Finally, Arizona has allies in the push to protect free speech at universities

It was no accident that roughly five years ago a political conservative, Karrin Taylor Robson — then a member of the Arizona Board of Regents — proposed and created the annual Regents Cup competition to promote free speech on the campuses of Arizona’s three state universities.

Conservatives were the early targets of unwritten speech codes on U.S. campuses that could cost instructors their university positions.

They were the professors enduring public shaming on social media. They were the speakers hounded and driven off campuses by student mobs.

A 'New McCarthyism' has gripped academia

A “New McCarthyism” had taken over academia, said former Harvard President and U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers in August 2022.

“It is a profound threat to American universities,” he told Bari Weiss and her Free Press.

The irony is that the New McCarthyism was inspired by the scholars who loathed the Old McCarthyism, a bygone movement that thought it saw Communist insurgencies in every crease of government, Hollywood and the universities.

The new McCarthyism was born of radical identity politics cultivated in the university social sciences over decades and placing the rights of historically marginalized groups — women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians — in conflict with bedrock principles of free expression.

As those groups rightfully pushed for greater acceptance and influence, the most extreme among them condemned legitimate criticism of their movements as “sexism,” “racism,” “homophobia” and “transphobia.”

Those are radioactive words. They are designed to defame dissenters and kill debate.

“In a striking reversal,” wrote Dennis Chong, political scientist at the University of Southern California, “liberals are now consistently less tolerant than conservatives of a wide range of controversial speech about racial, gender and religious identities.”

Universities are starting to see the problem

But there are signs the universities and the American left in general are seeing more clearly today the damage that ideological capture has inflicted on learning institutions, and they are starting to resist.

On Saturday, the Washington Post, an echo chamber of American liberalism, published an editorial headlined: “These universities are pushing back on censorious students. Finally”.

“Across the country, a growing number of administrations and faculties at universities both private and public alike are beginning to ... (wake) up to the realization that academic freedom needs to be protected, and that student outrage on social media should not dictate university policy.”

The breaking point came in Palo Alto, Calif., in March, when the leadership of Stanford University Law School rebuked student activists who shouted down a federal judge. He had been invited to speak at the university by the campus chapter of the Federalist Society.

The Stanford protesters, among the elite law students in the country, were shouting profanities and carrying placards with gross insults. One student screamed at the judge, “We hope your daughters get raped!”

That was it for Stanford Law School Dean Jenny S. Martinez. She drew a strong line.

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“Some students might feel that some points should not be up for argument and therefore that they should not bear the responsibility of arguing them,” she wrote. “(However, that) is incompatible with the training that must be delivered in a law school.”

“I believe that the commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion actually means that we must protect free expression of all views.”

More schools follow Stanford Law School

Other schools are also planting a stake.

At Cornell, the administration rebuffed an effort in the Student Assembly to implore “instructors to provide content warnings on the syllabus for any traumatic content that may be discussed.”

Cornell’s president and provost said no.

“We cannot accept this resolution, as the actions it recommends would infringe on our core commitment to academic freedom and freedom of inquiry, and are at odds with the goals of a Cornell education.”

At Penn State, that university’s president released a statement this month saying controversial speakers will be welcome on campus. She reminded students that the First Amendment protects speech on public universities.

Arizona’s universities have had their own trials with free expression, having gotten tangled up in some of the political correctness and social panic of the last decade.

Universities tend to be so lopsidedly liberal these days that they can be slow to see their own defects.

Arizona spoke up early, to its credit

But our state university presidents have spoken up for free expression, and their schools have earned the highest “green light” rating from FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

For Taylor Robson, it must be satisfying that her instincts to promote free speech on campus were early and on point.

She was hardly the first to raise the issue. But she did something about it, creating an event that every year reaffirms our state universities’ commitment to free expression.

She was inspired by her 15-year-old son, who helped sharpen her focus on the issue when he told her, “Mom, you know there’s diversity for everything but thought.”

If more universities will stand against the erosion of free speech, that will no longer be true.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Universities are finally fighting back in the war against free speech