Transcribed by Sydney Sadur ’14
Transcription of “Challenging the Ideological Echo Chamber: Free Speech, Civil Discourse and the Liberal Arts” Panel in New York City, 9/22/2014
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Trigger/Content Warnings: Racism/racial slurs, ableist slurs, antisemitic language, anti-Muslim/Islamophobic language, anti-immigrant language, sexist/misogynistic slurs, references to race-based violence, references to antisemitic violence.
Transcriber’s Note: I have never previously transcribed a recording in any formal sense, so the notations used are not necessarily standard. I have tried my best to make the transcription as close the audio recording as possible, even when grammatically improper. The only exception to this is that all slurs have been edited out with brackets. Some relevant information or sources discussed by the panelists are included via hyperlinks. Please be aware that the consent of those who participated in the Q&A segment of the panel was not formally obtained but considered implicit. The appearance of ( ) or ((Inaudible.)) means the speaker was inaudible or hard to understand. Images and image descriptions of the provided biographies of each speaker are provided at the end of the document.
Moderated by Pres. Kathleen McCartney
Panelists include (from Smith College Club of NYC):
- Wendy Kaminer ’71, lawyer, social critic, public intellectual, free speech advocate; author of Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU
- Nina Shea ’75, director of the Center for Religious Freedom, Hudson Institute; international human rights lawyer
- Jaime Estrada ’12, assistant to the director and rights administrator, University of Pennsylvania Press
- Lauren Duncan, professor and chair of psychology, Smith College
Introduction by Elizabeth Mugar Eveillard ’69, Chair of the Board of Trustees:
EE: My name is Elizabeth Eveillard, I am the Chair of the Board of Trustees, and the Class of 1969. For anyone who cares about education, tonight’s topic is an important one. The free exchange of ideas is the foundation of liberal arts, and a value that I know is at the heart of Smith’s mission of educating women for the world. Exposure to different points of view and reasonable debate is critical to developing the skills needed for leadership in a complex world. Moderating tonight’s discussion is our esteemed President, Kathleen McCartney.
((Audience applauds.))
EE: In the year that Kathy has been leading Smith, she has brought a palpable new energy to the campus. I have seen firsthand the extraordinary talents and the vision that she brings to our beloved College. And I can tell you that Kathy is exactly what Smith needs right now. Kathy cares deeply for our students. Her small gestures of caring make all the difference, whether she’s assuring a nervous first year student that her first day jitters are perfectly normal, or eagerly sharing advice with seniors during her office hours. She is committed to raising Smith’s visibility and sustaining its reputation. Many of you may have heard – read, rather – her recent letter to the New York Times about socioeconomic diversity at Smith, or her excellent op-ed on CNN.com about free speech on college campuses. I am encouraged by her good work to keep Smith front and center in these important conversations. Kathy is a visionary leader. She has big dreams for Smith and wants to ensure that the best and the brightest young women from around the world have access to the exceptional Smith education that is offered, just as all of we had. She wants every student to graduate feeling empowered and prepared to lead in whatever endeavor that student chooses. There is no question that Kathy is perfect for the moment and the perfect person to chart Smith’s course in the 21st century. So please join me in giving a warm welcome, in New York, to Kathy.
((Audience applauds.))
Kathleen McCartney: ((Inaudible.)) Welcome, everybody! It’s wonderful to see you here. What do you think of the venue? ((Audience laughter, applause.)) I know! We’re just wild and [ableist slur], aren’t we? ((Audience laughter.)) I’m always inspired by being with Smith alumnae, and maybe never more so than tonight. Once again, the attendance has exceeded our expectations and I know we are going to have a great discussion. Before we begin, I want to introduce our new Dean of the School for Social Work, Marianne Yoshioka, who is here – Marianne? ((Marianne receives applause from audience.)) And we have some alumnae here from the School for Social Work, it’s wonderful to have you here, so thank you for joining us.
Now, more than a couple of people have asked me an extremely important question: when is Mountain Day going to be? ((Audience laughter.)) I would tell you, but I would have to kill you. ((More laughter.)) And I have to – just one thing I have to tell you that’s so funny, now that there’s social media, students are tweeting to me, “How about Wednesday? It’s my birthday,” “Don’t do Thursday and Friday, I’m going to be doing research in Washington, D.C.!” Even the faculty have gotten in on this, which days they’d prefer and not, and if I took them all into account, we couldn’t have Mountain Day. But we will, soon enough. And I know that you’ll get an email from us, and one of the things I’ve heard from alumnae in the past year is that when you get that email saying it’s Mountain Day, many of you tear up a little bit, thinking about your own Mountain Day experience. So, rest assured that we are going to be having a lot of fun on campus, and wishing you were with us.
So tonight’s conversation is a timely one, ((Inaudible)) and a very important one. Free speech, the importance of protest, campus discourse – these are critically important topics for any democracy, for education, and of course, for Smith. Diversity of thought is the foundation of any society and is something that we welcome here tonight; we won’t all agree, and that’s all right. It’s fundamental to a liberal arts education, as you know. Reasonable people disagree, and tonight we will celebrate this. Last spring, you know, not just on our campus but on other campuses, there were a number of Commencement speakers who withdrew. And I want to just make clear, because a couple of people have asked me this, Christine Lagarde withdrew. We tried to convince her to re-examine this decision, but alas, in vain, and I hope at some point we will be able to have her come to campus and meet with the protesting students, as well as anybody who is interested in meeting with her, so stay tuned. ((Audience applauds.)) ((Inaudible.)) We have asked her, and I hope that she will agree to do that. She has indicated that she might.
So, I think one of the things that I have been writing about in response to this is, how do we disagree without demonizing the other side? How do we support a silent majority of members of our community to speak up? How do we publicly tackle contentious issues in a rigorous and tireless way? So, one of the examples I’ve been giving is, we know the war in Gaza that took place this summer and that still continues, perhaps, we know we have difference of opinions about that issue. How do we think about that on the Smith campus in a way that honors everybody’s point of view? We also affirm the right to protest, right? This is America, after all. Everyone has a right to protest, including last year’s students and faculty who disagreed with the choice of Madame Lagarde. So, no problem there. Campus activism across our country has prompted our nation through the years to reflect on injustice, to seek different solutions, to enact change, maybe even to end wars. So campus activism is a good thing, it’s in Smith’s DNA. And I am happy about that, it’s one of the things I really like about being at Smith. And you might be interested in knowing that last year Gloria Steinem and I, and others on campus, including Lauren Duncan who you will meet in a minute, we started a center, which we will hopefully be able to name the Gloria Steinem [Center] on Social Activism. And I think that’s a great thing, right? ((Audience applauds.)) Again, part of Smith’s DNA.
