CAMPUS SPEECH : Have Universities’ Restrictive Conduct Codes Gone Too Far?

The recent push at colleges to enforce strict “speech codes” in the name of discouraging prejudice and unfair discrimination is beginning to spark a serious backlash--from critics who cite America’s tradition of free speech.

Until now, the trend on many campuses has been largely toward restricting speech:

The University of Michigan has sought to discipline students for comments--including joke-telling--that “stigmatize or victimize” others because of race, sex, sexual orientation, ancestry or religion.

The University of Wisconsin has revised its code of conduct to prohibit “discriminatory harassment”--including remarks that “demean” another student.

The University of California prohibits “personally abusive epithets” that are “inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction.” Such epithets include “derogatory references” to race, ethnic origin, religion or sex.

BACKGROUND: In the past few weeks, educators, 1st Amendment experts and political leaders, including President Bush, have begun expressing serious concern that the campus trend may have gone too far.

Warning against “the rise of intolerance” around the nation, the President told a University of Michigan commencement gathering May 4: “We find free speech under assault throughout the United States, including on some college campuses.”

Bush said the notion of “political correctness”--the goal campus speech-regulators say they want to reach--may stem from a laudable motive, but in practice merely “replaces old prejudices with new ones.”

“What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship,” he said.

In March, Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), joined by American Civil Liberties Union President Nadine Strossen, unveiled legislation that would prohibit colleges and universities from disciplining a student “solely on the basis of conduct that is speech.”

The bill’s 16 co-sponsors range from other conservative Republicans, such as Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, to liberal Democrats, such as Howard L. Berman of Panorama City.

Meanwhile, the state Senate Judiciary Committee in Sacramento is expected to consider today a bill that would give students the right to sue for redress if they are denied their right of free speech by any public or private school.

The speech-code move started two years ago, largely because administrators were pressured to take action against discrimination on campus. Supporters say the codes are needed to prevent the spread of “hate-speech.”

Ironically, only a few years before, liberals were pointing to the Constitution’s free-speech guarantee to counter efforts to stifle civil rights demonstrations and anti-war campaigns.

Now, says Robert C. Post, a professor at UC Berkeley, the push to restrict speech has become “the new liberal cause celebre. “

OUTLOOK: It’s too early to tell how far the backlash may go. A federal judge already has struck down the University of Michigan’s speech code as unconstitutional.

Political analysts say the speech-code controversy could prove to be a ready-made issue for Bush, who could portray liberals on university campuses as trying to stifle free speech on behalf of special interests.

And the House Judiciary subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights is expected to hold a hearing in the next few weeks to explore the issue of racial harassment on campuses.

Yale University President Benno C. Schmidt Jr., a noted 1st Amendment scholar, in an opinion-page article in the Wall Street Journal, said universities should not have to rely on federal judges or new laws to protect free speech on campus.

“To stifle expression because it is obnoxious, erroneous, embarrassing, not instrumental to some political or ideological end is--quite apart from the invasion of the rights of others--a disastrous reflection on the idea of a university,” Schmidt said.