Free Speech Activism: The Right to Speak and the Right to Be Heard
In 2016, the national preoccupation with “free speech” places the term, now fully recognized as a social weapon, in the hands of conservatives, who use the political heft of the term to discourage minority groups from full participation in the community life of their campuses. An accompanying term, “political correctness,” is also at play, presented as an opposing force to free speech, wielded by students to silence their dissenters. But framing free speech and political correctness as adversarial creates a fictitious dichotomy which seeks comfortable conversations and political discourse that supports a status quo. If it is possible to conceive of free speech and political correctness as allies, bouying up together the ability for marginalized people to feel as though they are part of their campus communities, we can understand that political correctness actually expands the right to free speech. In this way, we can end the subordination of minority groups through decontextualized free speech absolutism and the diffuse conception of political correctness as a way to diminish tolerance, instead of bolstering it.
Nevertheless, with the widespread ideology of political correctness held up to the legacy of the Speaker Ban actors as free speech activists, their movement opens itself to contemporary criticisms: Despite their conviction that they were suing their University for the right reasons, they were not protecting their own right to free speech, but rather the right for their various student organizations to bring whatever speakers they choose to campus. The plaintiffs were all white, eleven men, and one “girl,” Eunice Milton Benton, whom several interviewees admit was added to the roster of plaintiffs to provide for some diversity.[3] And though a few of the Speaker Ban activists had been involved in civil rights protests in other locations and at other times, none of the plaintiffs themselves had been involved in the protests in Raleigh and Chapel Hill, which were the catalysts for the passage of the law. It is unfair to place the Speaker Ban activists in relation to contemporary activists as the paragon for student activism at UNC. In many ways, more than the critiques listed here, resonating deeply through the oral histories are the youthful and privileged reminiscences of men who have had successful careers as attorneys, judges, and journalists, not in spite of their involvement in student activism around free speech, but in part because of their involvement in the movement. However, the themes of conviction, a sense of place in local and national contexts, and organizing logistics remain important for contemporary activists without giving the Speaker Ban activists any kind of didactic power over current meanings of free speech.
There remains, though, a distortion involved in critiquing the Speaker Ban activists with a contemporary definition and understanding of free speech ideology as a tool of the race-blind bigot. The right to speak and be heard defended by Speaker Ban activists in the 1960s is distinct from the right to speak and be heard that is part of the struggle today on UNC’s campus for inclusivity. When we acknowledge the rhetorical slippage of the term “free speech” and view it as a political tool as much as a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, we are better able to draw from the shortcomings and achievements of the Speaker Ban activists. And when using this part of the University’s past, we must focus as much on the implicit right we have to listen as much as we focus on the right to speak. The term “free speech” assumes for both student activists and their detractors that if the other will listen, we can achieve a sustained political discourse. Perhaps “free speech” might best operate when accompanied by more explicit instructions to engage in active listening. However we negotiate the limits and definitions of free speech on the University’s campus today, we ought to remember that the political legacy of free speech at UNC involves both speaking and listening.
[1] Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” The Atlantic, September 2015.
[2] Manne, Kate and Jason Stanley, “When Free Speech Becomes A Political Tool,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 November 2015.
[3] Interview with John E. Greenbacker Jr by Charlotte Fryar and Alexa Lytle, March 2, 2013 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.