While the right to free speech is fundamental to classical liberalism, contemporary liberals are often accused of being its enemy. Two examples include incidents at Berkeley and Middlebury. As always, the matter of free speech is philosophically interesting, especially when it involves higher education.

One important distinction in the context of rights is that of the negative versus the positive. A negative right is not an evil right; rather it is a freedom such that the possessor is not entitled to be provided with the means to exercise the right. It is a right to not be interfered with.

A positive right is an entitlement to the means needed to exercise the right. For example, the United States currently grants citizens a right to public K-12 education. In addition to having the liberty to seek this education, it is also provided (by the taxpayers). In contrast, college education is usually a negative right: students have the liberty to attend college but are (generally) not provided with free education.

The right to free speech is a negative right; it is intended as a protection from impediment rather than an entitlement to the means of expression. To use an obvious example, while I have the right to express my views no one is obligated to provide me with free radio or TV time in which to do so.

While university personnel have no right to unjustly interfere with free speech, they are usually under no moral obligation to provide people with speaking opportunities on campus. For example, while I might be invited to speak at Harvard, Harvard has no obligation to provide me with a room just because I might want to talk about philosophy.

Decisions about who to invite and who to allow to speak in official venues are often made on pragmatic grounds, such as which speakers will boost the reputation of the school or who happens to be friends with top administrators. There are also practical concerns about the cost of the speaker, the likelihood of trouble arising, and the extent of the interest in the speaker. While these practical concerns are important, decisions about who to invite (and who to exclude) should also be made on principled grounds.

One reasonable principle is that decisions should be made based on the educational value of the speaker campus, broadly understood. Since universities are supposed to educate students, it makes sense for them to operate on this principle. Speakers who offer little or nothing in the way of educational value could be justly denied invitations. Of course, education is not the only concern of a university in terms of what it offers to the students and the community. Speakers who offer things of artistic value or even mere entertainment value should also be given due consideration.

One concern about decisions based on these factors is that there can be good faith debate about which speakers have the merit to warrant their invitation. For example, the incident at Middlebury arose because some see Charles Murray’s co-authored controversial book The Bell Curve as  based on pseudoscience and bad methodology. While these matters can be clouded with ideology, there are established standards regarding educational merit regarding such things as methodology and legitimacy. The main problem lies in their application, but this is not a problem unique to picking speaker as it extends across the academy. Fortunately, the basic principle of merit is reasonable clear but the real fights take place over the particulars.

Another seemingly sensible principle is a moral one; that those invited should reflect the values of the institution and perhaps the broader society. At the very least, those invited should not be evil and should not be espousing evil.

This principle does have some problems. One is deciding what conflicts with the values of the institution. Another is that it is difficult to speak of the values of the broader society, given the considerable diversity of opinions on moral issues. When people use this approach, they usually refer to their own values and fall prey to the cognitive bias that leads them to assume their values are shared by society. There is the enduring problem in ethics of sorting out good and evil. There is also the concern about whether academic or artistic merit can offset moral concerns. For example, a Catholic university might see a pro-choice philosopher as endorsing a morally wrong position, yet think that having this philosopher engage a pro-life philosopher in a campus debate to have educational merit. As another example, a liberal institution might regard an extreme libertarian as having morally problematic views yet see educational merit in having them present their arguments as part of a series on American political philosophy.  As with the matter of merit, there are rational and principled ways to approach ethical concerns but this is even more fraught with controversy than questions of assessing educational merit.

While I agree that speech can cause harm, I hold to a presumption in favor of free expression. As a principle, this means that if there is reasonable doubt as to whether the merit of a speech outweighs moral concerns about the speaker or content, then the decision should favor free expression. This is based on the view that it is better to run the risk of tolerating possible evil than to risk silencing someone who has something worth saying. As such, I generally favor a liberal (in the classic sense) approach to inviting speakers to universities.

Americans tend to favor free expression for those they agree with and oppose it for those they dislike. When campuses attempted to exclude right wing speakers, the right expressed its devotion to free expression, speaking of the free market of ideas. As was expected, when college students and faculty recently protested the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel, the right supported a crack down on free expression and on some campuses riot police were turned lose on students and faculty. The right has also worked hard to restrict the content of college classes, enacting laws imposing what they call “reforms.” For example, my adopted state of Florida professes to be all about freedom, but this is only for the freedom to express views that accord with the ideology of the right. It could be countered that “the left” takes a similar approach when it is in power, allowing free speech it approves of. While such finger pointing might feel good, it also shows that Americans are not as committed to free speech as we claim.