Over the summer I’ve been reflecting on what we should do as a community to learn from what happened last spring and to become stronger, and this is the first in a series of events, on campus and off. It’s a public commitment to hearing more voices and to being committed to hearing all voices and getting more comfortable with disagreeing. So I’ve asked Katherine Rowe, our new Provost, to chair a committee that will consist, not only of faculty, but students, staff, and alumnae – we are inviting some alumnae to take part in this. And we already knew that want to do two things: we want to have some meta-conversations, right, we want to talk about how we talk with one another; and we want to pick some difficult issues – and this idea really came from the faculty – and have forums about it. So, let’s talk about what happened in Ferguson, let’s talk about American immigration policies, let’s talk about Gaza, let’s talk about abortion, let’s talk about climate change, as we did last year in response to student protests about how our endowment is invested. Let’s talk about issues pertaining to race and class, they are perhaps the most difficult issues to talk about, and yet, maybe the most important. So, stay tuned, and you’ll be hearing more about our working group and what we decide to do. So why should Smith take this on? Because, as I said, we want to have fearless encounter with new ideas, I think that’s what is truly at the heart of a liberal arts education. Remember, it was once a provocative idea that a woman should go to college. ((Some laughter from audience.)) Or that women should play competitive sports. Or that women should run for political office. Or become a surgeon, an astronaut, or an engineer. And these things are no longer contentious or provocative because of places like Smith. So we are proud of that.
All right, so let me tell you a little bit about tonight’s speakers on the panel. In alphabetical order, I’ll introduce first Lauren Duncan, who is professor and chair of the Psychology department at Smith. She earned her PhD at Michigan, where she studied personality psychology and she did a certificate in Women’s Studies. Next, we have a recent alum, Jaime Estrada, from the Class of ’12. She has since then earned a Masters in Political Philosophy and Literature from University of Pennsylvania, in fact just last year. She is currently assistant to the director and rights administrator at the University of Pennsylvania Press. Third, Wendy Kaminer, from the Class of ’71. After Smith, she earned a law degree at BU. She is an author and commentator on contemporary social issues, including free speech, that is perhaps what she’s best known for. And last, Nina Shea, from the Class of ’75, she also has a law degree, this time from American University, and she is a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. I won’t say more about their backgrounds, although I could, I believe you all have a copy of their bio on your chair to learn more about them. [[Note: See end of document for images and image descriptions.]] So I get to be the moderator and it is my delight to invite our four panelists to the stage. Please welcome them!
((Audience applauds as panelists take seats on stage.))
KM: ((Inaudible)) Is this one [microphone] on? ((A few in audience say, “Yes.”)) I guess I’ll ask the first set of questions, and then I know we will be opening up the floor to your questions. And I’ve also encouraged the panelists to ask questions of one another; it would be great for us to have a dialogue up here. And I’m going to begin with this question, and I think I’m going to address it to Wendy [Kaminer]: How should colleges and universities work to expose their communities to controversial, even divisive ideas, and who gets to decide?
WK: Thanks, Kathy, and thank you all for coming. I wish we could see you, everybody is in the dark. The first thing that colleges and universities can and should do, I think, is take a really hard, critical look at all of their own speech and harassment codes that prohibit offensive speech, derogatory, demeaning speech that makes people uncomfortable. These codes are very common; they are often administered in entirely subjective ways. And essentially, when you prohibit offensive speech or demeaning speech or annoying speech, and these are actually terms that these codes use, or speech that makes people feel disrespected, when you prohibit that sort of speech you’re prohibiting discussions of divisive, controversial issues. Because it’s not possible to open up a discussion about a very divisive issue and not offend somebody, and not annoy someone, and not make someone feel threatened. I mean, you cannot talk about the situation in the Middle East and the recent war in Gaza without having somebody accused of being antisemitic, and somebody else being accused of being anti-Muslim. It goes on and on, it’s not possible to have a divisive – a discussion about a divisive issue without dividing people, without annoying and insulting and offending people.
The second thing that colleges and universities should do is fire almost all of the student life administrators, ((Laughter from audience.)) because they’re the people who enforce these policies in increasingly absurd ways. Let me just give you a couple of quick examples. At, I think it was Lewis & Clark University, two students, two friends, two good friends, one white, one black, two guys were joking around and having a friendly, sort of teasing each other about race. Their conversation was overheard by another student, who decided that those jokes they were exchanging between the two of them – again, these are two good friends – constituted racial harassment. And, you know, I can’t quite remember the outcome of it, but the university took it seriously, of course went to the student life administration, they were charged, there were disciplinary proceedings. Cases like this go on and on and on. If you go on to the website for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, thefire.org, you will see that these kinds of cases are not anomalies, they are typical. And they are in no small part a product of these very vague, over-broad harassment and speech codes.
Finally, I think you are doing what you need to do, by having this series of forums on very divisive issues. ((Microphone produces an echo, Kaminer mumbles inaudible comment about echo.))
JE: It is called the ideological echo chamber. ((Audience laughs.))
KM: I wish! It was a metaphor!
WK: So, I think it’s very important that Smith is doing that, and I think the only way to—
KM: Oh, you know what it is? The sound is on on the TV. We want the sound to go off, we want to be able to see the picture, but—
((JE turns off volume from television behind panelists.))
WK: We need somebody young like Jaime. ((Audience cheers.)) So, you know, you learn how to do it by doing it. And you also might think about, during student orientation, instead of talking to students about, I don’t know, being nice to each other, talk to students about their right to be really rude to each other. ((Audience laughs.)) To offend each other. And that it’s an inevitable result from having hard conversations.
KM: Any comments from the other panelists? Lauren?
