Even as free speech on college campuses has attracted congressional attention, UC Davis is developing a blueprint of sorts for how to provide Constitutional rights while not condoning hate or violence.
Earlier this year, UC Davis Interim Chancellor Ralph Hexter convened a working group composed of faculty, staff and students to consider how the campus can ensure freedom of expression, personal safety, and security of campus facilities while promoting an environment where all members of the community feel safe, valued, respected and heard.
The group established an online submission form for comments, ideas and opinions, including the option to submit anonymously. Their final recommendations were delivered to Hexter, offering a blueprint to allowing free expression while maintaining safety.
“Our obligation to uphold First Amendment freedoms is essential in our democracy and on our campus,” Hexter said. “While all expression is subject to time, place and manner restrictions, it cannot include silencing or blocking speakers, even if we disagree with what is being said. I appreciate the commitment demonstrated by the working group to gather feedback from a wide range of our campus community.”
Among the group’s recommendations, developed with input from the campus community, is a set of education events including interactive town halls and workshops; establishment and enforcement of specific disciplinary rules for those who disrupt campus events; increased coordination with the city of Davis and other law enforcement agencies in designing safety plans to ensure physical safety of participants; and creation of a standing Freedom of Expression Committee to engage the campus community in dialogue on freedom of expression issues.
Kevin Johnson, dean of the School of Law and chairman of the working group, added, “This is a complex issue that our society at large will continue to grapple with for some time.
“These findings are an important and necessary first step to address issues that arise on our campus and to ensure that the fundamental rights of each member of the community are supported,” Johnson added.
Hexter has asked UC Davis campus counsel to review the recommendations to determine any changes that may be necessary to campus policy in order to implement the recommendations.
The UCD blueprint announcement comes after a Senate panel questioned students, academics and lawyers after the abrupt cancellation of several high-profile speeches from California to Texas.
Students and academics insisted the golden rule is for the speech to go on as long as violence can be prevented, dismissing the idea of intolerance.
The hearing came after a speech by conservative commentator Ann Coulter at UC Berkeley was canceled amid fears of violent student protests. More recently, a commencement address by the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, was canceled after opposition from students at a historically black university.
UC Davis has had its share of interrupted speeches, most recently in February when right right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos’s speech was canceled Yiannopoulos also tried to speak at UC Berkeley, where that speech was also canceled, but not before fires were started and people were hurt in a demonstration that involved police.
There was also a protest at UCD but no violence resulted.
Eugene Volokh, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, said that a “heckler’s veto” should not be allowed.
“I think the answer is to make sure they don’t create a disturbance and to threaten them with punishment, meaningful punishment, if they do create a disturbance,” Volokh said. “If thugs learn that all they need to do in order to suppress speech is to threaten violence, then there will be more such threats.”
But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the universities can’t always deal with the fallout when anarchists and others respond to the appearance of a speaker they oppose. She said the biggest threat of violence often comes from people who don’t attend the university.
“You don’t think we learned a lesson at Kent State way back when?” Feinstein said at one point.
In 1970, National Guardsmen opened fire on protesters of the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Ohio. Four students died and nine others were wounded.
