The test of a society's commitment to freedom ofThis
expression lies in its defense of marginalized forms of speech. I say in
class, free speech is for speech that you hate, not for speech that you
like. The logic of the principle is simple: we don't need to protect
society's treasured ideas and institutions--they pose no danger to us;
we pose no danger to them. It is for those forms of expression that
disturb, offend, and even anger us that we actually need freedom of
expression, as these types of speech are those in danger of being
suppressed if society were not serious enough about a democratic
culture. --Florin T. Hilbay
week I've reviewed a series of articles spanning a Bell's Curve of
polarities in opinions, practices and policies regarding freedom of
speech on campuses. I confess to feeling deeply troubled.
Forty-three
years ago I was in high school in a conservative-leaning town in the
South. The Vietnam war was still eating away at us, desegregation was
still clawing its way into our consciousness and the War on Poverty had
been declared, but there were still no arms with which to fight.
It
was a tumultuous, disruptive and extraordinary time to be alive. I was
the co-editor of our high school newspaper. A young, feisty and
incredibly smart journalism teacher was assigned to us that year.
She
took us through all of the basics of journalism and helped me get an
internship under the formidable Kathryn Duff, Editor at our local paper.
My teacher encouraged me to write and submit articles to what were then
the Saturday Evening Post and Holiday Magazine. I received scholarships from both for college.
My
teacher was a fierce editor. I've never had one of her calibre again.
She forced me to think about what I was really trying to say, not just
how I was trying to say it.
She left at the end of my junior year
for a job at the capitol in New Mexico. She gave me a gift during her
short time, an extraordinary season of encouragement to deconstruct the
premise and practice of freedom of speech. She taught us to look at the
underbelly of our fears and isms.
She was not popular with some
faculty and some administrators. But she was my hero. She shook me up
and I am so grateful. I wrote about the war, the racial imbalance in our
troops, institutionalized racism in leadership election processes on my
campus (I was a class officer).
And, our small newspaper staff
shook up some things ourselves. I believe we carved a bit off the
deeply embedded roots of policies and practices in our school system and
community that were designed to preserve white supremacy.
When
my extraordinary teacher departed, a new teacher was hired. I suspect
she was instructed to put an immediate stop to the free-wheeling thought
and expression that had been cultivated in our newspaper staff.
Perhaps she acted on her own. She is dead now and we will never know.
She
shut down any publication of anything meatier than football scores and
4-H club. No questioning of authority or status quo was allowed. After
my first three articles were censored under her tenure and pleas to our
administration went nowhere, I quit my post as co-editor. Some other
team members and I started an underground newspaper. There was no
Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or email.
The
administration quickly sanctioned us and I received a warning by the
Vice Principal that I was inciting potential violence by talking so
openly about racial tensions. My status on an honors group was
threatened if I didn't cease writing about contentious ideas. I gave up
and graduated.
Forty-three years ago seems like a short time
when I read today about censorship on campuses by administrators, often
fueled by what students do not want to hear because they feel
triggered.
I am deeply concerned about the censorship crawling out of this Pandora's box. In recent years, I have been many places
in the world talking about the death spiral effects on society of
racism, gender-ism, sexism, homophobia, trans*phobia and censorship on
all of us.
It never occurred to me that those of us who are
fighting to create freedom and stop violence would find ourselves unable
to speak of these problems for fear that we would use words or images
that would trigger students so deeply that they could not or would not
participate in the dialogue.
I don't know how to change anything for the better if we do not or cannot name it, discuss it, debate it and yes, disagree.
I've
been accosted by ultra-conservative protesters who have called me some
despicable names (Fred Phelps comes to mind). I've been arrested
for civil disobedience for daring to sing a church hymn about freedom
and unity in a denominational meeting that excluded the voices of gay
clergy.
I've encouraged young activists in China and on fundamentalist religious college campuses to come out about their sexual orientation and gender identity knowing that they might be punished, expelled, imprisoned and even killed.
I
can relate to the impact of saying what one believes to be true when
other people don't want to hear it. That is why I feel alarmed today
about the campus-based and society-wide movement toward censorship.
This
movement, in part, emerged out of the last forty-five years of activism
to improve life for those who had been excluded and silenced. Creative
protesters formed names for these oppressions, marginalizations,
discriminations and stigmatizations and photographed them, memorialized
them in art and music and literature.
They raised awareness and
forced people to see atrocities and admit to them. I am one of those who
did this work. I never contemplated a day when these expressions of
freedom would be considered weapons against those they were designed to
free.
I have no doubt that the majority of what I wrote 43-years
ago would be censored by students and administrators today. The imagery
that I chose would be offensive, perceived as appropriating or
co-opting. But, for that time, it was revolutionary and it did what we
hoped to do. We blew a hole in a wall of white supremacy and some
people were able to get through to the other side and keep going.
The
first persons of color (then called black and Chicano) were elected as
class officers and cheerleaders in that extraordinary year in a town in
the middle of nowhere in the most unlikely of circumstances.
Some
of them and some of us who were subsequently censored by faculty and
administrators went on to become city managers, mayors, public
activists, advocates and educational administrators ourselves.
Our
high school journalism instructor taught us well about the gift of
differing opinions, civil disobedience, freedom of speech and more. I am
grieving today for young adults, faculty members and administrators who
may no longer feel free enough or psychologically resilient enough to
read To Kill a Mockingbird together and unpack it for what it was and is today.
What we fear is sometimes exactly what we need to face.
Freedom of speech is the crucible in which real freedom is born.
This
column is dedicated to Tam Baldwin, advertising manager for the Abilene
High School Battery in 1971. Without her dedication, the work of our
team would never have made it to print.
