Exeter Discusses Free Speech
Crowding the walls of History Instructor William Jordan’s classroom are dozens of blue and red campaign posters. One sports a 1960 photograph of John F. Kennedy; another features Donald Trump’s 2016 “Make America Great Again” slogan. “Increasingly, our country is divided between blue areas and red areas where people don’t talk to each other. Both sides see the other as evil or illegitimate,” Jordan said. “One of the principles of my [American Politics and Public Policy] class is to get my students to see the other side. The classroom has to be a brave space.”
Whether the Academy harbors enough brave spaces beyond the Harkness table is open to debate, however, Jordan contended.
Last Tuesday, Greg Lukianoff—co-author of the New York Times best-seller “The Coddling of the American Mind” and President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)—delivered on Dec. 10 an assembly on the growing restrictions upon free speech on college campuses. Lukianoff began, “The point of the First Amendment [is] to protect minorities and minorities of opinion in society… I’m concerned that freedom of speech, after being absolutely sacred in American society for a long time, is starting to get a bit of a bad rep.”
Lukianoff attributed this shift to various factors including an increased emphasis on political correctness, the “hyper-bureaucratization” of educational institutions and a “disempowered” student population less resilient during offensive or disagreeable encounters. He added that students, once champions of free speech on college campuses, have gradually strayed from this role in recent years.
Because Exeter is a private institution, free speech is not legally protected by the First Amendment. But Principal William Rawson maintains that the First Amendment and its principles are honored and upheld.
Rawson said Exeter’s guidelines on speech and expression are not defined explicitly in school policy, but rather are shaped by core community values. “We are guided by our school values, our Harkness pedagogy and our DEI vision statement. The vision statement contains wonderful language about cultivating empathy, understanding and respect, developing facility with diversity of thought, perspective and experience, and engaging our differences, including differences in political beliefs,” he said.
Rawson affirmed that protecting viewpoint diversity is key to building an inclusive Academy community, stating, “We value free expression at Exeter, and understand that the promise of a diverse community is not fully realized without free expression, just as the value of free expression is not fully realized in the absence of a commitment to diversity. I would like to see us making the most of our opportunities to learn from each other—with empathy, humility and respect.”
Dean of Multicultural Affairs Sami Atif noted that power dynamics are nuanced and relevant to the debate on freedom of speech. “Free speech is about power, empowerment, leveling power and leveraging power. The nuances here are not trivial. Location, time, relationship, power and privilege are all real factors when it comes to speech. Our treatment of these important factors is telling,” he said.
Atif questioned whether free speech should, in fact, be Exeter’s priority, and suggested that the topic warrants extensive discussion. “Someone once articulated non-sibi as the premier value. Can these powerful ideals coexist? Not fully, not how the current discourse and political climate presents,” he said.
Senior Janalie Cobb characterized community discourse at Exeter as frequently “heated and unconducive to actual conversation,” noting that Exeter is often host to “a climate full of attacks, cancelling, and arguments in which parties don’t listen to each other.”
In response to the question, “Have you ever felt the need to censor yourself due to your political views?”, 52.4 percent of Exonians responded affirmatively in the Eight Schools’ Association (ESA) survey administered by The Exonian last December.
Upper Walker Meistrell identified with this experience, noting that conservatives—13 percent of the student body, according to the ESA survey—are more likely to receive criticism. “Considering how polarized our country is because of politics in general, it’s harder for the more right-leaning students to fully express their ideas and be heard,” he said.
In addition to political minorities, senior David Gonzalez noted that other underrepresented groups face similar difficulties. “There are not a lot of people of color on campus. I know many who oftentimes feel that they are the sole opinion or the sole voice in a classroom,” he said. “As a result, their opinions can also go unacknowledged and be overshadowed by majority opinions.”
Spanish Instructor Mark Trafton contrasted his citizenship rights with community expectations on a residential campus. “As a citizen, one enjoys some pretty broad freedoms about going into the town square and speaking one’s mind. But I don’t know that the same freedom of speech would ever exist here. That would come under a different set of standards,” he said.
Upper Emilio Abelmann called for Exeter to strike a balance between supporting young students and being tolerant of controversial opinion. “If someone wants to engage in offensive speech, they should be able to express it to some extent,” he said. “[Regulation] hinders the efficiency of the campus to promote different ideas and do what it’s supposed to do, which is to be educational.”
While History Instructor Alexa Caldwell voiced similar sentiments, she questioned how the sometimes contradictory ideals of free speech and safe community spaces should translate to practice. “What kind of rules or barriers should be outlined to encourage freedom of speech and also protect students from harm or hurt? It is from hurt and pain that growth and learning happen. But I also realize there are varying levels of hurt and pain.”
History Instructor Aykut Kilinc described his own efforts to balance his right of expression with his duty as an authoritative figure. “We work with minors––children. I highly regulate what I say in front of my students,” he said. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to … create a structure in which we have bureaucratic control over what is virtuous and what is not.”
Jordan emphasized that for open dialogue to prosper, community members need to accept mistakes as part of the learning process. “One way of doing that is to give equal weight to intent and impact,” Jordan said.
Rawson hopes to find a balance where students and adults can have difficult conversations about complicated topics but also conduct themselves respectfully. “I see no reason why we cannot have both safe spaces and learning spaces, where we expect to challenge each other and learn from each other. Learning can be uncomfortable, having our ideas and beliefs challenged can be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to be unsafe, not if we see ourselves and each other as learners, and speak and listen with empathy and respect,” Rawson said.