Student Revolt and the Curtailing of Critical Speech

The violent crackdown on campus protests reveals an alliance between the Right and mainstream elites who are driven by reactionary impulses and status anxieties

State troopers in riot gear try to break up a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas Wednesday April 24, 2024 – credit: Jay Janner / American-Statesman

Across the country, authorities – sometimes university leadership, sometimes elected officials – have decided that the right answer to peaceful student protests and encampments on college campuses is to mobilize the coercive powers of the state and escalate the situation with brute force and violence. Mass arrests; police in riot gear beating unarmed students and faculty; heavily armed state troopers marching on the campus, turning the scene into the type of carnage that bloodhounds on the Right eagerly use as the justification for demanding the National Guard be deployed, as senator Tom Cotton and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have done – men who are just generally excited to use whatever level of violence is deemed necessary to force anyone who is coded as “left-wing” into submission.

You don’t have to like the pro-Palestinian protests or even agree one bit with the substance of what these young people are criticizing and demanding, with the way they are doing it, to see how this is a wildly disproportionate response: An outrageous suppression of speech because the powers that be reject the content of what is being said and consider those who are speaking dangerous, subversive, and unworthy.

Large swaths of America’s mainstream elite and polite society want to pretend that this is all a necessary answer to rabid antisemitism and escalating hatred of Jewish people and life amongst indoctrinated radicals. We are supposed to be believe that what was happening at Columbia before the mass arrests was something like the leftwing extremist equivalent of the Unite the Right Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017. In Charlottesville, as you’ll recall, neo-Nazis marched with torches, heavily armed rightwing militants descended upon the city, counter-protesters were assaulted – one person was killed. Ask yourself: Have you seen anything like that? Armed vigilantes? Violent clashes?

In some corners of the Left, conversely, there is a reflexive impulse to deny that anything antisemitic is ever said or done at these pro-Palestinian protests. This type of denial is not only morally disingenuous, it is also politically disastrous. The Left – and anyone who cares about the plight of the people in Gaza – should come down hard on those who see these protests as an opportunity to display their vile hatred. Some might just be getting carried away, who knows. But the fact is that yes, sometimes criticism of the Israeli government at these protests crosses the line into antisemitism; and there can be no justification for blocking Jewish students from entering or leaving university grounds, for assaulting them, berating them…

I don’t think it is asking too much of “the Left” in America and around “the West” to always be aware of the fact that antisemitism is a massive problem in all our societies. Every time I say this publicly, self-identifying lefties will jump on me and reject the premise, as if antisemitism hasn’t been an acute threat to Jewish people, life, and culture almost anywhere in the “West” at almost any point in modern history. You are not helping your – we are not helping our – cause by pretending otherwise.

But let’s also insist on acknowledging that the biggest threat to Jewish people is not coming from college students. America has experienced a drastic increase in political violence and hate crimes in recent years, almost all of it perpetrated by rightwingers. One of the two major parties is united behind Donald Trump, who subscribes to all the usual antisemitic stereotypes and has long been pushing antisemitic tropes about Jews only liking money, only being loyal to Israel: He has no discernible conception of American Jews as Americans, only as “them” rather than “us.” That’s also the party of QAnon and “Great Replacement,” of white Christian ethno-religious nationalism… If you are – rightfully! – worried about antisemitism, but you find yourself in an alliance with that party, find yourself calling for a crackdown on the same groups these people want to go after, people exploiting fears over antisemitism in order to advance their reactionary crusade, it is really time to take a deep breath and reconsider.  

Again, Jewish Americans have a right to demand “the Left” and everyone at these pro-Palestinian protests be vigilant and hold the line against antisemitism. But unless we characterize every form of criticism of the Israeli government and any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people as inherently antisemitic, the idea that all of these protests are just manifestations of vile antisemitism is bizarre. A lot of people want us to ignore that there are many Jewish students among the protesters; or want us to see people with no connection to the university – antisemites from off campus inevitably attracted to these events like moths to the flame because they see as a chance to stir shit up – as somehow representative of the students. We must not fall for it.

Let me repeat the most salient fact about these protests: They have been overwhelmingly peaceful. You don’t know if you can trust all the video and photographic evidence of young people just sitting on the floor? Or the journalistic accounts from on the ground? How about this then: Even the NYPD – not exactly a terrorism-sympathizing bunch inclined to spin the narrative in the students’ favor – confirmed the scene at Columbia was calm and peaceful. The NYPD!