LD: Yeah, I can’t speak to the student life side of things, but I can speak to what we as faculty do in the classroom. And it’s really important – I teach classes in psychology, political activism, political psychology, psychology of women and gender, all of which involves controversial social issues. In my classes, we don’t – we try to stay away from personal opinions, actually, what we try to do is intellectualize it, because that’s what the students are here at Smith for, they’re – well, not here – but that’s what they’re at Smith for, right? So we teach them about the theories that will help us understand why people believe what they believe, why they act the way they act. We might have, in my activism class, the students learn about white supremacists, and they learn about pro-life people, which are not usually people that Smith students have a great amount of sympathy for. So, and sometimes they take their point of views, they end up trying to understand them based on the assumption that each person, no matter what their belief is, has a reason for what they believe. It’s not that they’re [ableist slur], it’s that it’s serving some need in their life. So if you can intellectualize the question, that helps students approach these tricky issues. I’ve often said to students, “Okay, we’re going to treat this as an intellectual exercise,” and that tends to calm students down a little bit.
((Phone rings in audience.))
NS: If I could just jump in, I think that, first of all I want to congratulate Kathy, this is a wonderful, I love the spirit of this event. You’ve written about the need for a meta-conversation, that really talks about conversation, and that’s what this is. I think it’s really important. You also said that this is America, and it’s true, we are an island of freedom within a much larger world, including the Western world, including the English-speaking world, where there is a First Amendment that protects free speech. And I think it’s so important for our universities to train the students, or to teach the students, to be able to have civic discourse. We live in a very pluralistic society, many religions, many races, many nationalities – coming from many nationalities – and we need to be able to express our differences in a way that is not necessarily accepted with sympathy but at least tolerated. We need to tolerate each other, and the universities are an important training ground for that. And I’m thinking of, even a place like France, where there are hate speech laws. There are hate speech laws throughout Europe, and on one hand the European council says, “We need to keep free speech alive in order to disturb and shock, but we cannot offend people.” ((Some laughter from audience.)) So this is really something that is totally untenable, of course. And we have a case like Brigitte Bardot, great woman, who has been convicted five times for her animal rights advocacy because she opposes ritual slaughter of animals. And I don’t take a position on that, but I don’t think that she should be convicted of a crime for her speech on that, for her protest on that. ((Phone rings in audience.)) So, I think we need to figure out a way that we can talk about our differences on campus without penalty, but respecting each other at the same time.
JE: I have to jump in, because I completely disagree with Wendy’s comment that we should fire all university life administrators. ((Audience laughs.)) In fact, I think we need more diverse university life administrators, because the incident you mentioned that happened at Lewis & Clark maybe could have been avoided if the people that were prosecuting the case or doing the case could understand that nuances of race and how it’s discussed on campuses between students. And if you have more diverse faculty and more diverse staff and more diverse administration then that is a better — ((applause makes it difficult to hear JE)). I think also, thinking back to my unfortunately very recent experiences in student orientation, Smith tries very hard to help students to have civil discourse from the first day. And one of the things I remember doing is standing in a circle of students, being asked to step forward when there were certain words or terms that I identified with, either racially or class-wise, and that was a very difficult exercise, I think it’s currently being debated whether we should continue to do that. But the idea that we should espouse students being rude to each other is interesting and I think it should be discussed more, but I think the place to do that is not just the first day, but also all throughout.
((WK and JE say a few brief comments to each other that are unclear over audience laughter.))
WK: I think when students are introduced to a college they shouldn’t be strongly introduced into these notions of civility. I don’t think civility is the primary value, and partly because I’ve learned over really recent years that often when people, and I get accused of being uncivil all the time, that often when I’m accused of being uncivil it’s because I’m strongly disagreeing with someone. You know, I really don’t call people names, I don’t throw around epithets, I’m not generally uncivil except on occasion to my husband, and I think I have a right to do that. ((Audience laughs.)) But, you know, the notions of civility that are becoming increasingly prominent on a lot of campuses, and I’m not necessarily talking about Smith now, has more to do with strenuous disagreement than with something, what I would consider uncivil behavior, just cursing at somebody or calling somebody names or not listening to them. We’re talking about how people should talk to each other, we also have to think about how people should listen to each other. Because a lot of what’s not going on is listening.
KM: Let’s take this a little further. ((Audience applause.)) Is there a line between free speech and hate speech? And if so, how do you know when you’ve crossed it? So, I am curious, how do the panelists feel, I mean, should we allow profanity in our classes? Should we allow name-calling in our classes? And if we do, does that mean that we’ve drawn some kind of line in the sand? Is there a line?
LD: Well, I think in the classroom it’s pretty clear to me that this is supposed to be about intellectual exercises and I don’t really see where epithets or yelling at people has any role at all, on my behalf or the students. I don’t know if that might be different in other settings?
JE: What if you’re discussing a really difficult book that has that content, how do you manage that in a classroom? Or like a film, or something. You’re a psychology professor, in what instances do your course choices and the things that you teach lend to an environment where this might happen and how do you handle it?
LD: Well, we do discuss, I am one of those people that does discuss social structure and so, they do see films and we do talk about racism, and classism, and sexism, and homophobia, and all that stuff. So we do talk about that, and as I said, we do talk about both sides, often. Maybe not both sides, but we talk about how, say, white supremacists, how they come to believe what they believe, they think that they’re whatever. But, I think we don’t typically find occasions where they’re actually using epithets that you wouldn’t really want, that might be considered offensive, I suppose. So maybe it’s because they’re distanced, a little, in my class, maybe in other classes it’s different.
WK: There’s certainly a very important qualitative difference between discussing a work, say, a piece of literature, that is filled with characters who curse at each other, who utter a lot of epithets, between discussing that in class, which I think people should do, for a worthwhile piece of literature, and allowing students to curse at each other. I mean, I wouldn’t allow that, that’s got nothing to do with free speech, that’s just – you know, making it clear to students that they’re not supposed to call each other names is, from my perspective, not that different from telling them if they want to speak they should raise their hands. Now you might or might not want to have people raise their hands in order to speak, but I think there’s a most reasonable time, place, and manner of speaking where you really can’t have intelligent, intellectual conversations if people are just screaming at each other. I don’t think that’s really the issue, I think the issue is when, if you’re teaching Huck Finn–
JE: I was just going to bring that up.
