At last month’s University Senate meeting, Chancellor Kent Syverud spoke about free speech. Syverud said he decided to address the topic because of the polarized nature of the upcoming election and the university’s ongoing initiatives to hire hundreds of new faculty.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board commends the chancellor for continuing to speak about important issues regarding free speech on campus, but there is more the university, its faculty and its students can do to ensure diverse voices are heard at SU.

Syracuse has experienced a number of highly publicized free speech controversies in recent years. In the past, SU made headlines for threatening to censor students’ Halloween costumes and for its investigation of a law student’s satirical blog. More recently, SU received significant attention for its handling of a video produced by the Theta Tau fraternity that led to the permanent expulsion of the organization’s SU chapter and disciplinary action against a number of its members.

Critical encounters with free speech are often much more subtle, though. They occur in classrooms, in hallways and in our every-day discourse. They are challenging to navigate, but they are essential.

SU administrators have demonstrated that they recognize the difference between protected speech and hate speech. Tolerance for slurs and personal attacks is low, as it should be. As advocates for free speech, we have to condemn abusive or threatening speech that expresses prejudice against a particular group in favor of thoughtful dialogues about our disagreements.

Syracuse should be a place where students and professors feel safe expressing their personal beliefs without fear of retribution — a place where the campus community understands the difference between being unsafe and being uncomfortable.

Syverud spoke about the university’s role in establishing that sort of campus, but his comments left many senators and professors with questions.

“In hiring new faculty, I believe our university needs to be more attentive to this issue, and more concerned,” Syverud said. He added exposure to “a true range of views” can be difficult to achieve at universities or in departments where the faculty and staff are “too ideologically uniform.”

Syracuse University is in the midst of hiring 200 faculty over the course of five years as part of two major hiring initiatives — Cluster Hires and Signature Hires. Syverud’s Senate meeting comments marked the first time the chancellor mentioned free speech in relation to those hires, but it’s not clear how policies or hiring protocols would address that.

Rather than policing the ideological value of candidates, SU should focus its energy on creating a campus where disagreement is inherent in the learning process.

To learn is to be uncomfortable, to expose yourself to people and ideas that seem intimidating and sometimes objectionable. In the classroom, SU must make clear that disagreement and debate are encouraged. Professors must clearly establish the difference between fact or theory and personal opinion in their classes, and they have to foster an environment where students of all ideological backgrounds can share their opinions.

That exposure to competing viewpoints must be evergreen. The university cannot rely on temporary encounters with diversity and controversy in SEM 100 or in training modules as evidence that SU students are well-rounded and open-minded. SU has to embrace those characteristics across its curriculum and across each student’s college career. But students need to hold up their end of that bargain.

Young Americans for Freedom, a youth conservative group, was recently approved as a Registered Student Organization on campus. A local ACLU chapter was also recently approved. The SU College Democrats and the College Republicans at Syracuse University host numerous debates each year. Diverse opinions are out there, but students have to be willing to give them a chance.

SU needs to make sure their policies and actions support a campus where students and faculty can be intellectually and ideologically challenged in and out of the classroom. As a campus community, we must accept that we will inevitably disagree and argue, but we should commit to doing it respectfully.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board serves as the voice of the organization and aims to contribute the perspectives of students to discussions that concern Syracuse University and the greater Syracuse community. The editorial board’s stances are determined by a majority of its members. You can read more about the editorial board here. Are you interested in pitching a topic for the editorial board to discuss? Email opinion@dailyorange.com.

Published on October 6, 2019 at 11:46 pm

Contact: opinion@dailyorange.com