Speaker: State universities a free speech 'bastion'

Sep. 27—Conservatives face hostility in American higher education, the featured speaker said Tuesday at Missouri Western State University's grand annual event on public discourse, but smaller public campuses are in a better situation.

Professor Jonathan Turley, invited to Missouri Western for the 28th R. Dan Boulware Convocation on Critical Issues, said that institutions like Harvard University of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Northwestern University of Evanston, Illinois, have failed to counter what Turley said is the heckler's veto. At those universities, student-led protesters shout down speakers of a differing view, Turley said. Leading institutes have been discouraged from inviting such speakers. They also have mistreated faculty who disagree with leftist political views of administrators, Turley said, such as by removing or ignoring the protections of tenure. Turley teaches law at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, these professors ask me not to refer to them by name," Turley said in his speech. "They're scared. Freedom of speech is dying."

In part because they are in tune with their local communities, and in part because public institutions can be readily held to account in a court of law, Turley said, state schools are reliable defenders of freedom of speech. Boulware himself agreed with this sentiment in an interview after the event. Boulware founded the Convocation on Critical Issues three decades ago amid his service on the Board of Regents of Missouri Western College, which the state legislature elevated to university status in 2005.

In his university days in the 1960s, Boulware said, higher education campuses proudly defended freedom of speech. It is sad they don't do it anymore, he added, especially for the sake of right-wing ideologues. That problem won't spread to Missouri Western, Boulware said, because St. Joseph is a conservative community.

"I think, on the coasts, we have elitism," Boulware said. "In state schools, we have an opportunity here to do what the people think. I think the state schools are more responsible than the private schools with the elites. I think the people here are more attuned to what the community wants. I think, therefore, that you're not going to have the problems here that you have on the coasts."

Nathan Scott, a Missouri Western graduate student who has served as student government president over the last three years, said Missouri Western is a free speech-minded institution, and he added it's good to have speakers to remind students of those values.

"I think what's important, especially at schools like Missouri Western, is that we're open to all students," he said. "We're going to get opinions and perspectives from different individuals and different levels. That diversity of thought and that diversity of perspective is a cornerstone of an open enrollment institution like ours. It's important to have that around our academic experience."

Marcus Clem can be reached at marcus.clem@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowClem