- Hi, I'm Kirk Swenson here at Ideas Fest in Asheville, North Carolina.

In this next program, we talk about freedom of expression on college campuses and examining the inherent rights and responsibilities that come with it.

Hear from legal experts and educational leaders in this panel discussion.

- [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

- As you all know, this is a crucible moment for American higher education.

The worst pandemic in more than a century created a precipitous drop in enrollment at colleges and universities across the country.

Colleges and universities pivoted rapidly in the transition to remote and online learning, but in the process we saw what was unveiled was the expansiveness of the digital divide and that food and shelter insecurities experienced by so many students at all types of campuses across the country.

At the same time, we saw skyrocketing mental health issues and moral distress among campus leaders, which has in some instances morphed into moral injury, where leaders feel like they're being coerced into making decisions they believe are unethical, but they feel they have no choice.

We have seen the sharpest decline in public confidence in higher education that we have ever seen.

In 2017, 55% of the public believed that higher education was headed in the right direction.

There was still a sense that it could serve as a foundation for the American dream.

Now, only 36% of the public believes that higher education is headed in the right direction.

At the same time, students and parents are worried about whether college is worth the investment.

And we have seen concerns that range from the notion that higher education is too expensive, it's too difficult to access, it doesn't teach students 21st century skills to the notion, as George Will puts it, that college campuses are bastions of liberal progressivism with faculty brainwashing the next generation of snowflakes who will melt at the slightest abrasion of their sensibilities.

So George Will's perspective reflects what has become the politicization of higher education.

The culture wars burgeoning polarization and partisanship have led to educational gag orders, restricting free speech on campuses, intrusion into who gets hired, who gets tenured, what can be taught, who can teach it, how it's taught.

And so there's widespread concern over that.

And in a year last year, that began with an attack in Florida on African-American history as an advanced placement course, and the legitimacy of that culminated in a Supreme Court decision that eliminated the use of race-based admission on college campuses.

Upending 50 years of precedent culminated in three presidents, the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn being brought on the hill to appear before the Congressional Committee on Education and the Workforce.

And they were asked to atone for what the committee viewed as a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as inevitably sliding into antisemitism.

So since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, we have seen campus protests and we have seen speech on the part of administrators, faculty, students, and staff that has created the need to steer a course between American Higher Education's purpose, which is to educate for democracy, which requires the free exchange of ideas and the unfettered pursuit of the truth, and to balance that with the need to safeguard campus communities and ensure that our campuses are places of welcome and belonging for all students.

And so this is the challenge that we're gonna be talking about today, and I couldn't be more thrilled than to have my two wonderful colleagues with us.

Will Creeley, is the legal director at Fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Gina Lee-Olukoya, is the Director of Civic-- - Life.

- Life, at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

And they are experts in this area.

So we're gonna turn it over to them.

And Will, I'm gonna start with you.

What did we learn from this past year?

- Oh boy, Lynn, how much time do we have?

This is my first question.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for the opportunity of this conversation.

It's a joy to be here with you and Gina.

We learned a lot.

I think one thing I was remarking to folks before we got on stage here, is that you have to be an optimist to do this work.

As you so eloquently described for us the challenges facing American higher education are serious.

They are to coin a phrase, severe, pervasive, they are everywhere, and they are unrelenting.

We are bracing ourselves, even given the past semester, we're bracing ourselves for an even more climactic fall.

By the way, there's a presidential election going on, right?

So if you needed it, if you needed anything else, the stakes will be high.

Just to kind of pick up on one of the many threads we have to follow here in our two brief time, but we'll make the most of it.

Last week, I had the pleasure of listening to my colleague Greg Greubel, who's an attorney at Fire, where I work arguing alongside Leah Watson, from the ACLU in our First Amendment Challenge to the Stop WOKE Act in Florida.

This is a pernicious piece of legislation that bans the discussion, the advancement, the espousing of eight topics.

It's kind of one of these classic, newly classic divisive concept bills that reaches the legislative arm beyond just setting curricular decisions into the classroom to say, teachers, you can't discuss these ideas or more accurately, you can't endorse them.

You can criticize them all you want, but you can't endorse them.

I'm a First Amendment attorney, and the jargon, the term of art is viewpoint discrimination.

So now we see viewpoint discrimination being passed into legislation and we're optimistic about our challenge.

We thought Greg did a fantastic job before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

But, the very fact that we're having these arguments in federal court some 70 years after the Supreme Court made clear that our college classrooms are uniquely the marketplace of ideas that we learn from exposure to a multitude of tongues to quote the court that we cannot have a pall of orthodoxy descend upon our college classrooms otherwise, and this is again, quoting the court, our civilization will stagnate and die.

That's from the 1950s.

That was no bastion of progressivism.

But that, that's 1957 just after Joseph McCarthy.

So I guess I'll leave it here.

What's old is new again, no free speech battle is ever permanently won or permanently lost.

The object of the work that we do is to stay as grounded as possible, whether these threats to speech are coming from the left, the right, or congress or the local town council, just to kind of keep your eyes on protecting as wide of expressive rights as possible.

