Should universities have to adopt free speech statements?

Do we learn more by hearing and debating, or by suppressing, ideas that some consider "harmful"?

Minister for tertiary education Penny Simmonds (National Party) and associate minister of education David Seymour (Act Party) have announced new legislation that will require universities to adopt a freedom of speech statement:

“…to actively promote an environment where ideas can be challenged, controversial issues discussed, and diverse opinions expressed, and ensure that they are not constraining the freedom of speech rights of students, staff or invited speakers. It will also prohibit universities from adopting positions on issues that do not directly relate to their core role or functions.”

Such legislation would seem unnecessary – as existing laws should suffice – but some recent events have raised concerns. Victoria University had trouble just staging a seminar on free speech itself, and Massey University once famously cancelled a talk by Don Brash. (Both events did eventually go ahead, following some debate in the media.)

There are two sides to this. First, a university might take official stances on controversial matters such as the war in Palestine or te Tiriti o Waitangi. Adopting an official position from the top silences genuine debate on campus and in classrooms, or makes debate one-sided. Anyway, it can be bad for business, as many students may be put off enrolling at a university that’s too politically biased.

The other side is on-campus debate about contentious matters, which should be free and open. A famous example was the impassioned debate that occurred on the precinct of the Auckland University Students’ Assoc. in 1979 following the “haka party” incident. (I was there.) Debate was free and open, and the university took no official stance on the matter. And, yes, we did hear some racist statements. It was a learning experience for all concerned, however.

There have been reactions against the government’s proposed free-speech legislation.

The Tertiary Education Union’s president, Sandra Grey, has described the proposed law as “a heavy-handed approach”. Radio NZ quotes her as follows:

“You might get universities opening up the space that is for academic and rigorous debate and saying it's okay we can have climate deniers, we can have people who believe in creationism coming into our campuses and speaking about it as though it were scientific, as though it was rigorously defendable when in fact we know some of these questions... have been settled.”

It would surely be “heavy-handed” to stop a climate denier or a creationist from speaking openly in any public space, including a university campus. But I’d have thought that universities would be the places that they’d most want to avoid, as universities have experts with PhDs in the sciences who can demolish their arguments. So what’s the worry? Why not just have the debate? After all, that’s how we learn. There’s no need to hide from debate if we’re confident in the scientific evidence.

Green Party spokesperson for tertiary education, Francisco Hernandez, is concerned that the government’s bill may turn “our universities into hostile environments unsafe for marginalised communities.” People will show up and say things that inflame hatred towards marginalised groups, he fears.

On the other hand, Hernandez claims that David Seymour in particular is “looking to limit the ability universities have to take stances on issues, like the war in Gaza for example”.

Can you see the double standard? If a university officially condemned the war in Gaza, wouldn’t that raise the risk of hostility towards Jewish students? (For the record, I want that war to end immediately too, but that’s a matter for political debate on campus, if anyone has the stomach for it, and not for senior management officially to take either side.)

The arguments from the TEU and the Greens are intellectually weak, as they only want “free” speech on campus for ideas which they’ve pre-approved, as if they were the academic arbiters, if not the censors. (Who do they think they are?) Anything that opposes what they approve can be de-platformed or shouted down or banned on health and safety grounds. They forget that the very things they don’t want heard on campuses are already viral on social media, and hence seen daily by students.

Their arguments, then, are morally weak too, as they assume that students need their protection – from ideas that are out there anyway. Are people really that vulnerable? I don’t believe they are, as I’ve seen how people benefit from open and vigorous debate. Yes, sometimes it hurts to hear one’s cherished ideas get a good going over by opponents and sceptics. And sometimes some people’s sheer ignorance needs to be corrected. But that’s how we learn and grow. It wasn’t meant to be easy.

Trigger warning: feedback on your uni assignments may hurt your feelings.

Academic freedom comes with a responsibility to face to up to counter-arguments on factual, logical or ethical grounds. Academics are free to say all kinds of nonsense (and, believe me, they do!), but they should anticipate counter-arguments from experts in the field. Hence they have anonymous peer-review of publications.

A general freedom of speech also comes with limitations, beginning with legal limitations such as in the Crimes Act – and there are quite a few of those. Freedom also comes with a moral requirement to respect other people’s freedom and dignity, but that doesn’t stop a conversation from happening. A reasonably held opinion about a controversial matter, such as the Treaty of Waitangi, may anger some people, but that isn’t a barrier to saying it out loud. The main thing is that those who object are equally free to say why they disagree. That’s how we learn – or how we would learn, if only we’d listen to one another.

In a free society, one is free to say all kinds of incorrect or even offensive things – although beware of public disapproval and of the defamation action, if one goes too far. It’s not an authentic use of freedom, however, to abuse and insult others. Speech that’s motivated by hatred isn’t really “free”: it’s in thrall to a negative emotion. But, from that, it doesn’t necessarily follow that “hate speech” should be outlawed. The law might step in, but only if we could identify a real harm, or threat of harm, to a person or community. After all, the speech-act of threatening to kill is a crime.

In principle, I’m not against the government’s proposal to require universities to adopt a freedom of speech statement. I’m just sorry that there seems to be a need for it, as university communities have let themselves and society down on more than one occasion. They could have set a better example, but they didn’t, and so parliament may have to make them think again.

BTW: In an earlier readers’ straw poll, 43% of respondents said they had a great deal or a quite a lot of confidence in higher education. That was a bit above the US poll result of 36% expressing confidence, but Gallup polls show that the American public’s confidence has declined over time.

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Now, just so you won’t think that parliament is always the defender of free speech, here’s a case in point, from the NZ Herald, 17 August 2001:

“The use of opinion polls just before an election could be on the way out. Labour, National, United and the Alliance say they will back a bill from New Zealand First leader Winston Peters banning the polls. Mr Peters claims opinion polls in the month before an election can severely distort election results. He claims New Zealand First suffered from the public concentrating on his party's poll ratings in the days before the election, rather than on the issues. Act and the Greens oppose the bill.”

Obviously that bill didn’t pass, and there were good reasons why not, including concerns about censorship. See also this piece by Audrey Young on the topic.

At that time, I was involved with the former Assoc. of University Staff (AUS), in which some suggested publicly supporting Mr Peters’ bill. In the end, AUS didn’t support it. Unlike the TEU, AUS was a consistent defender of academic freedom, and so couldn’t countenance such restrictions on public information or press freedom.

But it goes to show how easily, with good intentions, our freedoms can begin to be traded off against other, often spurious, ideas. I say “spurious” in this case, as there’s no good evidence that opinion polls have decisive influences on election outcomes, and indeed they may give many voters more motivation to vote.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

As a final tidbit, I can’t overlook news of Donald Trump suing pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling firm, The Des Moines Register newspaper and its parent company Gannett for a pre-election poll in Iowa. It predicted a win for Harris in that state, but turned out to be wildly inaccurate. Trump won by 13 points in Iowa, and he now claims that Selzer’s poll created “a false narrative”. Certainly, CNN and RNZ loved that poll result and pushed it as click-bait for wishful thinkers on the left. I doubt that Trump will win in court, but the law suit itself is retribution.

I’m 100% sure that Mr Peters would never sue a pollster for underestimating his party’s support days before an election.