“Don’t worry about censorship”, says a major advocate of censorship.

I have to say that I’m not persuaded by the idea that investigations aren’t in themselves a problem. When someone is dragged through a multi-month process, possibly suspended from teaching during it, and very unsure of the result, eventual exoneration doesn’t eliminate the chilling effect. (And at least for high-profile cases, that seems common: some midlevel administrator brings the case but after months of churn and external pressure the university president or provost accepts the free-speech argument.)

But that having said, here are half a dozen cases that fit Justin’s criteria, all excerpted from Greg Lukianoff’s “Unlearning Liberty”:

In 2007, [Donald] Hindley, who had been a professor [at Brandeis] for nearly half a century, was found guilty of racial harassment for discussing the word “wetbacks” in his Latin American Politics course. He explained the origin of the word – it derives from immigrants crossing the Rio Grande – to criticize its use. For that, he was found guilty without a hearing and without even knowing the specific allegations against him. Professor Hindley was informed by Provost Marty Krauss in a caustic follow-up letter that “The University will not tolerate inappropriate, racial and discriminatory conduct by members of the Faculty”, and that Krauss was placing the assistant provost, Richard Silberman, as a monitor in Hindley’s class for however long Krauss thought it would take “to ensure that you do not engage in further violations of the nondiscrimination and harassment policy.” Finally, Krauss required Hindley to attend “anti-discrimination training” in which the trainer would “assess your ability to conduct classes without engaging in inappropriate, racial and discriminatory conduct.”

In the fall of 2002, an anonymous petition was circulated on [Shaw University] campus that criticised “the present atmosphere of contention and distrust of the Faculty and Staff… with regard to The Shaw University Board of Trustees, the Academic Administration and the sitting President.” On November 12 2002, Gale Isaacs, a professor at the university since 1986 and chair of the Department of Allied Health, admitted to being one of the authors of the resolution; she was immediately stripped of her appointments and on November 16 received a letter signed by the president of the university, Talbert O. Shaw, firing her explicitly for the resolution.

[Steven] Kirshnar [philosopher at SUNY Fredonia] wrote a biweekly column in the local … newspaper. In February 2006, he wrote two pieces, one titled “Are conservatives being shut out of the academy?” (he concluded it wasn’t totally clear that they were but thought it was a valuable question) and the other, perhaps more dangerously for a professor, “Against Affirmative Action at Fredonia. When he applied for promotion to full professor two months later, the response from the university president, Dennis L. Hefner, was remarkably blunt. He denied the promotion, citing Kershnar’s “deliberate and repeated public misrepresentation of campus policies and procedures…”

[In 2006] Walter Kehowski, a professor of mathematics at Glendale Community College in Arizona, was placed on forced administrative leave after emailing George Washington’s Thanksgiving address to the college district’s listserv.

Take the 2011 case at Gainsville State College (GSC) in Georgia involving a Confederate flag… superimposed over images of, among other things, a torch-wielding Ku Klux Klan member and a lynching [displayed at an exhibit, painted by art professor Stanley Bermudez]… After the Southern Heritage Alerts blog publicly criticized the painting as “despicable”… the school buckled under pressure and removed the painting.

Brooklyn College fired Kristofer Petersen-Overton, an adjunct instructor who was to have taught a course on Politics of the Middle East… [j]ust days earlier, Dov Hikind, a New York assemblyman, had complained about Petersen-Overton’s pro-Palestinian views.

FIRE’s “The Torch” blog has other more recent cases, though most involve students rather than faculty.

I feel really dirty linking to a David Brooks column, but his article “The Campus Crusaders” mentions a number of cases: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/opinion/david-brooks-the-campus-crusaders.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fdavid-brooks&_r=0

I also can’t bring myself to closely read a David Brooks column, so I haven’t checked to see if his example cases are legit. But maybe someone with a stronger stomach can check them.

As an aside I think your defeasible rule of thumb is as we say in Boston wicked defeasible. I hear about unarmed African-American men killed by the police in my Twitter feed constantly. Sadly, I do not think that implies it is a rare event.

