(Director’s note: Will Stockton is a Professor of English. His latest books include Members of His Body: Shakespeare, Paul, and a Theology of Nonmonogamy (Fordham University Press, 2017) and a translation of Sergio Loo’s Nightmare in Narvarte (Literalia, 2020). Find him at willstockton.com. This is Clemson Humanities Now.)
As the U.S. reels in response to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and others, institutions both public and private have faced significant pressure to make substantive and symbolic changes in the name of equality and inclusion. Clemson University is no exception. The university has recently deleted John C. Calhoun’s name from the Honors College. The Board of Trustees has also requested permission from the South Carolina General Assembly to change the name of Tillman Hall back to Old Main. Both moves are laudable and long overdue. They remove the names of notorious racists from places of honor on our campus. They do not “erase history,” but rather reflect our changing history.
A glance at Twitter or Reddit will suggest that both moves are still controversial. The criticisms are now commonplace: besides charging Clemson with erasing history, some deride the changes as “purely symbolic” or the start of a slippery slope that ends in changing the name of the university itself. Presuming that the views expressed on social media reflect to a great extent the views of our varied student body, I take these criticisms seriously. I do not agree with them, but to the extent they’re raised, they are worth talking about, openly and honestly, in a spirit of good faith.
Of course, social media fosters precisely the opposite of an open and honest conversation conducted in a spirit of good faith. In a university setting, these conversations are more properly the province of the humanities classroom, where instructors invite students to try out ideas, test them against other ideas, and refine their own thinking. This golden world of shared inquiry and intellectual development requires the instructor to construct a classroom environment in which students can advance most ideas without fear of reprisal.
In the middle of a national conversation about the pernicious effects of structural racism, especially in the areas of policing and law enforcement, it can be easy for us to lose sight of the conditions under which education best takes place. Many of us in the humanities have statements on our syllabi aimed at fostering civil discourse, reminding students to treat one another with decency and respect. These statements usually suffice. In my ten years at Clemson, teaching subjects from Shakespeare to contemporary queer literature, I have been tremendously encouraged by the good will and genuine curiosity with which most of my students engage contentious questions, including the definition of race and racism.
Yet there’s a difference between encouraging students to be respectful and threatening students for advancing arguments or expressing opinions that run afoul of others’ ethical sensibilities. Last week, the Clemson Faculty Senate crossed precisely such a line. The Faculty Senate’s Statement Against Racist and Violence-Inciting Public Expressions reaffirms policies against discriminatory and harassing behavior already present in the Student Code of Conduct. It then “recommends disciplinary action, persona non grata status, and/or expulsion of any past, current, or future student, faculty, or staff who evoke or incite racism and violence.” The statement concludes: “It is imperative that Clemson University demonstrates that racism, encouraged or actual violence, or any statement/act that undermines our shared principles of inclusion, [sic] and tolerance outlined in ClemsonFORWARD is unacceptable and will be met with severe consequences.”
The law governing public universities like Clemson makes crucial distinctions between speech and action, and between speech that expresses an unpopular, even reprehensible opinion, and speech that incites violence. This statement thoroughly muddles these differences. “Encouraged or actual violence” can and should certainly be met with severe consequences. The Supreme Court has held that so-called fighting words fall outside the realm of protected speech, as “resort to epithets or personal abuse is not in any proper sense communication of information or opinion safeguarded by the Constitution” (Cantwell v Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 309-10 [1940]). But most offensive speech does not rise to this level. Indeed, the ability to offend is precisely what the First Amendment protects: “if it is the speaker’s opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection”(Hustler Magazine v Falwell 485 U.S. 46, 55 [1988]). A statement threatening disciplinary action for “any statement that undermines our shared principles of inclusion and tolerance” strikes me as an encroachment on just this type of offensive, yet constitutionally protected speech.
The Faculty Senate seems to have issued their Statement in response to racist posts on Instagram. I applaud the Faculty Senate for signaling Clemson’s disdain for racist provocation. At the same time, the Statement itself ignores the constitutional remedy for uninformed or bad speech, which is “more speech, not enforced silence” (Whitney v California, 274 U.S. 357, 377 [1927] [Brandeis J., concurring]). Many Clemson students are already afraid to speak publicly about hot-button issues, not because they are naked racists, but because they are scared that they will be understood as such. I want my students to tell me why they feel the need to reflexively respond “all lives matter” when they see a sign saying “Black lives matter.” I want to know why students believe that “purely symbolic” name changes are unimportant, and the extent to which they register the reality and effects of structural racism. The Faculty Senate’s statement will diminish willingness to have these conversations. It will hinder the important work of refining thought through open debate.
One might defend the Faculty Senate’s statement by arguing that racist speech inevitably constitutes, if not leads to, racist violence. The argument goes like this: the conditions of race in America are such that violence is continually perpetuated against people of color. This violence comes in many forms, but it includes statements that deny our shared humanity and, en masse, underwrite institutionalized white supremacy. Furthermore, people’s humanity should not be up for debate, and any effort to allow such a debate under the umbrella of “civility” amounts to white supremacy in action. It’s a strong argument, one worth hearing. At the same time, few will hear it — in the deep sense of wrestling with it — unless one invites argument and push back. As free speech advocates from John Milton to John Stuart Mill have argued, exposure to and tolerance for the ideas of others is a prerequisite to intellectual self-development and collective betterment. Certain assertions — such as all lives matter, or “black-on-black” crime presents a more pressing problem than police violence — may strike others as denying people’s humanity. To the extent people make these arguments in good faith, however, the debates that follow are precisely the ones that need to be had. There is no world in which we will all come to the same conclusion about every contentious issue. Yet it’s possible to build worlds either more or less open to conversations that make us sharper thinkers and better citizens.
The distinction between speech and violence is sometimes difficult to draw, hence the litigation of speech issues on an almost case-by-case basis. But maintaining a basic distinction is foundational for education. When I entered college in 1997, I was an outspoken ex-gay who believed the world was 7,000 years old and racism ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Four years later, I was an outspoken, ex-ex-gay atheist who had conceded the earth’s actual age of 4.5 billion years and many of the effects of past institutionalized discrimination in present demographic disparities. That kind of intellectual change could not have happened had the threat of “severe punishment” loomed over my head for what my professors and fellow students doubtless perceived as my many speech crimes. I urge the Faculty Senate to revise its statement such that it condemns racism but reserves severe consequences only for violence-inciting expression. Otherwise, this statement will have a chilling effect on speech at a university that should encourage it.