[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHALLENGES TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTHCARE,
BENEFITS AND ADMINISTRATIVE RULES
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 27, 2017
__________
Serial No. 115-30
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
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Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Trey Gowdy, South Carolina, Chairman
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland,
Darrell E. Issa, California Ranking Minority Member
Jim Jordan, Ohio Carolyn B. Maloney, New York
Mark Sanford, South Carolina Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Justin Amash, Michigan Columbia
Paul A. Gosar, Arizona Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Blake Farenthold, Texas Jim Cooper, Tennessee
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Thomas Massie, Kentucky Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Mark Meadows, North Carolina Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Ron DeSantis, Florida Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
Dennis A. Ross, Florida Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands
Mark Walker, North Carolina Val Butler Demings, Florida
Rod Blum, Iowa Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Jody B. Hice, Georgia Jamie Raskin, Maryland
Steve Russell, Oklahoma Peter Welch, Vermont
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Matt Cartwright, Pennsylvania
Will Hurd, Texas Mark DeSaulnier, California
Gary J. Palmer, Alabama Jimmy Gomez, California
James Comer, Kentucky
Paul Mitchell, Michigan
Greg Gianforte, Montana
Sheria Clarke, Staff Director
William McKenna, General Counsel
Kevin Eichinger, HealthCare, Benefits and Administrative Rules
Subcommittee Staff Director
Christina Aizcorbe, Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee Staff
Director
Sharon Casey, Deputy Chief Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on HealthCare, Benefits and Administrative Rules
Jim Jordan, Ohio, Chairman
Mark Walker, North Carolina, Vice Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois,
Chair Ranking Minority Member
Darrell E. Issa, California Jim Cooper, Tennessee
Mark Sanford, South Carolina Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee Columbia
Mark Meadows, North Carolina Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
Paul Mitchell, Michigan Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands
------
Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Affairs
Gary Palmer, Alabama, Chairman
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin, Vice Val Butler Demings, Florida,
Chair Ranking Minority Member
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Mark DeSaulnier, California
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Matt Cartwright, Pennsylvania
Thomas Massie, Kentucky Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri
Mark Walker, North Carolina Vacancy
Mark Sanford, South Carolina
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on July 27, 2017.................................... 1
WITNESSES
Ms. Nadine Strossen, John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law,
New York Law School
Oral Statement............................................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 10
Mr. Ben Shapiro, Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Wire
Oral Statement............................................... 21
Written Statement............................................ 23
Mr. Adam Carolla, Comedian and Filmmaker, No Safe Spaces
Documentary
Oral Statement............................................... 26
Written Statement............................................ 28
Dr. Michael Zimmerman, Former Provost and Vice President for
Academic Affairs, The Evergreen State College
Oral Statement............................................... 33
Written Statement............................................ 35
Mr. Frederick Lawrence, Secretary and CEO, The Phi Beta Kappa
Society on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League
Oral Statement............................................... 40
Written Statement............................................ 42
APPENDIX
Ms. Taylor A. Dumpson Congressional Statement submitted by Ms.
Demings........................................................ 96
``Kellogg Community College Responds to Political Organizations
Lawsuit'' submitted by Ms. Demings............................. 99
CHALLENGES TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES
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Thursday, July 27, 2017
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on HealthCare, Benefits, and
Administrative Rules, joint with the Subcommittee
on Intergovernmental Affairs,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 9:04 a.m., in
Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim Jordan
[chairman of the Subcommittee on Health Care, Benefits, and
Administrative Rules] presiding.
Present from Subcommittee on HealthCare, Benefits, and
Administrative Rules: Representatives Jordan, Walker, Meadows,
Grothman, Mitchell, Krishnamoorthi, Norton, Kelly, and
Plaskett.
Present from Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Affairs:
Representatives Palmer, Grothman, Foxx, Massie, Walker,
Demings, and DeSaulnier.
Also Present: Representatives DeSantis, Hice, Brat, Rooney,
and Raskin.
Mr. Jordan. The joint subcommittees will come to order.
We are going to start with a short 50-second video clip,
then opening statements, and then get right to our esteemed
panel of witnesses, so let's start with the video.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Jordan. Well, trigger warnings, safe spaces, safe
zones, shout-downs, microaggressions, bias response teams, and,
as we saw from the video, even riots on campuses today.
I want to thank you all for joining us in the audience and
certainly our witnesses today. This is our second in a series
of hearings to highlight the First Amendment. ``The history of
intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need
for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable,
discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.''
That quote, taken from the 1974 Woodward Report at Yale,
summarizes the policy that was for years the gold standard of
what free speech on campus should look like.
College is a place for young minds to be intellectually
bombarded with new, challenging ideas. Unfortunately, today, on
many campuses students and faculty are forced into self-
censorship out of fear of triggering violating a safe space, a
microaggression, or being targeted by a bias response team.
Restricting speech that does not conform to popular opinion
contradicts the First Amendment principles and the right to
speak freely without regard to offensiveness. Shout-downs,
disinvitations, and even violent rioting, as we saw on the
video, are some of the tactics used to silence opposing views.
In the most recent example of how not to promote free
speech on campus, students and even faculty at Evergreen State
College berated and threatened a professor for questioning why
a new campus initiative could not be debated. The police
eventually stepped in to warn the professor it was no longer
safe--think about this--no longer safe for him to actually come
to campus.
The college administrators stood by and did nothing. In
fact, when asked to come and defend their speech policies at
today's hearing, Evergreen's president George Bridges refused
to testify, suggesting such policies truly are indefensible.
And he was not the only one to decline an invitation to defend
the policies that limit speech and ideas on our college
campuses.
I see in this past academic year violent disruptions and
silencing of opposing opinions are detrimental to an
educational environment where students can learn and engage in
civil discourse. This has serious ramifications for our public
education system.
This committee is committed to help colleges reinstate the
freedom of speech as an important protection. After all, it is
no coincidence that the Constitution's Framers prioritized the
freedom of speech in the First, the First Amendment.
Mr. Jordan. With that, I would like to recognize Mr.
Krishnamoorthi, the gentleman from Illinois, for his opening
statement.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Chairman Palmer, and Ranking Member Demings, and thank you all
for being here today.
Free speech is a cornerstone of this nation's commitment to
ensure that we have the most robust and wide-open discussion on
issues that affect the public. Our First Amendment protections
are among our most cherished rights. While certain restrictions
on the time, place, and manner of speech can exist, any law
that seeks to limit the substance of speech should be
approached with great caution. Restrictions may exist on how,
when, and where people say things, but the government
fundamentally should not restrict what people say.
The Supreme Court has rightly held that practically any
peaceably expressed idea cannot be suppressed by law, no matter
how unpopular, repugnant, crude, or ill-informed it may be.
However, free speech does not mean the right to be free from
criticism. As I have a right to state my view, you have a right
to disagree vocally, passionately, and peaceably. No idea
should be free from criticism.
This is why I am particularly concerned about a potential
bill that is going to be discussed today, a Wisconsin bill that
would allow for the suspension or expulsion of any University
of Wisconsin student who engages in, quote, ``indecent,
profane, boisterous, obscene, unreasonably loud, or other
disorderly conduct that interferes with the free expression of
others.'' This law does not merely seek to restrict the time,
manner, or place of speech, but it threatens students with
disciplinary action for exercising their First Amendment
rights.
While nobody should interfere with anyone else's free
expression, this bill, as drafted, opens the door for the State
Government to quash any form of student protest its officials
do not agree with whenever officials deemed the conduct to be,
quote/unquote, ``indecent,'' quote/unquote, ``boisterous,'' or
quote/unquote, ``profane.''
Regardless of the intentions behind this bill, I am very
concerned about the chilling effect on the rights of students
to speak out against the ideas of others with whom they
disagree. Ironically, while proponents of the Wisconsin bill
claim that it is to protect free speech at the university, the
bill's threat of harsh discipline against students who express
their opinions would have precisely the opposite effect.
The Anti-Defamation League, which has worked for over a
century to protect American civil rights and is represented
here today, has raised legitimate concerns with legislative
efforts that would inhibit the free speech rights of students
on any side of the debate. As the ADL points out, protecting
free speech on college campuses should not be partisan, and
most importantly, should not be legislated by Congress. Rather,
it should be left in the hands of the Academy.
To that effect, it is critical that in looking to address
the challenges of free speech we do not do the very thing some
here today have criticized colleges in doing, suppressing
certain forms of speech that may not be popular or as offensive
to others.
As we examine the issue of free speech at our nation's
colleges, we are fortunate to be joined today by Mr. Fred
Lawrence, the former president of Brandeis University, and who
can speak from firsthand experience the challenges university
administrators face in balancing free-speech rights on
campuses. Mr. Lawrence understands the complexities of running
a university in a way that legislatures do not and can explain
for us the difficulties campuses face when addressing free-
speech challenges.
Ironically, we have a situation here where we see some of
my colleagues advocating for more government intrusion in an
effort to quell the rights of students to challenge the ideas
of speakers they may have profound disagreements with. But just
as important as it is for us to stand up for the rights of
others to engage in speech that may be deeply offensive to
some, it is just as critical that we stand up for the rights of
students to protest and speak out against speech they disagree
with. That isn't going to happen because of greater, more
restrictive legislation such as the Wisconsin bill. It will
happen because colleges and universities are allowed the
freedom and flexibility to encourage open expression among
students and faculty.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentleman.
I would now recognize the subcommittee chairman, Mr.
Palmer.
Mr. Palmer. I yield my time to the gentlewoman from North
Carolina, Ms. Foxx.
Mr. Jordan. The gentlelady is recognized.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank Chairman
Palmer for giving me the opportunity to say a few words on this
issue.
I welcome everyone to this joint subcommittee hearing
today, which is of particular interest to so many of us. It is
a real privilege for me to continue to serve on this committee
while serving as chairwoman of the House Committee on Education
and the Workforce. Many of you know I spent most of my adult
life in higher education as both an instructor and
administrator on a college campus.
Our Founders believed that a free expression of ideas and
speech were an essential foundation to our nation and captured
its importance in the First Amendment. George Washington said
it perfectly in 1783. ``If men''--or women he might add today--
``are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a
matter which may involve the most serious and alarming
consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind,
reason is of no use to us. The freedom of speech may be taken
away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led like sheep to the
slaughter.''
Throughout our nation's history, we the people have
defended our right to express our beliefs and opinions, no
matter how unpopular, without the fear of retribution. While
the way in which we express ourselves has changed since our
nation's founding, Americans still hold tight to the belief
that freedom of speech and expression are fundamental to who we
are as a people.
According to a 2015 Pew Research poll, 95 percent of
Americans believe that people should be able to make statements
that publicly criticize the government. Roughly 70 percent of
Americans also considered it very important for people to be
able to use the internet without government censorship on
matters of free speech. Apparently, this poll did not take into
account individuals on college campuses who seem to disagree.
We are seeing a steady rise in anti-speech attacks on
students, faculty, and invited speakers on our campuses.
Pressure from students, faculty, and free-speech advocates has
put college administrators in a difficult position, and the
committee understands their frustration. It is difficult to
manage a campus when dealing with campus protests and other
disruptions by students or other members of the campus
community who simply do not want a certain point of view
expressed on their campuses.
College campuses are supposed to be places where students
and instructors are able to share in diverse conversations on
any topic in order to better understand our society. In my
years in the classroom, I loved to see students thoughtfully
and respectfully discuss the conflicting ideas. I believe to
this day those discussions help many students learn to express
themselves. As a lifelong learner, they helped me, too.
I have often told people that the greatest compliment I
ever received as a teacher was at the end of the semester
evaluations when many of my students would say, ``She taught me
how to think.'' There just is no greater compliment than that.
When we stifle free speech at our institutions of higher
education, we are depriving students of an open environment of
thoughts and opinions. This is especially true for public
colleges and universities that receive direct taxpayer funding.
Our public institutions of higher education should not be
engaged in activities that would stifle any constitutionally
protected speech of a member or invited guest in the
educational community. And while private colleges and
universities do not have the same constitutional obligations as
their public counterparts, I hope we can all agree that they
should do what they can to ensure their campuses foster robust
discussions that include all views.
Today's joint subcommittee hearing will explore these
concerns, as well as how colleges may address these issues
without unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. The First
Amendment promises a freedom of expression for all Americans,
and it is the duty of Congress to ensure that those rights are
protected on the campuses of our public colleges and
universities. While Congress is not in the business of defining
what is and what is not protected by the First Amendment, we
must guarantee this fundamental right is upheld.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and members
today as we have this important discussion on one of our
nation's most central rights.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentlelady for her statement and
her service as the Education and Workforce chairman.
And we now recognize the ranking member of the
subcommittee, Mrs. Demings.
Mrs. Demings. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you to our ranking member, Mr. Krishnamoorthi, as well.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you all so much for being
here.
I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. My mother was a maid,
and my father, a janitor. But in spite of their lack of
material wealth, they gave me everything they had to support me
and prepare me mentally, physically, and spiritually to
succeed.
I am the youngest of seven children but the first in my
family to go to college. My parents' life lessons helped to
guide me in college when it was clear that there were some who
did not want me there. When I joined the Orlando Police
Department when women and other minorities were still trying to
find their way, my parents' life lessons guided me, and even
here, they still guide me in the United States Congress.
I have taken three oaths in my lifetime, one as a young
police officer in 1984, one when I was sworn in as the police
chief, and the third when I was sworn in as a Member to serve
in the 115th session of the U.S. House of Representatives. In
each oath, I swore that I would protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign
and domestic. I have taken each oath very, very seriously.
As a law enforcement officer, I had several occasions to
provide security for many groups while they exercised their
First Amendment rights, groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the
neo-Nazi movement. There, I was providing much-needed
protection, and if anyone, someone, anyone had tried to harm
them in any way, I would have risked my life to protect them,
not because I agreed with their speech but because I agreed
with their right to speak, their right as guaranteed by the
First Amendment.
I appreciate this opportunity to shine a light on the real
clear and present danger facing colleges and universities
around the Nation. The problem is not high-profile speakers
like Ann Coulter. The clear and present danger is the increase
in white supremacist hate groups on campuses and the targeting
and harassing of students because of their race, religion,
gender, and sexual identity.
For the 2016 and 2017 school year, the Anti-Defamation
League reported that students, faculty, and staff on 110
American college campuses were confronted by 159 separate
incidents of racist flyers and stickers. The Southern Poverty
Law Center reported that in 10 days alone after last year's
election there were 140 incidents of hate bias attacks on
university campuses.
Most recently, on May 1 of this year at American
University, bananas tied with nooses were hung across the
campus after the school elected its first African-American
student government president Taylor Dumpson, who I understand
is with us today. Now, I was proud when Taylor was elected
because it demonstrated our progress, much-needed progress as a
nation, but the words ``AKA free'' were written on the bananas,
referring to the predominantly African-American sorority, of
which Taylor is a member. Taylor was also subjected to a cyber
bullying campaign by a white supremacist group on social media.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating these
unprotected illegal expressions of speech that Taylor was
subjected to as a hate crime. The operative word here is crime.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask that a written statement from
Taylor about the hate speech attacks and harassment she was
subjected to on the campus of American University be included
in the hearing record.
Mr. Jordan. Without objection.
Mrs. Demings. Thank you so much. As Taylor explained, and I
quote, ``I applied to college,'' like all of our children do.
``When I applied, I thought I would meet new people and learn
new things, not be the victim of a racially motivated hate
crime and cyber bullying that would interrupt my academics and
disrupt my mental, emotional, and physical health.'' As stated
earlier, what happened in Taylor's case is being investigated
by the FBI.
Mr. Chairman, public safety trumps everything.
For students like Taylor, the issue of free speech on
college campuses isn't a right or left issue. Rather, it is
about criminal acts being wrapped in banners of free speech. It
is knowing that the symbols and language from 400 years of
torture and terror are enough to strike fear in the hearts of
every student of color.
As we examine the issue of free speech on college campuses,
let's keep the focus on addressing some of the real danger,
which are any acts of violence, attempts to threaten,
intimidate, bully, harass, or violate any laws that this nation
holds quite dear. For even with the guiding principles of the
United States Constitution, we are a nation of laws, and public
safety always has been and still is my number-one concern.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentlelady.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess at any time, and the chair will also hold open for five
legislative days for any members who would like to submit a
written statement.
Finally, the chair welcomes Mr. Blum, Mr. DeSantis this
morning, and the chair also notes the presence of Congressman
Brad Thompson and Mr. Rooney. Without objection, these members
are welcome to fully participate in today's hearing.
I want to show one other quick video clip before we get to
our panel, and this is about 20 seconds. We can show that real
quick.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Jordan. This is where it all ends. You start with the
safe spaces, safe zone, trigger warnings, microaggressions,
bias response teams, and even riots, as we saw on the first
video, and where does it end? It ends with students holding
hostage a president of the university, and he has to ask
permission to go to the men's room. That is why we are having
this hearing. That is why we are highlighting the attacks on
the First Amendment.
And now, I am pleased to recognize our distinguished panel.
I would like to start with Ms. Nadine Strossen, law professor
at NYU University, and also a long career working with the
American Civil Liberties Union. We welcome you here, Ms.