And I'll stop there.

- Yeah.

The point that you made is so important.

The Sweezy case that you're referencing made clear that institutional autonomy and freedom of expression on college campuses is critical, not only for a thriving university system, but for democracy and national security itself.

So that's, thank you.

Gina, what do you think we've learned?

- What have we learned this year?

You know, somewhat still asking that question of myself and of my colleagues on my campus, my colleagues across the country who work directly with students.

What have we learned?

You know, I feel like the strength of me is I'm a learner.

I like to absorb the information and therefore share.

So what I have learned is that it's a complicated situation on college campuses, and we often forget the legacies that have happened previously.

I think that what we've learned is that there are external factors that we know what they are, but it's difficult for administrators to claim what they are and therefore to share with our students.

And then I think what we have also learned is that our students are really empowered.

Our students see the larger picture.

Our students are trying to voice their dissent.

They're trying to voice their concern in a variety of different ways.

And we need to continue to cultivate that.

We have not done, in my opinion, a very good job of cultivating that with our students, primarily because I think we're concerned about those external factors that honestly, in my world, normally I don't think about those things.

I sometimes I interact with our board of trustees, interact with our legislators, they have concerns about things.

My department works around like civic learning and democratic engagement.

I've been at the institution for a while.

And so there's, you know, we'll interact different times.

So I never really kinda assume that these legislators are interacting with me for like bad intentions.

I never assume that what they're looking for is for me to try to write the ship with the students as they perceive to be a little bit too activated or not necessarily understanding the complexities of the issues.

So I've learned over this year, the issues are complicated.

There are these external factors that we don't wanna name and claim.

Our administrators feel threatened or concerned.

And I think sometimes are just decisions of some of our administrators and our senior leaders have been complicated to say it nicely.

I'm trying to find really nice words to-- - That's a good one.

- I know.

I'm trying to find really nice words to say that I think that our administrators on our campuses and our faculty who are supporting the student experience know what the right thing is, but find it challenging to do.

And this year I found myself sharing with folks who I thought would know better, like, remember the lesson of, I wasn't around then, but remember that I read and consumed the lessons of Kent State.

- Mmmh yeah.

- That is primary.

And so going into every discussion, it's trying to remind those folks who should know better.

That is a lesson.

- Right.

- And it seems as if we keep forgetting that and others along the way because of these external influences.

And I think for those of us on the ground who are working with students to try to teach them and cultivate their experience through the curricular and co-curricular spaces find it challenging because we know better, we're hoping that others know better too.

Because actually when you know better, you do better.

That old phrase that my father used to say.

But we're not really doing better.

And that's concerning.

And so what I've learned is that I need to be concerned because I'm not really sure what will be moving forward.

- Mmmh.

- Yeah.

It's such an important message to approach these issues with a sense of good faith.

And there was an article in the "Chronicle of Higher Education" after the December 5th hearings on the hill and it was by Daniel Drezner entitled "You Could Not Pay Me Enough to Be a College President".

- That's right.

- And of course, says it all.

But the issue is that there are these multiple constituencies.

They often have unconditional non-negotiable demands that are at odds with one another.

So no matter what you do, and now the weaponization of donations, it's no wonder there's moral distress and despair.

- Yes.

- Well, you did a brilliant piece in the Atlantic a few months ago.

And you talked about how, despite the fact that campus leaders, legislators claim to be championing free expression, the rhetoric doesn't much the reality.

- That's right.

- Tell us more about that article.

- Yeah, well, I thank you for the kind words.

I wrote that article on Take Your Kids to School Day.

I'm sorry, take Your Kids to Work Day.

They were not at school.

There was my work.

So I had me and my colleagues in the office, there're about 15 kids, grades eight through no grade at all 'cause they're about six months old in the office.

And I had my two kids kind of at my feet that was happening in front of me.

The split screen was that the night before Governor Ken Paxton in, pardon me, Greg Abbott, I'm thinking I'm confusing the Attorney General.

Greg Abbott in Texas had ordered the Department of Public Services to come in looking like something outta my son's Star Wars movies.

You know, it looked like Storm Troopers coming into UT Austin.

And really, the visuals were striking and dismaying and break up the peaceful protests.

There had not been an encampment.

There had been discussions of an encampment, but it had not happened yet.

And all of a sudden, here comes this disproportionate show of force and it was a chilling show of force.

And to your question, Lynn, I'm old enough to remember 2019 when the same governor was signing into law a Campus Free Speech Act, saying that on this campus, no idea is too offensive, We will challenge the unchangeable.

This is uniquely the place.

And he was right about that.

For the record, this is uniquely the place where we can have these debates and discussions just like we're doing here today at UNC Asheville.

So the hypocrisy to name it, because there is a word for it, and it fits of saying just five years prior that this is the place where we have these discussions.

But wait a second, when the political winds start blowing a different way, ah, now, the story changes and the incentives change, the political incentives change, and all of a sudden campus free speech doesn't look quite as a promising in practice as it did when you were at the signing ceremony.

So that was deeply disappointing.

