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Freedom of Expression: Free Only if Correct?
| Article
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11063 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1993 |
3,922 Words |
| Author
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Susan Mendus
Susan Mendus is professor of politics at the University of
York, England. She was Morrell Fellow in Toleration from 1985
to 1988. |
"It is by the goodness of God that we have in this country three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either." Mark Twain was right. As speech codes proliferate on university campuses, professors withdraw courses deemed politically incorrect, and speakers are shouted down for their views on abortion, the imprudence of exercising free speech does not need to be argued. It need only be noted.
In 1989, Professor Stephan Thernstrom discontinued a course at Harvard after allegations of insensitivity in his discussion of the Jim Crow laws. It was said that he had presented the laws sympathetically by reading from journals of white plantation owners who gave a picture of slavery as "benevolent." In the same year, a visiting speaker at Harvard was attacked in an open letter for quoting from Byron's Don Juan and thus promoting a "dangerous misperception" of women. More recently, Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey has been shouted down at Cooper Union for expressing antiabortion views, and many college campuses have adopted speech codes of a more or less restrictive kind. The codes range from the University of Connecticut's instructions to its members to "refrain from actions that intimidate, humiliate, or demean persons or groups or that undermine their security or self-esteem" to Stanford University's injunction against epithets or terms intended to convey "visceral hatred or contempt" for the people at whom they are directed.
TWO VIEWS OF FREEDOM
These events and the controversies they have generated highlight the ambivalence that liberal societies now feel about their commitment to free speech. It can be no part of a civilized society, much less of a university, to condone the untrammeled expression of hatred and contempt, but equally it can be no part of a free society to restrict opinion, even when the opinion expressed is one that is profoundly offensive in itself and demeaning to weaker members of society.
But if a civilized society cannot condone hatred and a free society cannot condone restriction, does it follow that in the debate between political correctness and freedom of speech we are faced with a stark choice between censorship and liberty? The conclusion that we are has prompted one commentator to describe the proponents of political correctness and the advocates of free expression as "akin to two puritan sects." The former pose as revolutionary but are in fact merely pilgrims wending their way to a "linguistic Lourdes," where every misery will be
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