Strossen.
Mr. Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire and
columnist. We appreciate you being here as well, Mr. Shapiro.
Mr. Adam Carolla, comedian, radio personality, and TV host,
welcome as well.
Dr. Zimmerman, former provost and vice president for
academic affairs at Evergreen State College, the college that
was just part of that last video clip; and more importantly,
former president, Oberlin College in the 4th District of Ohio.
We welcome you, Mr. Zimmerman, as well.
And Mr. Frederick Lawrence with the Anti-Defamation League,
welcome as well.
Pursuant to committee rules, we actually all stand and be
sworn in, so if you please stand, raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Jordan. Let the record show that everyone answered in
the affirmative.
Ms. Strossen, you know how this works; you have done it
before. You get five minutes more or less. We appreciate less,
but somewhere in that vicinity would be great. And you are now
recognized for your five minutes.
WITNESS STATEMENTS
STATEMENT OF NADINE STROSSEN
Ms. Strossen. Thank you so much, Chairman Gordon and--
Jordan and other distinguished committee members. I am so
grateful for your eloquent, fervent commitment to freedom of
speech and especially on college campuses where it's
particularly important, and for including me in these important
hearings.
As the opening statements have made clear, all of us share
a general neutral commitment to freedom of speech in the
abstract, but the difficulty is when we hear ideas that we
hate. It becomes very hard, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
enjoined us all to do, to defend freedom even for the thought
that we hate. So, I urge all students and others on campus to
respect freedom of speech for speakers they strongly disagree
with, but I also--picking up on the point that Mr.
Krishnamoorthi made, also firmly defend freedom of speech for
protesters, for peaceful, non-disruptive protesters against
those speakers. This is the genius of the First Amendment.
I share the concern that Mrs. Demings raised and also that
Mr. Jordan raised about violations of law. You know, the legal
infractions, the crimes that were committed against the
administrators that we saw, but crimes, including hate crimes
that are committed against students, we do not need to choose
between robust freedom of speech and these countervailing
concerns of equality and respecting law and order. The question
is what is the appropriate response to ideas that we disagree
with, including hateful ideas.
And here, I'm happy to say that the Anti-Defamation League,
the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, we are all on the
same page, that we need not and should not sacrifice robust
freedom of speech in order to counter hateful ideas and hate
crimes. In fact, the appropriate answer, as the Supreme Court
has said, is more speech, counter speech. And interestingly
enough, evidence demonstrates that it is far more effective
than censorship in robustly, effectively countering ideas that
we disagree with.
I'm working on a book right now, and this is the whole
theme of the book summed up in the title, HATE, all caps
because that is a very serious problem in this country, but the
subtitle is Fighting It with Free Speech, Not Censorship.
And we really have to educate the activists, the students
on today's campuses. I have to say, as an activist from the
'60s and '70s, I'm thrilled by the resurgence of student
activism in support of racial justice and social justice. I'm
really heartened by their bringing in voices who were
traditionally marginalized and disempowered, but I am
disheartened by their apparent belief that freedom of speech is
an enemy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The whole
struggle for racial justice throughout the history of this
country, starting with the abolitionists, going through the
civil rights movement, and every movement for social justice,
including for women's rights and LGBT rights has depended
critically on robust freedom of speech, including for ideas
that were controversial and hated.
Now, in addition to misunderstanding how essential freedom
of speech, including for hated ideas and hateful speech, is
there is too much misunderstanding about what the First
Amendment actually means. We hear too many statements about so-
called hate speech, which, by the way, has no--is not a legal
term of art. It has no accepted definition, so it is generally
used to describe speech that conveys hateful ideas on the basis
of certain personal characteristics that traditionally have
been bases of discrimination: race, religion, gender, and
sexual orientation, among others.
We hear constantly statements that hate speech is not free
speech, absolutely wrong, but we also hear equally incorrect
statements that hate speech is absolutely protected, also
equally wrong. The genius of our Supreme Court decisions on
this issue--and here the Court has been very unified from right
to left, setting a model that we should all emulate in the rest
of the world. This is not a partisan or ideological issue. They
have laid down two core free-speech principles, one when hate
speech or any other dislike speech may not be punished and one
when it may be punished, and I think they are brilliant and
make great common sense, including in this context.
Number one, speech may never be censored just because we
revile its ideas. That's called viewpoint neutrality. Number
two, and this picks up on points that Mrs. Demings in
particular made and was also made by other speakers, the
opening speakers, that if the speech does cause what is often
called a clear and present danger of harm, including instilling
a reasonable fear that you will be attacked, the incidence of
the nooses, that constituted targeted harassment and threats,
which may and should be punished consistent with existing free-
speech principles.
So, I think if people understood both the commonsense
distinction that our law draws between protecting ideas that we
hate versus not protecting but strongly punishing speech that
actually directly causes imminent serious harm, then there
would be much more acceptance of it. And I'd like to--and
support for it neutrally.
I'd like to end by quoting--there are so many that I could
quote--prominent minority leaders who recently have spoken out
against censorship on campus not only because it is wrong in
principle, but also because it is disempowering to the student
activists who are seeking greater justice. And there are many
examples. One would be former President Obama himself, but I'm
going to quote somebody who is actually a university president,
Ruth Simmons, former president of Brown University, the first
African-American president of any Ivy League university and the
first female president of Brown. She said, ``I believe that
learning at its best is the antithesis of comfort, so if you
come to this campus for comfort, I would urge you to walk
through yon iron gate, but if you seek betterment for yourself,
for your community, and posterity, stay and fight.''
Thank you.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Strossen follows:]
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Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Ms. Strossen.
Mr. Shapiro?
STATEMENT OF BEN SHAPIRO
Mr. Shapiro. It's an honor to testify before you here
today.
The reason that I'm with you is that I speak on dozens of
college campuses every year, so I have some firsthand
experience with the anti-First Amendment activities that have
been taking place on the college campuses. I've encountered
anti-free speech measures, administrative cowardice, even
physical violence on campuses ranging from California State
University at Los Angeles to University of Wisconsin at
Madison, which is driving the legislation that Mrs. Demings was
talking about, to Penn State University to UC Berkeley, and I
am not alone.
In order to understand what's been going on at some of our
college campuses, it's necessary to explore the ideology that
provides the impetus for a lot of the protesters who violently
obstruct events, pull fire alarms, assault professors and even
other students, and the impetus for administrators who all too
often humor these protesters.
Free speech is under assault because of a three-step
argument made by the advocates and justifiers of violence. The
first step is they say that the validity or invalidity of an
argument can be judged solely by the ethnic, sexual, racial, or
cultural identity of the person making the argument. The second
step is if they claim those who say otherwise are engaging in
what they call verbal violence. And the final step is they
conclude that physical violence is sometimes justified in order
to stop such verbal violence.
So let's examine each of these three steps in turn. First,
the philosophy of intersectionality. This philosophy now
dominates college campuses, as well as a large segment,
unfortunately, of today's Democratic Party and suggests that
straight white Americans are inherently the beneficiaries of
white privilege and therefore cannot speak on certain policies
since they've not experienced what it's like to be black or
Hispanic or gay or transgender or a woman. This philosophy
ranks the value of a view not based on the logic or merit of
the view but on the level of victimization in American society
experienced by the person espousing the view. Therefore, if
you're an LGBT black woman, your view of American society is
automatically more valuable than that of a straight white male.
The next step in the logic is obvious. If a straight white
male or anybody else who ranks lower on the victimhood scale
says something contrary to the viewpoints of the higher-ranking
intersectional--intersectionality identity, that person has
engaged in a microaggression. As NYU social psychologist
Jonathan Haidt writes, ``Microaggressions are small actions or
word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious
intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence
nonetheless.''
You don't have to actively say anything insulting to
microaggress. Somebody merely needs to take offense. If, for
example, you say that society ought to be colorblind, you are
microaggressing certain identity groups who have been
victimized by a non-colorblind society. Note, microaggressions,
as the name suggests, are not merely insults. They are
aggressions. They are the equivalent of physical violence.
Just two weeks ago, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett of
Northeastern University published an essay in The New York
Times suggesting that words should be seen as physical violence
because they can cause stress and stress causes physical harm.
Thus, Feldman suggested it is reasonable scientifically
speaking to ban or restrict speech you do not like at your
school. This is both inane and dangerous. That's because it
leads to the final logical step, words you don't like deserve
to be fought physically.
When I spoke at California State University L.A., one
professor threatened students who sponsor me by offering to
fight them. He then posted a slogan on the door of his office
stating, ``The best response to microaggression is
macroaggression.'' As Haidt writes, ``This is why the idea that
speech as violence is so dangerous. It tells the members of a
generation already beset by anxiety and depression that the
world is a far more violent and threatening place than it
really is.'' It tells them words, ideas, speakers can literally
kill them, even worse, at a time of rapidly rising political
polarization in the United States, it helps a small subset of
that generation justify political violence.
Indeed, protesters all too often engage in physically
violent disruption when they believe their identity group is
under verbal attack by someone, usually a conservative but not
always. Not only do some administrators look the other way, at
Middlebury College, Cal State L.A., Berkeley, Evergreen, actual
crimes were committed and almost nobody has been arrested. But
they actively forbid events from moving forward, creating a
heckler's veto, the notion that if you are physically violent
enough, you can get administrators to kowtow to you, to bow
before you by canceling an event you disagree with altogether.
All of this destroys free speech. But just as importantly, it
turns students into snowflakes, craven and pathetic, looking
for an excuse to be offended so they can earn points in the
intersectionality Olympics and then use those points as a club
with which to beat opponents.
A healthy nation requires an emotionally and intellectually
vigorous population ready to engage in open debate at all
times. Shielding college students from opposing viewpoints
makes them simultaneously weaker and more dangerous. We must
fight that process at every step, and that begins by
acknowledging that whatever we think about America and where we
stand, we must agree on this fundamental principle: All of our
views should be judged on their merits, not on the color or sex
or sexual orientation of the speaker, and those views should
never be banned on the grounds that they offend someone.
Thanks so much.
[Prepared Statement of Mr. Shapiro follows:]
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Mr. Jordan. Mr. Shapiro, would the professors you cited in
your testimony view your 4 minute and 48 second opening
statement as a microaggression?
Mr. Shapiro. I assume that some of them would. I mean,
apparently, college students do all the time since when I speak
there I've been ----
Mr. Jordan. I think they ----
Mr. Shapiro.--there have been riots and such.
Mr. Jordan. I think they definitely will, which is kind of
a sign of the times, I guess.
Mr. Carolla, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF ADAM CAROLLA
Mr. Carolla. Thank you. It's an honor to be asked to speak
in front of you all.
First, just a quick piece of business. Do we get to keep
these pads? This is going to be huge. And not that I'm going
to, but what do you reckon they'll get on eBay? I'm not saying
I'm going to, but it's just pure curiosity.
I'm not as eloquent as Mr. Shapiro. I sort of speak in
beats and off the top of my head, and I've written a few down
for you all today.
First off, I come from a very blue-collar background. I
grew up in North Hollywood, California. My dad was a
schoolteacher, and my mom received welfare and food stamps and
told me very importantly when I was young when I asked her if
she would get a job, she said, ``And lose my welfare benefits?
No, thank you,'' which taught me a very valuable lesson, which
is never to listen to my mom.
All right. I ended up being a carpenter and then a boxing
instructor and met Jimmy Kimmel when I taught him to box for a
morning zoo stunt and eventually made my way onto TV and radio.
In the early days of my career, I toured the country with Dr.
Drew when we were on Loveline together, a syndicated radio
program also on MTV, and we must have played 100 college
campuses with nary a word of negativity and no safe spaces and
no stuffed animals being handed out, simply went there, said
our piece. Many controversial ideas were exchanged, and that's
just what they were, exchanged, and then we got our paychecks
and went home.
And 15 years later, I went out with Dennis Prager, a
conservative talk show host, and attempted to do a show at Cal
State Northridge where my mother was an actual graduate from
with a Chicano studies degree, believe it or not. So, she's
rolling in dough about now.
And they pulled the plug on it. They gave us no good reason
why we couldn't speak there, and we actually had to get
attorneys involved to go back and speak at a later date.
We're talking a lot about the kids, and I think they're
just that, kids. We are the adults, and I don't think we are
doing the children--I mean, these are 18- and 19-year-old kids
that are at these college campuses. They grew up dipped in
Purell, playing soccer games where they never kept score, and
watching Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! and we're asking them to be mature.
We need the adults to start being the adults.
Studies have shown that if you take people and you put them
in a zero-gravity environment like astronauts, they lose muscle
mass, they lose bone density. We're taking these kids in the
name of protection, we're putting them in a zero-gravity
environment, and they're losing muscle mass and bone density.
They need to live in a world that has gravity.
When you--you need to expose your children to germs and
dirt in the environment to build up their immune system. Our
plan is put them in a bubble, keep them away from everything,
and somehow they'll come out stronger when they emerge from the
bubble. Well, that's not happening.
Children are the future, but we are the present and we're
the adults and we need to act like it. And I feel that what's
going on on these campuses is--we need law and order. We need
to bring back law and order, but I think if we just had order,
we wouldn't need law. So, could we just bring back order, and
could the faculty and administration on these campuses act like
faculty and administration, and, most importantly, adults who
are in charge of these kids who need some gravity in their
life. Thank you.
[Prepared Statement of Mr. Carolla follows:]
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Mr. Jordan. Well said. Well said. Thank you, Mr. Carolla.
And, Mr. Zimmerman, or Dr. Zimmerman, excuse me, you are
now recognized for your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL ZIMMERMAN
Mr. Zimmerman. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,
thank you for inviting me to speak with you about the
importance of freedom of speech on college campuses.
I begin by making two points that are intricately related
to the issue. First, I believe it's important to recognize that
racism in American society, both overt racism as well as more
subtle but no less important forms of institutional racism, is
very real and needs to be addressed.
Second, nothing that anyone might say today should
undermine the critical role that colleges and universities play
in American society. While these institutions aren't perfect
and while those of us in the Academy need to work toward
improvement, higher education has been and remains the single
best way for individuals to dramatically improve their
socioeconomic status. Beyond that personal benefit, there's
ample evidence demonstrating that society is richer when it's
well-populated by an educated citizenry.
I've spent almost 40 years working at institutions as a
faculty member and administrator promoting the value of a
liberal arts education. Such an education should teach students
how to think rather than what to think. It should teach them
how to differentiate facts from opinions, and it should teach
them how to articulate their thoughts cogently rather than
repeating those of others.
As we've all seen, there have been problems on American
campuses. Some voices have not been welcomed, while others have
been violently excluded. Let me say this as clearly as I can.
This is wrong and it must stop. But what we don't need is
additional legislation. We currently have all the tools we need
to fix the problem if we have the courage to use them. College
administrators need the courage to do what is right, to stand
for principles rather than expediency, and to risk alienating
some in the name of those principles.
On campuses where such strong leadership exists, conflict
rarely escalates to crisis. At the same time, faculty members
need to hold their colleagues accountable. The problems we've
seen on campuses are not, I'm confident, supported by the vast
number of faculty members. But most faculty have opted to
remain silent, to censor themselves, and therefore, they've
ceded control of their institutions to a small but vocal
minority.
This silence is understandable. Speaking out distracts
people from their important work of teaching and scholarship,
while often bringing them into conflict with their colleagues.
Asking faculty to encourage civil discussion and to celebrate a
range of voices and perspectives is asking a great deal of
them, more than we see in our political discourse. But if
diverse opinions are not celebrated on campuses where were
supposed to be trafficking in ideas, I doubt they'll find any
welcoming environment. When we shut out voices, we shut out
ideas, and serious consequences ensue.
Part of the problem on campuses I believe stems from a rise
in the belief that all knowledge is socially constructed and
that there are no absolute truths, or the concept of
postmodernism, as it is known in academic circles. Why has this
idea made a comeback now? One possibility is that the
relentless disparagement many have leveled on disciplines and
the humanities, arts, and social sciences has led to a
backlash. It shouldn't be surprising that when practitioners
see their fields portrayed as useless by those who promote only
STEM--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--they
push back, and the resistance often manifests itself as
antipathy towards science.
When we marginalize certain voices, we all lose. We need to
recognize that disciplines each bring something important to
our understanding of the world. Privileging some fields over
others yields a fragmented and incomplete picture. I say this
as a scientist. As important as science is, it certainly isn't
all there is.
Much of the tension on campuses today comes from a similar
historical silencing of certain voices, voices of the
marginalized, voices of people of color, the disabled, those
with nontraditional sexual orientations, the poor, and many
others. As these individuals rightfully try to insert their
voices into conversations, tensions arise. But these voices
deserve to be a part of the conversation.
The comparison between racism, sexism, homophobia, and
other equally terribly discriminatory behaviors and a lack of
appreciation for certain academic disciplines should be seen
only as a metaphor. In the former case, people's lives and
their experiences are discounted. Without those voices, we all
suffer, obviously not equally, but we all suffer. The goal has
to be to find ways to celebrate ideas, a wide array of ideas
and the people who hold them, but such a celebration requires
not only that more voices be at the table but that all of us
listen to those voices. Looking beyond oneself, listening to
what others have to say, understanding a perspective other than
your own even if you don't agree with that perspective after
all is what a liberal arts education is all about.