Not to mention Representative Elise Stefanik, who was a member of the the House Free Speech Caucus or House Campus Free Speech Caucus.

And there she is doing her best Joe McCarthy impression, and bullying college presidents on the stump.

Now, those college presidents, I think do have significant free speech failures to answer for.

My organization has made that clear over the years.

But the answers that those college presidents gave were essentially legally correct.

They may have been inartfully delivered.

But the truth is, as any lawyer will tell you, when it comes to whether speech in a given phrase is protected, the answer really is, it depends.

So adjusted to your point, it's been disappointing, perhaps unsurprising, but disappointing to see folks claim the mantle of free speech when it's convenient and abandon it as quickly as they can.

- Yeah.

- When the poll numbers, or political incentives are arrayed differently.

Again, that's the challenge is trying to stay in the same place.

- Yeah, I mean, certainly much of the hearings were performative, and that was indicated by the fact that it became a cold open in a Saturday Night Live skit.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- Were even the president's most bellaco inquisitors were viewed as somehow doing better than the presidents themselves.

But despite the performative nature, it's something we need to take seriously because it does pose an existential threat to higher education as we know it.

- I think I would follow up to say too, that I think that's what's causing, I mean, our students are confused.

Our students are leaning into the confusion, and we need to clarify a few things for them.

But, students do understand that they do have First Amendment Rights.

They want those rights to continue.

They value them.

They actually do want the marketplace of free ideas and speech to be present around them.

And so then when you're on a campus such as the University of Texas, and you're demonstrating the fundamental value that the institution said that it was about and that the governor has espoused.

And now you can't do that.

I think that that's really teaching a lesson to our students as to you really don't have those rights here on this campus.

That what you're learning in the classroom is not really valuable.

And then juxtapose that to what's happening with the whole DEI initiatives as well.

I think there's a conversion there around speech and what we're trying and hopeful that hopeful for our students to live in communities of which are diverse in thoughts, diverse in opinions of which we are teaching them how to critically assess and learn.

But all of those things are being challenged when it doesn't fit the political scope of those who are in charge.

- Yeah.

Gina, I'd like to follow up on that.

Of course not all the critics are outside of academia.

Zeke Emanuel, university of Pennsylvania, professor of bioethics wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times after the campus protest began on Harvard's campus.

And he was particularly concerned about students who were blaming Israel alone for what was happening in Gaza.

And he said, this is an indictment against liberal education.

It has failed our students.

It either has failed to provide them with a moral compass because it is unable to do so, or unwilling to do so, and there is no humanistic identification among students.

How do you respond to that?

Are we teaching our students to engage in humanistic identification, to speak across differences?

And if not, how do we do that?

- I think that we are, on some level, I do agree that we're failing our students because I do think that moments such as this, we often miss the moment.

I think that we're often missing the moment because for many of us on our campuses, we're just hoping that we can just get through.

That this is just a moment in time.

And the new semester orientation is starting right now on many campuses.

And so we're happy about that.

And then as soon we'll have a new class in.

I do think that we're failing our students to teach them how to critically assess and to critically think and to understand the differences between a right and wrong sometimes.

We often, when we look at our students who are going through our conduct system, I'm gonna pick on those students.

For example, the goal of our conduct system is accountability and to teach moral issues and have moral clarity to have ethics.

But we often fail them there too, because we don't challenge the perspectives that maybe others would have.

And we also I think we're failing our students because we're not creating the community and the systems for them to actually really understand the complexities of issues.

And to be able to grapple with your own moral reasoning with these more challenging issues.

We do not do very well in presenting the historical arguments and historical facts about what is happening.

And so therefore, our students are kind of blindly going, and I think blindly going into situations and not necessarily understanding the complexities of all the issues, because we're not talking about them on our campuses.

And we're not using that as a moment to teach a moment for clarity, a moral for an opportunity for accountability.

And so I think that we are failing, but we have opportunity.

So I'm optimistic the words that describe me are ever hopeful.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- And I work in a complex institution and I've been there for a while, and every year I'm frustrated, I'm frustrated this year, but I'll walk into the new year and say, okay, we can do something about this.

We can continue to chip, chip away.

We do have a, for many campuses we are failing.

But there are really good examples of campuses that are allowing students to learn in the moment.

We are using the campus issues as the laboratory so that when they leave and they go out to be global learners and leaders they're able to take these opportunities with them to reshape.

There are really good examples, but I think that those really good examples, whether it be at the University of Chicago or James Madison, these are really some good examples get lost in the moment too, and we also are not learning from them.

So I think that we are failing, but we have the opportunity to rewrite the ship.

So to speak, we have an opportunity to use this moment in time as a learning opportunity if we so desire.

But I think that we have to go into this as using all of the aspects of it, and be really clear with our campus community about all the extenuating factors that are at play here.

When we talk about moral reasoning, we want our students to be able to grapple with that between the rights and the wrong, but we also want them to be able to understand the complexities of the issue.

It is not as simple as we think it is.

It's not just X or Y.

It's not, why can't we just all get along.

We have to understand the history.

We have to understand from which we came from, so that we can learn and continue to create the systems for our students to grow.

