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Comment on this article AYA Spring Assembly: Considering Free Speech
At the AYA Assembly this spring, delegates learned how a college founded on the principle of religious intolerance became a bastion of free expression. Summer 2002
by Bruce Fellman After a year during which AYA assemblies were designed around celebrating the Tercentennial, d elegates returned to business on April 26 and 27. The theme of Assembly 60 was “Free Speech, Free Expression, and Free Inquiry at Yale,” and for two days, alumni representatives discussed presentations from faculty, administrators, and students about the state of what many consider the fundamental principle on which a university is based. Assembly chair Mark E. Greenwold '66, chief counsel for the tobacco settlement at the National Association of Attorneys General, noted that Yale’s policy on free speech dates from January 8, 1975 and the “Report of the Committee on the Freedom of Expression at Yale.” This document, now known as the Woodward Report (after its chair, Sterling Professor of History C. Vann Woodward), established the current ground rules.
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The theme was “Free Speech, Free Expression, and Free Inquiry at Yale.”
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The Report defined a university as a place whose primary function is to “discover and disseminate knowledge by means of research and teaching.” To do so, “it may sometimes be necessary in a university for civility and mutual respect to be superseded by the need to guarantee free expression,” the Report continued. “The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” But did the Woodward Committee get it right? “If you define the function of the university, for example, as bringing talented people from diverse backgrounds together and teaching them to live in harmony, or as transmitting a set of universal truths, or training leaders for the next generation, you might well reach a different conclusion about the importance of free expression relative to other important values,” said Greenwold. In fact, Yale’s founders had a profoundly different idea in mind when they established the Collegiate School in 1701. Ironically, the institution now known for its staunch defense of First Amendment rights was founded on the “bedrock of religious intolerance,” said Gaddis Smith, the Larned Professor Emeritus of History. Smith explained that the College began as an antidote to what many 17th-century clerics felt was a dangerous tilt at Harvard toward free thinking. To counter this, Yale required its students to adhere to a strict Puritanism that allowed no dissent. Anyone with the temerity to “Question Authority” was dismissed, and vestiges of this attitude continued well into this century. But battle-tested soldiers returning from World War II, civil rights and Vietnam war protesters, coeducation, and other factors would help Yale learn to tolerate dissent and then, through the Woodward Report, codify the right to disagree. While that right remains paramount, delegates had opportunities to see the friction that can develop when free expression collides with a diversity of community values. In fact, it was just such a collision several years ago that led to this spring’s Assembly. In September 1999, a group of freshman counselors, objecting to an article in Light and Truth, removed copies of the magazine from student mailboxes. The counselors were reprimanded, but members of the Class of 1937 felt that the punishment was inadequate. There would be other instances of students dealing with “objectionable” material by getting rid of it, and as a way to address alumni concerns from right, left, and center, the AYA made free expression the topic of the first post-Tercentennial assembly. In addition to Gaddis Smith’s history lesson, which included references to more recent protests over the appearances of George Wallace, William Westmoreland, and William Shockley at the University, delegates heard an overview of the current state of free speech affairs from Yale College dean Richard Brodhead. “In general, people feel free to pipe up and articulate their convictions,” said Brodhead. And if anyone, even veterans of the protest-filled 1960s, was inclined to dismiss today’s students as apathetic, an Assembly forum called “Free Speech in Action” showed that Yale remains a hotbed of passionate advocacy. The forum, an attempt to replicate the atmosphere of London’s Hyde Park in the Lee Amphitheater Concourse, featured student groups of every political, social, religious, and sexual orientation. People exchanged views on everything from the Women’s Center to the environment to the practice of Falun Gong. But there was a distinct absence of stridency, and this left one delegate shaking his head. “They’re so, well, polite, “ he said. Indeed, a number of Assembly sessions dealt with an irony: a growing trend towards self-censorship (see page 32) in many sections of the University. Panel discussions on student publications and activism showed that there is ample opportunity to make one’s views known in print and turn advocacy into action, but in a panel titled “Unspoken Words: Tacit Constraints on Free Expression at Yale,” a group of graduating seniors, all of whom had been freshman counselors, talked about what didn’t get said. In some cases, conformity is the root cause of the constraint. “When you’re talking in the dining hall, it’s hard to be anything other than a liberal,” said Olivia Wang '02. In addition to not voicing opinions with a Republican slant, students tend to shy away from the subjects of race, religion, and certain aspects of sexuality. And while some of this comes from sensitivity, there are also problems with language. “I’m very confused about what words I should use,” said Laura Feiveson '02. “People don’t know how to talk about things.” The tendency, the panelists said, is to “compartmentalize disagreement”—to avoid it at the dinner table in favor of the relative safety of the classroom. But even there, delegates learned at discussions led by faculty, speech is not entirely free. Hazel Carby, chair of African American studies, talked about how junior faculty, particularly those of color, feel constrained by both academic culture and their own desire to advance. Robert Levine, a bioethicist and professor of medicine, discussed the implications of collaborative research efforts between the University and industry and its effect on the ability to freely exchange ideas. And in a look back at a notorious experiment that took place at Yale, psychology chair Peter Salovey examined the matter of research questions that can no longer be asked. In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram, in an investigation of the power of authority, learned how far people would go in administering a series of increasingly powerful electric shocks to subjects. Because there was no attempt at truly informed consent—those receiving the shocks were actors, but the people at the controls weren’t told this—such an experiment would never pass muster with today’s institutional review boards. But these safeguards, however worthwhile, have a cost. “There’s a tension between the need to protect human subjects and free scientific inquiry,” said Salovey. Resolving this tension requires a delicate balancing act, but President Levin told delegates that despite all the challenges explored at the Assembly, “free speech is certainly alive and well on our campus.” At no time was this more obvious than in the way the University responded to September 11 by setting up what the President called “a free space for discussion that was inspirational in its open-mindedness. We encouraged the expression of the widest range of views,” he said. “That’s what Yale is all about.”  |
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