Needless to say, I did not have to answer the question as to whether free-speech advocates give “aid and comfort to racists.” It was, of course, the wrong question.
Shortly thereafter, I was called to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where a band of free-speech professors and students were trying to overturn a nearly decade-old speech code implemented by then chancellor Donna Shalala, who thus earned the nickname “Queen of Political Correctness.” Originally, two codes—one for the students, the other for the faculty—had been instituted. Students had immediately gone to court and gotten the student speech code declared unconstitutional in 1991, but the faculty chose to live under the heel of its code until the issue of repeal came up in 1998.
No faculty in the country – then or since – has had the courage to brave the “ban offense” crowd and restore academic freedom and free speech to any American campus, public or private. At schools where such codes have been dropped, it’s required a court decision. So Wisconsin would have been a first. It looked touch-and-go, and in fact some members of the free-speech faction had, in meetings leading up to the faculty vote, almost compromised with the censors for fear of losing. But the repeal motion suddenly gained enormous momentum when Jason Shepard, a gay-male student appointed as one of three student members on the committee charged with making a recommendation to the full faculty senate (the other two student reps were women), spoke.
The auditorium in which the faculty senate met—with every seat taken and national-media reporters in abundance—was hushed when Shepard began to speak. “One of the things that we were initially surprised by is the stereotyping that members of the majority [i.e., pro-speech code] did on us as three minority students [on the ad hoc committee]. Initially, they blindly assumed that we would support a speech code that was intended to protect us. In the most general sense, I, as a gay student, see this policy as paternalistic. And I think it reinforces the stereotype that all minority students think the same, and don’t have the capacity or the desire to stand up to bigotry on our own. That’s the thing the speech code does: it assumes that all of us will have the same reaction to offensive speech.” Shepard also pointed out that he’d soon be graduating into the real world where the First Amendment allows people to call him whatever they please, and so in this sense a campus where censorship is practiced is hardly preparation for life. He also pointed out the utility of knowing who really hates you.
The impact was electric, and the applause was thunderous. The faculty speech code was repealed. (You can read all about it in Donald Downs’ book, Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus (2005). And you can read my legal memo to the faculty free-speech coalition, which had solicited my advice, on www.thefire.org.)
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