To The Maroon,
Amidst the fracas about Steve Bannonโs upcoming talk, the Edmund Burke Societyโs now-canceled debate on immigration, and similar controversies, one issue connects them all: free speech. It is arguably the most important philosophical question on American campuses, and certainly at the University of Chicago. And yet The Maroonโs Editorial Board, despite its mission to speak out about issues relevant to campus, has been silent on free speech.
That silence is deafening. For one thing, The Maroon is the newspaper of a campus whose administration has the least restrictive free speech policy in America. And while The Maroon is editorially independent of the Universityโthat is, it has no obligation to agree with all of the administrationโs stancesโit is nevertheless a newspaper whose very existence depends on being able to publish whatever it likes.
University policy mirrors the free speech provision of the First Amendment as interpreted by the courts, meaning that the governmentโand in our case the University administrationโwill not censor any speech unless it is libelous, causes harassment in the workplace, or creates a clear and present danger of violence.
The policy is in place for a reason: The ability to say what you want, no matter how odious such speech can seem to others, is vital to democracy and to the college experience. After all, this is a place where students should learn to argue, to think, and to refine their views. To do that, they must be exposed to all manner of views, including those from which they instinctively recoil.
Why? John Stuart Mill explained in his classic essay On Liberty. First, you might learn something. That โsomethingโ might be constructiveโan opinion you might have dismissed without a careful hearingโor you might simply learn whatโs wrong with it, and thus become better able to defend your own views. As Mill argued, you can hardly have confidence in your own opinion unless youโve heard and met the arguments of the other side. If, like most students and faculty, you lean toward liberalism, Bannonโs appearance might fill either of those needs. And if nothing else, letting bigots speak is the best way to โoutโ them, discovering what they really think.
Free speech deserves unreserved support for two other reasons. First, nobody, including The Maroon, should have the right to determine what speech should be free and what speech should be censored. Just as your paper wouldnโt trust anyone to determine what you could print, so nobody on this campus should determine what others should be able to hear.
Further, censoring speech wonโt make it go away. Will Steve Bannonโs views disappear if he doesnโt express them on this campus? Think again. Free speech is the best disinfectant.
The University has wisely decided that nobody should be able to censor speech on this campus and has widely publicized that policy. Itโs time that The Maroon also weighs in on this issue. The only sensible position is a broad endorsement of free speech and condemnation of those who would ban or de-platform speakers.
โJerry Coyne, professor emeritus, Department of Ecology and Evolution