Posted by Eugene Volokh:
DePaul Adjunct Professor Suspended for Speech That Causes "Loss of Intellectual
Empowerment":
I've looked at the items to which [1]David points, and I share his
concern. I haven't seen any real allegations of threatening behavior
by the professor (for instance, express or implied threats that he'd
somehow retaliate against students for their pro-Palestinian views).
The only retaliation for viewpoints that I see is the retaliation
against Professor Klocek. And if [2]the Chicago Jewish News story is
correct to say that Klocek is being charged in part for "verbally
attack[ing]" the students for their "religious beliefs and ethnicity,"
"demean[ing] their ideas," "dishonor[ing] their perspective" and
"press[ing] erroneous assertions," that is very bad indeed: It proves
that DePaul really is going after him for expressing ideas that it
disapproves of.
DePaul is a private university, and is thus not bound by the First
Amendment. But as with most private institutions that aspire to being
serious academic centers -- a status that necessarily involves people
criticizing others' beliefs, sometimes in harsh ways (or in ways that
are ambiguous but could be interpreted by one side as harsh) -- DePaul
has [3]voluntarily embraced academic freedom norms: "Academic freedom
is guaranteed both as an integral part of the universityâs scholarly
and religious heritage, and as an essential condition of effective
inquiry and instruction."
It is theoretically possible that a university could preserve academic
freedom and still impose evenhanded rules that require debate to
remain civil. Some such rules turn out to be necessary in the
classroom, where, for instance, professors may refuse to call on
students who have proven rude (or even mark them down for consistent
rudeness, if there's a class performance component to the class); I
think that administrators also must have some authority to stop
professors from saying rude or personally insulting things when those
things make it harder for students to effectively learn. That's
necessary for the school to succeed in teaching students.
But outside the classroom, the rules do much more harm than good,
precisely because the boundaries of civility are so vague, and these
vague rules will necessary interfere with debate. What's a "verbal
attack" on people for their "religious beliefs," and what's a forceful
argument that some religious beliefs are wrong or evil? What's a
"verbal attack" on their "ethnicity," and what's the delivery of
unpleasant truths about the behavior of members of certain groups,
whether Israelis or Palestinians? What's "demean[ing]" someone's
"ideas," and what's simply arguing that those ideas are wrong? What's
"dishonor[ing a] perspective" and what's a proper argument that some
perspective is indeed dishonorable? And of course what's an "erroneous
assertion[]" in debates where most of the assertions are about hotly
contested moral questions and ambiguous empirical generalizations?
For this reason, I highly doubt that DePaul would routinely punish
professors for harsh speech criticizing Republicans or Israel or
pro-life or pro-choice forces. It is likewise quite wrong for DePaul
to do so here.
Again, all this turns on the specifics of what Klocek said and why
DePaul acted. If Klocek had, for instance, threatened the students'
grades or bodies (as opposed to their psyches), and DePaul punished
him for that, that would be quite proper. But the stories that David
points to, and two others that I found when searching the DePaul
student newspaper (see [4]here and [5]here), strongly suggest that
DePaul is behaving wrongly here.
Finally, here's a striking item:
[Dean Suzanne] Dumbleton also emphasized the School of New
Learningâs dedication to the core values of DePaul and that she was
deeply saddened by the situation and the loss of intellectual
empowerment the students suffered. âWe do not respect the unfair
use of faculty power over students,â she said.
I would think that one way of becoming intellectually empowered is by
learning that when one is confronted with offensive ideas, the
response is to argue against them, not to demand that the
administration censor them. (The power to suppress bad ideas is indeed
power, but it's not intellectual power.) And imagine what academic
discourse would look like if academics could lose their jobs (or
students their places in the school) when their speech causes "loss of
intellectual empowerment."
References
1. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_03_20-2005_03_26.shtml#1111425439
2. http://www.chicagojewishnews.com/cover.jsp
3. http://www.depaul.edu/about_dp/mission.asp
4. http://www.thedepaulia.com/story.asp?artid=530§id=1
5. http://www.thedepaulia.com/story.asp?artid=77§id=1
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