- Academic institutions in the United States, at least public institutions, have a duty to support and enable free, open, and respectful dialogue and exploration of ideas, even when those ideas are not popular, or are unpleasant, even offensive to some. This right to free speech and open dialogue must be protected, and its protection is the responsibility of our academic institutions and the nation.
- The right to freedom of speech and expression has never been intended to be without any limitations, restrictions or regulations whatsoever. There have always been expected boundaries. The classic almost cliché’ example is the prohibition against shouting “fire” in the crowded theater, as it constitutes a clear and present danger to those around. But it is more than that -restrictions have long existed against libel, against communicating secret information to an enemy, against telling lies in financial or tax matters, as well as prohibitions against outright threats, intimidation and harassment. All of these forms of speech can be restricted or laden with legal consequences.
- It is a challenge to our democracy and to any civil society that at times the balance between what constitutes free and protected speech and that which crosses the line into threat, intimidation and harassment is not always completely clear. Sometimes it does have to be viewed in context. And this context includes history.
These questions about context can be seen, for example, in issues over sexual harassment, when the act of making a work – place or place of education “uncomfortable on the basis of sex” can be sanctioned even when it involves ‘only’ speech. Who decides what is harassment is often the person reporting being harassed. I think our society has come to accept that as appropriate, even when subject to adjudication. - Regardless of where one places the balance between perceived freedom of expression, and threat/intimidation and harassment, there is no basis whatsoever to claim that the right of free expression includes a right to interfere with the legitimate movement and freedom of legitimite action of others. I may have the right to stand on a public soapbox and claim one side or the other has no right to act in a way it is acting, or even, to be extreme, so say it has no right to exist. But I never have the right to block you from going about your legitimate business, such as going to class, or of forcing you to listen to me. When one party takes over a building and prevents such legitimate business from being conducted there, it is no longer free speech, it is trespassing and therefore invokes and deserves consequences. It may be moral to have done so – civil disobedience has been a part of many freedom movements, but one cannot expect to break those laws and be unpunished.
- Individuals have every right to articulate very unpopular positions, as long as they do not engage in direct threat, intimidation or harassment – which might be in the eyes of the beholder, such as in the case of sexual harassment, subject to adjudication. When protesters interfere with the rightful movement of others, such as blocking their entrance or egress to campus or daily attendance of classes, and especially when they take over administration buildings, and the like in protest, it is no longer protected speech, or speech at all, and those who engage cannot expect to be spared disciplinary or even legal consequences. The institution and the political entity governing the area in which these more physical or invasive actions are clearly occurring, be it university, city, state or nation, has the right, and in fact the duty to intervene. It may not be wise, or in the institution’s long – run interest to use force to intervene, but the institution has the right, within reasonable limits, to do so.
- The important point about protest, which too often gets lost when the argument turns to shouting is that protest is intended to induce discussion, and should ideally have the effect of creating opportunities for genuine dialogue. Of having a chance, tiny though it may be, to change minds, to open eyes, to touch hearts and make the other consider, or reconsider the certainty of their beliefs. Such an effect can be possible between those who are open – minded enough to hear another’s point of view. This is not possible for those who are unwilling to listen, or hear anyone else’s opinion.
- Those unable to hear, or unwilling to listen to the other have become the more dominant voices both on campus and in the rest of the world. I have argued before in these pages, in a different context, that the “extreme position always has the ability to hijack the agenda,” and render actual dialogue or problem- solving impossible.
That has happened in the current situation in Israel/Palestine/Gaza. The extremes have hijacked the agenda, rendering moderates increasingly silenced. Those in control of the actions on both sides have shown a consistent unwillingness and inability to allow the others consideration of their point of view, thus ensuring that dialogue and compromise became impossible and force has become, in the minds of many, the only alternative. - There are extremes on both sides. I believe that the Israeli right wing is just as extreme as is Hamas, in its refusal to consider the point of view, the rights, the argument, the identity, the dignity, and the humanity of the Palestinian people – those Arabs whose families lived in Palestine for the last two thousand years. Netanyahu and his right-wing extremists in some cases have gone so far as to deny that there is any such thing as a Palestinian history, identity, or right to a national homeland. They have insisted on the progressive use of force, and force – protected settlement, to take possession of a disputed land and hold it as much as they can for the exclusive reserve of their own ethnicity.
The same is true of Hamas, who reject any right of a Jewish entity in the land of their history homeland, in which they governed for a thousand years and which they have spoken of every year for the last two millennia, and reject it with as much, or even more vitriol than the Israeli right. Both extremes have done everything they can to discredit, stifle, and render impotent those moderate voices, both within their own side and that of the other, which would seek to find a solution with common benefits to both.
We can argue about “who started it”, and who is “more to blame”, but the fact is that the horrors of October 7, and the horrors of the Israeli response to October 7, both grow out of the unwillingness to seek a commonly beneficial or at least acceptable solution. Hamas insists it will have nothing other than the elimination of Israel from the land they claim as Palestine. The Israeli right insist (although until the present conflict brought it out into the open somewhat more clandestinely), that they will have nothing less than the elimination of the Palestinians from the land they claim as Israel. - Both extremes have succeeded – if their goal was to silence the voices crying for mutual and peaceful compromise. Both extremes have succeeded – if their goals were to make a bilaterally acceptable solution impossible.
- The only hope for a solution which does not ultimately irreversibly damage or destroy both parties is for the moderates on each side to insist on taking back the agenda, to insist on talking to each other. Talking starts with listening to each other – even when it is hard to hear and offensive. While accepting that you may not share the other’s opinion, other views have to be given some consideration. There is something right in them.
And that is also the only way to bring our campuses back to the sites for constructive and intelligent dialogue which they are meant to be.
Otherwise, it has every risk of becoming mutual destruction.