Sometimes neutrality in the face of evil effectively means taking a side. It’s interesting that one of the key events cited in the Kalven Report was what it blithely refers to as the university’s “policies regarding off-campus housing”. The year being 1967 and the city being Chicago, it didn’t take long to figure out that it was a direct reference to university-owned segregated housing that had been the subject of student led demonstrations (led by Bernie Sanders, among others) five years earlier. The university took what was then considered the status quo or “Establishment” viewpoint at the time which was that integration while virtuous was something that could only be attained at a rate “at which it is possible to move toward the agreed objective without losing more than is gained.” In other words, slowly.(University of Chicago sit-ins - Wikipedia) . Student demonstrations (which included sit-ins) were banned after a series of meetings which failed to convince the then president (and Kalven Committee convenor) George W. Beadle, to immediately desegregate university owned off-campus housing.
You should have finished the story, @circuitrider : The effect of that valuable agitation by Bernie Sanders and other student activists was that the University did reconsider its portfolio of real estate holdings and did move rather quickly if also deliberately to assure that its agents were no longer administering any of them in a discriminatory way. Of course it is useful to bear in mind that this was housing in and around Hyde Park, where the stocks available to students are limited and where the University’s principal reason for holding them was as a source of off-campus student housing in an era in which there were vanishingly few black students in attendance. The year of all this, incidentally, was 1962, the year just before I arrived on campus, not 1967. The campus activists of my time (and I lived with two of them in '66-'67) were no longer very interested in that issue. The cry of the day was against the University’s involvement in the Vietnam War. It was that agitation, in which I myself participated and which I can assure you was vociferous, that Beadle struck the Kalven Committee and instructed it to consider the University’s role in light of the calls being made for it to take institutional positions.
I can tell you that this was a highly charged time, as much so as our present one. Activist students barged in to university reading rooms (this happened once on my watch while working at the reference desk of one of them) to harangue kids trying desperately to finish up papers or study for exams. The call of the day was that “all education is a bourgeois irrelevancy.” A learned law prof of the time, Philip Kurland, excoriated the students in the Maroon as being “revolting in both senses of that word.” It was in this “context” that the Kalven Report arrived, an event I remember well. While it did not by any means put an end to student agitation, most of it turned thereafter toward involvement in the anti-Vietnam war movement off campus. However, it was on campus, in the auditorium of the Law School, that I first heard Senator Eugene McCarthy speak at a moment when he was teetering on the edge of declaring his anti-war candidacy against Lyndon Johnson (he did this only days later, and I worked in his campaign in both Illinois and Wisconsin).
It was also at the Law School in that same auditorium that another very significant event, at least in my own understanding of it, occurred in early 1968. A debate was planned as between Hans Morgenthau, a noted Chicago anti-war prof, and someone from the state department speaking in defence of the war. The place was packed with us anti-war students and was raucous with displeasure when the pro-war speaker began. When we attempted to shout him down Morgenthau stepped to the podium and admonished us all against going down that path. He told us that he himself had seen the consequences as a prof in pre-war Germany. I remember vividly his telling us that that those students too, soon to be absorbed into the Wehrmacht, believed they were on the side of the angels. But where dissenting speech is stifled, he said, moral absolutism reigns and the end is never pretty. So it was at that time and place, and America, he said, needs to be better than that. His words sobred us up, and we quieted down, and the pro-war gentleman was permitted to speak without interruption. That was principled leadership. Morgenthau then proceeded to surgically eviscerate all his opponent’s arguments. I learned a lesson I have never forgotten: this is how to handle “the speech we hate.”
Basically, what I’m seeing, as far as Chicago is concerned, is a pattern where they (meaning the president, the board, etc.) are 1) Fine with faculty agitation, 2) Fine with student agitation, 3) Fine with agitation of all sorts, so long as they are not dragged into deciding which side is right. Is that a fair summary of The Chicago Principals?
Two cavils with your summary.
First, “agitation of all sorts” doesn’t extend to harassment of other students, blocking access to facilities, and disrupting the ordinary educational activities of the university; but, yes, the taking of positions by members of the university community on any subjects whatever and voicing those positions on campus or otherwise is not to be interfered with by the University.
Secondly, to put it that the University’s objective is “not to be dragged into deciding which side is right” is to make it sound like the objective is a negative one - to avoid controversy, to placate both sides, etc. Better to put it as the Kalven Report puts it: “The University is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”
Tell that to Rep. Stefanik and see how far it gets you. I don’t think she cares where the critics are living. She cares whether they are effective in their criticism.
Well, as I began by saying, Alivasatos’s reply to her question, based on Chicago Principles, would have been substantially the same as that of the three other Presidents. She wouldn’t have been satisfied with it. So what. One of the worse things that Penn’s President did was to try to walk back her answer a day or so later in order to save her job. She was probably a gonner by then anyway, but that move just exposed the hollowness of her newly found commitment to free speech. Principles aren’t worth much, either to individuals or institutions, unless they are backed up by the courage to stand up for them.