Thank you.
[Prepared Statement of Mr. Zimmerman follows:]
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Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Lawrence?
STATEMENT OF FREDERICK LAWRENCE
Mr. Lawrence. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, ranking members, and
distinguished members of the committee. I am the 10th secretary
and the CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and I say that I am
delighted to hear Dr. Zimmerman's celebration of the liberal
arts and sciences. Phi Beta Kappa was founded, like our nation,
in 1776 and dedicated to the notion of free expression, free
inquiry, and that the liberal arts and sciences would bring us
to a better place. Indeed, it has in this country.
I am honored today to appear on behalf of the Anti-
Defamation League, of which I am a national commissioner and
former chair of the National Legal Affairs Committee.
The challenge of free expression on our campuses has never
seemed greater, and I am grateful for the opportunity to
address it today before this committee. I know from my years as
a law school dean and as a university president that these
challenges come in all directions and all contexts. They come
from the left and they come from the right. They ----
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Lawrence, just pull the microphone a little
closer. Pull your mic a little closer to you there. Now, we are
talking.
Mr. Lawrence. Did you miss any of the good stuff, Mr.
Chairman?
Mr. Jordan. No, got it all. Got it all. Keep going,
brother.
Mr. Lawrence. I want to make sure that my board heard
everything, Mr. Chairman.
The challenges of free speech come from the left and they
come from the right. They involve students, they involve
faculty, and they involve those outside the campus who affect
the community as invited speakers and sometimes as uninvited
agitators. Given our current polarization in our society, it is
perhaps no surprise that this issue presents itself with such
urgency on our campuses today, public campuses and private
small liberal arts schools and large research universities.
At this moment, it is especially important to clarify first
principles pertaining to our democracy's core values of free
expression as they manifest themselves on our campus, and I
would articulate two such principles. First, and I think there
is broad agreement on this panel today on this, robust free
expression and free inquiry are central for the mission of our
colleges and universities. The limits of such expression are
way out on the margins of expressive activity, and they involve
behavior that threatens or instills fear in a victim or
victims. Hate speech is protected, hate crimes are not.
The second principle is that constitutionally protected
hate speech still causes harm to members of our community.
There is a moral imperative, therefore, for campus leaders
vigorously to criticize hate speech, not to suppress it, not to
prohibit it, but to identify it for what it is and to criticize
it.
These two principles lead me to a third conclusion, that
efforts to legislate bright-line solutions to subtle and
complex situations are misguided and they are doomed to fail.
Campus administrators must be given the discretion to handle
cases of hate speech and to judge when cases have crossed the
line into hate crimes. If we are to do our job, as
Congresswoman Foxx said, to teach our students how to think,
that must be left in the hands of those on campus who are best
equipped to make those decisions.
Let me elaborate briefly on the two principles. Free
expression is a core value of our system of government and our
society, and it is especially true on our campuses. Most if not
all of our campuses share a common mission, to discover and
create knowledge and to transmit that knowledge through our
teaching and our scholarship. For this mission, free expression
and free inquiry are essential.
I therefore start from the presumption that speech on
campus and writings on campus are protected, but this is not a
presumption without a limit. Where should the limit for
expression be? Where does protected hateful speech cross over
into being behavior that a university may prohibit and
sanction? As is so often the case in the law, for example, in
basic principles of criminal law, we do best to focus on the
actor's intent. The division between that which we may protect
and that which we may prohibit should be based on the intent of
the actor. Is the intent to communicate, however hateful the
idea, or is the intent to intimidate and threaten a particular
victim?
A recent example that helps make this point referred to by
Ranking Member Demings, and that refers to the statement of Ms.
Taylor Dumpson seated behind me in the room today makes the
point. As the ranking member said, after her election as the
first black woman to hold the position of president of the
student government at American University, she was the victim
of targeted hate-motivated actions, bananas hung with nooses
with the letters of an African-American sorority. This reaches
beyond the boundaries of free expression to a hate crime and
has no place on an American campus.
To be sure, not all hateful speech is similarly threatening
and prescribable. Much is protected. What is the proper
response when hateful speech that is protected occurs on our
campuses? Here, I believe, as Professor Strossen said at the
very beginning, we do well to look to Justice Louis Brandeis'
famous dictum in the case of Whitney v. California where he
said, ``The answer to hateful or offensive speech is not in
forced silence, it is more speech.'' And in the face of hate
speech on campuses, the call for more speech is not merely an
option, it is a moral obligation on behalf of our campus
leaders on all sides.
We observe with alarm the disturbing increase in the number
of cases of white supremacist activity on our campuses, as has
been well and disturbingly documented by the Anti-Defamation
League. But even then, the answer will generally not be the
enforced silence of which Justice Brandeis warned. The answer
is to assert the highest values of our academic communities.
Doing so precisely in the context of how we debate and how we
disagree is at the heart of the enterprise of a college or
university.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[[Prepared Statement of Mr. Lawrence follows:]
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Mr. Jordan. Thank you all for your eloquent testimony. We
appreciate that and frankly think Congress broke some new
ground today, first reference ever to Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! in a
congressional hearing. But we will start with the chairman of
the Education and Workforce Committee, the gentlelady from
North Carolina.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and I want to
thank our witnesses again for being here.
As we all agree, free speech is fundamental to a free
society. It is astonishing to me that so many young adults
today are willing to throw those constitutionally protected
rights out the window just because they are on a college campus
and may disagree with the content of what is being said.
However, it is not surprising that so many colleges are
struggling with how to handle free-speech rights on campus.
Mr. Zimmerman, you note in your written testimony it is
important for colleges and universities to continue to be a
place where free exchange of ideas, even though some may
disagree, is allowed and even encouraged. I strongly agree. Can
you discuss some of the challenges public colleges and
university administrators face when trying to balance their
constitutional responsibility to protect free speech with
ensuring the safety of the campus community, particularly when
opposition to that speech leads to threats of potential
violence?
Mr. Zimmerman. I can certainly try. It's not an easy--
there's no simple answer to that. The most important thing I
think goes back to something Nadine Strossen said and has
written about eloquently, and that is in American society and
on campuses today we don't have a good enough understanding of
what the First Amendment actually means. We need to educate
each other within the Academy and beyond the Academy about the
importance of freedom of speech.
So, often on college campuses, there are two kinds of
issues. There are the internal issues that administrators are
more easily able to deal with if they have the courage to do
so, and then there are the external issues, when the attacks on
freedom of speech come from external agitators, and that's much
more difficult because administrators don't control those
individuals.
Administrators have to have the courage to stand up and, as
Mr. Lawrence has said, to speak out eloquently in favor of
ideas that they are opposed to and make it clear--and speak out
in favor of the opportunity for those ideas to be expressed
while making it clear that those ideas should not be expressed
and to call the people who are saying those hateful words into
question, not their right to say them but their obligation not
to say them if they want to live in a civil society.
So, what administrators need to do is change the nature of
the discourse, to ask for much more civil discourse. And that
doesn't mean closing down ideas. It means respecting each other
and the diversity of opinions that each of us should have.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you very much.
Ms. Strossen, in your testimony, you discuss several
instances where speech may be restricted because of specific
objectively demonstrable serious harm that it directly causes.
Can you expand on those instances and discuss how colleges and
universities can appropriately draw the line?
And again, I appreciate all of you all coming today.
Ms. Strossen. Too eager to talk. As one educator to
another, I'm especially eager to answer that fine question. The
basic--the most important examples that would apply on campuses
include what the law calls a genuine threat or a true threat
and targeted harassment. Now, we have to be very careful
because we tend to use the word threat or harassment very
loosely in everyday conversation. And I am very concerned about
students and even faculty members saying, ``I feel assaulted by
that speech'' or even ``I feel, you know, that speech is
committing violence against me.'' No, no, no.
The test is appropriately narrow. The element of intent, as
Mr. Lawrence said, is very important. When the speaker means to
instill a reasonable fear, not a fear that someone subjectively
feels but a reasonable person in the position of the student
who is targeted would reasonably feel fear of violence or harm,
that is a true threat. And it doesn't--the speaker need not
intend to actually carry out the threatened harm but to instill
the fear, which itself is intruding into the liberty.
So--and it's a very fact-specific determination, which is
why I agree with Mr. Krishnamoorthi that we must not make this
into a punitive matter because it is a matter that involves
discretion and judgment. You would look at all the facts and
circumstances, and certainly one of them, as Mrs. Demings said,
is the history that is associated with the expression. The
noose, certainly, would convey a reasonable fear of racist
violence.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Jordan. The ranking member is recognized, Mr.
Krishnamoorthi.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Ms. Strossen, you are free to exercise
your free-speech rights to mispronounce my name. That is
perfectly okay. The other day I introduced myself, I said,
``Hi, my name is Raja Krishnamoorthi,'' and someone said,
``Roger Christian Murphy, very nice to meet you,'' so I am used
to it.
You know, I think that the three principles that I am--
look, I think there is room for us to come to agreement on a
few principles that I am hearing echoed in your excellent
testimonies across the board. First, I personally believe that
Mr. Lawrence is--Dr. Lawrence is absolutely right, that college
administrators should have maximum discretion to, you know,
essentially enforce these free-speech rights both for those who
are peacefully protesting and those who would show up in, as
Mr. Shapiro said, you know, practice their viewpoints or
espouse their viewpoints.
The second principle kind of goes along the lines of what
you are saying, Ms. Strossen, which is you have to have some
principle that is equally applied to both sides, and that is,
is it the reasonable-person test. Would a reasonable person
feel they are about to be attacked, or would a reasonable
person perceive an intent to attack, et cetera.
And then the third principle I think is we don't want
anything to border on violence, any kind of incitement to
violence. That is why, when Mrs. Demings brought up the case of
Taylor, who is with us in the audience--I am sorry; I forgot
your last name, Ms. Taylor.
Ms. Dumpson. Dumpson.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Dumpson. Thank you for coming. I think
that that particular episode to me I think as a reasonable
person--hopefully, most people would agree that is crossing a
line into a place where, you know, there might be violence on
its way, and I am very sorry that even happened to you. At the
same time, I am disturbed when I see videos of people getting
shouted down and shut down.
And so my question to the administrator is that people who
are in the shoes of the college presidents and administrators
who are trying to enforce these principles, Dr. Lawrence and
Dr. Zimmerman, I mean, how do you, A, prevent that kind of
shouting down and just, you know, shutdown of speech, which we
saw, and on the other hand prevent what Congresswoman Demings
talked about, which is that hate crime in my view? I mean, what
are the challenges there from a public policy standpoint? Like
is there anything that you need in terms of tools to help in
that particular area?
Mr. Lawrence. Well, let me start with the last question, is
there anything else that we need besides the goodwill of the
House of Representatives? We certainly do not need more
legislation in this area. I think the question of how do you
deal with the conflict between, on the one hand, protecting
students from hate crimes, on the other hand exposing students
to troublesome ideas, even offensive ideas and teaching them
how to respond to it. That is the challenge that we meet.
But you start, I think, by recognizing, as a university
administrator, that it is--those are not the only two options.
Either we protect speech and embrace it or we prohibit speech.
There's this whole middle category that says speech is
protected, it is encouraged, and university administrators also
have First Amendment rights and also get to speak.
So, in many cases, the answer is not to run to the extreme
of shutting down an event if there is a--even a white
supremacist on campus. If they are invited by a campus group or
in a State university if they're entitled to be there by the
State university rules, then you don't shut it down, but you do
counter it with comments of your own, and the administration
has to say, ``We have values in this university, and we
represent all of our students of all backgrounds, and this is
what we stand for and these are the high values of this
university.''
I know outside the context of the university this sounds
like thin stuff. Within the university on the campus for those
of us who spent our lives there, this is not thin stuff. This
is the real stuff. This is where students and faculty are
engaged in the life of the school on a daily basis.
So this is where Justice Brandeis really did have it right.
The answer is not enforced silence, but it is more speech, and
more speech is not just an option; it's a moral obligation.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Dr. Zimmerman, can I just add onto
that? Has something changed in the last 10, 15 years whereby
the incidents that Congresswoman Demings talked about have been
on the rise, especially as of late against many different
minority groups and also what Mr. Shapiro was talking about as
well? I mean, has something changed that we need to be aware
of?
Mr. Zimmerman. What a great question. Let me back up for
one second and agree with Dr. Lawrence and say one other thing,
and that is you can't wait until one of these events happens.
You have to change the culture ----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Right.
Mr. Zimmerman.--from the beginning.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Right.
Mr. Zimmerman. You have to--the first day students come to
campus, before they come to campus ----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Right.
Mr. Zimmerman.--they have to know they're coming to a place
where they're going to be trafficking in ideas, and some of
those ideas, as so many of you have said, might be
controversial and might make them uncomfortable, but that's
what makes them educated.
I guess the deep--the real answer that I see to your
wonderful question is are we a less civil society in general
than we used to be? Are we more at odds with one another? Do we
have a deeper misunderstanding and more distrust when we talk
with people who disagree with us? Are college campuses the
epicenter of this or are they a reflection of what's going on
in society?
And, you know, I--we're sitting here in House chambers or a
conference room. The House doesn't interact with the--Members
don't interact with each other at least publicly very well
often. We on college campuses, students, faculty model the
behavior we see. And it's not that you are the problem, but you
are part of American society. We have all come to this, I
think. We need collectively to come to a better understanding
of how to disagree civilly and respectfully.
And unless we understand what our opponents are saying,
we're never going to make cogent arguments against them. We
need to understand our position, and we need to understand
their position if we're going to make rational decisions.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you.
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Carolla, we have heard from the other side,
we have heard from a couple of our witnesses about the intent
to cause violence. We have heard the term agitator used. We
have heard that it is appropriate to criticize hate speech.
When you are on campus, do you engage in hate speech?
Mr. Carolla. Well, that's a--it's all in the ear of the
beholder. That's the problem, and everyone's ears are getting
supersensitive these days. I express ideas and ideas I believe
in and oftentimes jokes like, Mr. K, did they charge you extra
for the nameplate? You know, like ----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I have a wraparound--it wraps around --
--
Mr. Carolla. When you bring a van to the car wash, do they
charge you more? I just figure with the 128 letters there.
You know, I try to be a little more philosophical about all
this stuff, and I was at a Home Depot in Glendale, California,
two days ago standing in the tool department, and a Taylor
Swift song came on. And I was initially agitated. I just didn't
feel like it was good thematically for me to be looking at
RotoHammer with Taylor Swift talking about how hot she was
pumping above my head like a halo. But all I did was keep
shopping, keep walking. I realized some people like this music,
some people don't like this music. It's the prerogative of
whoever manages the Home Depot to play Taylor Swift at that
time. I didn't complain, I didn't throw something at the
speaker, and I didn't start a fire. I just got my tools, paid,
and left.
And I just thought if more people could do that with ideas
they disagree with or people they disagree with or music they
disagree with--it's not an endorsement of Taylor Swift; it's I
have a life to lead. I need a RotoHammer, and I don't
personally hold the manager of this Home Depot--nothing against
him if he wants to play--he or she wants to play Taylor Swift.
And I think if people could just sort of have that in their
mind--and I'm not saying don't have an opinion and I'm not
saying don't voice your opinion, but when other people are
voicing their opinion or singing their song, sometimes it's
time just to grab your RotoHammer and head for the parking lot.
Mr. Jordan. And your appearances on campus, has your
intentions ever been to cause violence on college campuses?
Mr. Carolla. Oh, sorry for skirting the question.
Mr. Jordan. No, no, no, it is a second question. It is a
second question. You did fine on the first.
Mr. Carolla. Literally talking about Taylor Swift and
skirting, mini-skirting the question. Of course not, never, no.
And I don't know whose--who does have those ideas. I personally
want to exchange ideas. I basically want to just take my ideas
and put it into your head, but I don't want to put my fist or
foot in your head.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. Mr. Lawrence, do you think that when Mr.
Shapiro is on campus that he has any intentions to cause
violence or promote violence? Do you think he is an agitator or
do you think he engages in hate speech?
Mr. Lawrence. No, I have no reason to believe he's there to
create violence, and, in fact, I would say that the wise
university president does not get in the business on a daily
basis of calling First Amendment balls and strikes. Generally
speaking, you want to let the game play on. You want ideas to
be exchanged. If Mr. Carolla wants to come to campus and do his
seething critique of Taylor Swift, I would say have had it.
But those aren't the hard cases that we're talking about.
Where you do weigh in are precisely cases ----
Mr. Jordan. What you mean they are not the hard cases? Mr.
Shapiro has been shouted down uninvited, violence at the thing,
so what do you mean it is not the hard case? If you think his
speech is appropriate, he is engaging in the kind of ideas,
robust debate that we want on college campuses, then why is the
reaction the way it is then?
Mr. Lawrence. Well, there shouldn't be that reaction, and
what I mean by not being a hard case is that it should not be a
hard case for a university administration to protect his right
to speak. I think there's no problem with that.
Mr. Jordan. That seems to be.