WK: Right.
JE: But it has the n-word, and some people are sensitive to that—
WK: Well, let’s talk about the n-word. Let’s talk about the growing lexicon of words that can only be known by their initials. I mean, when I say, “n-word,” or when Jaime says “n-word,” what word do you all hear in your head?
((Members of audience reply with, “[n-word]”.))
WK: You all hear the word [n-word] in your head? See, I said that, nothing horrible happened.
JE: I mean, it depends on who you are in the audience, something horrible happened in their head.
WK: No, you know what—
((Members of audience applaud.))
WK: No, really, I disagree, and you know, even 30 years ago, maybe 25 years ago, Mary Matsuda, who was one of the early critical race theorists, who was one of the early people who was devising theories about how the use of language could constitute civil rights violation, even Matsuda said, you know, if you’re uttering these words in the course of explaining them or in the course of quoting somebody else, there’s no reason why you can’t do it. We had, there was an incident at Brandeis just a few years ago, where a longstanding Latin American Studies professor was found guilty of racial harassment after a secret investigation, a secret investigation because he uttered the word, “[anti-Latin@/anti-immigrant slur]” in class, in the course of explaining its use as a pejorative for Mexicans who entered this country allegedly illegally.
JE: Well that’s just ridiculous, Wendy, but I don’t think that’s comparable to this.
WK: Well I agree it’s ridiculous, I think that we treat these words, whether it’s the n-word or any other word known only by an initial, like characters in a Harry Potter book who are afraid to say the word, “Voldemort.”
((Audience laughter.))
JE: But I don’t think that makes us Harry Potter if we do say the n-word in class.
WK: It doesn’t, but what have you accomplished when you said, “n-word”? Everybody here heard the word [n-word] in their head, so what have you accomplished?
KM: So we’ve got a difference of opinion here. ((Audience laughter.))
LD: I think that the reason we say, “the n-word,” is because it, if you say that, you are showing that you are aware that it can hurt a large group of people. ((Audience applauds.)) I think that, so I think that words like that should be used very carefully, especially by people who don’t belong to those groups. In a classroom setting I think there is a space for discussing words like that, you want to describe the social context, you want to describe what it’s used for, you want to describe how it might be used to stratify groups, and so on. So I think, you know, one of the problems with the clamping down on free speech or political correctness is that then professors’ students become afraid to talk about really difficult issues and that’s exactly what college is for. I feel very strongly that professors especially have a very big role to play in helping students learn how to engage around these particular issues. I think developmentally it’s difficult for students sometimes, they come in as 18 year olds, they may come from who knows what kind of backgrounds that they come from, they come from all sorts of backgrounds and they may come from places where they’ve never, ever challenged their parents’ thoughts or beliefs – or maybe they have, but they got slapped down. And so they’re trying to figure it out, trying to figure out how to argue and disagree respectfully with people, and I think we as professors, especially in class, have to model that for students and we have to teach them how to do this. Because there’s no progress with paralysis, right? You can’t address these issues if you’re always afraid to talk about them.
NS: Well, again, if I look to Europe and see how they’ve gone down this road, I think it’s really disturbing. They don’t just put words off-limits, but they put concepts off-limits, and I’m against all of it. I’m against banning Holocaust denial, I think it’s a ridiculous to do, but we saw last summer the first synagogue in Europe being bombed since the 1930s. We don’t have that here, but we don’t ban that kind of concept. There are also whole bodies of ideas concerning Islam that are not allowed to be discussed in Europe. When I say, “aren’t allowed,” I mean they’re criminalized, and people have gone to jail in Scandinavia and other places for, for example, criticizing child marriage. And I worry, because I do see that coming here. The State Department and Homeland Security Department, for example, have banned a whole list of words concerning Islam. They banned the word “jihad,” “Islamist,” “caliphate.” These words have been banned since the Bush administration.
KM: For internal use?
NS: Yeah, for internal use, and for public use as well. But that has gone by the wayside, actually, with the ISIS takeover in northern Iraq. Because they realized they could not talk about what’s happening without talking about a caliphate or Islamists. ((Audience laughter.)) They unbanned them just this summer. So, I do see a slippery slope, and that’s always the danger of starting, it’s a very subjective concept of what is hate speech.
JE: Is that because the people who banned it didn’t go to Smith and learn civil discourse? They couldn’t figure out how to discuss the topic civilly, so they just have to ban the terms completely? I don’t understand the motivation behind that.
NS: Well, I think that somehow we do find an equilibrium in the United States. And I believe in protest, I think that, you know – there is an example, the Ayaan Hirsi Ali, very controversial woman, comes out of a Somalian Muslim family and she was subject to forcible marriage and genital mutilation and became a Parliamentarian in Holland and became controversial even more, and eventually came to the United States. She was invited to Brandeis to be the Commencement speaker this last spring and was disinvited, unlike Christine Lagarde. And there was a lot of protest around that. Yale University last week, a small, conservative club invited her to speak – the Buckley Society – invited her to speak there. The Muslim Student Association and 30 other student associations issued a protest statement, which was fine, and she spoke. It was well attended, she was well received, there was lots of standing ovations for her, for her courage and speaking out, and the Muslim Association had, afterwards, a table outside with pamphlets explaining what they saw as her errors about Islam. And I thought that was a great model. It’s a great model of free speech and protest. And that’s what we should aspire for.
((Some audience applause.))
KM: What part of this line, a little bit, though, between free speech and hate speech? Actually I was a little surprised to hear you [Kaminer] say that you didn’t think profanity was a good idea, knowing what I know.
((Audience laughter.))
WK: I actually don’t use it all that much. ((Audience laughter.))
