Free Speech Ignorance
By Jan Larson (04/25/06)
The debate over abortion has raged for over three decades and there is nothing to suggest that this debate will cease any time soon. Among the places where one would expect to be a venue for vigorous debate on that subject and many others are university campuses. Unfortunately, one professor recently decided to encourage students to squelch a point of view contrary to her own.
A campus right-to-life group at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) had gone through proper channels and obtained permission to set up a “Cemetery of Innocents” consisting of 400 small white crosses.
NKU English professor Sally Jacobson, an instructor at the university for 27 years, said she was “offended” by the display and added that any student facing an abortion “should not be slapped in the face by her university by calling her a scarlet woman.” [1]
Jacobson suggested that students in her British literature class that were similarly offended could use their “free speech” rights to take down the display. Several students took up her suggestion and although Jacobson initially did not admit to participating, an editor from the student newspaper photographed her tearing up the sign that explained the display among a sea of uprooted crosses.
The vandals deposited the crosses in trash cans around the campus. When the vandalism was discovered, the crosses were retrieved, repaired and the display was restored.
Jacobson’s actions are typical of so-called free speech advocates on the left. In an astounding display of ignorance, Jacobson did not or could not recognize the “free speech” staring her in the face, namely the free speech rights of those that erected the display.
Jacobson and her students are not unlike those on campuses around the country that shout down speakers with which they disagree, demand that “affirmative action bake sales” and similar displays of hypocritical policy be shut down and generally decry anything that goes against their liberal agenda.
Considering her long tenure in academia, one might think that Jacobson would have known better, but on the other hand, it probably isn’t surprising that having been sheltered from the “real world” for so long that Jacobson, as is the case with many others in the ivory towers, let her ideology trump common sense.
In this case, the NKU administration, particularly President James Votruba handled the situation quickly and responsibly, by suspending Jacobson for the remainder of the semester, effectively ending her career at NKU as she had previously announced her decision to retire. (Jacobson potentially faces Class D felony charges for her role in the vandalism.)
While NKU should be applauded for their actions in this case, the campus should not be considered a bastion of free speech and expression. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a number of speech codes at NKU are unconstitutional [2] and NKU has earned the organization’s “red light” status [3].
There are many colleges and universities across the country that have been red-lighted by FIRE. In fact it is hard to find very many that are assigned a “green light” for not having speech and conduct codes that are in conflict with the rights of free speech and expression.
Campus speech codes are the result of an increasingly politically correct society that seeks to prevent anyone from being offended by anything at any time. Such codes are contrary to liberty and the free exchange of opinions that are ultimately accepted or rejected in the marketplace of ideas.
The case at Northern Kentucky, while positive in its resolution, demonstrates the kind of thinking that is often present in academia today. While liberals talk about the support of free speech, the policies in place at many institutions of higher learning are plainly restrictive to the fostering of such speech.
Unlike NKU’s Sally Jacobson, one can only wonder how many other Sally Jacobsons on campuses across the country are getting away with suppression of speech with which they disagree with the support of administrators and speech codes?
[1] http://tinyurl.com/nmo2r
[2] http://www.thefire.org/index.php/torch/#6976
[3] http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/5823.html
Copyright ©2006 Jan A. Larson All rights reserved.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Jan Larson