Mr. Lawrence. But what I mean by the hard case is that when
you do see a dramatic increase in white supremacist incidents
on campuses, university administrators have to pay attention,
and particularly when there are people who come from the
outside ----
Mr. Jordan. Right.
Mr. Lawrence.--and the university president has a hard time
keeping control of her or his campus. That--but that's a
different situation from Mr. Carolla and Mr. Shapiro.
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Shapiro, are you an agitator?
Mr. Shapiro. Not as far as I'm aware. So this--I think that
some of what's been said does miniskirt the debate.
You know, Mr. Krishnamoorthi--I got it right--when you're
talking about the Wisconsin law, I believe that law was brought
up in direct counter to what happened, and it was people who
talked about it on the Floor of the legislature--in direct
counter to what happened when I spoke at University of
Wisconsin at Madison where you had a bunch of protesters who
sit in front of the stage and obstructed the stage and then
refused to leave. And when I asked the police would they remove
the protesters at a certain--they'd been going for 15 minutes.
I--by the way, personally, two things just to preface. I
have no problem whatsoever with people protesting my speeches.
I do have a problem with people who won't actually let me
speak.
And, number two, as far as all the talk about white
supremacy, I can speak from experience, Mr. Lawrence, your
organization named me the number-one target of anti-Semitism
online last year, so I have a trophy at my house that says
number-one hated Jew in America, so I'm totally familiar with
the level of vitriol that's become common in our politics.
But one of the things that's a problem and I think we have
to be careful about is when we say leave it to the
administrators and then the administrators do what they did at
UW, which is the police--I said to the police, ``Will you
remove these protesters,'' and the police said, ``We have been
told by the administration that if we remove the protesters, we
are to shut down the event entirely, so we can't remove the
protesters.'' We literally had to wait until they just got
tired and walked out basically.
When that's response of the administration, shouldn't there
be some sort of repercussion for that? Because what I'm seeing
is a heckler's veto that's taking place on campus. What I'm
seeing is people who are not engaging in free speech designed
to enrich the debate but in order to shut down the debate, and
there have to be some sort of ramifications for people who are
actually committing trespass.
I mean, these are--this is not a question of free--everyone
is trying to focus in on this term hate crime and hate speech.
They--but the important part of those phrases is not the first
word. It's speech versus crime. So if there is a crime that's
being committed, we're all in agreement. If somebody commits a
crime and they're speaking of an imminent threat to somebody,
of course that's a crime, but that has very little to do with
the hate and a lot more to do with the crime as to whether
that's prosecuted because hate speech is not prosecutable, nor
should it be policed by the campus.
So, the fact is that what we are seeing is a conflation
between speech and active attempts to obstruct in order to
promote the obstruction by some administrators on a few college
campuses.
Mr. Carolla. Can I add to that?
Mr. Jordan. Sure can.
Mr. Carolla. I think that the bigger problem and what's
sort of insidious here is I believe that the administration
does not agree with Ben Shapiro and Ben Shapiro's thoughts and
what Ben Shapiro is going to say, so it becomes a tacit
agreement. They disagree--they're basically Steeler fans, and
he's a Baltimore Ravens fan, and he's going to come up and make
a speech, and all the Steeler fans say, well, he should be
allowed to, but we're not a fan, and so quietly they go along
with it. And I think that's a problem. I think that's a big
problem.
We--everyone agrees on free speech, everyone agrees that
the college campus should be a petri dish of free speech or
melting pot or whatever it is, a sea sponge of free speech, but
when the administration doesn't agree with what Ben Shapiro has
to say, they don't defend his right to say it as vigorously as
they would if someone came on who they agree with. It's quiet
and no one ever talks about it, but I believe that's what's
going on.
Mr. Jordan. They tell him like they did last week that, oh,
there is no venue that will accommodate him in September. Wow,
right? You can't find the place on campus to have him come and
address this ----
Mr. Shapiro. I mean, I think that--if I may for a second, I
think that that's one of the dangers here is that what we're
seeing in many cases is use of what would normally be time,
place, and manner restrictions in order to restrict the actual
type of speech.
Ms. Strossen. As a pretext.
Mr. Shapiro. Yes.
Ms. Strossen. If I might say, responding to points that Mr.
Krishnamoorthi made and also ----
Mr. Jordan. I have got to get to ----
Ms. Strossen.--Chairman Jordan, that this really is not
such a new phenomenon. Back in the '60s and '70s, there was
actually epic violence on campuses, massive shutdowns, outside
agitators, students alike, faculty members and administrators
imprisoned within their offices, and that gave rise to that
fabulous report that Chairman Jordan referred to, the Woodward
Report, which I think is responsive to a number of questions
that have been raised. What should campus administrators do?
Because it really, in concrete terms, spells out the
distinctions between speech that should be protected, including
vehement protest, and where it crosses the line into coercion
and intimidation, where it is important for the university to
enforce its own rules. But that's as distinct from ----
Mr. Jordan. Well said.
Ms. Strossen.--government getting into the fray.
Mr. Jordan. Well said.
The gentlelady from Florida is recognized, and we will be
relaxed in time restraints a little bit there, too.
Mrs. Demings. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
And again, thank you to all of our witnesses for being here
today and engaging in this very important discussion.
Mr. Lawrence, in your written testimony you talk about
white supremacists are engaged in unprecedented outreach on
American colleges and campuses. What do you believe accounts
for the rise in outreach? And what do you believe white
supremacist groups are hoping to achieve by the increase in
targeting colleges and universities?
Mr. Lawrence. I think what they are hoping to accomplish is
to influence the next generation of leaders in society, and so
they come to campus with that in mind. I think they also are
hoping to get a high level of visibility, which they do.
Campuses get a high level of attention in the media and the
press, in government, and mostly for good reasons, but I think
that raises that as well.
And I think to a certain extent we are living in a highly
hyperpolarized environment right now, and there is a violence
to the vocabulary that comes very quickly, and there is a
racialized version of much of this vocabulary that comes very
quickly.
But let me hasten to add that even when those groups come
to campus, I still think the answer is more speech, not to
restrict. But I do think this is where the job of the
administrator becomes very complicated but terribly important
to be a voice of clarity to say on this campus we believe that
all are entitled to come here and have a satisfying learning
experience, to be challenged, to be challenged intellectually,
to be troubled with ideas, but not to be threatened and not to
be stigmatized because of who they are or what they are.
Mrs. Demings. You know, as I indicated in my opening
statement, I have been directly involved in numerous--provided
security for numerous protests as persons who I agreed with and
groups that I didn't exercise their First Amendment rights, so
I take this conversation very, very seriously.
You talked earlier about kind of the complicated and
sometimes difficult job of the college administrator, who is
trying to balance protecting the right to free speech but also
thinking about the welfare and safety and well-being of their
students, which can be a difficult line. Could you--or even Dr.
Zimmerman. I would like to hear from both of you. Kind of talk
more about--even though we said it is a tough--it is difficult,
could you kind of talk more about the role of the college
administrator in balancing the right to free speech and the
welfare of the students on campus?
Mr. Lawrence. Well, let me start with something very
important that Dr. Zimmerman said. These discussions do not
best start once an event has already happened on campus. It
starts at first-year orientation discussions. It starts in
dinners in the president's home. It starts in discussions in
the office talking about what do we stand for? What does a
civil learning climate mean? What does it mean to challenge
each other? It comes with how we treat each other. I think he's
also right that there are a precious few good role models for
civil disagreement in our society right now, so we have to
create those on our university campuses.
When an event does happen, I think there also are very
significant rules of engagement that have to be enforced, so,
for example, if Mr. Shapiro wanted to come to my campus, he
obviously would be free to come, and I would make sure that
there were no protesters who kept him from coming, but I would
require--and I'm sure he'd be happy with this requirement--that
he'd have to take questions and answers; he couldn't just give
a speech and leave it. I have no reason to think he wouldn't
agree with that.
Mr. Shapiro. In fact, I actually--in all my speeches I say
if you disagree with me, you go to the front of the line for
Q&A. That's always how it works.
Mr. Lawrence. When I got pushback particularly from some of
my trustees about certain speakers they disagreed with
vehemently, ``Why are they on campus?'', my response was
always, ``Trust my kids.'' I'm going to make sure that these
speakers have to answer questions, and they're going to stay
until the questions are done. Trust my students to ask hard
questions. That's where the training how to think actually
happens, so you create those environments as well.
But, look, let's be clear as well. When the situation gets
out of control usually because you've got people from the
outside--not only, sometimes it's inside--but usually, when
you've got people from the outside, then you got the same
questions on campuses that law enforcement, such as your
experience, are more adept at dealing with. And these will
continue to be challenges for our universities.
Mrs. Demings. In your written testimony, you also talked
about the just unbelievable number of incidents of racist-
related stickers, flyers on campuses. Could you talk a little
bit about the impacts that you have seen on certain groups as
it pertains to those flyers and stickers?
Mr. Lawrence. Look, you've got to go all the way back to
first principles. Universities are not punitive institutions;
they are educative institutions. We exist for a purpose; it is
to educate our students. When there is a pervasive expression
of racism on campus, that disables the learning of certain
students. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean you would
repress some of that expression, but you have to respond to
that not just because you think that's a nice thing to do. You
have a professional obligation as an educator to see to the
learning ability of the students on your campus. So, the
incidents that you're referring to have a deeply negative
impact on the ability of students to learn, which at the end of
the day is the mission of the institution.
Mrs. Demings. Okay. Thank you. I am out of time.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you.
The chair notes the presence of Congressman Hice and
Professor Raskin, and without objection, they will be welcome
to participate fully in today's hearing.
I now recognize the Chairman, Mr. Palmer.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to bring up something from your written
testimony that frankly, Mr. Lawrence, I find troubling. You
cite an instance at Central Michigan University where there was
a Valentine's Day card that went out that was extremely
offensive to Jews, and you do point out that the creator--and
it was attributed to a Republican student group. And in your
written testimony you went out that the creator of the
Valentine turned out to not be a student, but you never
mentioned in here that it was not the Republican group, that an
inquiry into this by Central Michigan University found--led by
Katherine Lasher said that they determined that leaders of the
student organization, the college Republicans at CMU were
unaware of the card and that their director said the members of
the student organization were shocked and remorseful. Why
didn't you make that clear?
Mr. Lawrence. Congressman, I apologize if it was not clear
in the written testimony as you see it. I did say in the
testimony that it was determined not to be from a student
group. The ----
Mr. Palmer. But you didn't make clear that it wasn't the
Republican--not only was not a student, it wasn't the
Republicans.
I guess I'm a little sensitive about that, Mr. Chairman. I
like to enter this into the record if I may.
Mr. Jordan. Without objection.
Mr. Palmer. Because I realize that some speech does incite
inappropriate behavior, even violence, and I know that
firsthand because I was one of the Republican baseball players
that was on the field. I was 20 steps from the guy when he
started shooting, and it was clear that he was incited by
certain speech.
But I would like to point out that, as traumatic as that
experience was, I have not heard a single demand from any one
of those who were present who were injured or wounded for
restriction of anyone's right to speak their views on any
issue.
And I just think--you know, I was at the University of
Alabama in the mid-1970s. Nineteen sixty-five was the first
time an African-American was allowed to enroll in the
University. It was a dark time in our history, there is no
question about it. But in 1976 we elected the first African-
American president of the Student Government Association, the
year before that, the executive vice president of the Student
Government Association. And there were people who disagreed and
protested, but we didn't have this inability to communicate
that we have right now on the university campuses.
Mr. Lawrence. Mr. Chairman, I would agree that it is
critically important that on campuses we not get in the
business of name-calling and certainly not prohibiting others
from speaking. And, in fact, one of the reasons that I think it
is very important for universities not to rush to judgment and
not to look at these as cases to punish but as cases to educate
is that the goal at the end of the day is to teach students how
to challenge each other intellectually but not physically ----
Mr. Palmer. But you have a ----
Mr. Lawrence.--and not with ----
Mr. Palmer. You have a responsibility, though, to make sure
that both sides have the opportunity to engage. This idea that
denying students the opportunity to hear views or ideas that
are contrary to what they believe, these safe spaces, I think
are dangerous. You are not protecting students. You are denying
them the ability to engage in debate, to defend their views or
oppose other views because when they leave college, I promise
you, they are going to run into the views that are opposite to
their own.
Mr. Lawrence. You and I are in complete agreement on that.
It is the obligation of the university to expose students to
views they disagree with. You and I are in complete agreement
on that point.
Mr. Palmer. I ask Professor Strossen, while I find the
numerous instances of speakers being disinvited or shouted down
problematic, I think the most troubling aspect of the anti-free
speech movement is the surprising amount of traction it has
gained with the younger generation. There is a Pew Research
Center study that showed that 40 percent of millennials believe
that the government should be able to prevent people from
publicly making statements that are offensive to minority
groups. Does your experience as a professor confirm that
students are likely to support restrictions on speech?
Ms. Strossen. I am not going to rely on anecdotes because I
have to say, by definition, when I'm invited to speak on
campus, I'm often perceived as a controversial speaker for
defending freedom for everybody from A-to-Z. So ----
Mr. Palmer. Now, how does it impact you in the classroom?
I'm not talking about ----
Ms. Strossen. Oh, in the class--no, in the classroom, you
can't teach a law class without--well without forcing students
to do well to be able--and here my students can quote this--
articulate and defend all plausible perspectives on every
issue. You're going to fail my class if you just adhere to the
civil libertarian line or any other line. You have to be able
to answer back.
And interestingly enough, there has been some suggestion
that these problems do not exist at law schools. The new dean
of the Yale Law School just wrote a very interesting essay in
TIME magazine in which he said isn't it striking that we don't
have these problems at law school? It may well be because we so
emphasize critical thinking and forcing students to advocate
against their own deeply held beliefs, understanding, first of
all, that may open their minds and change their perspectives.
That's not the worst thing to happen in life. And secondly,
even if it doesn't, it enhances their ability to effectively
advocate their own positions. So, that could be an educational
model for undergraduates and, for that matter, high schools and
below as well.
Mr. Palmer. I am encouraged to know that you are promoting
critical thinking skills.
One last thing, Mr. Chairman, I hear you tapping there; I
heard that.
Mr. Shapiro, proponents of curtailed speech often argue
that certain types of speech amount to violence, noting that
certain listeners are emotionally harmed when listening to
ideas with which they disagree. There was an article in the
L.A. Times that made this argument, going so far as to call on
courts and legislatures ``to allow the restriction of hate
speech, as do all other economically advanced democracies in
the world.'' Is there any limiting principle at play where
forbidden speech is anything that a particular person or group
of people find offensive?
Mr. Shapiro. No, I haven't seen any limiting principle at
play at all on college campuses, which is the problem. You'll
have people like Jason Riley from the Wall Street Journal treat
it exactly the same way as Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos,
and they're poles apart in terms of how they express themselves
and many of the views that they hold.
So, this idea that there is some sort of bright line--this
is why I hate even--even the term hate speech is really
difficult because it's--it just suggests that if I don't like
what you're saying or if I impute to you an intent that you may
not have, then, now you're hateful and you should be banned. It
seems to me that it would be a more effective use of
terminology would say speech I find insulting or speech I find
offensive, but the idea of hate speech itself--there are
certain types of speech I think we can all agree are
objectively hateful, but I don't think that there is any
limiting principle at play from a lot of administrators because
I think that they use that club of hate speech in order to
cudgel people with whom they disagree. They just say, okay, I
don't like what you're saying now, and that's hate speech.
And microaggression culture contributes to this. I mean,
literally on campuses students will be told that if you say to
another student, ``Where are you from?'', that this is some
sort of microaggression, that this is a minor, minor form of
hate speech if you say, ``Where are you from?'', because you're
implying they're not from here. Well, I mean, of course you're
not from here. I mean, I assume you weren't born on this spot,
but it doesn't matter.
The idea that you're going to broaden out terminology in
order to prohibit groups that you don't like or ideas that you
don't like, I would much prefer that if we're going to be--if
we're going to move the ratchet in any one direction, let's
move the ratchet in favor of more speech.
And I agree of course with Mr. Lawrence that it's perfectly
appropriate if an administrator wants to say that I personally
disagree or the university doesn't agree with the views that
are being espoused by a particular speaker, that's perfectly
appropriate, but, you know, sometimes there are gray areas in
terms of what the university is doing.
When Mr. Lawrence was at Brandeis University, Ayaan Hirsi
Ali was uninvited from the university because of blowback from
some of the students. I mean, is that a case of her free-speech
rights being violated? It's a private university, but if it
were a public university, would that be a case of her free-
speech rights being violated because administrators decided not
to stand up for those because students were upset?
I mean, this is why I think that the notion that there is
some sort of grand intelligentsia running the universities who
are capable of discriminating between hate speech and normal
speech and could be sitting atop a hill somewhere under a palm
tree like a qadi dispensing justice on a case-by-case basis I
think is nonsense, and I don't think that they have any
rational standards they apply.
Mr. Palmer. I will just conclude with this, Mr. Chairman,
that I think this hearing is very important. I think the main
thing that students ought to get and all of us ought to get is
to deny ourselves access to other people's views is to deny
ourselves furthering our own education. This is how you learn.
And I would like to compliment Mr. Carolla on his metaphors
football and hardware. Thank you very much. I yield back.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Carolla. Thank you.