KM: Well, I know you don’t use it, but—
WK: I know, I’ve taught a couple years here and there. I can’t imagine teaching a class and – look, I’m not going to come down hard on a student if he or she occasionally, you know, utters a profanity. But if that becomes the lingua franca of the classroom, really, there are much more intelligent ways to articulate your point of view, and to make an argument. So, you’re not really teaching people. But, outside the classroom, if students get into an argument outside the classroom, I don’t think there should be any restrictions on their use of profanity with each other. And I don’t think there should be any restrictions on their own right to offend each other, you know, we offend each other all the time. I might have offended Jaime, and even if I meant to offend her – which I didn’t – but if I meant to offend her, I think that I would have a right to do that. Especially since it was in the context of a genuine disagreement about a genuine issue. But to get back your question about free speech and hate speech, from my perspective, there is no such thing as free speech in a regime that has restrictions on hate speech. For a number of reasons, one, because people do define hate speech – people have a range of definitions for hate speech. I mean, some people might define it as speech that advocates genocide, I think that’s probably one of the more narrow definitions, that might be a definition that I would accept, though I don’t actually think in terms of hate speech. And some people would define it as—
NS: But that’s incitement to violence.
WK: Well, not necessarily. Not necessarily, there’s a difference—
NS: If it’s imminent.
WK: Well, that’s the difference between advocacy and incitement, and there’s very important Supreme Court cases on this. So, I don’t think in terms of hate speech or hateful speech because a lot of things that people say in the context of disagreeing with each other over important issues, somebody or other is going to consider an opinion hateful, a statement hateful. I think in terms of only restricted speech that really qualifies as incitement, which the Supreme Court, I think, defined pretty well in a 1969 case, which is, speech that is intended to cause imminent, illegal action, and is likely to do so. And that’s the difference between speech and advocacy. So, you know, I don’t have a free speech right to say to someone who’s under my influence, “Go beat that person up,” or, “Go burglarize that house.” That’s really just a conspiracy to commit a crime, I’m not exercising any free speech rights. But I think I do have a free speech right to stand on podium and engage in an antisemitic rant and say that, “Jews are all a bunch of greedy snakes and they all deserve to have their homes burglarized.” I think I have a First Amendment right to do that. What I don’t have a First Amendment right to do is to encourage people that I have some control over to go break into that Jewish person’s house over there. That’s where I draw the line.
JE: I think it’s an interesting line also that you all have brought up, in terms of being a student versus being a professor, being a person who’s in a position of power versus being someone who’s in a learning position. Because, I have to correct something, because I work in publishing so I’m all about corrections. I’m still a graduate student, I haven’t finished yet, because I’m ((inaudible)) that just happened on Thursday. And I had an incident where my free speech was questioned in a class, because I had a professor tell me in his office hours that I should do a gynocritical reading of an Audre Lorde poem, and I found that really offensive that a male professor would tell me to use my gynecological intelligence to do a critical analysis of an Audre Lorde poem. ((Laughter from audience.)) So, in the paper– ((More laughter, someone repeats, “gynecological intelligence.”)) He said, “Do a gynocritical reading of an Audre Lorde poem.” And I was just like, “Excuse me?” But I didn’t say anything at the time, but when I wrote my paper I used the introduction to do a quick recap of what he told me, and in the introduction I said, “What the ‘f-‘ is an Audre Lorde poem?” except I used the full word in my paper – I’m sorry, “What the ‘f-‘ is a gynocritical reading?” – and he wrote back to me in the margins, which I fully expected to, you know, read a comment that said, “If you were my advisee, I would tell you that you’re not ready for graduate school because you used an epithet in your paper.” But I wanted to say to him, which of course I couldn’t because of the power dynamic of our relationship, if you were my advisee I would fire you, because you told a woman of color in a private conference that she should use a gynocritical analysis in her paper without considering the implications of this kind of language. So, I have to say, as a current student, it’s very frustrating, this idea, this line between hate speech and free speech and, what is an epithet? and what’s appropriate and what’s not, and what the tone is? And, you know, if you’re going to stand on a podium and tell people, you know, that maybe they should do X, considering as you’re standing as a person later in their career, that might actually motivate people to do X. ((Some applause from audience.)) If I was a Smith undergrad and I stood on a podium, people are going to think that I’m [ableist slur]. ((Some laughter and applause.)) So, there’s a little bit more nuance to this than just, you know, I’m a person of X age I should be able to say this, or I’m a professor so I should be able to say this, because I’m teaching, or I’m a student. So, how do you regulate that?
WK: I think you don’t regulate it. And, let me tell you quickly about the Supreme Court case in which this line was drawn. It was a case that involved what were then called criminal syndicalism laws, and these were laws against, basically, people who advocated socialism or communism, and they were used to imprison people who advocated alternate forms of governance during the Red Scare. Because standing up and advocating socialism, or doing what Eugene Debs did during Word War I, and advocating resistance to the draft during World War I, was considered not just really offensive – like telling you to use your gynocritical intelligence for a critical analysis ((Audience laughter.)) – it was considered not just really offensive but a serious danger to the country.
NS: Treason, even?
WK: Yeah, it was essentially considered treason. And Eugene Debs was sentenced to ten years under the Espionage Act because he spoke out against World War I and encouraged people to resist the draft. The criminal syndicalism statute that was at issue in the 1969 case when the Court made its very narrow, I think appropriately narrow, definition of illegal incitement and distinguished it from advocacy, was another one of these Red Scare cases. Well, I think actually this case might have involved the [Klu Klux] Klan, but these – it involved the Klan – but these criminal syndicalism cases all came out of the Red Scare. So, what I would suggest is that when you think about how we should draw a line, say, between speech that’s allowed and speech that isn’t allowed, between permissible advocacy and impermissible incitement, always imagine how that law is going to be applied by your ideological opponent.
LD: I think the problem is that the law is different than, kind of, what we experience in real life a lot of times. The law is, you know, the law makes, you have to be very careful when you pass laws, right? Because they then create a precedent and they can be used in other cases. And you either win or you lose, everything’s very black and white, in a way, and what Jaime’s talking about is the idea that there are nuances in, and I agree with her, that people have to be careful when they use their free speech rights. There are many times when people hide behind this idea of, “Oh, I’m just exercising my First Amendment rights, I’m not inciting anybody,” but then, you know, people go off and kill people because they’ve said, yeah, Jews are whatever. Or, you know, “Black people are bad,” and then lynch them, you know, things like that. So, in other words, I think – I don’t know what the solution is, but I have a problem with big, broad, blanket pronouncements on either side, either, “X is not allowed,” or, “all X is allowed.” I think that’s just difficult.
