PHENOM’s campaign to rally all public colleges in Massachusetts to defend free speech on campus
What are the Chicago Principles? The Chicago Principles are a short yet potent statement published by the University of Chicago which argues protecting free speech is at the very core of any university’s very reason for existing.
For this reason, PHENOM is excited to announce our campaign to work with all 29 public colleges in Massachusetts to endorse the Chicago Principles. By having all public institutions in the Commonwealth adopt the Chicago Principles, we can protect the freedom of expression so central to our universities’ purpose. We will ensure the adoption of the Chicago Principles within the following months by working with university administrations to amend university policies, as well as by persuading boards of trustees to approve the measure.
But why is implementing the Chicago Principles across the entire Massachusetts higher education system so important?
Freedom of speech has been the most celebrated American value since our country’s founding. Our universities have been one of its greatest defenders. The Chicago Principles highlight the deep connection between learning and free speech that has been central to American universities since the very beginning.
Universities premised not only on learning but also on discovery cannot exist without the freedom to question and debate freely. If we do not have the power to question the world around us, how could we ever solve anything?
More than 10 years since the publication of the Chicago Principles, its ideas are more important than ever for our universities and for our democracy. In real time, we are witnessing an authoritarian regime in Washington doing everything they can to silence universities, from jailing innocent students to slashing funding for life-saving research.
Regardless of one’s opinion of the substance of recent protests on university campuses, students’ and faculty’s right to voice their opinions is non-negotiable. As the Chicago Principles make clear, free speech is at the very core of any education. The federal government’s efforts to punish universities for tolerating the lively debate that defines protest not only threatens our freedom of speech but also our ability to truly learn at all.
When we restrict freedom of expression, we suddenly rule out the myriad ways we all learn on a college campus outside of studying and going to class. We learn by engaging in political activity; by attending thought-provoking guest lectures, even if controversial; and by voicing grievances about problems on campus and beyond.
The loss of these opportunities threatens a lot more than just our individual development. After all, every question is in some sense political: it challenges the way things are and invites us to create something different and better. To “think critically”, which is all any learning ever is, means to voice one’s doubts and truly critique the nature of something instead of blindly writing it down.
The loss of a culture of open debate and genuine questioning at our universities leads us to accept the problems around us as insurmountable and a better world as forever out of reach. The dangers of this scenario could not be more obvious.
The cause of protecting free speech on college campuses has a remarkable amount in common with the cause of ensuring our colleges are high-quality, affordable and accessible. Each one reinforces the other: when colleges are more affordable, students have more time to truly reflect on the world around them.
When students can afford to be full-time students, they have the space not only to dive into their coursework more deeply but also to question the status quo and organize for a better campus and world. When colleges protect free speech, students have a greater ability to advocate for the changes they need and, in turn, keep our colleges affordable and accessible.
Unfortunately, we have entered a vicious cycle of the exact opposite. Just as the decline of college affordability hinders free speech, so too does the decline of free speech hinder college affordability.
It was no accident America’s politicians turned against the model of affordable college in response to student protests of the 1960s. Just as President and California Governor Ronald Reagan believed saddling students with the costs of college would make them less politically active, another official named Roger Freeman worried that an educated proletariat would be “dynamite”. What has followed is decades of funding cuts to public colleges, rising tuition costs, and a crippling student debt crisis as colleges have pushed student loans onto vulnerable families as the only way to afford a degree.
Free speech is the foundation of our universities and of America herself. How can we expect to protect our republic if we cannot even preserve free speech at our universities? As the University of Chicago’s President Hanna Holborn Gray remarked, “education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think”.