Fatal Flaw

CHICAGO - The distinguished free speech absolutist, Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, has reviewed the Sawicki Report and found it disappointing. To be more precise, he calls it "lame" and labels it "long and turgid."

The only thing Coyne likes about the report is it dropped the suggestion floated earlier by Jana Sawicki at Inside Higher Education that each student group should have a faculty adviser who would "...talk with the club members about whether they'd thought through how the speaker's views would affect their peers."

Ultimately, Coyne asserts it is impossible to combine freedom of speech with inclusion and diversity.
Setting an example of simplicity and grace, Coyne introduces his article with a short and easy to understand summary of the Sawicki Report and its most significant and fatal flaw. "The committee’s statement does not constitute a policy," he writes. "...it’s a farrago of good intentions and desires to balance free speech with diversity and inclusion. But it offers no guidelines about what speech is to be seen as “hate speech” that threatens “dignitary safety” and therefore subject to institutional action."

Fans of Ephblog will note that Jerry Coyne quotes liberally from my recent Ephblog article accessing the Sawicki Report. As you may know, Jerry Coyne is a prominent "New Atheist" along with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Reportedly, Coyne's Why Evolution is True blogsite has over 50,000 e-mail subscribers.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

The College Fix

 Report this morning and highlighted the reactions of those of us who were hoping Williams College would adopt the free speech absolutism of the Chicago Principles including Jerry Coyne, Luana Majora and me.

Ethan Berman, a student at the University of Texas-Austin, criticizes the Sawicki Report saying "...this ad hoc committee on 'Inquiry and Inclusion' instead gave the administration plenty of loopholes to regulate both student and faculty speech, including a 'feedback' protocol that resembles a community-wide heckler’s veto."

The article favorably quotes the pessimistic views of Jerry Coyne, a top leader of the New Atheist movement, who asserts it is impossible to reconcile freedom of speech and inclusiveness, and silly to think the Sawicki Report will fix things. “If Mandel and the committee thinks that this policy will quell the discontent of Williams’s woke students when they return this fall," Coyne writes, "they are sorely mistaken."

On a positive note, the article report  Coyne was pleased that the committee report dropped an idea floated earlier that would have required each student group to have a faculty advisor who would discuss “the appropriateness of a speaker and its effect on the College community."

The College Fix interviewed Williams biology professor Luana Majora who indicated she was “relieved” the report was “not as terrible” as she feared it might have been. Maroja told The Fix that she agrees with Coyne’s take “for the most part." “I thought [the report] would require an ‘advisor’ approval all invited speakers,” as Coyne feared, Maroja wrote in an email. “We will see what the fall brings to us.”

Internet Discourse Bad

WILLIAMSTOWN - I had a chance to read through the final 75 page report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Inquiry and Inclusion. Here's my take on what we will now refer to as The Sawicki Report.

The most positive thing about the report is it illustrates the vast majority of students and alumni don't like it when the school bans speakers. Most significantly, the report indicates hosting a speaker does not imply the school endorses the speaker's positions. These findings support the interpretation that the vast majority of us do not buy the most important arguments for banning speakers.

In general, the report confirms what many of us active in off-campus social media - including Zachary Wood '18 - have been saying and complaining about regarding Adam Falk's decision to ban John Derbyshire.

On the downside, the report does nothing to reverse viewpoint discrimination.

The report mentions, then thoroughly ignores, complaints that conservative views are absent on campus and that conservative students and faculty are fearful of speaking up. There is no sense of historical or political context either. It doesn't seem to grasp the way dis-invitations have been solely focused on harming conservative speakers whose ideas interfere with the college's institutional commitment to identity politics, feminism and critical race theory.

To interpret the report's conclusions, it is important to understand the perspective of Sigal Ben-Porath, specifically her reasons for rejecting the Chicago Principles. In her view, freedom of speech is too often a tool used by conservatives. She disdains an absolutist view of free speech. She believes free speech has a tendency to silence minority students. Her philosophy helps explain why so much of the Sawicki Report stresses systems that give minority students the opportunity to process what they hear from outside speakers. Empirically, of course, Ben-Porath is off-the-charts wrong.

As Michael Poliakoff has observed, Ben-Porath's own principles have not worked out very well on her own University of Pennsylvania campus. As you may remember, the University of Pennsylvania Law School went after professor Amy Wax for the crime of promoting bourgeois values and questioning the usefulness of affirmative action. Ultimately, Ben-Porath's argument leaves you with a situation in which the administration still ends up choosing which speech will be privileged and which will be shut down.

Consequently, I don't see The Sawicki Report recommending a reversal of Falk's regrettable Derbyshire decision. If anything, it affirms Falk's views by making clear the administration still has the right to ban speakers. In this sense, their recommendations fall far short of the clear, decisive, and easy-to-understand Chicago principles.

On the topic of clarity, the report reminds me of Maud Mandel's earlier response to the CARE Now students. This is because it includes a long, encyclopedic recitation of existing policies which is designed to assure the reader everything is okay if only we are up-to-speed on the relevant on-campus literature.

In other words, pay attention to what we say and not what we do.

Instead of a pithy Chicago-style statement, we are left with a wordy, difficult to digest, mash up of unclear and unspecified recommendations designed to make it look like everyone has won.

Almost everyone.

The greatest ire developed by the Ad Hoc Committee on Inquiry and Inclusion is focused those over which it has the least control, the off-campus folks following and commenting on Williams College through social media. On the penultimate page of their report, the committee bares its fangs:

We must also recognize that speaker invitations (and disinvitations) are not the primary threat to inquiry and inclusion. Today’s intellectual discourse has been tainted by the rise of intolerant forms of expression and its proliferation on social media. While this can occur deliberately, it can also arise from (and further encourage) bad habits characterized by impatience, intimidation, and other deleterious forms of speech and thought.  Here too, we can look to the Mission Statement, which cautions "...against the growing culture of simplification, where intricate issues are boiled down into fiercely held 'positions,' where counter-arguments are seen as irritating distractions from clarity, where 'points' have more power and visibility than the thinking that produced them.
We recommend that working against this culture be a focus of continued conversation and study, in particular to explore how the College can support students, faculty, and staff in the presence of internet discourse that can be used to harass, threaten, or demean individuals or otherwise disrupt the functioning of the College and its educational goals.

Essentially, The Sawicki Report closes with the observation it was given the wrong mission. Its real focus should have been on discovering ways to shut up contributors at Ephblog, Breitbart, Canary Mission, FIRE, First Things, The College Fix, College Reform, Mind the Campus, The Volokh Conspiracy, The Tablet, and Legal Insurrection and others who have been most active in protecting the rights, freedom and safety of politically non-compliant and ideologically persecuted students and faculty.

As I read the report, it is telling stakeholders there are no real problems with free speech at Williams, the administration should still be free to limit conservative speakers to appease campus activists, and the school's worst venom should be targeted at its off-site enemies, the social media activists and reporters who are holding the college accountable.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award winning political scientist.