We’ve had a few local dust ups over free speech in the last few weeks. Let’s get caught up.
Last week UW System President Ray Cross chastised UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow for inviting Nina Hartley to speak at his campus. Cross was obsessed with the fact that Hartley, now 59, had once been an adult film star. He wasn’t at all interested that during and after her career she’s been outspoken and thoughtful about issues revolving around that industry, she’s written extensively about it and, in that she’s also been invited to speak at such second rate academic backwaters as Harvard, Dartmouth and Berkeley.
Cross also ignored the fact that Gow invited her as part of UW-La Crosse’s Free Speech Week. On Nov. 9 Gow published a sound, sensible, reasonable and even inspiring defense of his decision. About three weeks later, after sniffing out the political winds, Cross wrote Gow a disingenuous and self-serving public letter of reprimand designed to protect his right flank and appease the ill-informed.
It’s easy to characterize all this as “pay[ing] for a porn star to come to the UW-La Crosse campus to lecture students about sex,” as Cross did in his letter. Taking a little time to understand who she really is, what she’s really about and why she was invited would be so tedious as to be, I don’t know, academic.
And in the biggest irony of all, this comes about a year after Cross pushed a new free speech policy though the Regents to appease legislative Republicans who believe (not without cause) that conservative ideas get short shrift on campuses. “Different ideas in the university community will often and quite naturally conflict,” the policy states. “But it is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they, or others, find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
Those words may have been aimed at liberals who too often want to quell conservative speech on campus, but they’re still pretty good sentiments and they cut both ways.
Gov.-elect Tony Evers won’t have a direct say over the next system president and the Republicans may even do what they can to restrict his control of the Board of Regents, but the political winds are shifting. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a guy like Joe Gow as system president sometime in the future.
Next we move on to Baraboo where students at a high school prom were photographed last spring with their hands in the air. Depending on who you want to believe, that was either a playful wave or a menacing Nazi salute. The whole incident reminds me of the excellent old television series Picket Fences, which was actually set in a fictional small town in Wisconsin.
Picket Fences’ niche was to present seemingly obvious stories of right and wrong only to twist them and get the viewer taking the opposite view just in time to twist the story back again, leaving the viewer not knowing what to think, but getting them to think. It was a damn good show.
When I first saw the photo (and was told what it was) I was appalled. In my own mind I rushed to all kinds of judgments about small towns and the state of our country in the era of Trump. Then alternative explanations were offered and I looked at the photo more carefully. Were they really giving a Nazi salute or was that indeed a wave?
I’m still not sure, but for the purposes of the free speech debate let’s assume the worst. Under the First Amendment (which is, by the way, America’s best idea; sorry, national parks) the government has no business doing anything about it.
But there is the First Amendment legal protection as interpreted by the Supreme Court and then there is the spirit of free speech, which is interpreted by each one of us. Within certain reasonable limits we can legally express ourselves any way we want. But outside of the law and of government action, words and expressions still can have consequences. For example, I’m not likely to get a job with Ray Cross.
The Baraboo school district has decided not to follow up with any disciplinary action against the students. That’s probably appropriate, but I don’t think they should just let it go either. I agree with Jeff Sptizer-Resnick that it would be a good idea to try to get as many of those guys together in a room and have a good discussion.
The boys should be directly asked: What were you thinking when you lifted your arm like that? And if you really were making some kind of Nazi salute, do you understand what that means? It wouldn’t be hard to find YouTube videos of concentration camps and testimonials of victims. Put those guys through an hour of that and see how they feel when they come out. If they really were just waving, well, they’ll wave again and they would have learned something important. But if they were making a Nazi salute, my guess is that it won’t happen again.
I wish everybody would just exercise good judgment. I wish university presidents would bother to understand the context before firing off simplistic letters about “porn stars.” I wish kids would understand enough history not to mimic deference to a fascist monster. And I wish campus liberals would sit quietly through the lectures of even the most outrageous conservative speakers and then challenge them vigorously but politely during the question and answer period.
Free speech is a powerful and messy thing, but for me at least, it is the very center of what it means to be free. And it can’t stand on its own. To continue to exist, free speech needs to come with a large dose of tolerance for the sometimes challenging and sometimes ignorant ways in which it is expressed.
