Fighting Intolerance With Intolerant Speech Codes : Campuses need to address the causes of prejudice, not only symptoms

In a recent speech at the University of Michigan, President Bush took up the banner of those attacking so-called “politically correct” thinking on U.S. college campuses. While the President’s remarks were reasonable enough, the truth is that the “PC” debate has cast a very wide net indeed. The label is often misused, for example, as the new acceptable way to denigrate laudable and necessary attempts to make the college curriculum inclusive of the history and achievements of women and minorities.

But the PC label is also being used, more appropriately, to describe well-meaning but misguided attempts by colleges and universities to create codes against offensive speech. Codes against “hate speech” are unwise--even if they ostensibly shield students and faculty from the invective of racists, sexists, anti-Semites and homophobes.

Universities should and do have codes governing behavior; obviously physical assaults, vandalism and the like cannot be tolerated. It is the attempt to govern offensive thought and speech that is troublesome. An unusual alliance of political conservatives--who see speech codes as an assault not just on hate speech but on their viewpoint--and civil libertarians--who are First Amendment purists--now both oppose them. In theory, such codes seem reasonable; in practice, they don’t work, and can contribute to an even more resentful and intolerant atmosphere on campus--the one place that should be the ultimate marketplace of ideas, even extremely foolish ones.

IDEAS VS. ACTION: Yet the issue of speech codes is extraordinarily knotty because those codes were intended to combat not just foolish ideas but to discourage hurtful, dangerous action. Campus violence against minorities occurred with alarming regularity in the 1980s--which, probably not coincidentally, was a decade that conferred political legitimacy upon a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. Minority students, particularly African-Americans, were attacked, chased and jeered on campuses from coast to coast. As all students felt the economic squeeze and anticipated fewer choice jobs on the horizon, some whites made affirmative action policies the scapegoat. White student unions formed to protest “preferential treatment” of minorities. The racial die, on campus as in larger society, was cast.

Blacks, other minorities and women fought back by asserting their rights. Unfortunately along the way the currency of the word racist and words like it got cheaper and cheaper. Not only was the white fraternity that simulated a slave auction racist; a professor who taught a U.S. history course and read from the writings of a slave owner was branded a racist too.

It is in this poisonous, everybody-feels-put-upon atmosphere that speech codes at public and private universities were created in the past few years. At the University of Michigan, violations included making jokes about homosexual men, displaying a Confederate flag and laughing at a joke about stutterers. Sanctions could range from formal apology to expulsion. That code was challenged and eventually struck down in U.S. District Court. In his decision, Judge Avern Cohn cited the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the right to burn the flag: “Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

The University of California prohibits “personally abusive epithets” that are “inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction.” That’s an effort to narrow its code to the so-called “fighting words” standard of a 1942 Supreme Court decision that linked words with provocation. To be clear: Certainly it’s not OK, for example, for a drunk student to yell racist and homophobic slurs, as one did at Brown University. In such cases behavior rules, such as one against public drunkenness, or civil codes, such as disturbing the peace, can and should be invoked. Thus speech codes become largely unnecessary and intrusive.

THE REAL PROBLEM: The problem with most limits on “hate speech” is that they not only infringe on the First Amendment, they are ineffective. Forbidden speech then becomes tantalizing speech, powerful speech. Speech codes don’t attack the racism and other attitudinal baggage that students brought with them to college. Codes suppress the words without exploring and combatting the lazy and irrational thinking that spawns prejudice based on ethnicity, religion or sex.

The racial tensions evident on today’s campuses reflect a nation deeply divided by race. Racism and other -isms must be strongly discouraged. But the methods here--speech codes--don’t treat the madness, they only obscure it. It does no good to attempt to cure one kind of intolerance with another. The university must uphold the efficacy of persuasion over coercion.