Power corrupts: Speech codes for universities is a dangerously subversive idea

OPINION:

Here’s what bothers me about the debate over the performance of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at last week’s congressional hearing: The Republicans, led by Rep. Elise Stefanik (Harvard 2006), seem intent on adding to the pathology of speech and conduct codes, rather than using this moment to destroy these monuments to privilege and the corrupting nature of power.

Indeed, Ms. Stefanik and others have demanded that university speech and conduct codes be amended and expanded, presumably to include provisions outlawing hatred of Jews or at least outlawing expressions of hatred of Jews. Ms. Stefanik has spent much of the last few days noting that the speech and conduct codes remain unchanged and do not yet include provisions precluding actions she would like precluded.

Such an approach is understandable. Having been the targets of these codes for years, those on the right now see an opportunity to place their political adversaries in a bad spot by placing some of their predilections under sanction.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with that approach. First, as your mother probably mentioned to you, two wrongs do not make a right. Second, once the government gets involved in regulating speech — and make no mistake, Ms. Stefanik is the government, whether she is nominally on “your” side or not — it never stops at the obvious and the easy. It always expands, and it is always bad.

The notion that our universities — which at this point are either entirely or essentially quasi-governmental operations — should have speech codes is a dangerously subversive idea and has been since such codes first surfaced at places like Penn 35 years ago.

They have been an accelerant of social decay for decades, constraining our ability to engage in free public discourse. They have resulted in the silencing — if only temporary — of a constellation of people, including pretty much everyone on the political right.

Given the current moment, when their limitations are conspicuous and there is a genuine opportunity to geld them, no one should be in favor of expanding them, especially those who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.

But that’s where the Republican Party is nowadays. It has become so marinated in the politics of grievance and vendetta — thanks mostly, but not entirely, to its current leader — that it is incapable of understanding that now is a moment to restore the First Amendment, not add to its corrosion.

Others see this as well. In response to Ms. Stefanik’s offer to treat this as a moment for political retribution (“One down, two to go!”), a family member asked me: “What’s wrong with these people?”

The unhappy answer, and the only truthful answer, is that power corrupts. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you have enough leverage, you eventually want to decide what people should and shouldn’t say, what people should and shouldn’t do, and — most ominously — what people should and shouldn’t think.

Limiting the range of acceptable thought is the actual purpose of speech and conduct codes and the final goal of those who would perpetuate them, like Ms. Stefanik.

The Republicans should understand this better than most and take this opportunity to deconstruct those codes, not enshrine in them as tributes to our own sense of victimization.

• Michael McKenna (Penn ’85) is a contributing editor to The Washington Times.