The president of Indiana University is asking faculty government to consider adopting the Chicago Principles – a set of guidelines about free speech on campus. One faculty leader said he’s optimistic, despite the university’s recent clashes over censorship.
Over 100 other universities have adopted the 2014 report, which calls for administrations to limit interference with free speech and for students and faculty to tolerate views they oppose.
Bill Ramos, co-chair of the University Faculty Council and leader of the Bloomington Faculty Council, said they can’t afford to miss this opportunity.
“I think we are on the precipice of a really beautiful thing, if we allow it to happen,” he said. “I think it's going to probably ask that some people back away from some current feelings they have.”
Those feelings run deep on the Bloomington campus, where faculty voted overwhelmingly last year that they had no confidence in President Pamela Whitten, after the university canceled or attempted to cancel events related to speech on Israel and Palestine.
Ramos acknowledged frustration and low morale at his home campus but said he’s an optimist.
“I feel like it's a trust fall, right?” he said. “But if we don't take it, what chance did we ever have?”
The Chicago Principles aren’t policies and can’t be enforced, but they’re a symbolic move toward mending the university’s contentious climate.
Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, chaired the committee that wrote the document in 2014, after a nationwide series of protests against controversial speakers on campuses.
Stone wrote the report specifically for his university, and he never expected it to be adopted so widely. The document heavily references the university’s own history, but it’s since become a free speech standard.
“As principles, I think they're correct and I think they've stood up quite well, and that's why so many universities and colleges have adopted them,” he said.
The report calls on the university community to respect differences of opinion, while compelling administrators to protect free speech “in an open and aggressive fashion,” in Stone’s words.
“There's really very little indication that a principled application of the Chicago Principles has caused any real problems,” he said. “Basically, it has served the universities well.”
The report also carves out space for time, place and manner restrictions that allow universities to limit some expressive activity, but the report says these should be “narrow exceptions.”
“It is vitally important that these exceptions never be used in a manner inconsistent with the University’s commitment to a completely free and open discussion of ideas,” it says.
Some of IU’s recent free speech controversies are homegrown, but others come from the statehouse. A law passed last year allowing universities to investigate professors for the political content of their teaching recently led to IU pulling one lecturer from her class.
“Obviously in a state university, the state law will dictate what the policies are,” Stone said. “But I would hope that the state laws are consistent with the Chicago Principles.”
Once the University Faculty Council has made a recommendation on the document, Whitten has asked them to submit it for her approval.
