Transcriber: Annet Johnson Reviewer: Anna Sobota
When did you first encounter free speech?
Can you remember?
I first encountered free speech around our kitchen table growing up
where we would sit around and share several meals several times a week
and talk about all manner of things: politics, religion, sexuality,
what we learned in school, current events, sports; you name it, we talked about it.
My mom is a retired dietician.
She made sure that the meals were good
and we had representation from the main food groups.
My dad was a university professor,
and he made sure that the conversation was good.
He would ask thought-provoking questions to really get us talking.
I encountered free speech again in law school in my First Amendment class
where we talked about the First Amendment and the overarching principle
that government can’t restrict an individual’s right to speak freely
or to associate or to assemble.
We talked about the Tinker case and the Supreme Court’s decision
that students don’t shed their rights to free speech at the schoolhouse gate.
Or the Island Trees case where the court famously held
that a school district can’t remove library books
simply because they don’t like the ideas in them.
And then I became a higher education lawyer.
I dealt with things such as the radical preacher
who shows up to campus every year to tell everyone they’re going to hell
or the controversial art exhibit
where the artist makes Klan’s robes out of Kente cloth.
It’s been my job to give the lawyer answer,
when someone asks why we can’t just kick off the preacher
or questions why we would allow such an exhibit to take place,
that the First Amendment protects most speech,
even the speech that might make you uncomfortable.
But something changed for me when, for seven months,
I took off my higher ed lawyer hat and became Interim President.
Now that might sound like a big job, and it is, but I took it in 2020,
the year that changed everything.
(Laughter)
We were in the beginning stages of a global pandemic,
there was racial awakening and reckoning,
a contentious national election, and I could keep going.
I mean, you were there;
most of you were on mute, but you were there.
(Laughter)
There were so many things that were trying to pull us apart
and it was my job to figure out how to keep us together.
So much of higher education is centered around togetherness:
there’s learning together, working together,
living together, socializing together,
and of equal importance, is disagreeing together.
I believe that if we do this right,
we will equip our students to go out into this world
and be models of togetherness.
That brings me back to the kitchen table
which serves an important function in our society.
Research shows when families eat together around the kitchen table regularly
there are important health benefits, like lower rates of obesity
and lower likelihood of developing eating disorders.
There are also important social benefits, like greater self-esteem
and a greater sense of resilience.
Really, the kitchen table is a conduit for togetherness.
I believe that higher education is not just the marketplace of ideas
but it’s also society’s kitchen table,
and I’ll use my remaining time to tell you how.
The first is about exposure to diverse thoughts and opinions.
So growing up with a nutritionist for a mom
meant that she would set a balanced table and we had to taste everything.
It didn’t mean we had to like it, but we, at least, had to taste it.
That was important because it helped to develop my taste and expand my palette.
In the same way in higher education, we have to set a table
and challenge our students to develop and expand their palette.
Our current technological society is actually hindering this palette expansion
in what some refer to as algorithmic culture,
which are the ways in which computers running complex mathematical formulae
engage in what’s often considered to be the traditional work of a culture;
i.e. the sorting, classifying, and ranking of people, places, objects, and ideas.
Now, there’s real cultural danger in allowing computers to do this for us
and not developing the muscle doing this ourselves,
and I’ll give you an example.
My favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate chip cookie dough.
Okay?
(Chuckles)
So I’m on social media and I see an ad
for Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream,
double-tapped and liked that.
Then I head over to TikTok and now I see an influencer who filmed herself
tasting chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
Then I go over to Instagram and now all of a sudden my feed is filled
with nothing but chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
So what happened?
All that sorting has been done in the background
and I don’t even notice that it’s taking place.
So what happens then when I see an ad for a rocky road ice cream?
Which by the way is the most disgusting ice cream out there on the market.
Argue with somebody else, that’s what I believe.
(Laughter)
“Mute, block, bye!”
I don’t even have to engage with them.
Now, this is a light-hearted example,
but it’s the reality of how we receive our information these days.
And because of this, we don’t develop that muscle of hearing dissonant ideas
and digesting their concepts,
which is the foundation for being able to respect another person’s point of view.
In academia, we have to confront this decaying muscle, if you will,
and challenge our students
and develop in them the habit of tasting all viewpoints,
and then doing that work of the sorting, classifying, and the ranking.
Around the table of higher education,
the students eat what they want, they spit out what they don’t like.
That work is theirs to do.
Our work is to set a table satisfactorily or scientifically
or artistically nutritious.
As long as it’s good for us to consume, it needs to be served.
The second kitchen table function of higher education
is engaging in informed discussion.
