Partha Chakraborty-
“Loke ki balbe?” [What will people say / think / opine?]
Growing up in India, that was the first – and very often the final – sentence that was spoken on all matters that needed stepping beyond the groupthink of the day. My family was not unique, nor was my case any worse than the overwhelming majority of my cohort, and legions before, and after, me. Those three Bengali words, or their equivalent in every language and dialect, are still dreaded in a majority of Indian households.
Imagine my happiness when it fully dawned on me that free speech is truly cherished in the US.
It happened early on at Cornell. Attending one of the early (mandatory?) assimilation orientation lectures I challenged the instructor with a question I thought was truly earth-shattering in its brilliance. It was anything but. “What if your speech is considered vile by, and insulting to, most people around?” – was my question. Her answer was unequivocal and precise. Free speech is protected especially if the speech is vile and insulting. It was obvious that she entertained the same question countless times.
Quiet confidence in her voice still rings in my ears.
I have no idea if these lectures are still offered in the Big Red Barn – the hangout of choice for International graduate students. I never got her name, nor do I remember seeing her afterward. I have, nevertheless, clung on to that mindset, and will till my last breath, that I do not have a right to harm but I do have a right to offend. That right is beyond sacrosanct – it is etched in the blood of Americans who defended the right against enemies foreign and domestic, it was echoed in ACLU’s defense of KKK’s right to march, it was codified in John Stuart Mills’ writing, and John Rawls’ more recent works. This is the cherished freedom that every immigrant – yours truly included – dreamed about before landing on these shores.
This is also the freedom that stands canceled on American campuses, including, possibly, at Cornell.
You have heard the horror stories, and every day we add to the list. Progressive groupthink and “race essentialism” are almost enshrined in college charters – at least that’s how it looks. Speech police has taken the place of free speech champions. I used to think this normalization of pathologies of dictatorship was endemic only to the “non-science” disciplines, and God knows how many times I have railed against them – surely devotion to data, questioning minds and peer review will hold sciences immune. I have been proven wrong – from MIT to UC Berkeley to Medical Schools all over – you better watch out when decades-old meanderings of an itinerant mind come to light, even if that had nothing to do with your field of expertise, and especially if you were affirming allegiance to the doctrines that hold science to a higher standard. In a social science like Economics – I will pretend that it cares for mathematical rigor and data validation – aggrandizements can take the form of sidelining a MacArthur genius, and John Bates Clark medal winner, presumably because his research confronted orthodoxies of the Faculty Club.
Not that campuses are equal opportunity offenders.
Elite universities have, proudly as they seem to pretend, stepped away from adherence to strict neutrality. One positive upshot of the Israel-Hamas war is that it laid bare what we already knew all along – the emperors have no clothes. But they do have the privilege of being the Supremes; they – and only they – decide if they are right or wrong, if your grievance deserves their support if they would deign to use their tenurial protections to lift a pen on your behalf, never mind they were loudest voices in every other comparable case. Nobody believes US college administrators because Free Speech is dead as a dodo on elite US College campuses, it can be argued, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Unless you bring in instruments of influence elsewhere. In another article – “Donors’ Right to Choose Can Save College Campuses,” written by Mr. Stuart Shapiro – I explore the influence donors can have. A second approach might use market forces. Free speech, Democracy and Free Market Capitalism, together, depict a symbiotic cycle of progress – each builds on, and is sustained by, the others. In the context of elite campuses, it could bring the financial motive of self-sustenance back to individual faculty offices.
Science and technology-related programs already know this. Their multi-million-dollar research budgets cannot be sustained with the general ledger alone; even in endowment-rich institutions (“hedge funds with a college attached”) they depend on specific grants from public and private sources. Every new faculty spends a sizable chunk of their onboarding resources looking for support outside – their credibility inside critically depends on it, as does their access to research-related human capital. In many fields where such a direct causal relationship is difficult to establish, they take on the responsibility of teaching mega-sized mandatory undergraduate courses. For some programs – like business schools – students pay tuition to their specific colleges and programs, in addition.
Nobody in their right mind would question that the human quest for knowledge and excellence has been compromised in any of these fields that are market-driven. A comparison with fields where general accounts inure market forces will vouch that the impact is positive.
Can we extend? Can we embrace it for the academic programs, and faculty, that explicitly belittle market forces? I did not drink the Kool-Aid, so I will be realistic. It cannot be done, at least not in the near horizon. Because it will face every imaginable roadblock, amplified ad nauseam by its well-entrenched support network in the media and in politics. I know what the Arts Quad mafia will say. That I am a flamethrower. I am exploiting the status quo to bring down the house. That I am hell-bent on demolishing their cherished tenure. That I am evil with a smile and a warm handshake. That I am an extremist.
Let me confess once and for all. I dream of a day where the elite institutions revert to the standard I heard the first week at Cornell – that free speech, including the freedom to offend, but not to harm, is sine qua non for American Exceptionalism and experience. Yes, I am a radical in the same vein as the Framers were.
Yes, I am a Free Speech Fundamentalist. And there is nothing anybody can do about that.
