Students and faculty occupying college campuses around the country should enjoy a freedom of expression that is nonexistent in the professional world, but every community has its censors.
That was the message visiting professor Robert O’Neil stressed in his lecture Thursday in Robert R. Herring Hall at Rice University.
‘We in the academic community are in some ways freer to speak on campus than elsewhere, while in other respects we are less free,’ O’Neil said.
O’Neil teaches constitutional law at the University of Texas. He said that although campuses are home to engaging intellectual discourses, academia has its own forms of censorship.
‘ Outside the classroom, students have the right to read any translation of a book they please, but on campus students may suffer for reading Cliff Notes, or the English versions of texts assigned in a foreign language, O’Neil said.
The First Amendment gives student protestors the right to make controversial statements on campus, but this freedom is also limited.
‘On a large college campus …’ there are so many different paths you can take and so many ways in which you can avoid being affected or impacted by a display of that sort,’ O’Neil said.
However, he said protests meet with more restrictions in situations where viewers can’t leave. He cited one school that banned sticks and rods in its sports arena to prevent students from waving Confederate flags during games.
‘People really are, for the duration of the game, captives,’ he said.
O’Neil said institutions can use ‘non-speech sanctions’ such as the ban on sticks to prohibit messages without appearing to suppress expression.
Non-speech sanctions have potential for abuse by administrators as ‘a cheap path to cracking down on an unpopular message.’
Freedom of speech at student newspapers depends on the ownership of the paper as well as the view of the courts and legislature on student journalists, O’Neil said.
As for faculty expression, universities give professors the freedom to use institutional funds for progressive research.’ The university setting is also a more accepting place for individuals’ eccentricities than corresponding industries, O’Neil said.
An engineer working for a company might be alienated for an outspoken denial of the Holocaust or anti-Israel tirades, O’Neil said, but in academia his views may be accepted as legitimate opinions.
‘The academic setting is distinct from the workplace in that wide latitude is required for professional judgment in determining the appropriate conduct and presentation of academic material,’ O’Neil said.
While universities may offer more leeway for quirks than the professional world, O’Neil said academia is far more restrictive about the attribution of intellectual property.
‘Even a long-tenured professor risks a severe sanction or possibly dismissal for demonstrated misappropriation or non-attribution of literary or intellectual property at a level that would fall far short of actual copyright infringement in any other setting,’ O’Neil said. ‘This is simply because we in the academic community are for scholarly integrity and collegiate acknowledgment.’
O’Neil’s lecture was a part of The Boniuk Center’s three-part series on freedom of expression on campus.
The series will conclude on April 14 with a round-table discussion between the lecturs and the attendees of the presentations.