The idea that investigations in themselves, even when the way in which they are conducted is not objectionable (which it certainly was in the case of the investigation against Kipnis, at least if what she wrote about the process of that investigation is true), are not problematic betrays a complete — though unfortunately widespread — misunderstanding of what is probably the most important way in which freedom of opinion is undermined in democratic societies.

In fact, the problem is that, by focusing exclusively on cases where someone was actually punished for the expression of his views, you not only exclude cases where one was investigated though ultimately cleared for expressing politically incorrect views, but also many other types of incidents that have the same kind of chilling effect on freedom of opinion. For instance, even if one is not investigated by one’s university for expressing views that some find objectionable, one may be prevented from teaching or from giving a talk by protests that disrupts one’s class/talk.

In democratic societies, legal or quasi-legal procedures of the sort that can be found in universities aren’t the main obstacle to freedom of opinion, social pressure — which can take a variety of forms — is. Thus, for something like freedom of opinion to exist in a university, it is essential that students be liberal enough so that, when one expresses a politically incorrect view, one can expect to be met with arguments but not to be subjected to arbitrary investigations or confronted by a crowd of hysterical students disrupting one’s class/talk.

Punishment is not the only, or even the most efficient, way in which freedom of opinion can be undermined. Tocqueville explained that very well almost 2 centuries ago: “The Inquisition has never been able to prevent a vast number of anti-religious books from circulating in Spain. The empire of the majority succeeds much better in the United States, since it actually removes the wish of publishing them. Unbelievers are to be met with in America, but, to say the truth, there is no public organ of infidelity. Attempts have been made by some governments to protect the morality of nations by prohibiting licentious books. In the United States no one is punished for this sort of works, but no one is induced to write them.” (Democracy in America, vol. 1, ch. 15)

The only thing I would like to add is that it needn’t even be the majority that exerts the kind of social pressure he describes. Provided that it is vocal enough and well-organized enough, a minority can, and often does, undermine freedom of opinion in much the same way. For instance, I have little doubt that — at least for the moment — most people in academia disagree with you on that issue, but they are in effect letting a minority of people scare them out of speaking their mind. So, I agree with you on at least one point, namely that such people — who I believe are the majority — should speak the fuck up. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that they have no reason to be afraid or that, if you were in their shoes, you wouldn’t probably do the same thing.

The existence of the idea of legal precedent obviates the need for many cases. If only one case where a ruling in favor of censorship gets on the books that can easily have a large effect on the subsequent behavior of universities. (Of course, it would have to be a ruling in a civil suit filed against the university.) Fortunately, I think this is fairly unlikely to happen. In fact, I am rather dissapointed the Kipnis case didn’t go through to the point where it could come to the desk of the supreme court, which I suspect would have taken the opportunity to gleefully demolish the new interpretation of Title IX being pushed by the executive branch. (Though it would have obviously been bad for Kipnis. Needs of the many, etc.)

You talk a lot about the plight of contingent faculty, non-tenured faculty, here. You say: “If the worry is indeed that faculty are no longer comfortable expressing certain ideas in their research and teaching, this is not something that will be improved by faculty not expressing these ideas; it will just make it less and less comfortable to do. One might be inclined to tell these faculty: toughen up. Or perhaps try to think about how to be skillful in presenting controversial ideas.” Contingent faculty seem like they are the most vulnerable in this situation. Do you think your advice might be construed as a tad condescending, given the fact they have devoted a ton of time, money and energy, not to mention the opportunity costs and risks, to becoming teachers? It seems to amount to this: don’t worry about it. Teach better. I suspect many people feel like there is a disconcerting assumption afoot: the customer, the student, is always right. Many conservative students don’t even want to listen to a criticism of an argument for the existence of god. You ever try to criticize libertarianism in a business ethics class? The ideas are offensive to the students. Don’t you think the possibility that these students are going to complain about that (or something unrelated) is going to have a chilling effect on what a contingent faculty member is going to talk about in class? If you think the possibility the student is going to start an investigation about that (or something unrelated), and every student who disagrees with you is going to do this until you’re gone isn’t going to alter what you cover or how you cover it, you might be wrong. Can you really tell contingent faculty to ‘toughen up’ in good conscience? Keep in mind, one day, we might all be contingent faculty!

