Victory for Free Speech - Williams College's New Free Speech Statement Under Cuts Prior Sawicki Report

Thanks to Ephblog, I read a copy of Maud's e-mail to the Williams College community along with a statement on free speech created by the faculty steering committee. Her e-mail and the statement are available after the break. I read both a couple of times and then reread the iconic Chicago Principles. All in all, it looks to me like the faculty steering committee disregarded the suggestions in the earlier Sawicki Report and embraced the Chicago Principles after all. The document looks like a win for free speech advocates.

What's my hot take? All in all, the new statement seems to hit many of the main points stressed in the Chicago Principles while dropping some of the most dopey nonsense in the Sawicki Report including its unhelpful call for the protection of "dignitary safety," a concept which appeared to me and watchdogs like Jerry Coyne as a loophole that permitted the sort of speaker bans and speech restrictions and speaker bans favored by woke totalitarians.

My fears that the concept of "dignitary safety" would erase free speech from Williams College was inadvertently supported by the comments of Eli Miller '21, a student member of the Sawicki Report, who asserted that the report was not really a win for the advocates of free speech. In a Press Record podcast, he rebuked free speech watchdogs by saying "I don’t think those people are correct in assuming this report supports them."

Thankfully, the new statement appears to dump that blarney in favor of a more absolutist stance on freedom of speech, a stance which seems less likely to protect students from the supposed evil of inviting the mild-mannered John Derbyshire to share his views on campus.

Moreover, the statement is easier to read than the dense, encyclopedic Sawicki Report. Instead of mindlessly repeating existing campus policies, the statement saves time and space by simply providing a link to policies relevant to organizing campus events.

The statement's support for free speech includes a brief caveat aimed at protecting the community from "...speech that threatens, incites violence, or constitutes harassment..." This exception strikes me as reasonable and not too far off from the Chicago Principles which prohibit speech "...that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the University."

This exception might be helpful in punishing the female Williams College professor who threatened to leverage her experience as an activist at UC Berkeley and bring riots and violence to the campus if the school adopted the Chicago Principles.

Likewise, I think the steering committee's insistence on regulating the time and location for free speech does not seem all that different from a similar statement in the Chicago Principles.

Surprisingly, the steering committee statement appears to place a higher priority on free speech than Maud herself. In her e-mail, she stresses the importance of two completely incompatible values - inclusion and free speech - and suggests we should knock ourselves out in the simultaneous pursuit of both. The steering committee, however, drops this theme in favor of a more subtle approach which describes an "inclusive environment" as one where "each member of our community is equally respected and equally invited to speak and to be heard." As such, the steering committee seems to broaden the meaning of inclusion so that it may ideological diversity too.

Laughably, Maud suggests steering committee statement was "based" on the Sawicki Report. This observation only makes sense if you define "based" to mean that the steering committee coughed up the Sawicki Report and spit it out.

Unfortunately, the existing campus policies undercut freedom of speech to the extent that they require the sponsors of a speaker to cover related security costs and further requirements requiring the disclosure of the funders for the event. Both of these policies could be used to make it harder for conservative speakers to appear on campus and result in continued bias against even mainstream conservative views. Finally, it seems odd that the statement forces students and speakers to include question and answer sessions at all of their events. This seems like an unnecessary intrusion on their rights to present their information anyway they see fit.

Nevertheless, our dear friend at Ephblog - David Dudley Field '25 - sees much to applaud in the final product. "All has proceeded as EphBlog forecast a year ago. Well done Maud!" he writes. "Now we just need two things. First, get FIRE to award Williams a green rating. I think we now merit a green rating and such a rating would assuage concerned alumni. Second, we need to bring John Derbyshire to campus. And that, at least, is going to happen, one way or the other."

For me, the final lines of the statement seem to indicate an opening for conservative students. The statement asserts: "We recognize that in the past these freedoms have not been equally available to all people and that inequity of access persists today. The college is committed to supporting equal access to these freedoms and pledges to continue working to realize this commitment fully."

I'm certain the authors intended this statement as a gift to the woke professors and students who sincerely believe the English department is a hotbed of violence and racism.

