You Can’t Legislate Free Inquiry on Campus

There is a battle raging for the soul of America’s universities. One side, on the left, seeks to limit the range of acceptable speech to a curated set of “safe” ideas. Another side, on the right, wants to aggressively enforce the addition of other ideas to restore a balance of perspectives. Both approaches are misguided and dangerous.

The political climate on campuses undoubtedly skews left, often sharply so. But in an attempt to combat this trend, some conservatives are pushing reforms that erode the foundation of free inquiry on which higher education is built.

Consider what is happening in Arizona. Last year, a state representative introduced legislation that would ban faculty members at public universities from offering courses that advocate for “social justice” for any particular “class of people.” Last month, the state enacted a law that explicitly says that schools “may restrict a student’s right to speak, including verbal speech, holding a sign or distributing fliers or other materials, in a public forum.”

These actions are no doubt rooted in genuine concern for the erosion of intellectual diversity in American higher education. But each of them exacerbates the problem they seek to solve.

Without a culture of free inquiry, universities “cease to be universities,” Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1945, once said. But this intellectual atmosphere cannot be legislated from the outside. Just as those who shout down or silence speakers with whom they disagree contribute to the problem, so, too, do efforts by legislators to eliminate particular courses or forms of expression.

The Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank in Arizona, drew up a “model policy” for state legislative proposals on campus speech. Though not fully incorporated in the final version of the Arizona law, the institute’s proposal has been alarmingly influential. The model policy has been rightly criticized for proposing that decisions about campus disciplinary policy be shifted from universities to lawmakers, even going so far as to proposing removing schools’ discretion in addressing individual situations and dictating punishments for student protesters. It also would mandate that schools suspend students who twice interfere “with the expressive rights of others.” A third time would lead to expulsion.

Such broad measures are vulnerable to abuse. Our criminal justice system has already seen the destructive effects of similar mandatory minimums where sentencing and punishment are concerned, and there is little reason to think they would fair better in the environment of a college campus.

These worrisome developments in Arizona are, sadly, not unique to the state. Lawmakers in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Nebraska and Michigan have introduced similar legislation.

The new Arizona law follows on the heels of a decision by Arizona State University and the state legislature to create a School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, a decision that some have applauded for effectively giving conservative scholars a separate home at the university, away from the otherwise liberal political science department. But if the vision of the new school is indeed to keep scholars separate as some critics and admirers alike have claimed, it will surely be a mistake. Different ideas must come into contact for intellectual progress to occur.

With a diversity of viewpoints and ideas comes tension among members of the campus community. It is up to each school to navigate that challenge to uphold the core values of a liberal education.

Arizona State University has recently provided an excellent example of how inclusion, diversity, free expression and open inquiry can work hand in hand: Last year, more than 120 experts from a wide array of universities and ideological backgrounds, collaborating through Arizona State’s law school, published a comprehensive report called “Reforming Criminal Justice.” They produced a total of 57 research papers written for policymakers, prosecutors, police officers and criminal justice reform groups, with the goal of bringing scholarship and data to bear on one of our country’s most contentious issues.

These scholars arrived at innovative ideas not in spite of their different backgrounds, but because of them. Not because they were forced to, but because they saw the benefits of working together to drive knowledge and progress forward.

Homogeneity and censorship in academic debate — which is to say, no debate at all — is bad for everyone, whether it arises from a campus culture or is mandated by law. The alternative is not a constructed and regulated forum, but a free, open and expansive one.