Mr. Jordan. When Mr. Shapiro was giving his example about
asking the question and it being perceived as a microaggression
asking the question of where are you from, I noticed the
students in the audience all nodding their heads, and so in our
subsequent hearings we are going to look to get some students
here who can give us some firsthand knowledge of what it is
like from their perspective on these particular campuses.
And with that, I recognize the gentlelady from Illinois for
her questioning.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I find this conversation very interesting. I used to work
on a college campus. I was a director of Minority Student
Services for Bradley University, and I am now on the Board of
Trustees of Bradley. That is my alma mater.
And something you said, Mr. Zimmerman, we did start--you
know, we had student orientation, and as part of the
orientation, the students went through diversity training and
diversity orientation. As freshmen, they had to go through a
class for half of the semester.
Mr. Lawrence, Anti-Defamation League came to the campus.
That is where I cut my teeth. I am a diversity trainer, and we
did a campus of difference.
And one thing I wanted to say also, I know on the outside
it may look like we don't get along, but I just hosted
something I called ``Breaking Bread,'' and there were 75 of us,
Democrats and Republicans, that ate together, and not that
probably--Mr. Meadows, a head of the Freedom Caucus, and I
probably never vote alike, but we are very close. You can ask
him. And Mr. Palmer and I, I bring him popcorn from Illinois,
so we do get along better than people think. Maybe we need to
show it a little bit better.
Mr. Palmer. And I brought you Valentine chocolate.
Ms. Kelly. That is right. He brought me Valentines
chocolate. But I think we do get along better than people
think. We may not agree on how to get to a goal, but there are
a lot of similar goals also.
But Mr. Palmer said--and I deeply understand how he is
sensitive because of what he experienced, but I also think
about Taylor and the impact on her. And even though I agree
with free speech and all of that, but we do need to think about
the impact and the long-lasting impact that it does have on
people. And I don't want to speak for her, but like maybe her
trust or, you know, when she meets someone new or how the
campus is and those kind of things, I think that we really need
to make sure that we give the students support. And I agree
with being open-minded to different ideas and things like that,
but it does have an impact on people.
When I went to college a long, long time ago, it was so
segregated. I grew up in New York City. I went to college at
Bradley University, and I just was not used to that. And I
still remember the impact that it had on me and people's
attitudes and things like that, but maybe that led me to be
passionate about diversity and becoming a diversity trainer.
But what do you think about that, the impact that it has on
people? Even like Mr. Palmer said--and he is a full-grown
adult, a Congressman, and the impact of what he went through
has on him--but how can we support students?
Mr. Lawrence. Well, I think the more we talk with one
another and the more we listen to one another, the easier it is
to understand one another. When we look at others as other, we
can demonize them. We can ignore their ideas and know that
their ideas are wrong. When we understand who these people are
and what they believe, it's so much easier to share what we
have in common instead of looking for our differences.
So, the fact that you had 75 members together is absolutely
wonderful, but I think you're right; that needs to be
demonstrated more openly because that's not the image that's
seen. And we, as members of the Academy, as I've said, we as
citizens, we as human beings look for role models, and we model
what we see, whether we mean to or not. And when we see from
cable news segregation of ideas, not segregation in terms of
race but--well, some of that as well but segregation in terms
of ideas, when we see that so obvious, we internalize that and
say that must be the way American society should work.
We need to work together. We need to understand each other,
and we need to be able to disagree. There's nothing wrong with
the disagreeing, especially with the ideas but not with the
people.
Ms. Kelly. But I also think in disagreeing there has to be
a certain level of respect.
Mr. Lawrence. Absolutely.
Ms. Kelly. That is the other part, too. And again, I go
back to what Taylor went through. That is beyond the pale, and
I do think things should be done about that.
Mr. Lawrence. I agree with you completely.
Ms. Strossen. Could I possibly say something? First of all,
Congressman Kelly, I've spoken at Bradley and I have wonderful
memories. There weren't protests. But studies have been done by
social psychologists and legal theorists also have supported
the notion that a major harm from even threatening speech that
could be punished, much less constitutionally protected hate
speech, is not the initial speech itself but if there's lack of
objection to it from the surrounding community, if there's lack
of support for the person who's the target of the hate speech.
Conversely, when you have university presidents, student
body leaders, other members of the campus community rallying to
support the students who are the target of that speech, that
ends up being not such a--it can become a resilient, empowering
kind of experience.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentlelady.
The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Massie, is recognized.
Mr. Massie. I remember my very first day on campus. I grew
up in a rural town in Kentucky, 1,500 people, and I went to a
school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had never even visited the
campus. I crossed the crosswalk. We didn't have any crosswalks
where I grew up--and a car honked at me. I thought what are the
odds? I have been here an hour and already met somebody I know.
I turned around and waved at the car. I think they were waving
back with one finger, but what that showed me is these people
may have different ideas or a different upbringing than I had.
Ms. Strossen articulated a threshold for reasonable
expectation, whether something is hate speech or whether it is
protected or not. Mr. Lawrence, she said it was--maybe the
threshold should be reasonable expectation to--that it would
instill fear or violence--a fear of violence or harm. Is that--
would you like to in less than 30 seconds if you could sort of
articulate the standard of what might be protected and what
might not?
Mr. Lawrence. Yes, I think that Professor Strossen and I
are in roughly the same place on this. I would just focus more,
as we often do in the criminal law, on the intent of the actor,
so was it behavior that was intended to threaten or intimidate,
not to confound, not to trouble, not to raise new opinions ----
Mr. Massie. Right.
Mr. Lawrence.--but to threaten or to intimidate.
Mr. Massie. Okay. I have got a document here you may
recognize. It is the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence. If I brandish this, Mr. Lawrence, in your
presence, are you intimidated? Does it strike fear in your
heart? Do you think that harm may come to you very soon?
Mr. Lawrence. I think it is actually much safer than
crossing the street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mr. Massie. I would agree, but the administrators at the
Kellogg Community College don't. They arrested students for
handing out a Constitution. Can you imagine that? That is the
height of irony. How far has this ridiculousness gone if
students are arrested for handing out Constitutions? This is
the document that contains the First Amendment, the protection
in there. I think maybe we have gone too far if this is now
recognized as something that passes that threshold.
Mr. Carolla, I know King George may have found this to be
insightful, but do you find ----
Mr. Carolla. Is he a basketball player? I don't keep up,
you know, on the kings. I was just having a thought. No, I'm
sorry. Continue your ----
Mr. Massie. No, I just want to know, is this a threatening
document? Does this cross the threshold?
Mr. Carolla. Not unless there's a knife hidden inside of it
----
Mr. Massie. Right.
Mr. Carolla.--no. But as I was hearing everyone speak, I
never went to college. There's something I do--I would like to
touch on very quickly, which is going through diversity
training, going to college, we're all sitting here, first off,
under the assumption that 100 percent of kids go to college. I
didn't know anyone who went to college, so I had to figure out
a way to be a decent human being, not to be racist, not to be
filled with hate, to be tolerant minus college. I think that
starts at home.
So if we--if you get to 18 or 19, I believe the cement on
the sidewalk of your brain has already dried, and good luck
carving your initials into it with diversity training. If
you're a bad kid and we get hold of you in college, you're
probably just going to be a bad adult. You need to learn to be
a good human being from zero to college instead of us all
converting you once you get to college, and especially since
more than half the people don't end up in college.
So, we're sitting here with a grand plan of how to coach
everyone up once they get to college. What if they never get to
college? What about their parents and what kind of job are they
doing coaching the kids up so that they need no coaching,
whether they go to college or not?
Mr. Massie. Mr. Shapiro, I'm going to assume you don't find
this to be a threatening or harmful document.
Mr. Shapiro. I've brandished it at a few people myself,
yes.
Mr. Massie. Look, the college's defense, when they arrested
these students--by the way, they spent overnight in jail, seven
hours in jail for handing out Constitutions. You said something
earlier that struck me, that time, place, and manner
regulations are being used to restrict free speech because that
is what the college said to these students who belonged to
Young Americans for Liberty. They said if you just filled out
the paperwork, if you had stood 100 feet over there instead of
where you are standing, and if you had done it at this time, we
would have allowed you to hand out our nation's founding
document. Can you speak to how time, manner, and place
restrictions are being abused?
Mr. Shapiro. So, most obviously, UC Berkeley did that with
Ann Coulter where they kept moving around her room and they
kept saying they didn't have rooms available. They said the
same thing to me a week ago. There was some public outcry, and
now they're offering some rooms, which, you know, I hope that
that event goes forward. It's not rare. They do this a lot.
It's--a private university did it. It was DePaul University. I
was threatened with arrest if I set foot on campus. I actually
showed up there, and a security guard told me if--if I'm--I
asked him, if I move six inches forward, are you going to
arrest me? And he said yes, and he had the Sheriff of Cook
County behind him.
So, this is--you know, it's become a cover for ideological
discrimination because if Ta-Nehisi Coates wants to speak on
these campuses, there's not going to be any problem. The
administrators will make certain that time, place, and manner
restrictions don't get in the way.
And this is why I say saying that the discretion of
administrators is wonderful is all well and good except that
they very often are attempting to achieve a particular
political end by using means that are normally legitimate, and
that's definitely a dangerous thing.
If I--if you don't mind, I have a quick note on something
that I think it was Mr. Lawrence was saying earlier about the
damage that's done to students by various things that happen on
campus by threats of violence and this sort of thing. And
obviously, everyone I think agrees that what happened to Taylor
is unacceptable.
But one of the things that I think should also be pointed
out is we have a lot of other students in the crowd and
administrators who spend an enormous amount of time pushing
stuff like white privilege means that you must accept that you
are subordinate in terms of your view because of identity. This
also has some lasting damage with regard to First Amendment
exercise and with regard to how people perceive the freedom of
the country.
And I understand that this is a universally held belief
among university educators that we have to accept the guilt of
particular races or particular sexual orientations for
discrimination that's happened in the past, but when you teach
a bunch of 18 and 19-year-old people this, you shouldn't be
surprised when, number one, they go into hiding with their
viewpoint or, number two, they become frustrated.
It's an absurdity to suggest that you can tell people that
their viewpoints are out of line because of their identity at
the same time you're telling other people that their viewpoints
are completely in line because of their identity, and any
assault on their senses must be protected--or prevented at any
cost.
Mr. Massie. I would just like to point out in closing that
the group Young Americans for Liberty that is handing out
Constitutions on campuses all across the country has changed
free speech restrictions on 25 campuses just by handing out
this document, not by setting fires because they didn't like
the speaker or throwing rocks through windows but by handing
out this Constitution. And I am inspired that there are young
people who are inspired by this document, and it should never
be illegal to hand out this document.
Mr. Jordan. Well said, Mr. Massie.
Real quick, Ms. Strossen, is Mr. Shapiro right? Are most of
the anti-speech activities going on on campuses targeted
towards conservatives and libertarians?
Ms. Strossen. The--certainly, the well-publicized ones have
been. And I don't--I can't speak for campuses across the
country, but I go back to an opening point that I made, which
was best summarized in the title of the book by Nat Hentoff
called ----
Mr. Jordan. But I just wanted an answer.
Ms. Strossen. I'm sorry.
Mr. Jordan. I can't--we will come back to that, but I just
wanted to respond to Mr. Shapiro's point.
Ms. Strossen. Sure.
Mr. Jordan. I mean, that is my understanding as well, and I
will be ----
Ms. Strossen. Those are the well-publicized incidents, and
it would be consistent with what surveys show about the
prevailing beliefs on campus, that the majority of students
have--are on the liberal end of the political spectrum, the
majority of faculty members are on the liberal end of the
spectrum ----
Mr. Jordan. I find that shocking.
Ms. Strossen.--so they would be more likely to be offended
----
Mr. Jordan. I find that shocking.
Ms. Strossen.--by conservative speakers ----
Mr. Jordan. Professor Raskin, you are smiling. You find
that shocking, too, don't you?
The gentlelady from the District of Columbia is recognized
for her five minutes.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am pleased that the entire panel appears to believe that
exposure to speech that hurts is part and parcel of living in a
democratic free-speech society.
It pains me, I have to say, when I hear of African-American
students in particular claiming about hurt feelings when it
comes to speech. I simply say as a black woman and ask them to
remember that Frederick Douglass--and I am pleased that this
committee has just passed a resolution--sorry, a bill that will
allow Douglass' bicentennial to be commemorated--that at the
same time that African Americans were enslaved, Frederick
Douglass was able in even that society to denounce slavery all
over the United States.
Mr. Shapiro, I daresay I have had the opportunity to defend
people who were even more controversial than you are. I was
assistant legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
It was a small office, and I had a memorable opportunity to
argue before the Supreme Court a so-called prior restraint
case. That was a case where, as a matter of fact, it was in
Princess Anne County at that time--I lived in New York--
Princess Anne County Maryland, and a proto-Nazi racist party
came in that county and gave a speech of the kind you might
expect that denounced blacks and Jews and anybody else they
could think of.
Well, the State's attorney went into court and got an
injunction against their ability to speak the next day. And
that case was appealed all the way--I argued the case at the
Supreme Court not as it was appealed up. Supreme Court ruled
unanimously that those vile words could be spoken without being
censored ahead of time.
In essence, this kind of activity in the country and on the
campus is intended to have some kind of chilling effect to keep
people from wanting to speak at all.
The Republican-led assembly in Wisconsin has taken a stab
at what to do about this because I don't think we want to
encourage hateful speech. And I appreciate what Professor
Zimmerman and Mr. Lawrence have said about the anecdotes to
hate speech. But if you leave this to legislatures, they have
only the law at their disposal.
Now, in Wisconsin, the State Assembly there passed a bill
and recently passed a bill that would require disciplinary
action, and that action could be suspension or expulsion. This
is how they framed what would get you suspension or expulsion.
``Any student who engages in indecent, profane, boisterous,
obscene, unreasonably loud, or other disorderly conduct that
interferes with the free speech--free expression of others.''
Every Democrat voted against this. What kind of
polarization is this? I am glad to see we don't have it in this
committee. Every Democrat voted against that. Every Republican
voted for that.
The State Assembly, by the way, was not shy in making clear
what their purpose was. It was to suppress the campus protests
that they had seen over that time.
Ms. Strossen, I read your written testimony. You give a
wonderful expository about free speech, and you mention vague,
unclear guidelines as having a potential chilling effect when
people read those guidelines. And I guess when you talk about
clear, objective guidelines, I just read to you the words of
the Wisconsin Legislature, ``engages in indecent, profane,
boisterous, obscene, unreasonably loud,'' et cetera, speech.
Would you have concerns about that statute, that Wisconsin
statute, and what do you think would be the concerns of, for
example, the Supreme Court of the United States?
Ms. Strossen. Well, as Justice John Marshall Harland, who
was a graduate from New York Law School--I have to correct that
typo--where I teach famously said ``One person's vulgarity is
another person's lyric. One person's indecent profane speech is
somebody else's poetic speech. One person's unreasonably loud
speech is somebody else's clearly audible speech.''
The reason why we do not allow government to enforce these
vague standards is that they depend on subjective value
judgments, which can turn on nothing other than the political
preferences of the enforcing authorities, which is exactly what
we're all complaining about. We need to have clear objective
standards relating to demonstrable serious harm such as
violence or threats to constrain the discretion so as not to
punish disfavored ideas.
Now, Congresswoman Norton, I don't know if you got to the
appendix to my testimony ----
Ms. Norton. I did not.
Ms. Strossen.--but it includes very old but still timely,
sadly, law review article which quotes a certain Eleanor Holmes
Norton way back in 1990, who said--and this is exactly on
point--``It is technically impossible to write an anti-speech
code that cannot be twisted against speech nobody means to bar.
It has been tried and tried and tried.'' So you answered your
own question very eloquently.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I should end with that.
Mr. Jordan. And on a high note there, that is great. Yes,
thank you.
The gentleman from Virginia is recognized, not that I
didn't want to recognize you, Dave, but technically, Mr.
Meadows is up next, but I will go to you and then we will come
back to Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Brat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And my two colleagues
are letting me go prior to them because it is my birthday and
my parents are out in Statuary Hall.
And so my--I am a professor. I see a lot of young people
out there. It is great to see you. Raise your hand if you are
young. Raise your hand if you feel young. All right, good. So
we have got a lot--I am a professor for 20 years, so I used to
torture you all in economics 101 classes. So, I see you sitting
here, so here you go again. We are going to give you a little
philosophical lecture.
And the witnesses today were all just phenomenal. Mr.
Carolla in the last series of questions said we have got to
learn to be good, and that right there sums it up. And I am
going to ask the college presidents how we ground our
philosophical statements. That will be my question, right, so
they can give a cursory view of Western civ in the 30 seconds I
leave you at the end.
