What Some Colleges Have Learned From Hosting Controversial Speakers

It’s been more than a year since protesters stormed a stage at DePaul University and grabbed the microphone away from a moderator interviewing the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

The event was canceled, one person was arrested, and no one was seriously hurt. But it became a defining moment for a campus struggling to find the right balance between free speech and campus safety.

“We didn’t come out of it unscathed, but we did come out wiser for the experience,” Elizabeth F. Ortiz, vice president for institutional diversity and equity told top academic and student-affairs officers from around the country this week.

They were attending a plenary session on “preparing students for civic participation” that was offered here by the Council of Independent Colleges.

Longtime administrators may look back with nostalgia at how they used to complain that students wanted to talk only about campus food and parking, said Kevin Kruger, president of the student-affairs association Naspa.

Their list of grievances and concerns is far lengthier and their demands for action more immediate today, said Mr. Kruger, who was moderating a session on Monday about navigating difficult campus conversations.

The activism of today’s students has been energized by a confluence of factors, including protests over police violence, broader fights for racial justice and transgender rights, and the emboldening of far-right interests in the wake of Donald J. Trump’s election.

And all of that is amplified by social media in a way that the protests of the 1960s weren’t.

“Something happens in Missouri at 2 o’clock, and by 2:30 everyone knows about it,” Mr. Kruger said.

Outrage spreads, tactics are replicated on other campuses, and presidents are often pressured to immediately respond before all the facts are in.

Safeguarding campuses from violence can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars and tax police forces. But even the normal ideological skirmishes that break out on campuses put immense pressure on presidents and other top administrators, speakers noted.

At DePaul, a private, Roman Catholic institution in Chicago, the Yiannopoulos debacle happened months before the presidential election, when messages like “Make DePaul Great Again” and “Blue Lives Matter” were scrawled on campus sidewalks and then quickly scrubbed from them.

“We thought we could handle this, but quickly things escalated out of control,” said Ms. Ortiz.

The university’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, said he would step down in the wake of the controversy — a decision he says was in the works before it erupted.

Since then, faculty members have shared ideas in workshops on ways to promote respectful dialogue, and police officers have patrolled the campus on bicycles, interacting casually with students so they’ll see them as allies, not threats.

‘Part of Growing’

Other campuses have also revised their procedures for handling controversial speakers and dealing with campus protests.

Franklin & Marshall College last year canceled classes and will do so again next year for a campuswide “Day of Dialogue,” when small groups of students, faculty, and staff members discuss a range of issues related to race and diversity. The emphasis is on helping participants communicate respectfully about potentially divisive issues.

Joel W. Martin, provost and dean of the faculty, told attendees here on Monday that the Pennsylvania college wouldn’t allow anyone to shut down a speech because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable, he said, “is part of growing.”

Free speech, administrators remind students, “has enabled dissident perspectives into the academy.” At the same time, Mr. Martin added, the college won’t tolerate harassment or any speech that could lead to violence or deprive students of the chance to learn.

In February, Franklin & Marshall’s trustees approved a statement on free expression that was inspired by the University of Chicago’s hotly debated rejection of trigger warnings and safe spaces.

When people have clashing opinions on touchy issues, disagreements are unavoidable, says the Franklin & Marshall statement, developed by the faculty with input from the administration. “But it is not the proper role of the college to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, uncivil, or even deeply offensive,” it says. The best response to ideas one finds offensive, it says, “is speech, not censorship.”

That approach played out in March during a campus appearance by Flemming Rose, a Danish journalist whose cartoons of the prophet Muhammad are considered deeply offensive by some Muslims.

The college gave protesters space in the back of a lecture hall to hold signs, and the students listened without interrupting before asking the speaker tough questions afterward, said Margaret Hazlett, dean of the college. The college later held “debriefing” conversations with students and faculty members who had been offended by the speech and the college’s decision to allow it.

‘A Disservice to Your Community’

That peaceful protest was overshadowed by one that erupted the same day at Middlebury College. Students on the Vermont campus shouted down Charles A. Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve, prompting critics to describe today’s college students as hypersensitive free-speech censors.

One audience member here urged those in attendance to distinguish between speakers who are controversial and those who are purely inflammatory. “In some ways, you’re doing a disservice to your community” when someone like Richard B. Spencer is allowed to speak, said Glenn R. Sharfman, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Oglethorpe University, in Georgia.

Mr. Spencer, who advocates a separate homeland for white people and has been met in the past with Nazi salutes, is there mainly to rile up the audience rather than to share ideas grounded in research, he said. The shouting matches that occur when Mr. Spencer insults people in the audience and makes derogatory statements about women and minority-group members — “That’s not dialogue, that’s just screaming at each other,” Mr. Sharfman said.

Mr. Martin said he agreed with him in theory, but wasn’t sure where to draw the line.

It isn’t easy, speakers noted, to promote civil conversations around race, gender, politics, and religion. A good start, they said, would be to encourage students to scrutinize arguments on both sides of an issue, be discerning about what they read online, and make their points without disparaging segments of the population. Faculty members can help out, they said, by modeling those behaviors.

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.