National coalition in favor of campus censorship
washingtonpost.com
Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms. Magazine) and others call for restricting campus speech
The recently amended complaint against University of Mary Washington, filed with the federal Education Department, shows how Title IX has become a tool for people to try to suppress speech they disapprove of...
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the UMW president, Richard Hurley, sent a letter to the Feminist Majority Foundation responding to the charges, and publicized the letter more broadly. So the complainants amended the complaint, claiming that the statement itself — the university president’s speech defending the university against the charges — was illegal “retaliation.”
washingtonpost.com
...And here we get to the heart of the problem with the “retaliation” argument: Here, the claims are that Hurley “retaliated” against the students by (1) expressing his opinions about the severity of the initial allegations and (2) publicizing those opinions widely, which led anonymous parties to further criticize Feminists United (and perhaps to threaten them, though that isn’t specifically alleged in those paragraphs).
But all that Hurley was doing was engaging in normal public debate. When officials are accused of something, the accused set forth their side of the story. When complaints are picked up in the national media, the accused respond in ways that are picked up in the national media. Indeed, a recent California case, White v. Edley (Cal. Ct. App. 2015), held that University of California at Berkeley law school dean Christopher Edley actually had categorical immunity from libel law for his responses to an accusation of misconduct: “‘Because a public official’s duty includes the duty to keep the public informed of his or her management of the public business, press releases, press conferences and other public statements by such officials are covered by the ‘official duty’ privilege.’” Here, Hurley’s discharge of this duty wasn’t even libelous to begin with.
To be sure, some such responses by officials might lead to criticism of the complainants — and, on the part of some critics, perhaps even threats against the complainants (which, I stress again, may properly be punished, if they are true threats of violence). But that doesn’t impose any obligation on the part of the accused officials to just shut up and let the charges against them spread without response.
Readers might recall the recent attempt to use Title IX to shut down critical speech as retaliation, in the Northwestern University / Prof. Laura Kipnis controversy, see here, here and here. This complaint is yet another such attempt.
The Feminist Majority Foundation, though a publisher of a magazine, doesn’t seem to care much about the First Amendment rights of students, or of accused university officials. Its complaint goes far beyond constitutionally unprotected and rightly punishable speech, such as true threats of violence.
Instead, it faults the university for not stopping criticism of feminist arguments and feminist arguers, whether vulgar criticism or other criticism. It faults the university for speaking out, without vulgarities or epithets, in its own defense. And the premise of the complaint thus seems to be that one side of a debate has the right to speak — to condemn and to accuse — but the federal government should step in to stop the other side from responding.
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