Now, growing up with a professor for a dad,
meant that around our table
you were expected to contribute to the conversation.
He developed in us the habit of formulating our thoughts and opinions
and then crafting the most effective way of articulating them.
He never failed to impress upon us what he thought was right or wrong.
He also didn’t require that we assume those opinions for ourselves,
but we were expected to back up our thoughts and opinions
with something that we had read or seen.
Around the kitchen table of higher education,
this looks like embedding robust discussions,
engaging dialogue in classrooms, organizations, and programming.
This might look like allowing that radical preacher to come to campus,
but then holding a forum afterwards
to talk about the impact of the words that he said.
Now, when we’ve had controversial speech on campus,
I’m often asked why we can’t just stop that speech.
Well, besides the First Amendment,
I don’t believe that the answer to unwelcome speech
is to stop that speech.
I believe that the answer to unwelcome speech is more speech to counter it.
I’m paraphrasing Dr. Johnnetta Cole,
who is a renowned anthropologist and former University President,
who basically said we have to talk about our differences
until our differences don’t make a difference anymore.
So ideally more speech, when guided by reason, should result in togetherness.
There’s one thing I didn’t mention about our table growing up.
There were four of us around our table,
and if it was my mom’s job to serve a nutritious meal,
and my dad’s job to serve stimulating conversations,
it was my brother’s job to aggravate the crap out of me.
(Laughter)
One time in an argument, he called me an ugly Chilean word mouse.
Like, do you even know what that is?
We would call each other dumb and stupid, tell each other to shut up,
you know, the normal sibling stuff.
But on the occasion that our fights got bigger than normal
my parents would, around the kitchen table,
talk to us about the importance of respectfully disagreeing
and resolving conflicts,
which is the third kitchen table function of higher education.
There will be disagreements around the table of higher education.
Historically, this is the training ground for those types of things to happen
and we should welcome it.
In the 1960s, just down the road in Nashville, Tennessee,
historically Black colleges and universities were the training ground
where students learned how to protest segregation non-violently.
In 2020, after George Floyd’s murder,
there were protests popping up on college campuses
all across the country.
We want people to know and learn how to demonstrate and protest
in order to effect meaningful change.
We should be teaching our students how to speak with confidence
on the facts that they’ve uncovered.
This is a critical skill to a thriving democracy.
If we don’t teach this,
or if we are prohibited from teaching this,
we will fail an entire new generation because they won’t know how to cash in
on that promissory note of America’s promise.
There’s also danger in not teaching this.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,
has for years surveyed college students around their free speech attitudes.
In 2017, 1% of students surveyed
said that they felt it acceptable to combat hate speech with violence.
In 2021, that number was one in four.
Now, there could be all sorts of reasons why we’ve seen such a dramatic shift,
but it’s important to take note of this.
Because once you start introducing violence to combat speech
you eliminate all hope for togetherness that we might have.
Now, speaking of the word “togetherness,”
when I think about togetherness, I think about belonging.
It could be because that song of Mariah Carey “We Belong Together”
was my jam.
I mean, I wore it out, trust me.
In higher education, we definitely have to create that sense of belonging
in order to achieve togetherness.
And when we create that sense of belonging free speech should be a byproduct of that.
Growing up around our table some of my favorite memories
were sitting there talking and dialoging with my family.
My parents had a way of creating that sense of belonging.
I never questioned whether I belonged there.
Even the one time I threw food in the fourth grade in the cafeteria
and my dad gave me a lecture as long as the one he was giving his students,
I still knew that I was welcome at the family table;
they weren’t canceling me.
There’s a reason why we say grace around the family table.
We desperately have to give each other grace
if we’re going to achieve togetherness, especially as it relates to free speech,
and it could be modeled by those of us in higher education leadership.
For example, in 2020, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder,
we launched an effort called “A Place At Our Table,”
where small groups gathered around campus
to have those difficult conversations around race.
The idea was that, no matter your beliefs,
you belong at our table because we’re a family.
Now you best believe that there were some uncomfortable moments,
we did not always have the right words to say.
But I do believe that the conversations led to greater understanding,
even healing, and a greater sense of togetherness.
When we talk about things around our table
that make some around the table uncomfortable,
we have to resist the temptation to stop talking.
And that really means we have to go deeper and get to the heart of the issue.
This is really the work of society as a whole
that when we are so far apart on issues we have to find a way to stick together.
And this is where I believe that higher education can show the way，
because we say, “Come sit at our table.”
When you think about it, we take people from all walks of life, ages, races, sex,
socio-economic status, intellectual ability,
and somehow we’re able to grow together, evolve together, develop together,
and then we release them and they change the world.
Thank you.
(Applause)