My notes and other stuff regarding Controversial Speakers at Universities

Last Wednesday, May 1st, I did my first debate with The Motion, a group advocating debating as an after-work social thing. Part fun, part toast-masters, part education, and with free beer. . . They happen once a month, with four prepared debaters, and an audience of like 30 people.

Every month it is a different topic. This month it was whether controversial speakers should be allowed on public Universities. I was taking the position that they should not be allowed. Below are the notes I came with and some afterthoughts. 

I do look forward to going back, both as an audience member and debater. 

1^st Round (5 Minutes)

Controversial speakers are NOT good for public universities.

That is what I am defending.

Now despite my wife, and others' disapproval here, this is really not all that controversial.

So let's give it a shot. . .

I start by offering this question: What does a university do? 

(Aside from providing us with March Madness and New Years Bowl games, what do they do?)

What is the function of a university? Public or private. . .

Universities do two things. They perform two functions.

They research. . . they search for truth, and they educate.

These two things were and are the core of a university, past and present.

Regardless of what domain you point to, whether it be literature, sociology, or physics, there are certain things going on at a university which allow for it to research and educate. And it is these things, found at a University, and that provide for research and education. These same things do not allow for controversial speakers at a university, public or private.

Next question. What are these things? What makes a university successful in discovering and researching stuff, whether it be history or chemistry? Likewise, what makes it successful in educating? Again, whether it be in history or chemistry, whatever. 

I offer you several items here:

1.     a faculty, 

2.     a canon (or a set of highly regarded and defining texts), which the faculty respects, embraces, and applies. 

3.     a set of research methodologies, typically found in those texts, and applied by the faculty 

4.     a set of publications dedicated to research in a specific area or domain introduced in the canon and explored by the faculty

5.     With those publications, a process for publishing and getting published, a set of topics or questions each domain largely focuses on, tries to answer, and build upon

6.     Ultimately peer review of both in these publications and various conferences. 

These items are what allow for the fruit of research. They are what allow for truths to be discovered, and education. And again, they do not allow for controversial speakers.

Our controversial speakers typically do not contribute to the above. They are not part of that ecosystem. Rather they are part of our commercial media. They  sell books. they do TV and radio. They have podcasts. They participate in a system not focused on truth and learning but rather primarily advertising and sales. There is a difference between Rutgers University and CNN or Fox News.

And that is my first argument against controversial speakers.

2^nd and Final Round (3 minutes)

Let me first review what I laid out earlier:

Universities offer two things: Research and Education

And those two things are achieved by the list I provided:

·        A faculty

·        A canon

·        A set of methodologies

·        A set of publications

·        And peer review

And the controversial speakers again thrive primarily in a commercial media. They thrive in the selling of books, and ads.

Now in the question and answer period, the one thing I heard or expected to hear was reference to the freedom of speech and how important it was to education.

I offer two responses:

Freedom of speech is a political concept. It is found in our Bill of Rights in the Constitution. It prohibits the state from interfering with the free expression of its citizenry. Again, it is a political concept.

This is not to be confused with academic freedom, Researchers and students can and do pursue various research and educational agendas. They challenge core ideas and beliefs found in the canons of their studies. That is when this stuff becomes fun!

The most interesting idea is the idea that challenges but yet sustains the critique of the canon, the faculty, the methodologies, and the peer review and is ultimately published.

It is with the above list and academic freedom that we decide which research to embrace and what defines an education. It is the play of these things that bring us to new ideas, new research and new truths. So, the free play of ideas is within the domain that I describe.

This is what a University provides. . . research and education.

Afterthoughts:

The whole discussion that night circled around whether the controversial speakers had the right to speak. The focus was on the political.

Not only that but the discussion was focused on the controversial speakers of today. We did not deal with communist or far-left speakers or anything else. Just the far-right neo-fascists that are out there today - now. And sadly, my partner I feel exaggerated their positions. This was really neither the time nor the place to focus on them. They are only a type of controversial speaker that visit universities.

That said, I was the only one that pointed out that a University is a unique cultural institution that had built into it ways to deal with such speakers.

Lastly and this was perhaps my favorite offering of the evening and was in the midst of the question and answer period. It went something like the following:

“You may sympathize with my partner and his position. That said, you may not be willing to close down speech rights to these speakers. If that is the case-that you are not wanting to just say they don’t have a right to speech. Well then you need to look at my position. We do not need to ban their right to speech here. In this debate the topic is what is happening at universities. Not the general culture, not what is happening in out there, not what is happening here, but at our universities. Allow the Universities to use the tools and methods they have sharpened for decades. . .centuries to deal with such.”

The last item is regarding how we did. Motion Debates does take a tally before and after the debate to see how each side did. We went from 4 people holding our position before to 6 people after. A 50% increase.  

Sadly, the other side had like 22 people supporting their position at the start and that went to 26 at the end. There was a handful or two of those who were uncertain. 

I left thinking no doubt we had been fighting an uphill battle. And my position, where I argued that controversial speakers can be dealt with by the University, few got. More importantly, at least for me in hindsight, was the role of the university and how I see that effecting the equation, again few got. Not to my satisfaction.