WK: But that is what the law has to do.
LD: I know.
WK: That’s not what the college has to do.
LD: I know. Well, that’s why I’m not a lawyer. ((Audience laughter.))
WK: And this discussion is very different. ((Laughter.)) But, the law is an exercise in mind growing, and that is – that’s what you have to do.
KM: Any reactions here, before we move on?
NS: Yeah, I don’t think that you can – again, I agree with Wendy and the Brandenburg [v. Ohio] standard, which is the case that she described in ’69, is the right one. That is America’s free speech law, basically, on these issues of hate speech. I remember there was an – I live in Washington – and there was some [ableist slur] fellow who took over the Discovery channel and took everybody hostage. And I was so surprised, on this afternoon that what had happened had happened. And finally they rescued everybody and arrested him, and he went on to say that he had been inspired by Al Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance. ((Audience laughter, difficult to hear NS.)) So, if we start really going down that path we’re in trouble, we’re going to shut off just book after book.
LD: But maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of that, going down that path. I mean maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of having discussions about it. I mean, I know our laws, our law system is not alive—
NS: We can have discussions about it, but I wouldn’t want to censor somebody’s book—
WK: Can I ask you a question? (To JE.) Did you feel, I mean I guess you didn’t, but what would have happened if you had said to your professor, either, you know, “What the hell do you mean by gynocritical?” Or, do you understand – you know, if you had tried to explain to him why that was an offensive thing to say, or why you objected to it. I mean, you clearly didn’t feel free to do it except in your paper. But, do you think, can you think of a way in which you might have been able to do it? Or do you think that was just a function of the student-teacher relationship?
JE: I think that his position did not leave a pathway for me to have a conversation that would have any impact on his psyche other than in my paper. And I think perhaps, maybe, that’s how students often feel on college campuses, that they feel limited in their ways of expression and perhaps that leads to mis-expression, or what others in a position of power would see as inappropriate expression. I mean, if I could go back now, I would surely not use the f-word in my paper, but at the time it was the only recourse I could think of. Because I was just so frustrated. So, I think my question for you is, okay, so if you don’t want us to ban hate speech, then how do we create—
WK: Well, do you consider that hate speech? What he said?
JE: I don’t consider what he said hate speech, but I do consider what I said, I mean, I used a profanity in my paper.
WK: And do you consider that hate speech?
JE: I don’t consider it hate speech, but it could be considered grossly inappropriate conduct, right? ((Audience laughter.)) So, isn’t that similar?
WK: No, well first of all, I wouldn’t consider it – it’s not conduct. It’s speech. It’s one word. And I would read your entire paper and if I thought you wrote a good, well-reasoned paper, I might mention to you that it might be better next time – ((Audience laughter makes it difficult to hear WK.)) – But I would judge the paper as a whole. I wouldn’t focus on one word.
JE: I’m going to steer away from – so, it was just an anecdotal example, but the reason I brought it up is because I feel like the conversations we’re having are very different. We’re having one conversation about how to legislate speech, and what is free speech, and what is hate speech. But we’re also talking about Smith. We’re also talking about students, we’re also talking about people who, as Lauren might argue, are not fully developed into an adult that knows the difference between how to conduct themselves in adult society where there are risks involved in expressing ourselves. So, what do we expect from students? What’s permissible for students, and how do they communicate their dissent? That’s my question. And I really don’t know, I’m still stuck in the mire of that, it’s very difficult.
KM: Well, maybe this is a nice segue to protest. Let’s think about protest, not only on college campuses, but also more generally. How should we think about protest today? Do we rely on legal definitions for what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable? How do we think about digital protest, some people call, what is it? Clicktivism? All you have to do is click to sign a petition these days. Let’s just, what are people’s reactions, maybe using the Occupy [Wall Street] movement as an example?
NS: Well, my day was before the digital era and I remember our big protest on campus was in 1973 when Bobby Riggs challenged Billie Jean King ((Audience laughter)) to a tennis match. And he said, “I’m going to beat you because you’re a woman.” And he was, I think, 26 years older than she was, and she went on to win all three sets. And all the gals, all the women of Smith, just spontaneously went outside, I think, and marched around campus in celebration and cheers. And I don’t know if anybody was there during that period, but I remember President Mendenhall got a little nervous that we were coming for him. ((Audience laughter.)) So that was our radical experience.
WK: I think that there’s, one of several important – I won’t call them rules, I’ll call them guidelines – of protest, is not to protest in a way that literally shuts other people down. Not metaphorically, I don’t care what you do to people metaphorically, I’m not talking about figuratively, I’m talking about actually in fact shuts other people down. So, I’m talking about refraining from exercising your heckler’s veto. You know, if you all don’t like what I’m saying, from my perspective, the wrong way for you to protest is to shout over me so that I can’t be heard. A better way to protest, let’s say I’m a speaker at a university event, have a counter-event, make sure you do everything you can to make sure that the administration provides a question and answer period so that you can actually have some discussion, have counter speakers. But don’t shout people down, don’t protest in a way that shuts other people down or, to get back to Occupy, the main problem that I had with the way the Occupy protesters were protesting is that a lot of people seemed to think they had a First Amendment right to appropriate public spaces 24/7. And you don’t really have a First Amendment right to do that. I mean, you have a right to protest, you have a right to rally, you have a right to parade, you have a right to occupy a park, I would say for a time, but you don’t have a right to appropriate, for your exclusive use, a public space.
LD: Okay, and I think that there are all sorts of tactics that social movement groups or people use to try to get their point across, they try to figure out – most groups try to figure out what is going to be the most effective tactic to get what they want. So they have to figure out what they want first, and then they go for it. Of course, one of the problems with the Occupy group is that they didn’t really know what they wanted, right? That was a little disorganized. ((Audience laughter.)) But what’s important to remember is that that is in the eyes of the beholder, so, you know, there’s a lot of differences. There’s some evidence that groups that resort to violence do so because they feel that there are no opportunities for them to be heard, they feel their opportunities are blocked, they feel that if they do something that nobody will listen to them. You could use that as one of the precursors for terrorism, for example. If you look at terrorist groups it’s usually these groups that feel like they have no voice. At least in the beginning, right?
