Category Archives: Freedom of speech and expression

by James A. Bacon

Robert Grayboyes, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center in George Mason University, has penned a post on his Substack account, Bastiat’s Window, about the importance of free speech — even offensive free speech. As evidence, he points to his recollections of a controversial debate that took place during his days as a student at the University of Virginia.

Faithful readers of this blog will find the controversy familiar, for it is one that the enemies of Bert Ellis twisted during their campaign to block his elevation to the UVA Board of Visitors. Writes Grayboyes (his bold):

“In 1975, William Shockley, Nobel physicist-turned-white supremacist crackpot, was invited to the University of Virginia (UVa) to debate Richard Goldsby, an African American biologist, on “The Correlation between Race and Intelligence and Its Social Implications.” Some argued fiercely then (and argue still today) that the university should never have offered him a platform from which to disseminate his ignorant bile. My 2022 Bastiat’s Window essay, “Shockley versus Shockley,” explored why the university was wise to allow Shockley to speak and why those who attended the event (including me) were wise to sit quietly and let him speak. As I wrote: Continue reading →

It comes a little after the fact, but The Jefferson Independent has published a colorful and highly readable account of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s higher-ed summit at the University of Virginia back in November: “Freedom from Expression: How Youngkin’s Free Speech Summit Fell on Deaf Ears.”

by James A. Bacon

In the fall of 2022 a furtive figure was caught on videotape draping a noose around the Homer statue on the grounds of the University of Virginia. The university administration immediately declared the act a hate crime. University police launched an investigation, enlisting the FBI to help in the search for the perpetrator. A $10,000 award was offered to anyone who could provide more information.

“The facts available indicate that this was an act intended to intimidate members of this community,” said President Jim Ryan in a letter to the community. “A noose is a recognizable and well-known symbol of violence, most closely associated with the racially motivated lynchings of African Americans.”

A noose hung from a tree branch is indeed a recognizable symbol of lynching. The meaning when hung around the neck of a statue of an ancient Greek poet, however, was not self-evident (as we noted at the time). Indeed, when the offender was discovered, it turned out he hadn’t been targeting African Americans at all. Irate at how the Homer statue placed a hand on the head of a naked youth, the Albemarle County man declared that it “glorified pedophilia.” Local authorities charged him with intimidation anyway.

That was then.

Photo credit: WUVAnews.com

The day after Hamas’ October 7 terrorist assault on Israel, the Students for Justice in Palestine at UVA issued a statement issued a declaring that “colonized people” had the right to resist oppression “by whatever means they deem necessary.” A poster promoting the October 12 march showed a Hamas bulldozer plowing through an Israeli security fence. “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” the poster said. Later that month, SJP held two rallies on the Grounds. Marchers waved Palestinian flags and chanted, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” Some insisted that the slogan was just a call for solidarity with oppressed Palestinians, but many Jews interpreted it as advocating the eradication of the Israeli state and, in the context of the Hamas massacres, the slaughter of the Jewish population.
Continue reading →

Governor Glenn Youngkin at the higher-ed summit at the University of Virginia. Photo credit: The Daily Progress

by James A. Bacon

Governor Glenn Youngkin outlined yesterday his vision for colleges and universities in Virginia as bastions of free speech and intellectual diversity where people come together to devise solutions to society’s most pressing problems.

“How do we ask serious questions and foster informed debate so we can get to answers?” he asked in a pragmatic defense of free speech in a keynote speech of a statewide higher-ed conclave held at the University of Virginia. The answer was implicit in the title of the event: the Higher Education Summit on Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity.

The summit was attended by representatives, including many presidents, of every public university in Virginia and more than half of the state’s private higher-ed institutions. The end goal of the event, said Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera in introductory remarks, was for every institution to create an “action plan” to advance the goals of free speech and intellectual diversity.

Youngkin began laying the groundwork a year ago when he addressed the Council of Presidents and pushed them toward the same goals. The Council, comprised of Virginia college and university presidents, adopted a statement endorsing free speech and intellectual diversity in the abstract. But as discussions at Wednesday’s summit made clear, there is considerable gray area in applying free speech principles in the real world. The next step is to move beyond the expression of abstract principles to putting those principles into action. Continue reading →