“An investigation is not the same thing as a sanction.” If this means that an investigation is not the same thing as a punishment, then it is true by definition. If it means that an investigation is not a harm, then it is obviously false. Having to answer charges of wrongdoing is extremely costly in time and anxiety. What’s more, an acquittal never fully cancels the social stigma of being accused and investigated. When a jury declares a criminal defendant “innocent”, this verdict actually indicates no more than a failure of the prosecution to meet the standard of proof for a conviction, which is consistent with actual guilt, as the public well knows. So the cloud of suspicion still hangs over the defendant’s head, simply because the accusation was treated as worthy of investigation and trial. The same goes for the defendant in a university’s disciplinary procedure.
In short, premise (2) of this discussion is a red herring. Asking for cases of actual punishment draws attention away from the true costs of political correctness — which are the costs of social disapprobation. Read your J.S. Mill.

In response to the comment from ‘anon female grad student,’ I would be careful about generalizing from such cases, and I would be careful about even issuing judgement in a particular case you’re aware of if happened to be that you hadn’t heard both sides of the story. I know that I, for instance, once found myself involved in a retaliation complaint that did not come out in my favor (I hesitate to say that I filed it, because I actually requested mediation, but was informed that the only way of acting on my concern was to conduct a retaliation investigation), but the university mishandled it in an astonishing number of ways — ways that I had substantial evidence regarding, but, unfortunately, a completely misrepresentative narrative started spreading quickly. A narrative I could not correct, because I was following university policy by maintaining confidentiality.

So, I think it is worth reiterating Justin’s point about discussing concrete information (and it may also be worth pointing out that even if we discuss what we think is our knowledge of particular cases, discussing them even in vague terms may still be identifiable).

Doesn’t the point about social disapprobation cut both ways? It seems to me that it also counts as social disapprobation when a senior professor at your university writes a column for a national publication mocking you for filing a sexual assault complaint.

@ Note of Caution, Sorry, one more thought, I don’t think I was really clear about it in my previous comment:

The call for concrete info doesn’t make sense in this context, since these sorts of things *almost always* involve sensitive info, which means people will be silenced by confidentiality concerns or their stories will be incomplete or possibly biased, as you yourself point out in your comment. Almost none of us are in a position to tell the full, or even partial, story. But a lot of us, myself included, take ourselves to have prima facie evidence that abuses are in fact going on.

A further thought about investigations: One other effect of an investigation is that it says what is worth investigating; it says what is seen as potential grounds for punishment. A few months ago, here at UCLA, there were a few incidents (unrelated, as far as I know) where people distributed posters, flyers, and the like with some pretty ugly (but, as far as I could make out, constitutionally protected) messages. The student newspaper articles on these incidents all ended with some line about how “Campus police said they were investigating the incident.” As far as I know, nobody was ever punished in relation to one of these incidents, but the knowledge that they are treated as police matters might dissuade people from disseminating offensive views of their own.

Cases like this could be pushed further. Suppose Professor X is accused of saying that it’s permissible to bomb abortion clinics, or factory farms. The university investigates and finds that, no, she did not say that, so they don’t pursue sanctions. That there is no punishment in such a case would hardly reassure someone who *did* think that either of those things is permissible.

As a religious traditionalist with generally conservative political leanings, I can absolutely confirm that I (and academic friends who share those leanings) self-censor out of fear for my job security. I don’t have tenure, but I don’t believe for one second that tenure would protect me from the SJW mob if I were ever so foolish as to express my views in public, instead of behind a relatively anonymous internet handle.

David: What exactly do you mean by “social disapprobation” in this context? Or “political correctness,” for that matter? There are multiple ways of interpreting these terms, and I’m not sure exactly how the boundaries are to be drawn; for instance, would you take the Wendy Kaminer case above to be one where she suffered social disapprobation due to political correctness?