But I have a famous painting in my office with Plato
pointing up, right? What is to good? He thought it was up there
in the realm of the forms, and Aristotle is pointing down. And
no one has resolved that question philosophically in 2,400
years. There is no definition of the good. That is what makes
it crucially important that we do the liberal arts education
and allow all views to be heard from 2,400 years of human
history. And on that note I hope we all agree.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have spoken
about atrocities that have occurred in Western civ. I totally
agree with them. That is not what this is about today. But it
is about teaching these first principles. Everyone is talking
about shared values today. I am not sure if there are any
shared values today. If you want to read a good book, read
Alastair McIntyre. He will start off on the good, right? And
you probably heard of him. But his book is called Whose
Justice? Which Rationality? Same question, right? Whose
justice, which rationality, and what is the good? And we don't
have answers to that right now. See, your generation better get
moving.
The liberal arts I started teaching about 20 years ago, we
went from liberalism--I am a 19th century liberal, right? They
call me a right-wing knuckle-dragger in the newspaper, right?
But I am a class--I believe in Adam Smith and James Madison,
the author of the Constitution. And liberals, my liberal
colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle always used to
respect my view 20 years ago. That shifted in academia in the
last 20 years. Now, it is the hard left, and they are following
a philosophy called deconstruction. They are ripping apart the
foundations of the country. The Judeo-Christian tradition, the
rule of law, and free markets are under attack by the left, not
my Democrat friends I go to church with. That is a distinction.
And if you ask them to ground their definition of the good
or name a philosopher that undergirds their thinking, they
can't do it. So make sure you young people ask your professors
when they are spouting off, say name a philosopher, and if they
can't do it, write about it in the student newspaper because it
is an embarrassment.
And so I went to Princeton seminary. The seminary
voluntarily moved itself across the tracks because we don't
believe in forcing religion on other people. That is the great
debate, right? So, we have had the Enlightenment Project. We
tried to ground reality in human reason alone. It worked great
in the sciences, but in the moral realm it failed, right?
Jefferson, Immanuel Kant was kind of the end of the
Enlightenment Project. And the moral vision failed because they
could not tell you why it is that human beings are worthy of
dignity in the first place.
But our shared values that were delivered in the
Declaration was fairly clear. We have inalienable rights that
come from our Creator. Wow, there is a shocker. Ask your
leftists professors if they believe in those shared values,
those inalienable rights, right, that proceed the existence of
government, that come from our Creator. And boy, there you have
it all, right?
So, that has been rejected by the left. In K-12 education I
am sad to report the kids are not taught any system of ethics
for the first 13 years of their education. And then, in college
they are taught leftism. And so now we are left talking about
free speech, one particular part of the First Amendment and a
narrow part, and we are being told by some people, ``Leave it
to the academic institutions.'' You have got to be kidding me.
These are the first principles that ground in and surround the
space that universities inhabit, right, so the rule of law has
to precede what educational entities do, and that is why we are
here today talking about the law that will surround the space
you all act in.
And so I will just give you another quiz. Here are the
ethical schools that are taught in higher ed. Raise your hand
if you are an Aristotelian. No, none of them. All right.
Raise your hand if you are a follower of utilitarianism,
Bentham, John Stuart Mill. Oh, really? Good. Good for you.
Okay. That is the harm principle. Ms. Strossen mentioned that.
Raise your hand if you are a follower of Immanuel Kant, if
you are a Kantian. So we have got two people, good.
So those are the schools of thought you are allowed to
teach because they are the Enlightenment schools of reason,
right? Now, no one follows those schools of thought, but in
higher ed, you are not allowed to teach about the Judeo-
Christian tradition, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism,
Confucianism, and religion.
How many people in the audience and in the real world live
out those traditions? Just about 7 billion people out of 8
billion, right? And that is why I think we have got a
fundamental problem. So there is my lecture.
Presidents, if you want to weigh in on what has gone wrong
in higher ed over the past 20 years and how can we fix it.
Ms. Strossen. Thirty seconds.
Mr. Brat. Thirty seconds.
Mr. Zimmerman. I wouldn't dare touch that, but what I am
willing to touch until you tell me otherwise is two things.
First, I want to thank you for your passionate defense of the
liberal arts because the liberal arts--which has nothing to do
with liberal or conservative; it has to do with its origin--is
critically important, and the liberal arts are based on an idea
that all ideas need to be discussed.
I'd argue with you just a drop in saying that I frankly
don't believe the majority of professors on college campuses
have taken the view that you've espoused. Unfortunately, some
have. From my 40 years in the Academy, I've had any number of
conversations with parents in which I've said what good faculty
members want to do--and I believe in the institutions I've been
a part of. Almost all of our faculty members are good faculty
members. They want to teach your students how to think. And if
in the course of that instruction they think something
different at the end than they did at the beginning, that's
okay. If they don't think anything different, that's okay, as
long as they can articulate either of those beliefs.
Very rarely I believe do faculty go into a classroom and
say here's what you need to think. You need to learn to think
like I think. You need to parrot back what I believe. Yes, that
happens and it happens not very often but too frequently
because if it happens at all, it's too frequent. But I don't
think that's the norm.
Mr. Lawrence. Yes, I would agree with that. It was
interesting one of your colleagues said a little earlier that
actually there's very good working relationships across the
aisle here. We don't see it out in public, and I think that's
exactly the same phenomenon we're talking about in the
university. There's a lot of things that happen in the
classroom and office hours and seminar rooms that don't get a
lot of play because what--if it bleeds, it leads is the way the
media treats you and also treats us in academia.
As the CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, I would be remiss
if I did not thank you for your deep embracement of the liberal
arts. Phi Beta Kappa stands for philosophia biou kybernetes,
which means ``love of learning is the guide of life.'' I
mention that, Congressman, because it's about the process of
the learning ----
Mr. Brat. Yes.
Mr. Lawrence.--which I think is key, and when we lose track
of that, then I think we get ourselves in problems. But the
great legal philosopher Alexander Bickel said the only true
integrity is the integrity of process, and the process by which
we learn in our universities, which is really what we're here
talking about today ----
Mr. Brat. Yes.
Mr. Lawrence.--is what--is the glory of our university
system in this country.
Mr. Brat. I just want to thank--I want to thank the panel.
And, Mr. Shapiro, you are a first great philosopher on the
rise. I can tell. Thank you very much.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentleman.
Before I recognize Ms. Plaskett, I should point out we have
been here for a couple of hours. If anyone needs the
facilities, to use the restroom or anything, just let us know
and we can take a short recess or if you need anything. You
have got plenty of water and all that. We would like to go for
a little while longer, and we will now go to Ms. Plaskett for
her questioning.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to have a discussion on this topic.
Mr. Zimmerman, I think that what you have stated--Dr.
Zimmerman, that universities and schools are for teaching
individuals how to think. That is primary, as you said, and Mr.
Lawrence.
And, Mr. Carolla, I couldn't be more than in agreement with
you about the toughness that is needed by young people. And I
have to tell you, you don't have to look at any other group
that is tougher than young black men and women who go to
universities or--I have gone to universities or predominantly
white schools. You have got to eventually, if you are going to
come out of there on top, have a thick skin.
I went to one of the most elite private boarding schools in
the early '80s when almost nobody was there that looked like
me. You know what it's like to be an African-American Caribbean
woman at a boarding school in Connecticut when you grew up in
Brooklyn, New York, and being asked to give the black point of
view in the classroom when you didn't even know you had a point
of view at 13 years old.
But I think what we need to discuss here--and my colleague
Mr. Brat talked about it, about the influence of the extreme
left, but he didn't talk about the influence of the extreme
right as well and how that is affecting our young people on
campuses. What is the alt right as well as the extreme left
doing to the discourse and the civility on campuses?
I am very honored to have Ms. Dumpson, Taylor Dumpson here.
I am a graduate of American University's Law School where one
of my first-year law professors sits next to me. I am always
happy to point out that he is more junior than I am now in
Congress, but he was my professor there. And I understand what
you go through, and I am grateful that your mother is here with
you and that you have the support of your family.
That is important because, you know, the Anti-Defamation
League has recently reported that in the past six months alone,
I quote, ``They have seen a spike in anti-Semitic hateful
incidents on campuses.''
And I know that we are talking about free speech. Free
speech is important, but I think that it would be inclusive for
us to discuss this not just in the context of how it affects
conservative speech and conservative students but how it
affects all students. I think that we are doing the American
public a disservice when we only talk about one side of the
coin and not the other.
I fear for our conservative young children who feel that
they can't say what they want to say in a respectful manner,
and then the same way I am concerned for those who come on
campuses who are not respectful in their speech, whether it be
to Mr. Shapiro, whether it be to Taylor Dumpson having an
ability to hold office on the campus for which her family has
supported her to be there. That is a problem, and that is a
problem that this committee should be concerned with.
But who is the appropriate individual or the institutions
to address that? I don't think it is the legislature's job to
do that. I think it is for us to question the institutions and
ensure that they do it.
On May 1, after being elected the university's first
African-American student body president, we discussed that Ms.
Dumpson was met with hung nooses around campus and with bananas
with the message of ``AKA free,'' which references Alpha Kappa
Alpha, a traditionally African-American sorority that Ms.
Taylor Dumpson belongs to. And I am Me Phi Me right now myself.
I am sorry; I never belonged to a sorority. But we appreciate
the work of your sorority in the African-American community,
along with the others.
And not too long after, she was subjected to harassment on
social media by a known neo-Nazi group. Mr. Lawrence, are you
familiar with the hate speech incidents that she just
described?
Mr. Lawrence. Yes, I am.
Ms. Plaskett. And is that an example of hate speech that
crosses the line and should have no place on a college campus?
Mr. Lawrence. That is correct, Congresswoman. I would say
that's actually--you know, what I usually mean by hate speech
or hateful speech is the kind of speech that is in fact
protected and ought to be criticized by university
administrators. I would say would happen to Ms. Dumpson crosses
the line actually over to being a hate crime.
Ms. Plaskett. And why is that?
Mr. Lawrence. Because of the clear intent of the actor is
not to communicate a view but to threaten her, to intimidate
her, to instill fear in her. When that happens, we're no longer
in the realm of having an even difficult, provocative
conversation. We've crossed over the line into threats.
Ms. Plaskett. So it is as Ms. Strossen discussed, that a
reasonable person would see that as threatening speech ----
Mr. Lawrence. That ----
Ms. Plaskett.--not as one that is merely to express an
opinion that may be different ----
Mr. Lawrence. That is certainly how I would understand it.
Ms. Plaskett. And would you agree with that as well, Ms.
Strossen?
Ms. Strossen. I agree with that, and I should say the fact
that we call it a hate crime or a bias crime means that it is
subject to increased punishment even beyond a non-hateful or
discriminatory crime because it causes additional harm not only
to the immediate target but to the surrounding community as
well.
Ms. Plaskett. Now, it is interesting, Mr. Shapiro, you
talked about white privilege. And just this week I had a
conversation with Rachel Laser, who has done some work--a
Jewish-American woman who has done some work on this area, as
well as having extensive conversations with Dr. Greg Parks of
Wake Forest University, who has also talked quite a bit about
critical race theory. And it is my understanding that white
privilege is not telling individuals that they cannot speak,
but it is a term for societal privilege that individuals have
as a benefit of their white skin.
And I don't think that--and I think universities would be
remiss to then say that because you are white, you are not
allowed to say anything that is critical of white people. I
didn't know that white privilege actually went into that
sphere. My understanding is it is just--and the issue is is
that white privilege makes people uncomfortable to talk about
the societal privilege that they have.
Mr. Shapiro. Well, to me the--what I say on campuses all
the time is if you are--want to cite instances of racism that
we can all find and fight together, that's something that I am
more than willing to stand next to you and fight because that's
obviously stuff that we should fight together, but when you
just say that there is a white privilege out there in the ether
and that by dint of birth your skin color generates for you an
advantage, what you're really saying to people is that you--
your view is less valuable because you have not experienced
what I've experienced. And that is an identity argument that's
a character argument that's not a rational political argument
that can actually be taken on in any way. That's--it's more of
a cudgel and a club than it is an attempt to open a discussion.
Ms. Plaskett. Well, I think it's a demonstrable evidence
that through society's demographics that being white has
societal privileges that being black does not, but I ----
Mr. Shapiro. Well, we can talk about how that manifests --
--
Ms. Plaskett.--am very interested ----
Mr. Shapiro.--because that's ----
Ms. Plaskett. I am also interested in what you just said
now is that you would stand next to anyone who has this. So,
Mr. Shapiro, my question to you is for Ms. Dumpson, the tying
the noose around the campus and writing messages that target
African-American young students, would you consider that hate
speech, and then would you stand next to her and fight for her
against that?
Mr. Shapiro. As I say, I would--this is the first I'm
hearing about it honestly, but it ----
Ms. Plaskett. Really?
Mr. Shapiro.--from what--yes. But from hearing about ----
Ms. Plaskett. Shocking.
Mr. Shapiro. Maybe because it's local. I'm from L.A. But in
any case, I'm more than happy, more than happy to stand
alongside her and fight whatever group was responsible for
this, not only more than happy. I mean, you're talking about
the--again, I was the number-one target of anti-Semitic
harassment from alt right last year ----
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Mr. Shapiro.--so I am more than happy to do all that.
And I think there's one more distinction that has to be
made. When we talk about cases like Taylor's, they're horrific,
and the administration is siding with Taylor, okay? The
administration is doing the right thing by Taylor or trying to
do the right thing by Taylor, as they should be. And I think
that we need to make a distinction between cases where the
administration is actively participating in the suppression of
speech and cases in which the administration is trying to do
the right thing as a--in order to make people--in order to
punish people for application of crime.
Mr. Jordan. The gentlelady's time is expired. The gentleman
----
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Mr. Jordan.--from North Carolina is recognized.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As we look at this, this fundamental question of free
speech and where we crossed the line is certainly something
that is not new in terms of how we argue this point, and yet
here I find it interesting today that some of the direction we
are going seems to be at odds with what we have looked at
institutions of higher learning and being the beacon of free
speech, which would not normally be the norm, and now, all of a
sudden, we are there.
Without giving the name of the particular university, I was
really surprised to find that there was a free-speech zone that
allowed to actually be out of the mainstream view of most
people, and they allowed you to write in chalk, but it was the
chalk that was written in, the word Trump was there and all of
a sudden people got fearful for Trump being written in chalk.
Now, I went by this and I can't imagine anybody being
afraid of a chalk drawing on a sidewalk. And if that is the
case, that I would say that there are probably bathrooms all
over this country where people would not want to go in for fear
of what they may see on a bathroom wall.
So let's don't take it to extremes and let's make sure that
we understand that free speech is the bedrock of who we are. It
is truly what we must fight for, and if we start to take it to
extremes, we have a problem.
That being said, as an evangelical, I come out very
strongly in defense of my Jewish friends who truly--who have
had persecution for years, and yet somehow on college campuses
it is not okay to defend that. In fact, we go the other way to
suggest that that they shouldn't be defended, and I find that
offensive. And until we get that right, we are going to have a
number of issues.
So, with that opening statement, let me go into a couple of
questions. Mr. Zimmerman, I am a little concerned, and I
understand that you perhaps have been critical of your previous
alma mater we might say or place of employment, Evergreen State
College, because I look here and we have had $22 million in
grants and scholarship aids that have gone to them. We have had
over $7 million in Federal grants that have gone to them. We
have had another $15 million in student loans, and yet we are
seeing a chilling effect on free speech. Do you think they are
getting it wrong?
Mr. Zimmerman. Yes, I do.
Mr. Meadows. Okay, thank you. And I assumed that you would
say that. Do you think that they took bad advice from someone
when they were invited here to testify and they said that a
Member of Congress said that they shouldn't come before the
Oversight Committee to defend their position? Do you think that
that was misinformed?
I can answer it. The answer is yes. Would you agree with
that?
Mr. Zimmerman. That is not for me to say.
Mr. Meadows. Well, would it be for you to say to have said
if we are going to take away Federal dollars from universities
who will not truly defend free speech, that that would be
appropriate? I am sure that they would want to weigh in on
that.
Mr. Zimmerman. Oh, I believe every administrator on every
campus ought to be defending free speech, absolutely.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So, Mr. Lawrence, let me come to
you because I understand with your new position at ADL, of
which many times people on my side of the aisle would see them
as being in contrast to that--I don't. In fact, I have
encouraged my son to actually join you in really fighting for
those things that are critical. But I am troubled by one part
of your kumbaya opening testimony.
Mr. Lawrence. I take it you mean that as a compliment,
Congressman.
Mr. Meadows. Well, I wouldn't take it that way yet, so
let's go ahead ----
Mr. Lawrence. I'm listening.
Mr. Meadows.--and go there. Here is my concern, because in
your previous career you talked about, well, we are all about
free speech and we are really there, and yet there was a
certain young lady, a Somali-born activist that was disinvited
from getting an honorary degree at your direction, and it was
in 2014 where Ms. Ali was disinvited because, quote--the
University defended this decision saying it could not, quote,
``overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent
with Brandeis University core values,'' close quote.
Now, the problem is she is espousing anti-Islamic views and
the promotion of women's rights, so which one of those are
against their core views?
Mr. Lawrence. Well, first of all, neither of those. The --
--
Mr. Meadows. So, they are both your core views?
Mr. Lawrence. But the--what I would say--no, I would say
neither of those was the subject of ----
Mr. Meadows. So, why did you disinvite her when she is
being a true activist? Do you think that some terrorist in some
foreign land are upset and fearful for the life because of her
words?