And we as administrators need to also grapple with the conversation, like, what do we want them to learn?

And why?

And why is that valuable?

Because higher education is an equalizer.

It's a part of a democratic society, and we know that.

So therefore we must do better in that space.

- Yes, Will, I'm gonna ask you about the sense of optimism and hope, the moral resilience that's necessary, but also the need to avoid toxic positivity.

We need to face reality.

So Inside Higher Ed, every year does a survey of college presidents, and the latest survey showed that 55% of college presidents are deeply worried about what the upcoming election will mean in terms of campus climate.

But they're also concerned about what it will mean in terms of speaking across differences.

- Yeah.

- So how should we prepare for this fall?

- Oh, it's a great question.

I think Gina's answer is a good one.

I will tell you what we're doing at Fire, just and perhaps that's of some use.

First of all, I share Drezner characterization who would wanna be university president, and I share the concerns of that 55% in the IAG article.

But as my colleague, a brilliant Angel Eduardo, who you folks saw at the beginning of the conference, knows very well working as a senior writer at Fire, our message this year, and it's taking advantage of the opportunity that you see is back to basics, right?

It's okay, it's a good start.

When leaders say we believe in free speech, great.

But it also can become just a platitude very quickly, and then it becomes toxic as I think we could argue, Governor Abbott's hypocrisy demonstrates, right?

It's one thing to say it's nothing to do it.

The third step, and this is where colleges are uniquely equipped to achieve better outcomes, is to educate why we believe in free speech.

It's, you know, what are we doing here?

Angel and I, and all of our colleagues of Fire committed to this year getting back to basics.

That was the one question we kept getting asked in the wake of the Hamas attack.

And everything that ensued is, what's the line between harassment and free speech?

What's the line between incitement and free speech?

Why do we draw the line where we do?

Why is free speech good?

Free speech oftentimes feels like hell.

You know, you wanna shut that person up.

I always tell my kids and my wife, one of the oldest human impulses is to censor other people.

As long as people have been talking to each other, they've been trying to shut each other up.

So how do we achieve this, kind of, I would argue, world historical evolutionary accomplishment of allowing people to have different ideas about God, about what is good and true about how to live next to one another.

You know, my neighbor and I, may pray to different gods or not pray at all.

It is a remarkable achievement in the history of humanity that we can live next to each other in peace.

So how do we preserve that and why is that a good thing?

And colleges can do that work to tell students as they come up here, because students before they arrive on campus have been marinating for 18 years in our hyperpolarized, toxic media environment where if you're interested in politics be prepared to get your head battered down with a two by four rhetorically speaking hopefully, as soon as you open your mouth by somebody on the other side, right?

We are all too familiar with bumper stickers and red and blue and my team and your team, and it's turned into this kind of blood sport, this gladiatorial contest that gets pretty boring pretty quickly.

Colleges can do the harder work.

Why do we have the right to say, I think the governor's an idiot, or I think the governor's great.

Why is that important?

What does that represent?

What do we gain from it?

That's the work we're trying to do this year at Fire, to remind folks of why we have these protections in the first place, even though sometimes they hurt, even though sometimes they expose us to speech that's deeply offensive.

What's the value in that?

I tell our undergraduate interns who are the smartest people in the world by the way and they'll tell you about it too.

I tell them that you need to read people with whom you disagree.

That's a good start.

Not to check a box or not to just get some kind of basic understanding, but really the old line about he who knows only his own side of the argument knows little of that.

That is still true.

You need to be able to talk.

It may not change your mind, but you will have a better understanding of your own argument and commitments by the exposure to it.

So, just preserving this fragile, legal and moral framework that we have inherited here, and keeping First Amendment precedent where it is, I'm very nervous about the Supreme Court, which is half an hour is about to drop some opinions.

So we'll see.

But keeping things in more or less good shape for the preservation of our democracy, for the ability of our students to exchange ideas.

That is job one.

And it starts with explaining why we're doing this, right?

Not just receive wisdom, but it has a practical life affirming democratically essential purpose.

That's job one for us.

- Thank you, Gina.

So inside Higher Ed, also reported recently on Lumina Foundation study that they've done on why students are not attending college or dropping out of college.

And for the first time that this study has been done, mental health issues, anxiety and belonging uncertainty have surpassed financial considerations for why people are not attending college or dropping out of college.

Belonging uncertainty is a cognitive bandwidth stealer, where people's capacity to learn is diminished as a result of a lack of a sense of belonging.

So how do we address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and allow for free expression in a way that educates students about when speech crosses the line?

And I'll ask both of you to respond to this, Gina.

- Yeah, so it's interesting because I do think that our students now, when we're talking about free speech on campus, students aren't eager to have free speech zones.

You know, the data tells us that, the Knight Foundation's 2020 report, and then soon we'll be releasing an updated report to that as well, pretty consistent with the fact that students do appreciate the fact that there's diversity of ideas and thoughts and conversations on their campuses.

And then they do appreciate that campuses are trying to protect them.

But students also have said that they don't necessarily need protection from conversation.

