Efforts to stifle speech by colleges, students 'honored' with Jefferson Muzzle Awards
Posted: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 12:01 am
BY DEREK QUIZON
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The "Jefferson Muzzles," those dubious awards shaming the nation's worst free-speech offenders, are taking aim at higher education this year — from tarring those at Yale who warned students against donning culturally insensitive Halloween costumes to feathering others for muzzling the press and more.
This is the 25th edition of the awards announced each year around the April 13 birth date of Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president and ardent free speech advocate. The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression said the campus-themed Muzzles respond to an "epidemic of anti-speech activity" at colleges and universities in 2015 and continuing.
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At the University of Missouri, a now-fired assistant professor made the Muzzles cut for her call for "some muscle" to remove a student photographer from coverage of a public demonstration.
And at Yale University, the center said, it took to task those who issued an advisory to students about Halloween costumes. That said, professors and others came to the defense of instructors who questioned the student advisory on costumes.
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The complete list of Muzzle winners is available at tjcenter.org/muzzles.
Derek Quizon is a reporter for The Daily Progress. Contact him at (434) 978-7265, dquizon@dailyprogress.com or @DPHigherEd on Twitter.
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The story also appears with a 12:44 a.m. time stamp as an Associated Press story.
2016 Jefferson Muzzles: Awarding American Campuses a Failing Grade!
An epidemic of anti-speech activity swept across the campuses of American colleges and universities in 2015 and shows little sign of abating in 2016. Not long ago, these same institutions were at the vanguard of First Amendment issues; students demanded—then made powerful use of—expanded speech rights on campus, and administrators held academic freedom sacrosanct.
These positions reflected a shared understanding that intellectual inquiry requires an environment in which debate is uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, even if it occasionally results in unpleasant or offensive exchanges. Today, however, the focus seems to be on limiting rather than promoting the open exchange of ideas. Students who once protested to have their voices heard now seek to silence those they disagree with or find threatening. Meanwhile, university administrators appear locked in a competition to determine which school will take the toughest stand against offensive, unpopular, and hurtful speech. First Amendment principles have given way to identity politics, trigger warnings, and so-called “safe spaces,” and the Free Speech Movement has, at many colleges, become the Anti-Speech Movement.
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The recipients of the 2016 Jefferson Muzzle awards are presented below, divided into the following five categories: Censorship of Students, Censorship by Students, Efforts to Limit Press Access on Campus, Threats to Academic Freedom, and Censorship of Outside Speakers.
1. Censorship of Students:
MUZZ 101: Big Brother is Watching
If you want to single out a tipping point in the spread of anti-speech activity on campuses last year, look no further than the
University of Oklahoma. In March 2015, a video emerged showing a busload of tuxedo-wearing Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members singing a racist chant. Within 48 hours of the video going public, OU president David Boren severed all ties with the fraternity and expelled two students identified as leading the chant. Imploring other administrators to adopt the same zero tolerance policy against racist speech, Boren vowed that OU would be “an example to the entire country of how to deal with this issue.” Unfortunately, he was right. Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) notes that “colleges have seized on the University of Oklahoma’s unconstitutional actions as a signal that they have an ‘all clear’ to toss free speech and basic fairness out the window.” Boren’s actions were both clearly unconstitutional and extremely popular—a dichotomy that we will see repeatedly among this year’s Muzzles. Most importantly, though, the OU expulsions set the bar for nearly every incident to come. Anything less than zero tolerance would be condemned by many campus communities as a tacit endorsement of exclusionary or inflammatory rhetoric.
MUZZ 102: Introduction to Irony
Shortly before Halloween, the Intercultural Affairs Committee at
Yale sent an email to students cautioning them against wearing costumes that could be perceived as “culturally unaware or insensitive.” When one professor had the temerity to gently and respectfully suggest that students might be capable (and perhaps even better off) navigating these waters themselves rather than relying on university oversight, she was condemned, shouted down, and ultimately chased off campus.
All this talk of Jefferson has me in the mood of riling people up. Here's a blast from the past (March 2015):
Why expelled Oklahoma frat boys would have an ‘excellent chance’ in court
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