And yet, in the face of such outrageous suppression of protest through state agents, the powerful phalanx of elite opinionists who have told us for about a decade now that the “free speech crisis” on college campuses is a clear and present danger to freedom and democracy has had nary a critical word to offer. On the contrary, the crackdown at Columbia, specifically, has garnered an enthusiastic response from such prominent members of the “free speech crisis” industrial complex as Caitlin Flanagan and John McWhorter who have sided unequivocally with the authorities. The same circles who have been presenting themselves as uncompromising fighters for free speech, imploring us to understand that speech must not be curtailed just because you (on the Left!) may disagree with it, are now fully on board with speech they don’t like being suppressed by the state. Weird, huh?

Over the past week, I’ve been thinking back to a remarkable guest opinion the Washington Post published on December 10, titled: “To fight antisemitism on campuses, we must restrict speech.” It was written by Claire O. Finkelstein, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania who also served as a member of the school’s Open Expression Committee and as chair of the law school’s committee on academic freedom. The piece came out shortly after the Congressional hearings / show trials (“Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism,” they were called) that singled out three presidents of elite colleges, all of them women: Liz Magill from University of Pennsylvania (Finkelstein’s university), Sally Kornbluth of MIT, and Claudine Gay, the first Black president of Harvard. In this context, Finkelstein presented a surprising argument: The actual problem on the college campus, she wrote, was *too much* free speech: “the value of free speech has been elevated to a near-sacred level on university campuses.” It was time, the author declared, to change course – time to take measures “restricting poisonous speech that targets Jews and other minorities.”

On the surface, this take should have brought Finkelstein into direct conflict with the leading “free speech crisis” campaigners. But that’s not what happened. There was no outcry, no outrage, none of the usual scolding. Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, for instance, one of America’s leading “free speech” pundits, whose obsession with leftwing “cancel culture” at college campuses is almost unparalleled among the mainstream commentariat, had absolutely nothing to say about this, as far as I can tell. Didn’t write about it, didn’t tweet about it.

There is hypocrisy here, yes. But more importantly, on the level of the underlying political project, this is entirely consistent. The guest opinion in the Washington Post – and the (non-) reaction to it – was a reminder that the “free speech crisis” panic was never about the content-neutral defense of noble principles. It has always been a conflict over who gets to draw the boundaries of what is and what is not accepted speech – with those in elite positions anxiously fighting back against anyone daring to question their prerogative to define those lines in accordance with their own interests and sensibilities. As we are now experiencing the brutal crackdown on campus “unrest” with not only the support from the Right, but also the full-throated approval of many on the Center, including many self-identifying “free speech” defenders, the piece was also indicative of how quickly mainstream elites are willing to adopt any argument or “principle” that allows them to discipline the forces on the “woke” Left they believe to have gotten out of control. Even if that means making common cause with the Far Right.  

Too much free speech?

“Privileging free speech on campus relative to other values,” Claire O. Finkelstein declares in her piece, “emphasizes skills that pose the greatest challenge to our democracy and fails to cultivate the skills democratic societies most need.” Restrictions are needed – free speech must no longer be regarded as the highest value.

On that basis, Finkelstein explicitly criticizes university presidents – especially the ones who had just testified in front of Congress – for failing to “confront the conflict between the commitment to free speech and the commitment to eliminating the hostile environment facing Jewish students on campus,” for pretending they can “split the difference by saying they are institutionally committed to free speech but personally offended by antisemitism,” and for suggesting “the answer to hate speech is education and more speech.”

But wait, hasn’t that been exactly what leading Free Speech Pundits have been demanding for about a decade: *More speech* as opposed to what they have roundly derided as “cancel culture” and illiberal censoriousness? Finkelstein doesn’t acknowledge that position or even the fact that the idea of a “free speech crisis” on the college campus has played such a key role in elite discourse. “Countering speech with more speech might just mean adding to the hateful rhetoric on campus and would not solve the problem,” she declares instead.

No one gets to hide behind the First Amendment either, Finkelstein says – certainly not private institutions, which aren’t bound by it anyway, but not public schools either: “With or without the First Amendment, calls for genocide against Jews – or even proxies for such sentiments, such as calling for intifada against Jews or the elimination of Israel by chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ – are, in the present context, calls for violence against a discrete ethnic or religious group. Such speech arguably incites violence, frequently inspires harassment of Jewish students and, without question, creates a hostile environment that can impair the equal educational opportunities of Jewish students.”