Matt Weiner, as far as I know, Kipnis didn’t organize a protest against a student because she filed a sexual assault complaint. In fact, among people who agree with Kipnis, nobody ever does that when they disagree with someone. They also don’t disrupt anyone’s talk/class because they disagree with what they have to say. They write articles in which they argue, sometimes in strong terms (as, in my view, they should), against their opponents. As David Velleman says, in doing so, they are providing them a target for a response of the same kind, which is how people should disagree in a liberal society. Finally, they don’t seek institutional punishment against people they disagree with for what they say, which is increasingly what people on the other side are trying to do.

The problem with the question we’re discussing here is that academic freedom presumes academic integrity. And when it comes to the handling of sexual harassment and assault, the academy’s modus operandi falls short of even the basic norms of integrity.

So, for example, the report by former FBI Director Freeh did a nice job of showing that Penn State actively silenced individuals who were concerned about child sex abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky for fear of bad publicity, permitting Sandusky to continue to prey on children for more than a decade. Was this silencing (of academics) a violation of academic freedom?

The question is clearly misplaced. It was a violation of integrity — at best. Academic freedom — and free speech more generally — is predicated on the existence of a certain shared core of fundamental rights and values.

And lest we think that Sandusky is an extreme or isolated example, as any victim of sexual assault by a philosopher (and there are many) will tell you, there’s a similar kind of silencing that is alive and well among academic philosophers now, including some prominent feminist philosophers. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Because — well, you know, being sexually assaulted or sexually harassed is a stigma that could ruin your career.

And if you’re a university administrator and a faculty member has done something that might embarrass the university, wait until the hullabaloo has died down a bit, and then quickly and quietly give him (or her) a golden parachute — an attractive voluntary resignation or retirement package, with a non-disclosure agreement — and perhaps sweeten the deal by helping find a landing spot at another institution.

Non-disclosure agreements aren’t generally required for victims because — well, you know, being sexually assaulted is a stigma that could ruin your career. SHHH.

Tamler Sommers writes

“The most flagrant example of a fabricated controversy is the trigger warning debate. I dare anyone to try to find a trigger warnings column that doesn’t mention Oberlin or now Columbia.”

Google “trigger warnings” -oberlin -columbia . You’ll find several pages of them. No doubt some of them link to those stories or mention them without naming the institution, but the first half-dozen I looked at were mostly about other cases.

(I mention this as much as a chance to teach people that you can exclude terms from a Google search as anything else.)

Are you retaliating against me for providing empirical evidence?

I’ve lost the thread of the discussion. Are w accepting, denying, or questioning:

1. The reality and trauma of being triggered?
2. The use of trigger warnings as a morally permissible way of staving substantial student suffering?
3. The conception of a trigger?
4. The moral correctness of structuring one’s conversations in a class so as to provide ample warning for the most common triggers?

So far as I can tell, I’m completely convinced of the reality of triggers and don’t see them as an appropriate object of mockery (I find it quite distasteful actually). I also think, for some fairly basic other-regarding reasons, that trigger warnings are a kind of moral duty that we have. It costs me little to no effort to provide a trigger warning to my students for certain kinds of material and the potential trauma prevented matters far more than whatever discomfort I might feel at providing such a warning. Although I believe there is some room for us to discuss the very concept of a trigger, I find this to be a subject for which most philosophers are ill-suited (except for those of us with overlapping expertise in psychological issues or trauma studies). Even those of us who have personally experienced triggering in our own are not necessarily well-suited to wax philosophical about what triggers are or what a ‘genuine’ trigger ought to be. I should say that it’s clear, from the PTSD literature, that triggering is not mere offense and it’s uncharitable to construe it as such (it’s uncharitable for us to construe it that way and it’s uncharitable for students and university administration to construe it in that way).

Actually ejrd what is clear from “the PTSD literature” is that in the long run the only way to effectively deal with PTSD is via controlled exposure to traumatic stimuli. “Trigger warnings” are part of an avoidance strategy that does nothing but exacerbate the disorder.