So, again, back to the role of the university and the college, et cetera, I think it’s important for us to help students who often feel very helpless and voiceless at, when they’re 18 to 22, and they might be doing something like this for the first time, they’re not quite sure what to do with their frustration – ((Phone alert sound)) – and all of their idealism, and so on. It’s our privilege and – what’s the word – responsibility to try to help students figure out what’s appropriate under what circumstances, what’s going to help. And by appropriate I mean, what is the most effective way to reach that end goal. So, if you want to try to change the policies of the IMF I think it’s more appropriate or maybe it would be more effective if you got Christine Lagarde on campus and then, like, had a conversation with her and then maybe got some of these awesome Smithies into internships at the IMF, and then they start taking over the world like they’re taking over everywhere else. ((Audience laughter.)) I mean, I’m not saying that I had any problem at all with the student protest, I think it’s great. But I think it’s our – students don’t have the sophistication to know, I mean, adults don’t have the sophistication to know.
KM: So, I think we’re going to open up for your questions, now. And we’ve got Peg with a microphone, maybe ((name unclear)) here as well, and Jennifer.
((Jennifer Chrisler comes onstage to podium.))
JC: Yep, so, my name is Jennifer Chrisler, I’m the Vice President for Alumnae Relations, and first I just want to thank everybody for letting us witness what was clearly an engaged, committed, and, at times, disagreeable conversation. ((Audience applauds.)) It’s my job tonight to help moderate what is about 12 minutes, 15 minutes of question and answer for our panelists. I am going to be ably assisted by Peg Pitzer, who is going to bring you a microphone. And I would be remiss during this period if I didn’t remind you that, during a question and answer period it’s really great if you could ask a question. ((Audience laughter.)) So, if I don’t hear a question I may gently remind you, and I hope you’ll forgive me for that up front. So, raise your hand if you’d like to ask a question! Peg, there’s somebody down here, and then we’ll go into the back. If you could just stand up so people can see you.
1st Q Asker: Hi, thank you. What am I supposed to – my name and?
JC: Your name and your question.
1st Q Asker: My name is Susan Jansen, my class is ’79, and here’s my question. Smith is dedicating itself to look at a whole host of broad issues, the Palestinian question, and a lot of hard social issues. Are you going to look internally at Smith? We have heard such things as how odious “gyno“ whatever it was, “gynocritical” was, and we’ve talked a lot about protest—
JE: That wasn’t Smith.
1st Q Asker: Oh, thank god! ((Audience laughter.)) But shouldn’t Smith look internally? Everything from nudity at Convocation to chalking? To things that make people not want to offer up their own individual opinions? Be they on the right or the left?
JC: Thank you.
KM: Well, maybe I should take this one. ((Audience laughter.)) And I think we’re going to start with, how should we choose a Commencement speaker. We used our process last year, we had a process, and just so you know, there’s a committee of students – three students, three faculty, three staff, a trustee, I think, and me. Christine Lagarde was approved in 2011 by the Board of Trustees for an Honorary Degree. We have a whole list of folks and then the President tries to make sure we have a diverse group of honoreeants. So, we’ll take another look at that, and think about that process. From lunch today, certainly, I got the notion from conversations with Wendy that we do have in our student handbook text about, how should I phrase it?
((Kaminer pulls out sheet from under chair with text from Smith’s student handbook.))
WK: What a coincidence!
KM: We have a text about civil discourse, maybe we should take a look at that, as well. So, what I want to do this year is just get started with the notion I’m hearing voiced, because there are some students who didn’t participate in last spring’s discussion, for whatever reason, and I heard from many of them. So how do we get everybody involved in the conversation? And as I said in my CNN piece, how can we disagree without demonizing? I have to say, we didn’t demonize tonight, and I think that’s really important in order to bring everyone into the conversation. But we’re just getting started. (To Kaminer.) I’ll give you thirty seconds!
WK: No, I don’t really want to go into it now, I just happen to have a copy of a couple of Smith policies here. ((Audience laughter.)) Which I think would be worth looking at. And, let me just say very quickly, there’s a little policy about living in a diverse community and it talks about tolerance, and civility, and mutual respect regardless of, you know, the usual demographic categories: sex, race, sexual orientation, also political views. Now, you know, it’s not possible to have a conversation about sharply diverging political views and not have someone feel disrespected. That’s the kind of language that I think should be looked at and those are the kind of ideas that I think should be looked at and thought about during Orientation and generally (WK unclear at end).
JC: Good point. So I think we have a question in the back. Peg, do you have the mic? Excellent, go ahead.
2nd Q Asker: Hi, my name is Mohini Banerjee, I’m Class of ’13, so I’ve only been out a year now. I know Jaime, actually, we were both Mellon-Mays Fellows, which, I’m not sure if everyone here knows, but it’s a program at Smith that’s supposed to encourage minorities to – minority students to enter academia in order to help change the paradigm that I think Jaime’s trying to get at here about power. We were reminded today by Wendy’s comment, using the n-word publicly in this setting, that the real world isn’t a safe space for a lot of minority views, it’s not a place where people feel like they can speak up. My question – you don’t have to remind me – my question is, how can we help Smith be inclusive of minority views? Because a lot of the time, you know, someone might look at me and say, “Oh, why is she picking on that?” You know, “Why does she have to get offended?” that kind of thing. But that’s not the point, the point is that when someone uses words like that it’s the equivalent of shouting someone down in a classroom. It’s denying the other person’s humanity. And I can think of a whole host of terms that work for that, and for women, in general, like using the c-word, right? It does the same thing.
WK: And by, “the c-word,” you mean the word [c-word]?
2nd Q Asker: I do, and I could have said it, right?
WK: Right, you could have said it.
2nd Q Asker: And we would have all existentially been the same, but it’s different to actually call someone that. And I just think it’s important to make a distinction between these legal regimes, right, we were talking about limiting human speech, and what can Smith do to encourage this kind of discussion but also be very, very aware that a lot of people there aren’t respecting others? And a lot of times those other people happen to be racial minorities or gendered minorities.