So they, you know, you have the wicked person that folks don't like come to campus.

And, you know, folks get all concerned about that and students may protest or demonstrate against that, and then faculty may be a part of it to say, we don't really need this speech on campus.

It's harmful.

And, but students really don't necessarily need advocates to say this speech is harmful.

They know that the speech is not accurate.

They know it could be harmful, but not necessarily physically harmful to them.

The challenge though, is that trying to define where speech crosses the line from being speech to being speech that's gonna be harmful to the student, because ideas itself are not harmful, you know, and I think that our job always, as administrators is to protect the physical bodies of our students, but the minds of a student, I'm not here to protect your intellectual capacity because you need to engage with it.

So you learn and you understand that's what college is for.

There's a sense of belonging, I think that if you look at that particular data from that study, and then if you look at even the data, the Harvard Youth Poll, the students who are more likely to believe that their sense of belongings is in jeopardy are like, are marginalized students, students of color, LGBTQI, students are, and they've talked about how the climate is impacting their sense of belonging.

And so we do understand that and we know that they feel as if these issues are impacting their own identity, they're impacting their sense of belonging in their own community.

And so I think that what we end up doing is, and we have, and we continue to do this, is support those students with our programmatic experiences and also within the classroom.

But I think that we also have to recognize that sense of belonging is about community.

And sense of belonging too is about shared experiences and the sense of belonging that our minoritized students, I think are seeking is that community to help and support them in their experiences and also allow them to share and reflect.

It's not as if I think that our students don't want those opportunities on campus, those speech opportunities are which they might find negative.

I'm thinking of an example on my campus.

We had Jeff Sessions on my campus and I was pretty excited to work with our college republicans to navigate that because they, it was right after Covid.

- Yep.

- Initially he wanted to come and we were like, we have Covid protocols.

And we went back and forth.

It was an exciting moment to see our college republicans kind of get together and do what we want students to do, build collaborations, do program planning, I mean, all of those things, right?

And then there was a bunch of students who were really angry about him coming to campus and he's racist.

This and this, even Coretta Scott King didn't like him.

Why would he come to our campus?

But in the opportunity of our students who were concerned and angry about him coming, created community for those students.

And I think ultimately that's what they need.

And what they want is the opportunity for the community to continue.

But they want the opportunity for their opinions to be heard and to be reflected on.

So therefore they can provide the counter conversation to that, not to get rid of it, but the counter to that.

But I worry, so I'll end with this.

I worry that not every campus appreciates the fact that belonging is necessary for success and that belonging is necessary for success.

And that students, particularly like students of color and other marginalized students, need a sense of belonging to be successful.

It's the one that, and some others, but it's the top thing that says to a student you will be successful if you have a great sense of belonging and a greater connection to the community.

We have some campuses who are abandoning this concept of belonging for differences, for example.

Or diversity and equity is being challenged or repealed or eliminated.

Cultural centers are being shuttered.

When you shutter a cultural centers for what students have, that's where they've gone to, have created a sense of belonging.

Studies have showed cultural centers for students of marginalized community helps them to be successful because they are connected to that community.

We're getting rid of them because of our anti DEI push means therefore that we'll have less of that for them and they'll feel that they're not supported.

And then those other, I think contributing factors to them not being there and their success and their success will continue to see, - Right, of all of those issues, racism, sexism, homophobia, food and shelter and security belonging uncertainty.

- Yes.

- Top to them all.

- It's a top one.

- In terms of why students were dropping out.

- Exactly.

- Is very important.

- And that's a key to success.

And we are missing the fundamentals of that.

I think too, because attacks that we just mentioned.

- Yeah, I'm gonna ask you that question, but also add that the presidents who testified before Congress were criticized heavily for the differential application of the rules to which they were appealing and saying, we had to allow this speech, or we wouldn't allow this speech.

- Right.

- So how do they correct their past mistakes?

- Well, it's interesting now to see the momentum gathering for institutional neutrality, which is required a function of state law here in North Carolina.

But in the past two months, we've seen Harvard, Stanford going the same way and other schools will follow.

The idea is that the school itself will not issue statements on positions outside of its ambit.

That if it doesn't have to do with education or the school's values or mission, the school will not release a statement say, regarding most relevantly and most precipitously here, the war in Israel And Gaza.

And that is perhaps one way the school can extract itself from the push and pull of political winds shifting.

We shall see.

With regard to DEI quickly, if I may, fire has been concerned about the practice of requiring applicants, either student applicants or faculty applicants to submit a diversity statement.

Not because we have any argument with diversity, equity inclusion as useful normative values, but because we're worried that in practice they tend to serve as ideological loyalty oaths or tests, right?

Litmus tests to determine a faculty candidate or a student's political valence before admission.

But as you note, they push against DEI has gone far beyond that concern.

And now we're seeing campus centers shuttered.

I think what universities can best do is to provide as open and level of a playing field for voices as possible.

College Republicans get to invite Jeff Sessions, college Democrats get to invite Kamala Harris, you know, let more conversations happen, not less.

The university is the level playing field.

