On the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks wrote an e-mail to the campus community to argue that the exercise of free speech rights rests on establishing an atmosphere of civility. “Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas. In this sense, free speech and civility are two sides of a single coin – the coin of open, democratic society,” wrote Dirks. (reclaim UC, September 5, 2014)
Dirks’ e-mail provoked spirited commentary including one by Vijay Prashad, CounterPunch, September 8, 2014, who wrote that the main issue in the Free Speech Movement was the right of students to express political opinions on campus. Prashad criticizes Dirks position as missing the point of dissent. “Chancellor Dirks disparages speech that is ‘inherently divisive, controversial and capable of arousing strong feelings.’” Prashad says that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s grasp of the issues surrounding protest and civility was more discerning, “The call for law and order, or even civility, cloaks what is really being said – namely, that the injustice of the current ‘absence of tension’ is to be allowed to remain so that tension is not produced. Real peace, Dr. King argued, came from bringing injustice into the open through struggle and defeating it to bring justice to the world.”
Attorney Ken White, Popehat, September 6, 2014, crafted a sentence-by-sentence critique of the e-mail pointing out that Dirks is arguing for a precondition for free speech when none exists. White quotes Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the Court in the animal cruelty opinion, “The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits. The First Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the Government outweigh the costs. Our Constitution forecloses any attempt to revise that judgment simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it. The Constitution is not a document ‘prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.’”
Other criticized the Chancellor Dirks for misconstruing the nature of free speech and not understanding UC Berkeley’s role in the free speech movement. Michael Meranze, a history professor at UCLA, drew parallels between Dirks’ e-mail and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s decision to withdraw a job offer to American studies scholar Steven Salaita for his remarks about Israel on Twitter. ” …Secrecy and non-academic issues trumped the established protocols for making appointments. All in the name of civility,” wrote Meranze. (Inside Higher Education, September 9, 2014, by Colleen Flaherty)
While acknowledging the merits of criticism of Dirks’ e-mail, Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy in The Washington Post, September 9, 2014, says that civility is vital to society and worthy of defense. “If Dirks’s message is indeed, as some understandably suspect, a prelude to an attempt to punish supposedly “uncivil” speech, that would be bad. (I set aside here the proper power of professors to ensure that class discussion is civil by cutting off students who insult other students.) But if it is an attempt to persuade people to act civilly, then this goal strikes me as something that a university chancellor should indeed be trying to promote,” writes Volokh.