WK: I just, I think there is a very important difference between calling somebody a name and uttering the name in the context of talking about how it’s used. And I think it’s incredibly important to recognize that difference, because, you know, there are other words and other concepts that are going to make somebody feel threatened and somebody feel disrespected, and somebody feel psychologically unsafe. And if people can’t learn to deal with those feelings they really can’t function effectively in a free society. ((Applause.)) I can’t talk about what should be done at Smith, I’m going to defer to Kathy for that. I’m not at Smith.
JE: I think we’re also, kind of, touching on the recent debate on trigger warnings and whether or not they have a place in a classroom and whether or not certain words should be considered triggering and whether or not that’s reasonable in the context of teaching in higher education. And I think those are very complex, nuanced things to discuss. But I do think there’s a difference between saying the word because we feel like we have the right to exercise the freedom to say the word and also choosing not to say the word because we’re conscious of the racially nuanced history of the word, or gendered history of the word. And I think that people who are choosing not to say those words are not necessarily against free speech, or like, against people’s right to say the words, but are trying to exercise a sense of awareness of other people’s complicated histories with those words. And I do think that words have power. ((Applause.)) And I think that if Smithies don’t learn that, then we’re failing as an institution.
JC: All right, so I know somebody has the microphone because I can hear it clapping. ((Audience laughter.)) Please stand up and ask your question.
3rd Q Asker: Hello, my name is Joanita ( ), I am a 2013 graduate. And my question would be to differentiate between what’s moral and what’s legal, and should colleges actually tread there? And (more) support for what’s moral, what’s legal, I think it’s a good place for discourse. But in a college like is Smith that is so progressive and draws people from all walks of life, for example, I am from Kenya–
JC: I think, you know what, I’m going to stop you right there, because the question is, what is the difference between discussing what’s moral versus what’s legal when it comes to speech, and how would you guys respond to that?
3rd Q Asker: And should colleges take a stand for that?
JC: And should colleges take a stand for that.
3rd Q Asker: Like Smith.
NS: I think that colleges should foster good citizenship, and that means to respect other people that you’re living with in the community. It’s different from being an individual in society after you graduate, and, in the sense that the colleges can make rules, that is, short of being legally enforced. However, that said, I think that’s important, to have that sense of ( ) and good citizenship in that community. That said, it’s a very slippery slope what offends people. It’s not just epithets or name-calling, it’s ideas. And I deal with religious freedom, which is one of the most sensitive issues there is, because these are deeply held beliefs. And we’re not too far from where The Book of Mormon is playing, that could be very deeply offensive to someone. I’m not against having that theatrical production, I think that’s part of free speech, but I’m sure there are people in the Church of Latter Day Saints who are deeply offended by it. And they get on with life. And they respond with more speech, they put out a billboard in Times Square saying, look at the real Book of Mormon, what it says, and we invite you to read it. And I think that’s the perfect way of responding. So, I think that the university also has, the college has an obligation to prepare students for the real world, as well.
WK: I’m glad you brought up the question of morality and legality because I think censorship is immoral. I think that we have a basic, fundamental, moral right to speak our minds in ways that may or may not offend people. Jaime may think – I don’t mean to put words in your mouth – but Jaime may think, for example, that it’s wrong, or immoral, or even a little dangerous for me to use certain words, even when I’m not using them in a way, in a targeted way, even when I’m not using an epithet to insult somebody. I think that it’s wrong and in some ways dangerous to discourage people from using certain words. You know, and we can have a disagreement about that. But, you know, morality is, people’s ideas about morality are as wildly diverse as people’s ideas about hate speech, and free speech, and Israel, and, you know, and Palestine. One of the great purposes of free speech is to allow people to have very wide ranging discussions about morality, among other subjects.
JC: So, I know this is going to disappoint many of you in the audience, but we have time for one more question, and I know that you have the microphone, way in the back in our balcony section. So, I’m going to give you the last question.
4th Q Asker: Well, it’s actually more a suggestion and a recommendation based on what I’ve heard here. My name is Jane Brown, and I’m also from the Class of ’79. And, for those of us who went to graduate school, at least for me and a couple of others in the room that I know of, we had to take a class in public speaking. Because the idea was, it was going to be a skill set that was going to be necessary as we entered the business world. Secondly, I bet most people here who have worked in a corporation have taken diversity training, if not once then six or seven times. ((Audience laughter.)) And I don’t mean to dismiss that, at all. And I guess the question I have is, a recommendation or a suggestion, and would like a reaction to is, why wouldn’t Smith consider, during the first week of freshman year, the first year, having some kind of two-day public discourse seminar? How to talk to each other? How do you talk in class? How to handle a difficult conversation? Is that something that the college would consider and would that help people both be successful in college in learning how to speak up and be successful in their future lives?
LD: So, we do some things in the first year. Orientation is packed, it’s five to six days of non-stop fun for the students. ((Laughter.)) And they, believe me, they don’t remember – actually, the recent grads can probably attest to this, they don’t remember a thing at the end of it. ((Laughter.)) But, what we do have is we have a series of first year seminars, which, probably for most of you we didn’t have at the time, which are based – they’re particularly targeted towards first year students, and we have a writing requirement so students do these first year seminars on usually very interdisciplinary topics. So, in terms of, they don’t always deal with controversial topics, but sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. But at least the students, one of the things that is emphasized along with writing in many of these classes is public speaking. So, they are, we do understand that that is very important, it’s one of the thirteen capacities that the faculty identified, I don’t know when, a few years ago, so a lot of us do include those opportunities in class.
JC: Well, I hope you will join me in, I failed to mention that, not only am I the VP for Alumnae Relations, but I also graduated from Smith in 1992. And I think this kind of rich dialogue, the seriousness with which each of our panelists has tackled this discussion, and really the modeling of what has been a very robust conversation, I think is a part of what I love about having gone to Smith, and continuing to be involved in Smith. So, please join me in thanking each of them. ((Applause.)) And now I would like to invite [New York City] Smith Club President Julia Davis to the stage while our panelists step down to close our program this evening. ((Applause.))
((End of recording. Davis spoke briefly, and event was formally ended.)