It's worth unpacking this. Calls for genocide against Jews incite violence, that’s the claim. But along the way, there are questions: What qualifies as a “call for genocide against Jews”? Rather than clarifying, Finkelstein significantly widens the category right away: Not just calls for genocide, actually, but also “proxies for such sentiments.” What qualifies as a proxy? Anyway, it all “arguably” incites violence, we are told. “Arguably.” There are a lot of qualifications and stipulations here…

If this is meant as a plea to have an honest discussion about balancing free speech requirements, as they are generally defined in the First Amendment, with the goals creating an environment that is not “hostile” to the point that it must “impair the equal educational opportunities” of certain student groups, I am all for it. As long as we acknowledge that a) we are now firmly on the level of discussing the substance and content of speech as the deciding factor for whether or not it should be accepted publicly and have left behind the realm of defending abstract principles, and b) we are thinking this through not just for some vulnerable and protected groups while casually ignoring others.

To be more specific: By the standards defined by Finkelstein here, there can be no justification for allowing anti-trans bigotry or race science junk on the campus, correct? “In the present context,” as the author puts it, in which Republican-led states are radically assaulting the rights of trans people and passing legislation that ostracizes them from public life, in which we are seeing a drastic increase in violence and violent threat directed at trans people, certainly that kind of speech also “creates a hostile environment that can impair the equal educational opportunities”?

I want to be clear: I do not know where Claire Finkelstein stands on, for instance, the question of whether or not rightwing politicians and activists who have declared trans people a dangerous deviation from the “natural order” should be invited to speak on campus, or whether or not to tolerate protests against them when they come. (The self-proclaimed free speech defenders have certainly told us for years that any objection to having them speak on campus constitutes a dangerous act of leftwing cancel culture). But it doesn’t seem like there is much of a serious balancing effort going on right now among the Free Speech Punditry. Instead, the elite discourse seems to have gone very quickly from one established reactionary gripe – leftist censoriousness is undermining free speech! – to another: The university is indoctrinating students to become leftist radicals! That is the position Conor Friedersdorf took back in October when he declared in The Atlantic, in a piece titled “Students for Progroms in Israel,” that “flawed ideas informed the violence-endorsing statements,” referring to some of the worst antisemitic incidences, and that “concepts like ‘decolonization’” which were supposedly taught as dogma at every university needed to be scrutinized. That’s what George Packer is offering in The Atlantic now, arguing that colleges have been “promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university” – literally training students to become antisemites in the process.

Well, at least Finkelstein acknowledges in the Washington Post that we need to discuss the substance of the speech in question, instead of dodging the content and pretending it’s all about the noble principles? Ah, not so fast. She actually emphasizes other “critically important values” that universities ought to privilege over free speech, and those are also pretty abstract. She lists: “encouraging civil dialogue across differences, cultivating critical listening skills, developing the skills to build community relationships, promoting the ability to engage in moral reflection and building resilience in the face of challenge.” Finkelstein implores us to consider: “What values do university presidents think are most important to prepare leaders in a democracy? The ability to shout intemperate slogans or the ability to engage in reasoned dialogue with people who have moral and political differences?”

We are, evidently, back in the realm of content-neutral principles and values of reason and civility. Just once, I wish people making such declarations that may sound good in a vacuum would grapple honestly with the fact that the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 60s – the legacy of which everyone in mainstream America wants to claim and affirm – clearly violated those principles, and that the polite, “moderate” American mainstream widely rejected them with precisely those arguments: too radical, too loud, too disruptive, too divisive. The civil rights protests and its leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., were broadly unpopular at the time. Same with the protests against the Vietnam War. Protests demanding justice, protests by young people, protests by a multiracial coalition are almost always unpopular as they are happening. That was then, this is now. Fair enough. But if there is a difference that explains why widespread protests then were good but now are bad, surely we need to talk about the substance, rather than some abstract civility nonsense?  

Back in December, Finkelstein ended where, apparently, this type of argument almost inevitably goes: To the idea of the university as an incubator and accelerator of an intolerant climate that is threatening freedom in all spheres of American life: “Is it any surprise that students educated in an environment of antisemitism would behave as antisemites in their adult lives?” The assumption here seems to be that these beautiful young minds come to college where they are being indoctrinated to become antisemitic – and in such lasting fashion that they remain antisemites for the rest of their lives. It is remarkable that anyone would subscribe to such a simplistic notion of how people go through life, why they interact with the world the way they do, how they form their opinions and worldviews.