Mr. Lawrence. No, I would say two things, Congressman.
First of all--and I think it's critically important ----
Mr. Meadows. So, was this a correct decision?
Mr. Lawrence. If I may respond?
Mr. Meadows. Respond to that one first, and then I'll let
you go ahead and opine on the other. Was this a correct
decision?
Mr. Lawrence. Yes, I believe that was a correct decision.
Mr. Meadows. Based on what?
Mr. Lawrence. May I answer?
Mr. Meadows. Sure.
Mr. Lawrence. First ----
Mr. Meadows. Briefly. I only have five minutes.
Mr. Lawrence. Well, I'll use as little of your five minutes
as I can to give a full answer.
Mr. Meadows. Okay.
Mr. Lawrence. First, in terms of this hearing and
particularly relevant to this hearing, nothing in this decision
was about free speech. She had--my entire time as president--
and I have every reason to believe my successor would say the
same thing--an open invitation to speak on campus, so this was
not about free speech.
Mr. Meadows. So, it was just about honoring her free
speech?
Mr. Lawrence. It was about honoring the same way ----
Mr. Meadows. So, you didn't want to honor her free speech
----
Mr. Lawrence. It's not about ----
Mr. Meadows.--that protects women?
Mr. Lawrence. I--her speech about women is admirable and
was the reason in large part for the original invitation. There
was speech that specifically said--that specifically said that
Islam should be crushed. And when she was asked--when she--this
is on the record. When she was asked, ``You mean radical Islam,
you don't mean all Islam?'' She said, ``No, I mean all Islam.''
This is in direct response to that question. ``It must be
crushed and something new built on its level.'' If someone had
said that about Christianity, if someone had said that about
Judaism, that is someone who would not have been honored by
Brandeis University. Would they have been free to speak?
Absolutely.
Mr. Meadows. So, I assume since you pulled away her
doctorate, you invited her back to give lectures on a regular
basis, right?
Mr. Lawrence. Did that publicly and did that personally and
privately ----
Mr. Meadows. And so she did? She felt welcome to do that?
Mr. Lawrence. I can't say whether she felt welcome or she
----
Mr. Meadows. I can. So, did she feel welcome from you, Mr.
Lawrence?
Mr. Lawrence. She did in fact not come to campus for a
public event. She did come to campus subsequently for events, a
program at the business school. But she had a standing
invitation that was ----
Mr. Meadows. So, do you not see what you did had a chilling
effect on her free speech? You know, she is out there actually
----
Mr. Lawrence. I would put it in the same category,
Congressman, as a ----
Mr. Meadows. I know you would, but--I wouldn't put it in
the same category as what? Go ahead. I will let you finish.
Mr. Lawrence. All right. A university--a faith-based
university that said that although students are free to express
prochoice views, we will not give an honorary degree to someone
who is an advocate ----
Mr. Meadows. So, are you saying that what you should do is
actually--I will yield back.
Ms. Strossen. Time, place, and manner.
Mr. Lawrence. I may not be the only one in the room who
wanted to hear how that sentence ended.
Mr. Meadows. Yes. So much for free speech.
Mr. Jordan. And you all know Mr. Meadows is my best friend
in Congress so--the gentleman from Maryland, the professor, is
recognized.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening this most
fascinating hearing that I have experienced in my six months in
Congress, so I appreciate your very much doing it.
I wanted to give a quick shout-out to Taylor Dumpson, who
is at American University where I have been a professor of
constitutional law for the last 27 years. So, you guys have
entered my world of constitutional law and the First Amendment,
so I could be here for hours with you, but I have boiled it
down to four questions. I'm going to try to get them all out,
direct them to specific people, and if you would take notes if
you would and give me an answer back, and maybe I will follow
up if I can.
I tell my students at law school there are only two things
you have to fear: the Socratic method and the platonic
relationship. You have got to deal with it on your own.
All right. Let's start with this. Free speech is like an
apple. Everybody wants to take just one bite out of it.
Somebody doesn't like left-wing speech, take a bite. Somebody
doesn't like right-wing speech, take a bite. Somebody doesn't
like Nadine Strossen's eloquent defense of pornography, take a
bite. Some people don't like anti-pornography speech, and so
on. At the end, there is nothing left of the apple if you are
not willing to stand up for the whole thing. We devour the
entire thing.
Question for you, Ms. Strossen, at a time when freedom of
speech is under attack at the highest levels of the government,
the media is being demonized as the enemy of the people, press
conferences are being carefully micromanaged, video being shut
down, Washington Post, New York Times kicked out of the press
room, and so on. How do we overcome the negative messages that
are being sent about free speech at the highest levels of
government so young people understand, as Congressman Meadows
said, as others have said, that this is really who we are,
number one?
Number two, this is for Professor Lawrence. Speech exists
in a context of power. For example, in Congress for decades
before the Civil War there was a gag rule you couldn't mention
slavery because of the power of the proslavery delegations. It
could not be mentioned on the Floor of Congress. That was one
of the things that precipitated the Civil War.
Even today, it is a wonderful panel, but four of you have
been chosen by the majority under our rules and one of you has
been invited by the minority. So, speech always exists in the
context of a set of complex power relationships.
Now, in the 1960s and '70s, tens of thousands of people
were suspended, expelled, or otherwise disciplined in anti-
Vietnam War protest from campuses. Their speech--there was an
effort to drive their speech off of campus.
When I was in college in the 1980s, we saw thousands of
people disciplined for protesting the universities and
corporate complicity with apartheid South Africa. The speech
codes that were used at that time then were dusted off to make
life miserable for right-wing activists like Mr. Shapiro and so
on.
Now, my question is a serious question, which is, is there
an effort across partisan lines, left/right lines to come up
with a model speech code that every university and college
could adopt that everybody would support universally? Okay. So,
Mr. Lawrence, that is for you.
Number three--and maybe I will address this one to Mr.
Zimmerman and Mr. Shapiro--are your concerns about free speech
just for public universities like Berkeley or the University of
Wisconsin or do they apply to private universities, too, like
Yale and Harvard and Liberty Baptist--or Liberty University in
Virginia; Georgetown, which has kicked off pro-choice speakers
and shut down a gay student group at one point; Catholic
University, which has kicked off of campus speakers defending
prochoice?
And then I looked at--and Liberty University, for example,
says that profane language is not permitted. You are punished
by a $250 fine and you have got to do 18 hours of community
service if your speech is deemed profane. Any derogatory
comments of a sexual or religious or racial nature will not be
tolerated, also occasion for discipline.
Bob Jones University, which says there is to be no
proselytizing on campus based on Calvinism or Arminianism,
whatever that might be. And other use of profanity or
euphemisms will be occasion for discipline. Euphemisms are
against the rules there. So, should we be equally concerned
about private universities that have a religious heritage like
Bob Jones, Liberty, Yale, American University, which has a
Methodist--or are we just concerned about the public
universities? I will leave that one for you.
And finally, fourth question for Mr. Carolla. The lost
great fine art of heckling in America, if you go back and read
the Lincoln-Douglas debates, there was lots of heckling, but
they would interject something and they would wait for an
answer, and Lincoln and Douglas incorporated it into the
debate. Today, heckling is all about getting a bullhorn and
shouting somebody down, which is stupid. I mean, that is just a
blunder of this generation if that is what they are doing. Can
we restore an art of heckling that allows some reasonable
interchange between the audience and the speaker without
shutting down speech on campus? There we go.
Ms. Strossen, to you.
Mr. Jordan. That is a great approach ----
Ms. Strossen. Oh, I thought I ----
Mr. Jordan.--five questions ----
Ms. Strossen. I thought this was a take-home exam.
Mr. Jordan.--or four questions in five minutes. Now, you
need another five minutes for them to respond. This is awesome.
Mr. Raskin. You have been very liberal, Mr. Chairman, very
liberal today.
Mr. Jordan. I know I have been.
Mr. Carolla. Was I supposed to make fun of your hair during
that or--I just didn't know if you're asking me to heckle--
perhaps Professor Dreyfus could weigh in on this one.
Mr. Jordan. I think you got the answer to the fourth
question right there.
Ms. Strossen. Professor Raskin, I thought this was going to
be a take-home exam, but I'm happy to answer it orally now.
You know, I was going to quote the title of Nat Hentoff's
book Free Speech for Me--But Not for Thee: How the Left and
Right in America Are Constantly Censoring Each Other. So, I
found it very helpful in my education and my advocacy on free
speech to always give an example that will bother that person.
If you hate the media for this reason because they are giving
this message that you disagree with and you therefore think
government should have the power to censor messages offensive
to minorities, let me give you a counterexample where you are
in an environment where you are considered a minority and your
view is a minority view and--or the other way around and
therefore can be subject to censorship.
Unfortunately, given the diversity of environments we have,
including some of the private universities that you've cited, I
can give you an example where, for one campus where perspective
A is censored, there's another campus where perspective anti-A
is censored, and that's why we have to maintain neutrality. But
I think as an educator we have to give concrete examples. The
abstraction is not going to be persuasive.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
Professor Lawrence.
Mr. Lawrence. Can there be a model speech code that
everybody will agree on, I guess that's an easy one. The answer
almost certainly is no. Can we make an effort in that
direction? I think the answer there is yes. And it will look
something like this. An overwhelmingly presumption--
overwhelmingly strong presumption in favor of protection of
free speech certainly on campuses of all kinds for all comers
who belong on those campuses, that's principle number one.
Principle number two, there's a limiting principle that is
the kind of thing that Professor Strossen and I have been
talking about where you actually have an intent to do harm, to
threaten, to intimidate; not to confound, not to trouble but to
actually literally do harm.
And then principle number three is that what is the
obligation of a university even in the realm of protected
speech when it is hateful speech? I think those three
principles in some form or another are going to form the model
of the kind of speech codes that should get the broadest
consensus that you can. The more specific you try to be about
this is in and this is out, you're going to start making
mistakes, and that's why virtually every university's speech
code has been struck down by university--by courts.
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Shapiro I think and then Mr. Carolla.
Mr. Shapiro. Yes, I mean, as far as the distinction between
public and private, I do make a very strong distinction between
public and private universities when it comes to speech rights
because private universities I believe should have the--like a
private business, the broadest possible purview to act in
accordance with their values ----
Mr. Raskin. To censor speech?
Mr. Shapiro. If they are a private university, sure, which
is why when I went to DePaul University and they threatened to
arrest me, I left the campus. If they had done that at Cal
State L.A., I would have stayed and been arrested.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. But, Dr. Zimmerman, do you agree with
that? Do you think there is a free speech valuation to be
fighting for on private campuses as well as public?
Mr. Zimmerman. Absolutely, but it's a different kind of
free-speech right. That is the right to free speech is
absolute--should absolutely be there because it's a college
campus. In--if we value college education, we have to value
alternative views. If we value the liberal arts, we have to
value other people's ideas. We can't have meaningful discussion
if we only have one side of that discussion. But that's
different than the State mandating that you have to be able to
do that.
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Heckler?
Mr. Carolla. Geez, I want to talk about my white privilege
so badly. I graduated North Hollywood High with a 1.7 GPA. I
could not find a job. I walked to a fire station in North
Hollywood, I was 19, I was living in the garage of my family
home. My mom was on welfare and food stamps, and I said, can I
get a job as a fireman? And they said no, because you're not
black, Hispanic, or a woman. We'll see you in about seven
years. And I went to a construction site and dug ditches and
picked up garbage for the next seven years.
I got a letter in the mail sent to my father's house saying
your time has come to do the written exam for the L.A. Fire
Department. I took it, and I was standing in line and I had a
young woman of color standing behind me in line and I said,
``Just out of curiosity, when did you sign up to become a
fireman? Because I did it--or person--seven years ago?'' And
she said Wednesday. That is an example of my white privilege.
It's--I think it's an economic privilege more than it is the
color of your skin.
That being said, heckling people, busting their chops,
making fun of them is an actual overture of love, friendship,
and it's a positive thing. My friends I hang out with, Jimmy
Kimmel and his cousin and many, many other comedians, Jeff Ross
and people of that nature, and that's all we do, and the day
that stops, that'll be the day I know they don't like me
anymore.
Now, obviously, doing it to strangers on campus is a
different story, but lightening the mood a little bit and
lightening up a little bit in general when people--you know,
I'm an atheist and I go out and do things with Dennis Prager.
He's a devout Jew. He loves it when I make Jew jokes. I love it
when he makes atheist jokes, and that's how we know that we're
friends. And I'd say the same for Ben Shapiro as well, although
I don't know if he loves it when I make the Jewish jokes.
Mr. Shapiro. Oh, no it's fine with me.
Mr. Carolla. Okay.
Mr. Raskin. You guys are clearly not running for Congress.
Thank you very much for your testimony, all of you. I yield
back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Professor.
We now recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr.
Grothman.
Mr. Grothman. Yes, just one quick comment for Mr. Zimmerman
before I ask him a question. In your testimony, you said higher
education has been and remains the single best way for
individuals to dramatically improve their socioeconomic status.
There is a little bit of snobbery there I don't like, but the
point I will make is, at least in my district and I think
around the country, we have a lot of young people taking this
stuff to heart, and they wind up graduating from an institution
like yours with $50 or $60,000 in debt. They really do not find
a way to move up economically and they wind up having to go
back to a tech school or a trade school, which are very
wonderful when they are 39 or 40 and their whole life is
delayed. And I want you to be conscious of this kind of
unqualified worship of all forms of secondary education because
I think it is getting a lot of people into a lot of trouble.
But I will ask you a question. At Evergreen University--I
don't know how many professors you have there, but could you
tell me about how many professors you have and how many you
think, say, voted for Trump in the last election?
Mr. Zimmerman. Full-time, part-time, we have about 180
probably. I have not a clue of who they voted for.
Mr. Grothman. You never talk about politics with any of the
people hanging around the campus?
Mr. Zimmerman. I--we certainly talk politics occasionally.
I suspect not many of them voted for Trump, but I couldn't tell
you the ----
Mr. Grothman. Did any of your buddy say they voted for
Trump in all the times you talk to them?
Mr. Zimmerman. There are a couple of people on campus who
have, but not very many I suspect.
Mr. Grothman. Not very many.
Ms. Strossen, NYU Law School, I am going to give you the
same question.
Ms. Strossen. New York Law School. Again, I'll go to
surveys that reflect that the overwhelming majority of faculty
members are Democrats and have given--voted for and given money
to Democrats. And I think this is a serious problem because
when we talk about diversity, it should include ideological
diversity, as well as other kinds of diversity. And I'm very
supportive of a number of initiatives that have been started in
the recent past to address this problem, one of which is called
the Heterodox Academy, which was spearheaded by Jonathan Haidt,
who does teach at NYU.
And there's a similar project that's done to give--called
the Madison Project that's done together by Cornel West,
African-American, extremely liberal, some would say radical
professor, together with Robert George, a conservative white
male, Princeton professor.
But all of us agree that education suffers when we have too
much agreement, too much political orthodoxy ----
Mr. Grothman. Right.
Ms. Strossen.--in any direction.
Mr. Grothman. Right. Do you--how many professors do you
know? I mean, you guys, I assume, unlike--here on the
Evergreen, you must talk about who you vote for. How many do
you know on a personal level that voted for Trump in your
faculty?
Ms. Strossen. You know, I didn't actually ask people for
whom they voted, but my educated guess would be ----
Mr. Grothman. People must talk about it in the hallway.
Ms. Strossen. Respecting privacy, my educated guess would
be extremely few.
Mr. Grothman. Could it be none?
Ms. Strossen. Extremely few. But here's something sad. I do
know people ----
Mr. Grothman. Okay.
Ms. Strossen.--who privately supported Donald Trump but are
embarrassed to say that they voted for him.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. So that kind of muzzle--okay. And my
question for Mr. Carolla, and I am sorry what you had to go
through, the prejudice in our country, but ----
Mr. Carolla. I landed on my wallet.
Mr. Grothman. Do you believe part of the problem here is it
is easy to hate people and demonize people if you don't know
any people like that? It may be one of the reasons why we seem
to have difficulty with free speech on college campuses the way
you wouldn't have difficulty in other American institutions is
because some of the faculty members on college campuses, they
can spend, you know, extensive periods of time without talking
to anybody who has political opinions significantly different
than their own. Is that part of the problem?
Mr. Carolla. Oh, absolutely. And it's--I'm sort of
bewildered by it because knowing guys like Dennis Prager and
Ben Shapiro, and knowing them to be great guys or even
sometimes seeing what happens when Dr. Drew says something and
the Twittersphere goes ballistic and what--talking about what a
bad person he is or what have you, yes, when you get to know
almost anybody, you look at them as a person rather than an
idea, and we need to look at people as human beings, not ideas
or representatives of ideas. And it always helps when you're
exposed.
I personally--this may sound like a sidebar, but I grew up
playing football. I played 10 years of organized football. I
played with every different kind of human being except the Jews
actually, Ben.
Ms. Strossen. Females?
Mr. Carolla. Maybe the holder.
Ms. Strossen. Females?
Mr. Carolla. Yes.
Mr. Shapiro. Yes, the punter.