Agree that consistency is a virtuous thing. What are the odds Alivasatos will ever issue a statement condemning the rape and kidnapping of Israeli women?
He’ll never issue such a statement or permit one to be issued. The only statement to date, at least to my knowledge, is the one issued to “the members of the University community” on October 9th by the Dean and Assistant Dean of students. It says that “the attack, ongoing conflict and loss of life in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank have brought deep concern and sorrow to the members of the University of Chicago Community,” and it refers affected members to sources of support. What that statement doesn’t say is perhaps more important than what it says.
There have been many demonstrations, some screaming at passers-by, a sit-in and obstruction of entrance to a building (which the UCPD were called upon to clear). Even more serious were confrontations between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators. I would therefore not want to give the impression that the campus is peaceful or that the administration is without its critics, both those who would like to see a statement favoring their preferred position and those who believe there should be significant consequences for students who have crossed the line of what is permitted speech. However, it will be a frosty Friday before the U of C will fold on its core tenets simply because it is facing criticism. Significantly, there have been no rebellions of donors or alumni.
Asking for clarification here. Could him issuing a statement not fall under:
?
Meaning, “his own” views, not presented as “views of the University.”
As I understand Kalven, it would in principle be possible for the President speaking as a person and not in his official capacity to make statements on political or other matters. However, I doubt he would ever do this in any public way. Holding an office of that prominence would make it hard for anyone hearing such a pronouncement to keep the distinction in mind. Aside from anything else it would simply be imprudent and not in keeping with his job, which is to lead the educational mission of a great university. Wandering into fields where he knows no more than the next man and where there’s no general agreement - well, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Not exacty the way Kalven would have put it.
Interesting application of the Chicago Principles in this morning’s NYT:
Barnard College’s Restrictions on Political Speech Prompt Outcry - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The Barnard Administration’s actions, at least as reported here, do not seem to be based at all on the Chicago Principles. If they were, there would be no problem in professors posting whatever they wish on their office doors nor in postings or gatherings of student groups around campus. Certainly, political pronouncements by Departments would be barred ipso facto; but the Administration would not “decide what was and was not political speech,” and “college resources [would not be] barred from being used for political activity for at least a decade.” Rather, the latter would be barred forever.
Under the Chicago Principles no such determinations of the acceptability of speeh would ever be made. There would be no regulation of the speech of individuals, on the one hand, and no commandeering of the university or its departments in the name of free speech, on the other. The university’s job is to be a venue for free speech, not a speaker. That might require it to crack down on the conduct both of individuals and of deparments, but these actions would not turn on the acceptability of anyone’s speech. The university should be neutral on that score but not passive in the face of conduct that purports to be an exercise of free speech but is in reality a denial of the speech of others. As President Alivasatos put it in a recent statement to the U of C community: “In any venue, no member of our community may shout down or seek to prevent the protected expression of those with whom they disagree. You may not tear down a poster. You may not seek to intimidate or threaten another person or prevent them from being an invited speaker. These are egregious offenses against our community.”
I don’t see much real attempt to apply the Chicago Principles by either the Barnard Administration or its critics. I suppose lip service could some day lead to greater understanding.
of course, the article does allude to a double standard by allowing the Africana Dept to keep its political statement up on the website.
https://africana.barnard.edu/statement-africana-studies-faculty
Indeed. What struck me about the Barnard situation is that the prohibition against political speech isn’t even anchored to any sense of student safety or concern with the content of the speech - it’s an across the board ban on official channels being used to espouse any political position. Just like the Unversity of Chicago.
Here is a gift link to the Barnard article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/nyregion/barnard-college-free-speech-restrictions-israel-hamas-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QE0.yZlw.pVKZfCaj8Sxc&smid=url-share
Based on when this statement was issued (two days after the event), it includes one word choice that’s particularly sophisticated, in my opinion.
And by banning political points of view from spaces like the college website, Barnard seems to be laying the predicate for banning students from “commandeering” college owned property, so-called, “place and time” rules. Does Chicago not have its own version of “place and time” violations?
Question: what happens when someone puts up a poster that clearly threatens another person or people? Clearly putting up that poster is a violation. But is tearing it down then a violation? Who is allowed to or responsible for tearing down that violating poster?
I’m not understanding your question, @circuitrider , but it seems to be replicating the same confusion I found in the Barnard Administration’s position - between statements made by Barnard (including its departments) and statements made by the individual members of Barnard’s community. The former can’t be done per Kalven; the latter not only can be done but is encouraged per Kalven. The content of the statement matters not, subject to the limits mentioned below.
@DroidsLookingFor , there are well-established limits to free speech. What you describe - a threat to a person - is not protected speech. That’s not a hard call.
Right I understand and agree. I’m asking, as the President’s statement specifically said “You may not tear down a poster,” who is thus allowed to remove a poster which clearly violates one of the well-established limits to free speech? Can an individual member of the community do this, or only the school/administration? IOW who may enforce the limits on free speech?