And yet, such indoctrination claims are all the rage among the nation’s leading commentators. This is exactly what George Packer is also pushing in The Atlantic right now: “Elite universities have trained pro-Palestinian students to believe that, on the oppressor-oppressed axis, Jews are white and therefore dominant. They’ve trained pro-Israel students to believe that unwelcome and even offensive speech makes them so unsafe that they should stay away from campus. What the universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another.” No one who is familiar with the actual reality in the college classroom should entertain such nonsense (I wrote a long piece – “In Defense of My Students” – about what actually happens in our seminars and courses back in the fall).

Nor should anyone fall for such unfiltered nostalgia for a supposedly golden past – the “postwar ideal of the liberal university” has been betrayed, Packer bemoans. Don’t you know, things were so much better back then, when women and people of color were mostly excluded from those temples of pure reason. That was, as Bret Stephens put it in January in a raging anti-DEI column, before “the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts … blew up the excellence model, centered on the ideal of intellectual merit and chiefly concerned with knowledge, discovery and the free and vigorous contest of ideas.” Ah yes, when almost everyone in higher education still looked like Packer and Stephens, that’s when we still followed the ideals of excellence and intellectual merit, before the “intellectual rot” of “woke” leftist diversity social engineering. Things have clearly gotten out of hand!

BLM, MeToo, CRT, DEI… Turn the clock back!

In the fall of 2023, the immediate reaction by some of the leading “free speech crisis” pundits was to look for ways to reconcile, at least rhetorically, what they had always claimed was a commitment to content-neutral norms with their visceral disdain for college protests. The “cancel culture/free speech crisis” diagnosis was declared proven beyond reasonable doubt in light of the developments on “the Left” – but that connection was never actually established, only ever insinuated. “The Left,” we were invited to believe, was responsible for both the cancel culture threat as well as the pervasive extremism. And in this interpretation, the true, ugly face of the Left’s political project had now been revealed: An authoritarian vision of suppressing all those who disagree in service of a fundamentally antisemitic ideology – leftwing identity discourses were just a cudgel used to silence and assert dominance over dissenters.

By December, when Claire Finkelstein openly proclaimed that, actually, the problem in urgent need of an intervention was *too much free speech* on the campus, the climate in elite opinion had already shifted to the point where her argument mustered little resistance from the free speech punditry. It simply had proven difficult and tedious, even just on the surface level, to affirm a commitment to a principle that, if taken seriously, clearly called for the defense of college protesters, even if you disagreed with them or found them contemptible. The Finkelstein piece marked an interesting moment, therefore. A little over four months later, many self-proclaimed free speech defenders have made it all the way from “protect free speech at the campus at all cost” to “too much free speech on the campus” to “arrest them all!”

For these people, referring to “free speech” principles was a way to insulate speech to which they ultimately didn’t object – or found to be a necessary counterweight to all the “wokeism” out there – from critique. More generally, it served to entrench their privileged position as speakers in the public arena and enshrine their sensibilities as the only legitimate criterion for what does and what doesn’t constitute acceptable public speech. “Free speech” – and the manufactured panic over its “crisis” – thereby became a vehicle to preserve elite status.

In that sense, on the level of the underlying political project, the position free speech pundits who now support agents of the state suppressing critical speech have been entirely consistent. As “free speech,” understood as a largely content-neutral principal, would now benefit those they disdain, it is seamlessly replaced by others: civility, safety, reason. But the enemy, the threat remains the same: Those “woke” leftist radicals. The fundamental problem with them isn’t just the illiberal censoriousness or the extremist speech – but the fact that they are unruly. They must be disciplined, kept in check.

This crackdown on college protests and the support it is receiving from mainstream elites is about Israel and Gaza – and is not just about Israel and Gaza. It is also fueled by a pervasive sense that things have gone too far, that these “woke” radicals urgently need to be reined in. Maybe they were given too much rope during the Trump era, during the mass protests in the summer of 2020, specifically, when most of the mainstream elite felt compelled, momentarily, to lend its support to an uprising. But to status quo fundamentalists, uprisings are dangerous, always. The prevailing view on the center seems to be that we need to turn the clock back, to a time before what they see as the current excesses of radical leftism, “wokeism,” identity politics, “cancel culture”… Too much “chaos,” too much “unrest” and “turmoil.” Who can stem the tide? Centrist elites seem convinced that those young radicals must be prevented from toppling an order of reason and stability that had just the right kind of leaders (they think of themselves) in charge. And if that puts them in an alliance with Greg Abbott and Tom Cotton and Elise Stefanik? The answer, apparently, is: So be it.