Valley Interview : CSUN Leader Believes in Facing Racial Tension, Not in Censorship

In her second year at Cal State Northridge, President Blenda J. Wilson has been confronted by a series of racially tinged incidents among students that have raised campus tensions. A letter by the campus Black Students Union leader last month harshly criticized Jews and accused Jewish students of using “Hitlerian tactics” by scheduling an event to coincide with a campus speech by Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan. The letter and other incidents involving racial insults on campus this fall have raised questions about race relations at CSUN and whether the university ought to punish students or groups that make so-called hate statements. Wilson said the university had no basis for punishing the Black Student Union or its leader for the letter, although she criticized its contents. Instead, Wilson, 52, the former chancellor of the University of Michigan at Dearborn, has focused on the need for civility and respect for diversity among different ethnic groups, saying the university is a place where they can achieve greater mutual understanding. She was interviewed by staff writer John Chandler.

Question: In 1991 at CSUN there was a controversy over two sets of flyers that encouraged physical attacks on gays. Last year there was a fraternity party flyer that a lot of Hispanics and others found offensive. And this year there have been about half a dozen episodes where hate messages have been conveyed in various forms. What’s going on here?

Answer: I think what’s going on here is what’s going on in our society in general. And it is that for the very first time for some people, they are exposed to attitudes, cultures, behaviors that are not their own. And they bring with them to those experiences the prejudices of their homes and their communities.

We also have a university environment in which the challenge of ideas is a fundamental part of our mission. So I think what’s happening is that ultimately we are learning about one another. And some of the learning takes place in an atmosphere of tension around misunderstanding and intolerance.

Q: The campus newspaper had a commentary asking students and faculty if they felt there was racial tension on campus. All five people that they published responses from said they felt to varying degrees there is racial tension on campus. What’s your assessment of that?

A: All five responses reflect a very true aspect of what we’re talking about. One says this is a racist society. Another says certain events will happen that bring more tension. A third says as long as there is racism in the world there will be tension in the educational system. I think that is right.

What happens here is not only that there’s tension but that it’s a tension that as a university community we are charged to understand, to articulate, to respond to. We have a responsibility as a university not only to educate people in terms of knowledge, but to help create future citizens.

It would be inappropriate and wrong for a university and community to purport to be a homogeneous community in which there is no tension over ideas. So we don’t back away from it in the ways that genteel society avoids these kinds of tensions. And more than that, we have young people, so we have emotions involved. We have deep feelings of growing up and maturing and what that means.

These will be the leaders and the citizens and the employees in a multiethnic, multicultural society. If we can provide a place where the tensions that come out of our past are understood better, then our graduates indeed will be able to lead in a moral and tolerant way.

Q: Do you perceive the so-called hate messages that have come out in various forms this year as evidence that there are serious feelings of racism, ethnic hate that exist, or are we dealing with youthful exuberance that’s been misdirected?

A: My perception of the so-called hate incidents is framed within the context of walking around the campus all of the time. And what I see are varieties of different people together. I see the mixture of races and ethnic groups on this campus as very rich, very positive. I don’t at all think our community is more hateful or more racist, sexist, classist or genderist than any other community.

Q: In your view, do the protections of the First Amendment mean that a student or an organization on campus can say pretty much anything they want to about another group or person in whatever offensive terms, and the result is the university has no direct ability to hold that person or group responsible for what they’ve done?

A: I think the university has a responsibility to hold people responsible for what they’ve said. Our “good speech” directed at someone who has expressed “bad speech” is in fact a social sanction. It’s not a legal sanction. If you’re assuming that the only way to criticize, to educate and to condemn speech is through a legal punishment, then we don’t have that mechanism if the speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Q: When you have expressions of hate, what people might often expect the university to do is take some more direct response to the person or group involved such as suspension. Do you see that recourse as being no longer available to you because of the First Amendment constraints?

A: I don’t see it ruled out in all circumstances. And by that I mean that I think the university has the responsibility to protect human safety. If the quality and character of a hate-speech incident were such that it truly was viewed as disturbing the peace and security of members of our community, I think the university would have options open to it beyond “good speech.” On the other hand, it would clearly have to be at a very extreme to have the university take what you called direct action other than condemning the act, expressing the university’s positive values and providing opportunities for organizations to be taught.

Q: Two years ago, before you arrived here, the faculty and ultimately the Faculty Senate considered a speech code that would have forbade people from making offensive statements against other ethnic groups. A committee was formed and came up with a recommended policy. It went to the Faculty Senate and ultimately was voted down. Do you have any views about the viability of those kinds of measures?

A: While the issues were being debated here, they were being debated at the University of Michigan, where I was before, with the same result. Michigan went further, and it was really found to be a code that was illegal for the university to initiate. As a matter of personal values, I am opposed to censorship. I am opposed to speech codes. I don’t believe that words themselves are the issue. I think the issue is how people treat one another. No, I would never initiate a speech ban.

Q: Can you give some idea of how the series of hate expressions that you’ve encountered during the time you’ve been here compare with the kind of things that occurred at the prior places where you’ve worked?

A: I’ve seen it at all the places I’ve been within the last decade or so. I can’t say I encountered it earlier. There is something about this phenomenon, it seems to me, that parallels a breakdown in civility in our society, a weakening of what I would consider national ethical and moral leadership around issues of inclusion and equality.

Without a partisan point of view, I believe that our society over the last 12 or 15 years has lost a sense of moral certainty about bringing newer groups into the mainstream of American society. And compounding that lack of leadership is the stress of economic scarcity.

What we are experiencing here are not only tensions among ethnic and cultural groups, but a heightened need for each of those groups to have the opportunity to become a part of the mainstream. Countering that is, as I’ve experienced it, a greater sense of widened disenfranchisement. So there’s something that is more overtly expressed in recent times than there was before.

Q: We’ve talked about how students because of the First Amendment are pretty much free to express a lot of different ideas even if at times other people find them to be offensive. Do those same rules apply to the faculty-instructional end of things?

A: Faculty members operate in a different environment, but it’s an environment in which there is an additional right and protection for faculty speech which is academic freedom. Within the confines of a faculty member’s discipline, they have the absolute right to speak their mind. It is only when they become personally abusive in some way, where they discriminate against a particular group or student, that the university has very explicit provisions and protections that we would institute.