Statement on Universal Civil Rights for All Students Regardless of Religion, Race, Class or Ideology
Defending Democratic Education in Massachusetts
The University’s Role in a Democratic Society
Public universities should serve as foundational institutions for democratic society, charged with preparing citizens for participation in civil society through open inquiry access to knowledge. As constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman has demonstrated throughout his work on popular sovereignty, democratic institutions must model the principles they seek to teach.
Massachusetts public colleges and universities have a special responsibility as taxpayer-funded institutions to foster what Jonathan Rauch calls “liberal science”—the system where “conflicting views produce knowledge within society” through rigorous criticism and debate. This system depends on universities maintaining environments where all community members can engage with and access education and intellectual discourse without fear of professional retaliation, harassment or social consequences.
However, currently institutions increasingly fail to fulfill their responsibility to provide a safe campus climate. When students across communities—whether students of faith experiencing harassment, students of color facing bias, conservative students avoiding political expression, or progressive students self-censoring on complex issues— cannot participate fully in academic life, the entire educational enterprise suffers and learning becomes impossible. Without a safe environment for learning, students cannot receive an education, therefore, institutions cannot produce valuable leaders and engaged citizens.
Freedom of Speech and Civil Rights are the Foundation of Academic Discourse
Robust academic discourse requires both comprehensive free speech protection and genuine commitment to civil rights—not as competing values but as mutually reinforcing foundations for inclusive education. As Rauch observes, “A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.”
True intellectual pluralism and heterodoxy on campus demand environments where diverse perspectives can be shared, challenged, and refined through scholarly engagement. This includes protecting the rights of marginalized students to discuss their lived experiences of racism, antisemitism, religious persecution, students to share their full range of perspectives, and students across the political spectrum to engage in authentic debate about controversial issues.
Campus diversity becomes meaningful only when all community members feel secure enough in their identity and safety to contribute authentically to academic discourse. This requires protecting people from harassment and discrimination while simultaneously ensuring that disagreement, criticism, and challenging ideas remain central to the educational experience. When universities restrict expression—even well-intentioned restrictions—they typically undermine the very inclusivity they seek to promote.
How Campus Culture Silences Dissent
Scholars Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott have documented what they term “the cancelling of the American mind”—a systematic pattern affecting nearly 700 cases of attempts to remove professors for their speech since 2015. This represents an unprecedented level of systematic restriction on academic discourse that extends far beyond formal policies to create what researchers term a “chilling effect.”
As Ackerman’s scholarship on democratic culture reveals, the problem lies not just in individual incidents but in the erosion of shared commitments to principles that enable democratic discourse. When campus cultures develop informal but powerful mechanisms for policing expression, they undermine the liberal science principles that universities are supposed to embody.
For example, current evidence shows students from all communities self-censoring to avoid potential consequences. Jewish students report avoiding campus spaces due to antisemitic incidents, while simultaneously, students expressing support for Jewish communities face social pressure in other contexts. Students of color describe constraining their participation in discussions about discrimination, conservative students avoid sharing political perspectives in academic settings, and progressive students fear making mistakes in rapidly evolving conversations about identity and social justice.
This cultural shift damages everyone’s education. As Rauch demonstrates, “liberal science does not restrict belief, but it does restrict knowledge” by requiring all knowledge claims to be subject to public criticism regardless of who makes them. When campus cultures prevent this criticism through informal sanctions, they prevent the knowledge advancement that represents universities’ core mission.
The Universal Application of Civil Rights
The history of civil and constitutional rights in America demonstrates that meaningful protection requires universal application without discrimination based on identity, ideology, or political perspective. From the founding principles through the Civil Rights Movement, social progress has consistently depended on robust protection for unpopular speech and minority viewpoints, not on restricting expression that causes discomfort or offense.
This principle has particular importance for Jewish students and all other marginalized communities in higher education. Historically, American Jews have benefited from strong civil rights protections that enabled them to challenge discrimination, advocate for their interests, and contribute to academic and social discourse despite facing significant prejudice. These same protections enabled other civil rights advances by ensuring that marginalized communities could speak, organize, and demand equal treatment.
Contemporary campus antisemitism requires the same principled response that has served all civil rights causes: comprehensive protection for expression combined with clear prohibition of harassment and discrimination targeting anyone. Jewish students experiencing antisemitic incidents need robust free speech protection to call out that harassment and organize community responses, just as Black students confronting institutional racism need protection for their advocacy, and all other communities require the same comprehensive rights.
When institutions create exceptions to civil rights protection—regardless of their stated intentions—they establish mechanisms that can be redirected against the communities they were designed to help. Historical precedent demonstrates that civil rights restrictions, once established, tend to serve institutional preferences rather than the needs of those requiring protection most urgently.
Standing for free speech also means condemning any effort, especially those by non-student groups, meant to intimidate or dissuade students from participating in civil demonstrations of dissent. Students should not be doxxed, profiled, or harassed based on their political beliefs, and universities must be encouraged to act to protect their students against both hate speech and censorship. A university committed to free speech must act to prevent a chilling effect on campus, which would create a hostile environment in which students may hesitate to speak out due to fear of slander or defamation. Simply put, a campus absent of censorship and retaliation creates an environment that lives up to the ideals of higher education and best serves the student body. University administrations must work to foster universal protection of civil rights for all or risk compromising the integrity of campuses.
PHENOM’s Commitment
The Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM) recognizes that educational equity and civil rights protection are inseparable. Our vision of accessible, affordable, excellent higher education requires campus environments where liberal science can function and all students can participate authentically in intellectual life.
We commit to defending universal civil rights for all students, faculty, and staff, regardless of their backgrounds, beliefs, or political perspectives. This includes supporting students facing harassment while simultaneously opposing censorship targeting any community members, whether they express support for students of faith, minority perspectives, conservative viewpoints, progressive advocacy, or any other authentic positions.
We will advocate for adequate state funding to support comprehensive civil rights protection and democratic discourse programming in public institutions, and hold elected officials and campus leaders accountable for maintaining the safe and open intellectual environment that higher education requires.
Massachusetts’ public higher education system must reduce campus tensions by fostering universal civil rights principles that enable both knowledge advancement and open discourse. Public institutions must model the democratic discourse they are supposed to teach, demonstrating that all communities can engage respectfully across disagreement while upholding shared commitments to human dignity and intellectual freedom.
When universities protect everyone’s civil rights and dignity, regardless of color, class or creed, they build the foundation out of which any valuable education arises. Institutions must provide safe and open forums for civil discourse and constructive ideological engagement. PHENOM calls on public institution administrations to protect the civil rights of all students, without exception.
The Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM) advocates for affordable, accessible, and equitable public higher education throughout the Commonwealth. Founded in 2007, PHENOM organizes students, faculty, staff, and community members to build long-term power for educational justice.