It is also clear from “the PTSD literature” that there is not necessarily any obvious correlation between the trauma and the trigger. The classic example is soldiers being triggered by fireworks, but someone could also be triggered by a smell, or a certain pattern of color, that has no direct relationship to the trauma at all. So in addition to being counterproductive, “trigger warnings” are useless, since there is no way to account for the entire gamut of possible triggers, and no reason to expect that verbal or pictorial representations of trauma would be a trigger. In fact, people with actual clinical PTSD (as opposed to the special snowflakes) tend *not* to be triggered by mere words or pictures.

Disclaimer: once upon a time I was diagnosed with PTSD. I was beaten black and blue with a leather belt, nearly every day, for most of my childhood. I have never expected or demanded a “trigger warning” about anything, not even the smell of leather (which has “triggered” me in the past), and frankly find the concept insulting.

Vox has a relevant article, published today: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

*morally required of us to take steps to prevent triggering students for those things under which we have control.

I understand that, but my point is that the line between “institutional reaction” and “social approbation” is thin and rapidly fading. The fact of the matter is that in 2015 a mob of twitter warriors can derail your career by *provoking* an institutional reaction, even if all you did was make an unpopular statement.

Laura Kipnis has tenure. Do you honestly think that if she didn’t, Northwestern would re-up her contract, even after having been cleared by the committee? (And yes, I understand that this also touches on the major problems with the employment structure of higher education).

47/48 demonstrate, I think, what is concerning about a culture in which reasoned disagreement is becoming less of a reality. The reason I am concerned about trigger warnings is not trigger warnings in themselves, but that there is a widespread belief that some modes of speech are traumatizing (in a medically robust way) to students. Similarly, students (and professors) are so afraid of giving offense to each other, anytime a controversial topic comes up in class (or the hallway), the room falls silent and people get extremely tense.

I see this as a general cultural problem: when we confront an idea that we disagree with, we can either (a) engage rationally with that idea or (b) punish the people who accept that idea. (b) seems to me like it’s increasingly the go-to option. Punishment can take many forms, it can be outrage, ostracism, rumors, or a Title IX complaint. Maybe it’s wrong to frame this as a “free speech” issue, although it seems to become a free speech issue once the cost of speech is no longer merely social. But I don’t think it’s wrong to tie these things together, as two symptoms of an underlying problem: that disagreement is an indication that the other person is a monster, and so we don’t talk about the things we disagree about. We express anger, we protest, we end friendships, we frame the disagreement in terms of trauma and hostile environments, and file complaints.

This post is in response to Joe (#48).

“I have to say, I’m very confused about the insertion of social ostracism into this debate. The question concerns academic liberty, which is threatened by institutional intervention, not by social ostracism. A completely ostracized person still has the legal and institutional right to say/post anything they want anywhere they want to say/post it. So long as they are not fired, fined, investigated or officially sanctioned for their speech, academic liberty is in full swing. Right?”

While a lack of unreasonable institutional sanctions is necessary for academic liberty, it’s not sufficient. I’m curious what you’d say about the following example. Imagine a society in which speaking out *in favor of* gay rights brings no institutional sanctions, yet is so socially unacceptable that one can expect various harsh consequences imposed from outside, all the way up to having one’s house vandalized, one’s family threatened, or even being beaten or murdered oneself. It seems clear to me that all of this would diminish one’s academic liberty. One would not have the liberty to speak out in favor of gay rights in one’s capacity as an academic without fear of dire consequences. Whether they happen to be imposed by one’s employer is of secondary importance. Now imagine–to bring the example closer to the issue of ostracism–a society a bit like the one just sketched, but in which the consequences of speaking out in favor of gay rights are less dire. Rather than being murdered or having one’s family threatened, one can simply expect that one will be the subject of much negative gossip, that one will lose all of one’s friends, that just about everyone one knows will refuse to associate with one, etc. Now, clearly the harm to academic liberty is not *as* great as in the previous version of the case. But would it really be right to say that academic liberty is “in full swing” here? I’m doubtful. (Or at least, even if “academic liberty,” strictly speaking, is intact, there is another important kind of liberty, very close in spirit to academic liberty, that is still being reduced.) After all, one would still not have the liberty to speak out in favor of gay rights in one’s capacity as an academic without fear of consequences. That the consequences are less dire than being threatened, physically harmed, or murdered doesn’t mean that they’re insignificant. (Nor does the fact that people have the right to impose them–after all, people have the right to decide whom to be friends with–mean that they’re insignificant.) If we imagine, finally, a society in which speaking out in favor of gay rights doesn’t bring about any institutional *or* social harms, it seems to me that that is the society in which one is most free to speak out in favor of gay rights. To say that an academic is just as free to speak out in favor of gay rights in the second society as in this third society would seem silly.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but social ostracism is an absolutely central moral practice within every human society, ever.”

