Free speech for me but not for thee

Tuesday February 7, 2012

Dennis Hayes argues that we must defend free speech for those whose views we hate too

Dr Terri Ginsberg and her supporters believe she was victimised because of her views about Israel’s occupation of Palestine expressed at a film showing. She fell from being a rising star in the academic firmament of North Carolina State University (NCSU) to a falling star. She was denied even an interview for a tenure-track position.

Her supporters have followed a legal route but her case was summarily rejected by NCSU and two courts. They want a jury to decide her fate so that the ‘faculty at NCSU and elsewhere may finally exercise their legal right to academic speech on the topic of Palestine/Israel and, as such, to their full human rights as scholars, teachers, and intellectuals in the academic community.’

No academic could disagree with the aim but the legal route to redress is almost always futile. It shows a naïve faith in the legal system and avoids the more complex issue of building a defence of free speech and academic freedom. The lack of a responsive public audience for appeals to free speech and, in academia, the lack of a responsive audience in the fraternity, inclines campaigners towards legal and quasi legal short cuts. The tactic Ginsberg’s campaign has recently adopted is petitioning, and they are hoping to present a petition to the NC Supreme Court today – the 7th February. The petition is worthy of support but it would be better if it were part of a broader campaign for academic freedom.

That there is no such campaign is not just because of the lack of a receptive public. Many of those who are campaigning for Ginsberg, and perhaps Ginsberg herself, are themselves academic boycotters. For political reasons, many of them support calls for various academic boycotts of Israeli academics or academic institutions unless those academics or institutions commit themselves to opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. In other words, they don’t believe in academic freedom either.

It follows that you won’t find them defending the free speech or academic freedom of Zionists. Because of the seeming rightness or moral superiority of their cause, or the powerful position of their opponents to dominate speech, their motto is ‘free speech for me but not for thee’. This approach is not a defence of free speech but a defence of preferential speech. Academic freedom for those who agree with position X, Y or Z, whether it’s the dangers of climate change, the promotion of multiculturalism, or Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, is not academic freedom, it’s preferential freedom. Free speech is an absolute. It cannot mean free speech only for views you agree with. Basing any argument on free speech or academic freedom means that you are referring to absolute principles and these cannot be qualified without contradiction. Freedom to expresses acceptable views is not free speech.

There follows a consequence that those who defend preferential free speech or academic freedom fail to see. If you do not defend the free speech or academic freedom of those whose views you disagree with or hate, you cannot without self-contradiction use the defence of free speech or the defence of academic freedom when your own freedoms are under attack. Others can defend your academic freedom but supporters of preferential free speech and preferential academic freedom cannot defend their ‘right’ to free speech or academic freedom.

The consequence of their defence of ‘free speech for me but not for thee’ is therefore ‘free speech not for me!’

Dennis Hayes is the Director of Academics For Academic Freedom (AFAF)