The university is frankly a microcosm of our democratic plural of society, right?

Where you can expect to hear all views, you're gonna hear the itinerant preacher come to campus and tell you're going to hell for wearing a skirt.

You're also gonna hear the students over here protest him.

That's the way America works, right?

And you get to make up your minds.

That's the beauty of it.

The university isn't gonna put its thumb on the scale.

The university isn't gonna say this person's evil.

So we're all gonna protest no matter who that person is, because rapidly we're seeing in red states that, you're either get a red state education or a blue state education.

That freaks me right out.

Again, to go back to my colleague Greg Greubel before the 11th Circuit last week, the council for the State of Florida, Chuck Cooper, who's a veteran of the Reagan administration very accomplished lawyer.

He's arguing in court that what gets taught and what students and faculty are allowed to discuss in classrooms should be contingent upon elections.

That when the election goes another way, students can expect to receive a different education.

That faculty are government mouth pieces.

And that again makes me very nervous.

So I bring that up to answer your question, Lynn.

It's a good one.

I think that universities do best by themselves and by their students and do best at fostering the kind of sense of inclusion and belonging that you're right.

The data tells us that that's what students want by cultivating shared experience and openness of opportunity to speak and be heard.

And frankly, they can impact the basics.

Sometimes the the best response to speech you don't agree with, if you feel that you can morally pass it bias just ignore it.

Given some of these folks attention is exactly what they want.

I remember I wrote a piece, the white supremacist, Richard Spencer, was coming to the University of Florida and I got a call, these are one of the, it's a good call, but it's also a call that's tough.

I got a call from the New York Times, said, we want an opinion piece on what you would say to the students about why Richard Spencer is coming, why he should have the right to speak at University of Florida.

And we want it by five o'clock today.

It was my first day back from paternity leave.

I'm very thankful to have paternity leave, but I had baby Brian, but hammered it out.

And I just, one of the things I said to the students, look, you can make fun of him.

You can protest him.

Don't give him violence 'cause that's exactly what he wants.

But the other thing you can do is ignore him, right?

These folks thrive on the oxygen.

Anyway, that's my long-winded answer.

I could go for a lot longer.

I'll leave it there.

- Yeah.

- There's so much more to say.

But are both about the diversity statements and with an increasingly diverse student population, we've talked about not only diversity of race and gender and income and disability and veteran status and parenting.

You can focus on those issues without it being a political litmus test.

But I wanna focus on the position of neutrality.

And there are many college presidents who believe that that's a bit wrongheaded.

Pat McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, Michael Roth, Wesleyan.

When I was president of Mount Holyoke, our mission was to foster the next generation of women leaders for purposeful engagement in the world.

There was no issue that they didn't expect me to speak out on because they saw it as part of the mission.

So I understand that presidents can't separate their statements from the institution in ways that are effective.

But if we are to meet that responsibility of moral education of our students, how can we refuse to take a moral stance on the most fundamental questions of human existence?

- My argument, and then I know we Fire and ACLU have a different of difference of opinion here.

My belief is that by the university itself or the university's senior leadership arguing beyond the values of the university to reach out into the political sphere, to engage, as you say, a moral leadership, that also sends a message about what isn't celebrated.

There's no way of choosing without also signifying what isn't chosen.

And that itself becomes a political choice.

And I worry that in doing that, we are potentially abdicating our responsibility to let students choose for themselves, right?

To keep the field open for students to make up their own minds.

I remember as an undergrad, I certainly had my ideas of what was right and wrong, and I didn't want or expect the university to tell me about that.

I was at NYU just after, or just during 911.

I was about 300 yards away when the first tower fell.

And I'm thinking about that these days as to what I would've expected of my university.

All I wanted at that moment as I navigated the complicated fallout of what that meant and our, in the United States's response to it.

All I really wanted was stability with regard to my education, my housing, and just give me the basics and I will take care of the rest.

I don't want to raise a generation of future leaders who are re expecting or requiring those above them to kind of set the path forward.

This is where I think I'm, it's an optimistic play, but I'd like to bet on their ability to find it for themselves.

That's my hope.

- Yeah, I mean, some people are concerned that this will have a chilling effect on faculty.

That hasn't been my experience, that faculty feel chilled about saying anything, and I do think that there's a good argument on both sides of this issue.

- Indeed.

- I wanna turn this over to the audience because I'm sure you have many questions and we'd love to get your advice as well.

So, please.

Yes please.

- Hi, Randy Lee from Brave Angels.

I really appreciate this discussion.

I think it's incredibly important.

It does seem like universities had cultivated a posture of institutional neutrality until the summer of 2020 when many of them were pressured to take a stand with regard to the death of George Floyd and encouraging a certain tone for the conversation on campus.

And then in recent months that has come back to haunt them when folks say, well, we are now on the right side of history and you should be supporting us just like you did in the summer of 2020.

And I'm wondering if the folks on the panel believe that there were mistakes that were made during the summer of 2020 in terms of how that conversation was framed and was encouraged by university administrators.

