keep American democracy strong going forward.
