Hypocrisy on Display in Arizona
Right-wingers claim to want free speech -- but perhaps just for their side
When some on the right call for freedom of speech on university campuses, one has to wonder whether they mean such speech only for those who agree with them. When others dissent, they seem to come up with ways to shut them down – ways far less direct than the techniques of lefties who inexcusably shout down speakers, but perhaps more sinister.
Consider the latest turn of the screw in the drawn-out Arizona State University flap over a couple conservative speakers. Those folks – Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and radio provocateur Dennis Prager -- riled the campus last February. They and a couple allies in the state legislature tried to do so again on Sept. 27, though they made a far smaller splash this time. Their only victory on campus, it seems, was to mute those who dared earlier to differ with them.
Indeed, their antics and those of a couple supportive state legislators leading up to the talk earned them criticism from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the free-speech advocacy group. Troubled by a report the ASU administration released about the February event and comments by the legislators, FIRE in a statement issued the day before this week’s Kirk-Prager visit affirmed that faculty members – just like their critics – have the right to speak their minds. This includes “the right to express disagreement with on-campus speakers and to protest campus events,” as FIRE tweeted and as The Arizona Republic reported.
Kirk’s attitude toward such rights, however, appears to be little more than disdain, as he made clear by calling on state lawmakers to defund ASU, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. As the newspaper reported, he was met with protests earlier this month while visiting NAU. Apparently unwilling to face potentially probing questioning about his views, Kirk did not sit for an interview with the paper.
The newspaper reported that Kirk and Prager spoke to an audience of just about 350 people, a fraction of the 1,500 who attended their February event in person (along with thousands more online). The latest event drew a few protesters, but Kirk and Prager, along with their legislative supporters, apparently silenced the 39 members of the ASU Barrett Honors College faculty who had earlier decried the winter event.
“This time, professors shied away from speaking out,” the newspaper reported. “No faculty were outside the venue protesting, and several professors who opposed the February event were silent on the Wednesday talk on their social media platforms.”
Last winter, in a letter to the college dean, the critical faculty members called Kirk and Prager “purveyors of hate” for their attacks on women, minorities and the LGBTQ community. Significantly, they did not call for the talk to be cancelled, but their note and comments by a former administrator in a factually dubious Wall Street Journal op-ed, nonetheless, triggered creation of an ad hoc state legislative committee on freedom of expression at the state’s public universities.
That committee demanded that the university investigate the affair, which led to a 75-page report that concluded that the university “did not find that university or Barrett administrators censored speech or interfered with advertising or attendance.” Contradicting claims by the former administrator that three teachers discouraged students from attending, “ASU’s review did not find that any of the three faculty members told their students not to attend or implied that attending would affect their grades.”
Prepared with help of outside lawyers, the report found that one of those profs did not talk about the event in class at all, while the other two responded to questions from students. “One of the faculty members shared the faculty letter with students on her class website along with a message that expressed support for free speech and clarified that she did not have a role in choosing the speakers and she did not agree with them,” the report said.
The document appears to have been exhaustively researched.
“The university reviewed thousands of documents including emails, policies and websites and gathered information from university employees involved,” the report said. “ASU also engaged an outside law firm to assist in identifying relevant witnesses and documents and to conduct witness interviews, especially with those who might be unwilling to speak directly with the university. ASU reviewed tips submitted to the outside counsel and through a hotline (cfo.asu.edu/asu-hotline) it maintains to facilitate anonymous ethics reporting.”
Nonetheless, two state legislators who joined Kirk and Prager at their latest talk appear to have dismissed the investigation. Austin Smith, a former director of TP USA, said he will spend “all of next session” taking ASU and its faculty to task over free speech. The other legislator, Anthony Kern, previously told The Republic that while faculty have the right to speak their minds, he questioned whether they should do so, given their university roles.
“That’s a position of trust,” the paper quoted him as saying. “They’ve been hired by the university, and I think they should just adhere to that position of trust. I think students that are impressionable, they see their professor out there … that’s a little intimidating.”
Kern had earlier cast doubt on the ability of the university to do a fair investigation. “I do not trust the Board of Regents,” Kern said at a July hearing on the matter. “I do not trust ASU. I do not trust our universities to teach our kids what needs to be taught.”
The legislators have interesting histories vis a vis democracy. Kern was one of 11 Arizona Republicans who falsely posed as certified electors in a bid to circumvent the results of the 2020 presidential election, The Republic reported. For his part, Smith just took office this year and introduced a bill that passed the state house and Senate to ban ranked choice voting in the state. Such voting is designed to assure that the majority choice in a multi-candidate election wins.
In his appearance Prager was unsparing in his criticism of the faculty whom his visits helped to silence. "These are truly empty, bad people," Prager said. He called them "intellectual lightweights," "cowards," "talentless," and "intellectually vapid."
Amid the legislative heat and vitriol directed their way by Prager, some faculty members appear to have judged it better to duck the limelight. One Barrett faculty member told me some weeks ago that some have been threatened by right-wingers when they have spoken up. Furthermore, they worry about giving more ammunition to hostile legislators.
While many such faculty members at state institutions may be protected by tenure, their lives and those of untenured colleagues can be made miserable by politicians. The balance of power is tilted against them. This is particularly true at Barrett, where profs are “teaching faculty” and not eligible for tenure — a stunning thing in itself, since tenure exists to preserve the right of faculty to speak as they wish.
Silencing those one disagrees with, of course, is hardly appropriate to universities where free inquiry and critical thinking should be core values. More than that, it’s simply un-American and should be beneath conservatives who ostensibly champion free expression.
But flaps such as that at ASU suggest that some conservatives are determined to shut down any who have the temerity to dissent. For them, free speech seems to be just a weapon in a longstanding war on higher education and their hypocrisy in wielding it doesn’t trouble them.