- I'll take a first stab and then I'll briefly, I think that the reaction to the murder of George Floyd sets the expectation from all members of campus that when they suffer a similarly objectively grievous and horrible and tragic event, that the university will respond in kind.

And when the university does not, whether that's what's happening in Darfur or what's happening in Gaza, that becomes a moral failure.

And that is a way to let students down.

And I worry about that.

And that if that is the unintended consequence, which it surely is presuming good faith, that is one that I think councils now in favor of neutrality and providing a space for all students.

I don't doubt the good intentions at all.

I hope we were all there.

We all saw the video.

We will not forget the video.

But that being said, I think there are concrete efforts that are more important than statements.

I think actions go a lot farther than words in these circumstances.

- Yeah, I think that actions are better than statements and words.

I'm not sure that I would agree that what happened at the university's reactions in 2020 was a negative to or complicit to where we are today.

I think that in 2020 campuses have the responsibility to react.

I fundamentally believe that campuses have the opportunity, should have the opportunity to respond when we have critical things happening within our society and our world.

I think that's the purpose for one of the purposes of the institutions.

So we have faculty who are engaging in conversations, and trying to understand the complexities of lots of issues.

And so I think that it's important that campuses do recognize the moment and speak to the moment, can, universities should never quiver to stand or speaking to an issue or to a moment because it's might not be politically impactful or politically helpful or eventually can be concerned about the tides being changed like we are now.

Like there's this backlash to what happened and I'm trying to the backlash because, it was, we also said we saw the videos.

It's certained.

The chancellor on my campus who was our first African American chancellor at the University of Illinois, who grew up a son of a sharecropper had a story to share with folks after that and wanted people to know and wanted the institution to take the opportunity to teach our students through this, like, here are all the complexities of the issue.

So I don't think that I personally, I think that there's a moment for there's a place for universities to make statements.

As we're moving into this era of neutrality and content neutrality and all of these things.

Like, I actually worry that then we're creating, you know, maybe we're gonna create more chilling opportunities in the classroom with our faculty.

And, right now these students, based on the data, we know trust faculty members.

They are concerned sometimes about the things that they say in their classroom, but they overall trust them more than they might trust me.

And so we need to be cognizant of the fact that these classrooms are the space where our students are learning.

So I fundamentally, I am not sure I would say that what happened in 2020.

Now there's this backlash and, therefore we need to embrace this and think differently about what we did 'cause if universities don't speak to challenging moments, then what is the purpose of the academy?

What's the purpose of faculty and staff and scholar practitioners engaging in the conversation of understanding the whys to things if we don't speak to it?

You know, in the sixties when the students went to demonstrate at the lunch counter, you know, they were there, their campus did not want them there.

But because of that we are now able to do so many different things.

We need students, we need this community to speak to it.

Because I do think that there's a place for the academy to serve as the foundation to teach and to learn and to tell educate others.

So I'm not sure I would agree.

- Yeah.

There is of course the report that just came out by AUP suggesting that there's a backlash against racial progress.

- Yes.

- The class progress, but honestly, with respect to particular event.

- And there is this backlash.

I'm curious to understand what the backlash is, but I think maybe it's because we were trying to catch up and then we had all these great things, and folks feel uncomfortable, but yet you still have to explain why you're uncomfortable.

Let's talk about that.

- Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

- Right?

- So I'm gonna take each of the questions and then ask you to answer all of them, you know.

- I'll be quick.

- All right.

- So, yes.

- Let's... - Yeah, thanks.

Sorry, just woke up.

Hey Will, I really appreciate you stating that the things we exclude are just as important as the things we state.

I think that that's really forgotten in a lot of places in life.

One thing I do wanna understand a little bit more is this line between free speech and action.

And it feels like a lot of students don't understand that, right?

So what we see around a lot of campuses, and I saw this a lot at Indiana University this past semester, where students are removing equal access from other students, and those are clear civil rights violations and the campuses are not responding to that.

And I guess this question is for the audience also a little bit like, what is the line that we should accept for removing civil rights accesses for even one student?

How many students need to have that taken away from them before the campus and through law enforcement response to that next?

- Yeah, right.

- Well, there's your answer from the- - Well, I mean, and that's fair and I'll be dumb.

We say none, but we see it all the time.

And I just wonder if the response would be different if there were multiple videos of like Negro students and LGBTQ students being told, you can't come in here, or you have to go in the back door.

- Any blocking of access or egress is a violation.

First Amendment does not protect blocking somebody from entering a physical space.

That was an issue that we saw, for example, Columbia, where students were being asked to declare their kind of political bonafides before they were allowed to enter space that is, per se, hostile environment harassment.

And I think it's, you know, it's clearly not protected, but I could go longer, but I wanna respect- - No, let's try to get all the questions.

So yes, please.

- Okay, as a retired college professor, I am sympathetic to what Will said about the separation of the college doing its duty, but the, not current, but former administration was pushing blatant lies about the stolen election and resulted in the attack on the capitol.

And I feel like that's an attack on democracy.

So I want your perspective on colleges taking a stand on such things as stolen elections and those kinds of things.

- Yes.

That's a great question.

