The outgoing and incoming presidents of Dartmouth College, Phil Hanlon and Sian Beilock, respectively, recently published a robust defense of free speech in the Boston Globe. Not only do Beilock and Hanlon dismiss the silencing of people for supposedly harmful opinions as illegitimate, but they also explicitly recognize the self-censorship of conservative students in “today’s left-leaning higher education landscape.”
Not to be mistaken for Republicans, the two presidents highlight right-wing threats to freedom of expression, citing a Florida bill (HB 999) that would ban the gender studies major, queer theory, and critical race theory from public colleges and universities. In the same sentence, Beilock and Hanlon take the censorship-prone Left to task, pointing to “progressives who want to restrict potentially upsetting content” as another insupportable attack on academic inquiry. The presidents even indict their own — the academy — for a refusal to recognize the confirmation bias and groupthink that render “all of us incapable of recognizing our collective humanity.”
The greatest threat to free speech, according to the presidents, is neither institutional nor political, Right or Left, but “the fear of speaking up,” which precludes students from “the only way to find common ground.” To this end, Beilock and Hanlon reject “safe spaces” as failures and call for “brave spaces,” “bastions of rigorous academic debate,” and “critical civic discourse.”
I believe presidents Beilock and Hanlon deserve public praise for their stalwart defense of free speech, pluralism, and intellectual engagement. As the Dartmouth alma mater goes, “give a rouse for the college on the hill!” I hope that the admonitions of Beilock and Hanlon do not go unheeded across America’s institutions of higher learning, lest they unintentionally exemplify Dartmouth’s motto: vox clamantis in deserto.