Prof. Erin O’Connor, who is an invaluable read for anyone interested in academic freedom issues, posted a nice summary of the UofL/KKK issue on the Critical Mass weblog. She makes a few good points, better than my attempts to say the same (which is why she is an English professor and I am not):
Last winter, the Klan started posting flyers all over the U of L campus (I have not seen these flyers myself–if anyone has a copy and can send along a scanned image, I’ll post it). Flyers were found stuck on an outdoor campus map, on trashcans, on bike racks, on the ground, and even tucked under the windshield wipers of cars. Complaints came in. People were offended and frightened and disturbed. Emotions aside, there was a legitimate issue with the manner in which the KKK had disseminated its message: the university doesn’t allow anyone to post flyers in these places. It maintained concrete kiosks for flyer-posting purposes. And so university administrators notified the KKK of its error. But the way it did so may result in a lawsuit.
This is the crux of the issue. The university clearly has the right to enforce content-neutral restrictions on the time, place and manner of posting material - neither the KKK nor anybody else should be pasting material on campus maps or on trashcans. When the UofL removed the outdoor kiosks, its actions were a heavy-handed attempt to mute the KKK, but at least all outside speakers were affected similarly, and now no outside group can dissiminate information outside the odious “free speech zones.” Here, however, the school did two things wrong. First, it applied a neutral rule in a non-content-neutral way. Are all individuals caught posting material outside the kiosks/free speech zones banned for life from the campus (unless, of course, they’re paying cash money, such as buying tickets to athletic events, where even the KKK is welcome)? It’s extremely unlikely the UofL imposes the same sanction on groups that don’t offend.
Second, the university imposed the ban for distributing offensive and insensitive material. Furious backpedaling when the news hit the media doesn’t change that fact. Blaming police reports for the language doesn’t change it either. If the Klansmen were banned for posting flyers in inappropriate places, that’s what the letter would have said, and it’s clear UofL was just responding to student demands that free speech on campus be restricted.
Prof. O’Connor also points out something I missed:
U of L professor Ede Warner, unsatisfied with the administration’s ban of the men who posted the flyers, wants to banish the KKK itself from the campus. Currently, if KKK members who have not personally been banished for their poor understanding of campus posting rules wish, they can stand inside one of the school’s free speech zones and distribute their flyers there. That’s not acceptable to Warner, who argues that the KKK should be barred from campus because it is a terrorist organization (this argument, experts note, is not likely to fly in court).
This argument is nothing new. In February, Bethany Wright, chair of the campus chapter of the NAACP, argued that “We do not feel that we are bound to respect their First Amendment rights. We feel they have forfeited them, being terrorist organizations, and we do not want them on campus at all.” In March, graduate student Curtis Nelson claimed that “We just want the university to do the right thing. This is a terrorist organization organized for that specific purpose. They don’t do anything else.” Prof. Warner has been making this argument since March, as well: “There was a missed opportunity, and the opportunity is whether the Klan should be defined as a hate group like al-Qaida (terrorists), because for black people the Klan is al-Qaida.”
Putting aside whether the KKK is a terrorist organization - and the toothless dog that is the Klan (in the words of Ricky Jones, a UofL professor of pan-African studies) doesn’t look much like al-Qaida these days - there is a long history of allowing non-violent speakers from organizations that also advocate violence to speak publicly, so long as the speech itself is legal. Gerry Adams has long been a frequent visitor to the US, even as Sinn Fein’s military wing was engaged in violence that may or may not have been terrorism, depending on your perspective. The same is true of the PLO, of Hamas, of other organizations that condone or engage in violence. The Nazis marching in Skokie were certainly heirs to a history as violent as the Klan’s. I’d go so far as to argue that if al-Qaida had a political wing equivalent to Sinn Fein, its speakers should be free to make speeches or distribute materials, so long as the materials did not incite violence (I realize that the Patriot Act may well change this dynamic, but that doesn’t mean it should).
As Professor O’Connor notes in closing:
Rabidly racist speech is clearly the extreme test case for a university’s commitment to free speech. The University of Louisville is now being tested. In its official statements, it passes the present test with flying colors: see this FAQ on the U of L website. But in practice, things seem to be playing out a bit differently.
