It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom

by Michael Bérubé, Jennifer Ruth

How far does the idea of academic freedom extend to professors in an era of racial reckoning?

The protests of summer 2020, which were ignited by the murder of George Floyd, led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors?

It's Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy—theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. Approaching this question from two angles—one, the question of when a professor's intramural or extramural speech calls into question his or her fitness to serve, and two, the question of how to manage the simmering tension between the academic freedom of faculty and the antidiscrimination initiatives of campus offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion—they argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech.

In recent years, those with traditional liberal ideals have had very limited effectiveness in responding to the resurgence of white supremacism in American life. It is time, Bérubé and Ruth write, to ask whether that resurgence requires us to rethink the parameters and practices of academic freedom. Touching as well on contingent faculty, whose speech is often inadequately protected, It's Not Free Speech insists that we reimagine shared governance to augment both academic freedom and antidiscrimination initiatives on campuses. Faculty across the nation can develop protocols that account for both the new realities—from the rise of social media to the decline of tenure—and the old realities of long-standing inequities and abuses that the classic liberal conception of academic freedom did nothing to address. This book will resonate for anyone who has followed debates over #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, and "cancel culture"; more specifically, it should have a major impact on many facets of academic life, from the classroom to faculty senates to the office of the general counsel.

Genres: Politics

304 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 2022

About the author

Michael Bérubé is the director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities and the Paterno Family Professor in Literature at Penn State University.

Reviews

[Michael Asres · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It's Not Free Speech" is an indispensable read for those engaged in the discourse surrounding free speech and academic freedom within universities. While the authors primarily focus on the United States, they offer profound insights into the mechanisms through which controversies on campus concerning free speech gain traction and why. They prompt readers to scrutinize the broader ideological conflicts often masked as concerns for free speech, revealing deeper political motivations at play.

The authors also present compelling critiques of free speech absolutist arguments that reject any attempts to regulate expression, even when it results in demonstrable harm. In many higher education settings, the prevailing notion suggests that the remedy for objectionable speech is more speech—an argument that overlooks the significant power imbalances that render such a solution unattainable. Bérubé and Ruth argue that this perspective lacks nuance and fails to acknowledge how certain forms of expression (such as racism, xenophobia, sexism, etc.) can actively hinder democratic participation.

Their central argument revolves around addressing contested issues of academic freedom. While acknowledging that academic freedom has more defined boundaries than free speech in the United States, they contend that it should safeguard the work and expression of faculty as long as it contributes to advancing knowledge and research within their respective fields. It should not protect ideas that have been disproven or are blatantly false. The authors argue for the establishment of a democratic committee comprising peers specifically tasked with adjudicating disputes related to academic freedom. This committee of experts would determine the parameters distinguishing academic freedom from mere quackery.

This argument resonates strongly with me, and I believe it warrants further exploration by universities. However, I feel that the discussion on labour could benefit from greater emphasis. The growing trend in North American universities of relying increasingly on adjunct and contract faculty, while reducing the use of tenure, significantly undermines the strength of academic freedom as a robust form of labour protection. It seems to me that building an infrastructure around academic freedom may overlook the larger systemic issues. If the current trend in academic labour persists, academic freedom could become a privilege afforded to fewer and fewer faculty members.

While the authors do touch on this issue, I would have liked to see a more direct engagement with the broader labour concerns underpinning academic freedom and suggestions for ensuring everyone's academic freedom, not just those with tenure. This is undoubtedly a complex question that may extend beyond the scope of their book, but it is one that has lingered in my thoughts since completing the reading.

In conclusion, "It's Not Free Speech" is a remarkable work. It is brilliantly written, engaging, and infused with the authors' delightful sense of humor. It offers profound reflections on a challenging subject matter, making it a valuable contribution to the discourse on free speech and academic freedom.

[Natali · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a lazy book that tries to argue against free speech because of the "real harm" it causes but they do not prove this "real harm." This book ages especially badly when they use Covid as an example of how professors should not have been able to speak out against masking and social distancing. LOL. Now we know that there was no science behind social distancing and that there are real world harms of masking that were censored during the pandemic so that basically takes this book's main argument and shoves it face-first into a chin busting pavement dive. Nuked.

Same with climate change. The climate models are by no means agreed upon but they make a lazy argument that climate "deniers" should be pushed out of universities as if we all agree on that. I'm quite sure they haven't read much climate science. The CMIP5 and CMIP6 maps do not even conclusively show that humans-caused emissions are the sole cause of climate change but they think that anyone who questions this should be sent to an Academic Freedom commission that every university should establish, alongside their DEI commissions. This very prospect is chilling.

They go down the list of topics that they think are unacceptable and sort of lazily point out why we don't want to hear those things. This made me wonder: what are we doing here? Are we making a case against free speech or are we just taking pot shots at doctrines we don't like? You can't do both. If you want to write a book critical of scientists who have different opinions about the climate, do that. You can't take opinions different from yours and swipe them all away because they are "wrongthink" and then argue for them to be deplatformed. It's a sort of "wrongthink" absolutism. If we don't like it, there must be harm and we must deplatform it and here are all the things we collectively agree upon in progressive education...

Many of the things that they say are wrongthink have valid points that they don't discuss, which again proves them wrong. Some are odious ideas, to be sure, but they do not prove where they are harming society. They even make a full case against academic discussion about phrenology but they cannot prove that it is being promoted anywhere so this disproves their very thesis. If phrenology is so odious, perhaps it became extinct exactly because we were free to all see that for ourselves through free speech?

I had to push myself to finish this dreadful book. I read it to try to see why anyone would argue against academic speech and...well, I'm just as convinced as ever that those people are lame and what's more, they swipe away things they don't like lazily maybe because they don't want to actually study. Maybe they're using de-platforming in place of actually doing homework to discuss climate models or pandemic science?

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

All a lead up to the proposal that Unis should have AF Committees.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm writing a professional review for publication in a scholarly journal, so I'm not putting a review here.
https://youtu.be/R6p2tfJM5F8