I will say that, just to give you a little bit of the pee behind the curtain, you know, at fire, we had to debate ourselves too, right?

If there is violence against the democratic orderly, peaceful transition of power upon which the whole repeat player system of democracy stands, including our act, you know, our First Amendment rights, does that come within fires?

Ambit should fire say something.

And we did end up putting out a statement.

I think that the, where I think Lynn and I would probably agree, if we say it's the Calvin report does, the university itself is not the critic, it's the host of critics.

It's the platform for critics.

If we agree on that, and we agree that universities should only comment when it's within their values, the rubber will meet the road when we define what those values are.

- Yeah.

- And different institutions will arrive at different conclusions for that.

- All right.

That's exactly right.

We agree on that.

Yes.

- Yeah, I'm a K12 administrator and a doctor of humane education.

So holism is really important to me.

And I'm just curious from a K12 administrator's perspective, the concept of civic engagement, teaching democracy at a young age, engaging in morals and ethics, and then looking at the reflection you shared around mental health and wellbeing and culture of belonging.

You all are doing great things at a university level to help remedy that.

But are we, is there a missed opportunity by not integrating that in K12 education?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes, yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- I mean, I think some states are actually reevaluating that in terms of like K through 12 education when it comes to civic education, the K through 12 level, and how to teach that and why it's important to teach civic engagement, civic leadership and democracy at the basic level.

And I think that what we see often in behaviors of students, so the behaviors I study student behavior, it's more likely that when students experience certain behaviors before they arrive to to campus, that creates a different kind of student.

It allows for the dissidents, the challenge in that dissidence to kind of grow in different ways.

And it allows for their experiences to be evolved.

And so I'm always eager to help plant, so if you will, you know, the curricula in the K through 12 experience so that when they arrive, they're able to kind of grapple differently with the issues.

And so we do know that, we also know that when students come to campus and they've had a negative experience when it comes to differences in belonging, then they're seeking a different space of belonging at the campus.

And then they also wanna create the space which was missing for them.

So whatever is happening to our students at that level, therefore, I think gets transplanted at the higher education level as well.

But we do know that in the US in terms of civic engagement, civic learning, those tools, that information, I think, I mean, we're lowering, so the expectations for students to learn the basics about community, how your community works, how this community over here works, the conversation around differences is also a part of civic engagement.

When we challenge our students to go out into community to serve, not to just to check a box, to get into college, but hopefully to serve, to learn.

That's really what the purpose is for.

Those expectations are changing and I think that our students identification with civic learning is lowering.

And so we have, that's what I think creates some of our challenges once they arrive in our opportunity too.

So I'm saying we should do something there or K through 12 level.

- Yeah, we must partner with K through 12 business industry.

- We must, we must.

- We have to be anti institutions and one good thing that's come out of this debacle is that it is causing us to rethink the fundamental purposes of higher education.

which include these partnerships.

Yes.

- I've heard several times, lessons learned.

Lessons learned from the past.

As a guy from the sixties, is that lesson that the students were right and that history has proven them to be right and got the United States out of Vietnam?

That's my question.

- Yeah.

So let me just get these next two questions and you can answer all three in the remaining 30 seconds.

Yeah.

- So thanks.

[all laughing] So Ideas Fest is a great example of the academy engaging with the community on issues like free speech and homelessness and things like that.

How does that change for an institution that's obviously in crisis like this one that just let go 12 faculty members and is closing four departments and they got this language arts stew that nobody quite knows what... You know, if you're thinking about words, walk this way.

And so obviously the underwriting for an event like this and community engagement has gotta be considered at risk.

So how does it work with an institution that has had a commitment to engagement like this that is, you know, shutting down lots of parts of the body?

- Thanks.

- Thank you.

- And following that question, as we came in for the first day of the conference, there were some students that handed us some very well-written little cards that challenged the administration's decision on how to balance the budget.

Those little cards were well written and did a much better job of influencing the opinion of this gray-haired audience that a crowd five times as large with Science and Champs would have.

Does anybody know the story of how the UNC students got to be so strategy smart?

[all laughing] - All right.

- The previous question about, you know, I guess cutting different departments, et cetera.

I think it's just interesting across the country what campuses are choosing to cut or choosing to neglect or choosing to elevate.

And back to the point, depends on if you're in a blue state or a red state, kind of depends on what kind of education you're gonna get.

It feels like almost, too, that those politics are impacting the fundamental, value-based decisions like strategic cuts or strategic growth across many of these campuses, but that's, you know... - I see we're over time.

I will just say my email address is will@thefire.org and I'll be happy to discuss further.

And thank you so much for the opportunity.

- Yes, for sure.

- Thank you.

You know, the question about Vietnam is quite interesting and one thing that we had talked about is the advent of social media and how everything has changed as a result of that.

Roving strangers with targeted agendas.

So it's a different world.

- We could go all day.

- But yes, please be in touch with us.

Happy to continue the conversation and thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

- Thanks to my panelists.

- We hope you enjoyed this program.

I'm Kirk Swenson.

Thank you for joining us for this year's Asheville Ideas Fest.

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