Is the implication we’re supposed to draw here that there’s nothing wrong with any instance of ostracism, ever? Or perhaps, somewhat more charitably, that there’s nothing wrong with ostracizing people for holding unpopular views? I’m curious what you’d say here about the society–a society not that all that different from some actual societies–in which people are ostracized for speaking out in favor of gay rights. Would you say, as you do of other instances of ostracism, “That is not injustice, folks, it is life as a human being”?

“Moreover, there is an extraordinary amount of bad faith in (a) wanting to have the freedom to write ‘unpopular’ or ‘controversial’ things, and (b) wanting people to *not* become provoked or upset by those things.”

What is wanted is for people to become provoked *into discussing an issue*, not into ostracizing the one who voices an unpopular view. Being able to discuss controversial issues without becoming upset or refusing to associate with people who disagree with you is basic maturity.

“‘I want to be able to attack my ideological enemies, but I don’t want them to feel as though they are being attacked.’ Huh?”

Though the two are often conflated, as you appear to have conflated them here, there’s an important distinction between attacking a certain view and attacking those who hold it. Incidentally, it is precisely this conflation that leads so many to be incapable of discussing controversial topics in a mature, respectful way with someone who disagrees with them.

Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough in my last comment, so perhaps this will help explain what I was trying to say.

Matt, the point I’m trying to make is that although many critics of Kipnis would have us believe that what the students who protested against her, filed a complaint against her, etc. did nothing worse than what she herself did in writing her column, there is a fundamental difference between what she did and what the students did. I don’t even think it’s true that Kipnis mocked a student for having filed a sexual assault complaint, but in any case she certainly didn’t try to have anyone sanctioned by the university, unlike the students who criticized her.

I didn’t mean to suggest that Kipnis was prevented from giving a talk by protesters who disrupted it, since as far as I know nothing of the sort happened, at least not yet. I only brought that up because, when students do that kind of things, they often try to equate what they’re doing with what the speaker is doing by expressing views which they find offensive. I find it very alarming that even people who should know better are no longer willing to recognize the distinction between expressing opinions and trying to have someone punished because of what they say.

Now, I don’t want to be uncharitable and I don’t know if that’s what you meant, but you were clearly gesturing in that direction.

Joe, AnonGrad85 is not attributing to you any views about ostracism. (S)he’s trying to understand what your views are, which is, frankly, more respectful engagement than I think your first comment deserves. Since you’re so concerned to avoid “bad faith”, why don’t you do AnonGrad the courtesy of stating, clearly, what those views are. Thanks.

Onion Man: do you think that Kipnis would have written/said what she did if she _didn’t_ have tenure? Tenure gives us the unusual privilege of being able to say things that are unpopular. It also comes with the unusual responsibility of refraining from using that privilege to harm others.

Geisteswissenschaftler, sure. My view is that ostracism is often justified. Often, it isn’t. Any other view is plainly insane. It is almost incoherent to wholly oppose something that is a necessary feature of human society. it is also crazy to think that any form of ostracism is automatically justified, since it can have all kinds of nasty effects (as others have ably illustrated). It would take a book to sort through the complexities involved in drawing these lines. However, one type ofcase about which I have rather firm intuitions is this: it is absurd to require of a victim of gay-bashing that (s)he invite anti-gay advocates to his/her parties. Ditto for rape victims ans people who go around questioning the badness of rape.

And I’ll repeat: this issue is distinct from the issue of whIch policies universities ought to adopt. There are special reasons to protect academics from official censure and penalty. Previous comments are correct in pointing out that in special cases this line can get blurry, but it is still a line, and it is therefore evasive to change the subject In reply to Justin’s request.