Nevertheless, I think it is telling that the statement does not single out privileged minorities (or even better highly privileged intersectional minorities) and simply focuses on people. I think we can read this passage as a long overdue acknowledgement that Williams College has a long history of undermining and repressing the opponents of identity politics including many conservative students, faculty and speakers. As I pointed out in an earlier article in Ephblog, the Sawicki Report appeared clueless about the untenable situation of conservatives at Williams College:

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.

It would be wonderful if this statement represents straightforward endorsement of the Chicago Principles and a step away from the mushy views articulated in the Sawicki Report. Maud's e-mail and the text of the steering committee statement appear below the break. 

No Win for You: Student Member Asserts Sawicki Committee Report Was Not a Victory for Free Speech Watchdogs

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - In a recent Press Record podcast, one of the student members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Inquiry and Inclusion, Eli Miller '21, pushed back on campus watchdogs who believe the Sawicki report supports free speech to the extent that it would allow controversial speakers like John Derbyshire to appear on campus. Miller, a math and statistic major, was interviewed by a fellow student, Rebecca Tower '21.

Rebecca Tauber 

Do you have any last thoughts on the committee, their report, going forward? 

Eli Miller

I think my one concern is that this committee -- which I don’t think I’ve seen very much here, but I’ve seen sort of from like campus watch dogs -- is that this is seen as a victory for people who believe that free speech is like an absolute right and that people on college campuses who try to dis-invite people are like liberal snowflakes.  

That whole narrative is very popular, and my concern that this report gives those people a win.

I don’t think those people are correct in assuming this report supports them. But I think that definitely people have read it that way. And I guess I wish we had done more to resist that reading because I think it is a lot more nuanced and complicated than that. But I think at end of the day people are going to want to read what they want to read. 

As was reported in the Williams Record, the committee recommended the adaptation of both the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and PEN America frameworks for free speech, both of which give student groups the right to invite any speaker of their choosing without prior approval and allow the administration to disinvite speakers only in the “rarest of circumstances.”

Critics of the report including John Drew a former Williams College political scientist and Jerry Coyne a biologist with the University of Chicago, have decried the weakness of the report by pointing out that its recommendations allow for the censorship of campus speakers if those speakers should be a threat to "dignitary safety" or, more specifically, “the sense of being an equal member of the community.” As Coyne has pointed out, it is physically impossible to support both inclusion and freedom of speech. Eli Miller's comments verify the critics' views.

In a Williams Record article, Miller reports he was unhappy with the process because the group never attempted to reach a consensus on whether or not the administration should have had the authority to disinvite John Derbyshire, a political commentator for VDARE, who had been dropped by the National Review for a satirical piece he wrote for Taki's Magazine.

“It became clear that the goal of the committee was less to reconcile the differences that people have — on the most basic level — about whether John Derbyshire should’ve been allowed to speak on campus, and it was a lot more focused on taking the temperature of the campus and doing outreach to as many groups as possible,” Miller said. “It felt like the primary objective was just to calm people down.”

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND. 

Mixed Bag: FIRE Reviews Sawicki Report

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Two reporters from FIRE have analyzed the Sawicki Report and found it to be a mix of helpful and doubtful elements. Generally kind to the report, FIRE staff praised its thoughtfulness and thoroughness. Like Jerry Coyne, however, they are concerned that certain aspects of the report's recommendations will be abused so that the report does little to protect freedom of speech.

...the report contains broad and vague language that could facilitate censorship in the future. At one point, the college declares that it is obligated to maintain “dignitary safety” on campus in the face of so called “hate speech,” defined as “the sense of being an equal member of the community and of being invited to contribute to a discussion as a valued participant.” This language sets up the inevitable clash between offensive – but protected – speech, and the college’s inclusion initiative.

In its recommendations, the report also suggests the college “should acknowledge harm,” an undefined, amorphous standard that could mean nearly anything in application. Such broad and vague language threatens free and open debate and could chill a wide range of expression.

Their final opinion seems to be that they are willing to wait and see how this turns out. They are looking forward to Maud Mandel's final statement on freedom of speech. The article is worth saving and reading, in part, because of its stunning review of how the school has been sacrificing freedom of speech to the on-campus mob.

John C. Drew, Ph.D., is a former Williams College professor in American politics and political economy. He contributes to American Thinker, Breitbart, Campus Reform, The College Fix, and WorldNetDaily.