Beyond free speech: What SJ State actually, truly needs to escape politicization
We're all attuned to the overt ways that local colleges force political ideology (remember when SJSU prof Jonathan Roth was punished for defending himself against an aggressive anti-Israel protester?). But, as Law & Liberty's John Grove indicates, simply promoting “free speech” or manipulating an artificial balance of ideas won't fix things. The Bay Area doesn't need anemically neutral universities—it needs them to “disinterestedly” pursue truth.
We can understand “politicization” to mean that an activity is undertaken according to the aims, values, or modes of a broader, systematic social vision—not according to ones particularly suited to the activity itself. It may be direct (through government control or regulation, for example) or indirect (when the self-understanding of those who participate in the activity is altered to understand their work in political terms).
This latter kind of politicization can take the form of straightforward partisan or ideological capture—razor blade companies that preach about toxic masculinity instead of getting a clean, smooth shave; or churches that sing hymns about politicians instead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
But it need not always be so obvious. This form of politicization takes place when an institution consciously or unconsciously adopts values forged in and for the political sphere as the guides for how it ought to operate, even if they are not immediately applicable to the aims or activity of the institution itself. Consider how, for just about every corner of society (including the university, of course), you can find someone arguing that it ought to be “democratized”; or churches that have, without any immediate partisan aim, changed doctrinal teachings to bring them into line with political (as opposed to theological) notions of liberty or equality.
There is, of course, no shortage of the more obvious kind of politicization in higher-ed, from DEI departments to entire academic disciplines that barely hide their ideological purpose. It is this kind of “politics” on campus that has made free speech and neutrality a rallying cry today. But does this approach recapture the meaning of the university?
To escape politicization, we ought to have an institution that is guided by values and practices appropriate to the academic pursuit. What exactly that entails is too extensive a question to explore in detail here—and it is likely to be a point of debate and contention with which any given university must wrestle. But it is reasonable to argue that the dispassionate pursuit of knowledge undertaken through specific forms of study lies at the center of the historic concept of the university.
Academic freedom, as McGinnis related, is a norm specifically associated with this particular pursuit—a freedom protected by universities with a corresponding duty to maintain academic rigor and a serious pursuit of knowledge. “Universities are a special kind of institution, and their ideal structure of freedom is suited not to the raucous public square but to a forum for the production of knowledge.”
The right to free speech, though it bears some similarities with academic freedom, is a much broader principle, emerging from and appropriate to a different, distinctly civil context. It notably differs insofar as it takes truth—and even a good faith pursuit of it—mostly out of the equation. The state should not punish wrong opinions, even foolish ones. But it would be absurd to embrace a general principle that no person should ever face consequences for being a fool. It simply is not the proper task of the state to deal out such judgments.
The discourse on campus free speech, for instance, often focuses on how “comfortable” a student feels expressing an opinion. Insofar as discomfort comes from stifling ideological conformity (which it often does), it is certainly a problem. But “comfort” in expressing political and social opinions is hardly a guiding principle for the pursuit of truth. Socrates, at least, was not known for making his interlocutors, including his students, comfortable with whatever political and social opinions they already held. The very mission of education as a pursuit of truth often requires discomfort and a direct challenging of preconceived opinions.
The free speech and neutrality approach also focuses heavily on “balance”—making sure that there is representation from “both sides” of our political discourse. This requires us to label various ideas or people according to which “side” they are on, which in turn perpetuates the fixation on where the university fits in the broader political landscape. That only makes it harder to appreciate the university’s own, internally directed activity. Inviting Charlie Kirk to campus to “balance out” an appearance by Nikole Hannah-Jones, for instance, does not particularly indicate that the university has shifted from political activism to the pursuit of knowledge.
The widespread protests roiling campuses across the country this year reveal the limits of the neutrality/free speech approach to depoliticizing campuses. It tends to treat all forms of “expression” as valid and protected, even as none of them are officially endorsed. Mass campus protests centered on political and social issues are to be welcomed, encouraged, and praised as a utilization of the right to free speech. It becomes a problem only if the protestors are violent or inhibit the movement, instruction, or expression of others. …
The university dedicated to the full pursuit of truth—not a defender of “expression” or an open forum for a balanced set of opinions—is not so much a “neutral” institution so much as a disinterested one. What goes on there will have social and political ripple effects, but those are not the guides of its operation. The disinterested university has the potential to be a unique purveyor of human goods that political activity cannot offer. It has the potential to instill certain habits and casts of mind that few other institutions value. It initiates a student into a conversation with a cultural inheritance and thus “conserves” that inheritance in a way politics cannot. And in freeing the mind from mass opinion, it “liberates” in a sense that transcends political liberation.
Yet today, very few university students are even remotely interested in the pursuit of knowledge. At best, they hope to gain a useful skill or read a few interesting books. At worst, they are gratified that their own unreflective “voices” are “being heard.” This is in part because the university has lost a sense of its uniqueness and has made itself an empty vessel to be filled by anything students, activists, politicians, or taxpayers demand.
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