Are We Free to Discuss America's Real Problems? - Imprimis
"There is a lot of abstract talk these days on American college campuses about free speech and the values of free inquiry, with plenty of lip service being paid to
expansive notions of free expression and the marketplace of ideas.
What I’ve learned through my recent experience of writing a controversial op-ed is that
most of this talk is not worth much.
It is only
when people are confronted with speech they don’t like that we see whether these abstractions are real to them.
The op-ed, which I co-authored with Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego Law School, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 9 under the title, “Paying the Price for the Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture.”
It began by listing some of the
ills afflicting American society:
- Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available.
- Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows.
- Opioid abuse is widespread.
- Homicidal violence plagues inner cities.
- Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers.
- Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.
We then discussed the “cultural script”—a list of
behavioral norms—that was almost universally endorsed between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s:
- Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake.
- Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness.
- Go the extra mile for your employer or client.
- Be a patriot, ready to serve the country.
- Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable.
- Avoid coarse language in public.
- Be respectful of authority.
- Eschew substance abuse and crime.
...The reactions to this piece raise the question of how unorthodox opinions should be dealt with in academia—and in American society at large.
...What those of us in academia should certainly not do is engage in unreasoned speech: hurling slurs and epithets, name-calling, vilification, and mindless labeling.
Likewise we should not reject the views of others without providing reasoned arguments.
Yet these
once common standards of practice have been violated repeatedly at my own and at other academic institutions in recent years—and we increasingly see this trend in society as well..."
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Americans, he noted, don’t know their history very well.