Mr. Carolla. Yes, they cheered. Yes, it was awesome. So I
got exposed--everyone realized that everyone who came from
every different neighborhood was, you know, there for one
reason, and that was trying to win a game, and I think it
helped a lot in my view of life. And then later on when I
stepped on a construction site, I got the same thing again. So,
I do feel like surrounding yourself with diversity and ideas,
as well as skin color, is a good thing.
Mr. Grothman. Okay, Mr. Shapiro, I'm going to ask you to
follow up on that. Just, you hear things in this job, people
come up to you, and I do believe there is certainly departments
on major American campuses in which you can spend, you know,
all day walking up the hallways where the faculty work and
never be exposed to anybody who voted for a candidate that
about half of the American populace did, which is kind of
amazing that you find such, you know, lack of diversity ----
Mr. Shapiro. Oh, yes. And ----
Mr. Grothman.--anywhere. And I wondered if one of the
reasons for the left's rage is because they sometimes do go to
work on college campuses and they don't have any friends who
even voted for somebody who about half the American public
voted for, which is hard to believe there is anywhere in
society that kind of cloistered, but I am afraid on college--I
wonder if that is one of the reasons why you have this hatred
for, say, people who believe in, you know, more conservative
half of the American populace.
Mr. Shapiro. I think you do have some leftist professors
who attempt to, you know, be open to other ideas. I mean, Lani
Guinier was one of my professors at Harvard Law school, and she
ended up writing a job recommendation for me because we got
along so well, and she's very far to the left. But that's more
a rarity than it is the common thread.
I mean, even if you put aside President Trump, the fact is
that--and I think the polls show that well under 10 percent of
the faculty at Ivy League schools voted for Romney in 2012. So,
I mean, this has been very consistent, and this is why I think
you are seeing some of the violence. When I spoke at Cal State
L.A., you actually saw the professors calling me a member of
the KKK before I got there. And so most of the students had no
clue who I was, but they were perfectly willing to go out in
protest and beat people up.
Mr. Grothman. Mr. Zimmerman, are you doing anything--I
assume your campus--I mean, Evergreen has got kind of a
reputation. Are you doing anything to ----
Mr. Jordan. We will come back to that. We have got to move
on. I thank the gentleman, and I apologize.
Mr. Grothman. All right.
Mr. Jordan. We are trying to give everyone a little extra
time, but we can't go too much longer.
The gentleman from Florida is recognized.
Mr. DeSantis. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to
the witnesses.
Ben Shapiro, who came up with the Thug Life Ben Shapiro?
Mr. Shapiro. I have no idea. It wasn't me. I have never
listened to a complete rap song in my entire life.
Mr. DeSantis. It is funny and it is well done and it has
some of your greatest hits.
Let me ask you. You mentioned the professors. Obviously,
the professors overwhelmingly are on the left. Some are fair.
Some are more pushing the ideology. But I wonder. I see some of
these things that you have dealt with, others. I mean, is it
the professors doing this or are these students just
predisposed to do this? It seems like there are a lot of
radical students anyway, and a lot of them are kind of going to
do this even if their professors weren't egging them on. Is
that true?
Mr. Shapiro. So I think there are three groups. I think
there are usually a couple of radical professors who egg them
on, not the entire left faculty because that would be pretty
much everyone but like a couple of radical professors who
decide that they think it's worthwhile for there to be massive
protests, some student organizers, and then very often lately
you've been seeing people bust in from the outside. So, at
Berkeley you saw people being--coming in from Antifa and
integrating with the Berkeley student population and then doing
acts of violence. At Cal State L.A. there were a couple of
busloads of people who were bussed in. So, it's really those
three groups I think.
Mr. DeSantis. And when you are dealing with the anti-
Semitism and anti-Israel views on campuses, is that faculty-
driven or is that outside the university?
Mr. Shapiro. Well, I mean, I haven't dealt with that as
much because I think in the last couple of years most of the
opposition has been coming from the Black Lives Matter
movement, from the Bernie Sanders socialist wing of the
Democratic party. It hasn't been coming too much from the
Israel stuff because I don't speak about the Israel stuff all
that often on campus. But, I mean, the--I know for a lot of
Jewish students on campus it's very uncomfortable because there
are a lot of professors who support boycott divestment and
sanctions from Israel and activate their students to do the
same.
Mr. DeSantis. So, just from a conservative perspective, we
look at some of what is going on on college campuses and we
don't necessarily like it but, you know, we don't really want
government involved in a lot of this anyway. But on the other
hand, people will point out is we are funding these
universities, so the American taxpayer is underwriting a lot of
this stuff. So, is there a role for government, given that we
are funding it or is it just the type of thing that, you know,
we fund it and we still have got to just keep her hands off? If
we weren't funding it, then I would think that there would not
be a role for the Federal Government at all, but given--I mean,
a lot of money is going to these universities.
Mr. Shapiro. Yes. I mean, the Wisconsin law that's been
discussed repeatedly has been I think a little bit unfairly
maligned because people are refusing to read the end of the
phrase in the law, which is that this is speech that interferes
with the speech of others, meaning the--if you have
administrators who are basically handing a heckler's veto to
people who are standing up in front of other speakers and then
attempting to block it, that's not actually free speech, that's
trespass. So, I don't know that you need another piece of
legislation. I think you do need enforcement of existing law
that exists to prevent what is in fact criminal activity and
not free speech activity.
But there's going to have to be some sort of consequences
for administrators who don't abide by the current law because
what they're doing is they are essentially saying we can't shut
down this speech but if you go and make a big fuss, then we'll
say that in order to shut down the fuss, we have shut down the
speech. And if they continue to do that, then I don't see, you
know, why Federal funding should be going to--I don't see why
my taxpayer dollars should be going to a university that bans
me because the university refuses to protect my right to free
speech.
Mr. DeSantis. That is a good point. Now, you talked about
the hierarchy based on identity in terms of who does--and I
like a white male would be at the bottom kind of deal but, you
know, how honest does even that standard apply? Because like
somebody like a Justice Clarence Thomas, who obviously has a
very compelling background, how would he be received at these
universities in terms of his story, given that he is a
constitutional originalist?
Mr. Shapiro. Or Jason Riley from the Wall Street Journal. I
mean, it's the--obviously, it's--the intersectionality in that
philosophy is a stand-in for hard-core leftism, and it's just a
way of using multiculturalism as the entr?e to leftist points
of view. It isn't actually--as you say, if Clarence Thomas says
something, nobody on the left is going to say, well, you know,
he suffered as a black man, so his perspective is more valuable
than Joe Biden's perspective on a particular issue. You're not
going to hear anyone on the left ever said.
Mr. DeSantis. Carolla, thanks for coming.
Mr. Carolla. Thank you, man with the tan from Florida.
Mr. DeSantis. Trying my best.
Mr. Carolla. We don't have to recognize him as the man from
Florida. We can all see where he hails from.
Mr. DeSantis. Yes, well, I appreciate that. It is hot
there. We don't have the temperate climate that you guys have
in L.A., so it is 95 and heating right now.
Mr. Carolla. Well, it's dry, but there are a lot of
blowhards there in L.A., so there's a lot of hot wind blowing
around.
Mr. DeSantis. So, I mean, you have kind of come here, we
appreciate it. You know, you look at this experience. How do
you view kind of what goes on in Washington as potentially
being able to help stand up for free speech? Because, you know,
we get involved in things, and a lot of times we make it worse.
Mr. Carolla. You know, I've--I hosted a show called
Loveline for over a decade, and I had a very unique perspective
because I was able to talk to troubled kids, teenagers, two
hours a night for a decade, and I really got to learn something
about young people and how they work and what works and what
doesn't work. And, you know, people would say well, you're not
a professor, you never read a book, you never went to college,
how are you an expert on this? And I say, well, I'm a
journeyman carpenter as well. I've never read a book on
carpentry, and who would you like to build your house, someone
who read a book on it or someone who just did it every day for
over a decade?
And I learned that all of these problems that we're talking
about, free speech, discrimination, hatred toward other people
and drug addiction, violence, crime, it all stems from the
family. And when the family is intact, much of this stuff just
goes away. You don't have to legislate it away. It just goes
away because people are brought up in intact families with
decent, caring parents, whatever their color, whatever their
background is, and then they produce little decent individuals
who go off to college or to a job, place of work, and they
don't need to be coached up and they don't need to be
legislated and they don't need to be bloviated by people like
us. They grow up in an intact family.
So my feeling is all the stuff we're talking about is at
the outside of the rim. The hub is the family, and the
discussions should center around the family and who is creating
these people who think it would be a good idea to take a
baseball bat to the window of a Starbucks in their community.
Mr. DeSantis. Well, I think that is well put, and if we
could deal with that core, the free-speech stuff and a whole
host of other problems would go, and that is better than any
tax bill or anything else we could be doing. And obviously, it
is not going to be government's role per se; it is a societal
thing.
But, Mr. Chairman, thanks for your leadership on this
issue.
Mr. Jordan. Well said. Well said.
To our panel, my goal was 12 o'clock. We are going to be
pretty close. It may go a few minutes after. But if that is
okay with everyone, we have two others and then maybe a couple
other questions from the ranking member and myself to close
things out.
Mr. Hice from Georgia is recognized.
Mr. Hice. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
you allowing me to be a part of this hearing today.
Mr. Shapiro, I feel for you, and I met just recently with a
group of Jewish students who had experienced a great deal of
very difficult--from lack of free speech to harassment and all
sorts of things on the various college campuses that they
represent.
I am also an evangelical Christian, and I have seen it on
the other side as well and have been, in fact, on the frontline
of this for long, long time where Christian students are
disallowed to even share their faith. They are restricted to
free speech zones where Christian organizations are kicked off
campuses or even forced to allow non-Christians to take
leadership roles in the Christian organization, like how
backwards can this possibly be? And in many instances Christian
perspective is even looked upon as hate speech, which is
absolutely astounding to me where this is going.
And I want to transition, Ms. Strossen, to you. I
appreciate you being here as well. Are you familiar with
implicit bias testing?
Ms. Strossen. Yes.
Mr. Hice. Okay. This is intended to detect biases or
prejudices from individuals, various tests. Some colleges are
actually using these tests now to force those who fail the test
to be cured of their biases, prejudices, whatever it may be, in
essence creating on campuses thought police. You are aware of
this. I see it by your reaction.
Ms. Strossen. I am shocked, and of course I am against
creating thought crimes. I am completely in favor of
information. I've taken one of those implicit bias tests and
it's very interesting. So, if it's presented to you as a way to
expand your horizons about subconscious or semiconscious
assumptions and stereotypes, to which all of us are prone, many
atheists have negative stereotypes about evangelicals, and vice
versa.
Mr. Hice. Sure, we all have those. Are you ----
Ms. Strossen. But we should overcome them through
education, not through indoctrination.
Mr. Hice. Well, and they are not necessarily wrong one
thing or another.
Ms. Strossen. In some way it's a matter of belief.
Mr. Hice. We have got to accept the fact that you are
different from I am ----
Ms. Strossen. Absolutely.
Mr. Hice.--and I am different from you, and it is okay.
Ms. Strossen. Absolutely. We can disagree.
Mr. Hice. So college really has no business trying to cure
people ----
Ms. Strossen. Absolutely not.
Mr. Hice.--of their background, what they ----
Ms. Strossen. That would be a violation of everything the
First Amendment stands for, everything that academic freedom
stands for.
Mr. Hice. Absolutely. Let me kind of go on. What are some
of the biases that are identified as needing to be cured? Are
you aware of that?
Ms. Strossen. I'm sorry. I ----
Mr. Hice. All right. Well, let's go on. I don't have time
to dig into this. There is so much more to deal with. But would
you not agree that when a university or college, whatever,
starts branding people as hateful, as bigots, as politically
incorrect, as whatever and then creating an effort to cure them
of those deficiencies, the school is in itself creating a
thought police environment and is very dangerous?
Ms. Strossen. And it's also something that violates
equality principles, right? We're talking about trying to
create campuses where everybody feels welcome and included and
part of the community, and to stigmatize people because of
their beliefs or their ideas is as offensive to equality and
free-speech principles as stigmatizing people because of the
color of their skin.
Mr. Hice. Not to mention that, it is also un-American and
unconstitutional for ----
Ms. Strossen. And bad education and ----
Mr. Hice. Absolutely.
Ms. Strossen.--and ineffective. You're not--if--let's
assume the worst. Let's assume somebody is a convinced
hatemonger. You're not likely to dissuade that person from
discriminatory views by treating that person as an outcast.
That's the least effective way to persuade that person to
change his ideas.
Mr. Hice. Absolutely. And I appreciate what you said a
while ago, too, about the vast majority of professors are
Democrat or left-leaning, whatever it may be. While we were in
fact sitting here, I did a quick search. It is not from my
State, but University of Georgia profs are 12 to 1 Democrat
over Republicans. I think from what you are sharing and from my
experience, that is probably fairly consistent across the
country. I can't fully explain it, but it does have an impact
on the overall culture that is created and the resistance
towards those who disagree with a political, cultural view.
Ms. Strossen. And I'm sure you and I would make the same
negative conclusion if it was skewed the other way ----
Mr. Hice. Sure.
Ms. Strossen.--if the--right.
Mr. Hice. Absolutely. Now, we have got these speech codes
in place. It has been identified already a lot about this. We
have court decisions that, as one of you mentioned a while ago,
the court decisions overwhelmingly have ruled against the
majority of the speech codes in universities, and yet to this
day about 40 percent of our colleges still have speech codes in
place against what has been determined by the rule of law. And
why is that?
Ms. Strossen. You know, law is not self-enforcing. The
Constitution is not self-enforcing. We still have segregated
schools all these decades after Brown v. Board of Education,
and that is why it is so important for organizations like the
ACLU FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,
to be able to bring lawsuits to actually enforce principles. I
mean, the examples of using so-called time, place, and manner
restrictions as a pretext for suppressing ideas, that's illegal
and unconstitutional, but you have to bring a lawsuit in order
to vindicate that position.
And if I may say, Congressman, just last--a couple of weeks
ago, the United States Supreme Court unanimously said speech
that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion,
age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful but the
proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we
protect the freedom to express the thought we hate. If only we
could have the same unanimity in society as a whole as those
very ideologically diverse Justices have on that cornerstone
principle.
Mr. Hice. Mr. Chairman, I am not going any further because
I know I am not even a part of this subcommittee, and again, I
appreciate you letting me be part of it. I have got a lot more
to cover, though, but where this is going with the clear
distinction between one viewpoint versus another, creating a
culture of intimidation and silencing a particular viewpoint
has got to be dealt with, and I thank you for leading this
hearing.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentleman and now recognize the--
wait a minute, I now recognize the second tan man from Florida,
Mr. Rooney is recognized.
Mr. Rooney. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the
opportunity to make a few comments about free speech here and
for you taking the liberty of highlighting the problems that we
face.
Under the guise of protecting students, the freedom to
express views not deemed acceptable to an intolerant,
judgmental elite is being attacked and denounced by students,
professors, and occasionally administrators. These people have
the intellectual arrogance to think they should decide for all
of us which ideas are to be heard and which are not. This to me
reeks of totalitarianism, which, as we all know, creeps in
gradually until it takes root.
In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek described how
the threat of totalitarianism Europe in the 1930s was
foreshadowed by a society moving away from the basic ideas on
which European civilization had been built. This behavior in
the United States today contradicts the original concept of
what a university should be and how it originated in its
medieval beginnings as venues for promoting the free exchange
and rigorous debate.
Colleges use many different methods to suppress free
speech. One such example are these free-speech zones, which
have been talked about here on campus. To me, the mere idea of
a free-speech zone is wholly incompatible with the Constitution
of the United States, and it turns the words free speech into a
gross oxymoron. This transforms an absolute truth, a right
guaranteed under our Constitution, into a negotiable, transient
morsel of policy. I wonder which of our constitutional rights
and liberties will be next?
An ironic case at Kellogg Community College in Michigan--
you can't make this stuff up--students were arrested for
handing out copies of the United States Constitution without
the administration's permission. How incredible is this? In
their greatest hopes, Marx and Lenin couldn't have been bold
enough to try this. Cancelation of conservative speakers and
events on campus has become another method for constraining
freedom, as has been talked about here. Following protests and
sometimes riotous behavior by the scripted biased students and
faculty, many administrators and boards of trustees seem to
prefer acquiescence and political correctness instead of
confrontation, willing to accept the connected erosion of
freedom.
In 2014, protests by leftist students at Rutgers caused
former Secretary of State Rice to cancel a commencement speech.
This is an individual who rose up from desperate circumstances
with a life of persistence and achievement like none other.
Condi is certainly the American dream. This here again violent
student riots at Berkeley caused a school to cancel speech by
the conservative writer and speaker Ann Coulter. So much for
colleges fostering an environment of free speech.
Further, many college professors seek to indoctrinate and
discourage free debate in class. Much has been written about
this, leading to something called groupthink. The desire for
conformity replaces rational thought, and conservative opinions
are routinely suppressed, as has been talked about in this
hearing today. This lack of ideological diversity in academia
undermines the free exchange of ideas, and it is no wonder that
so much has been written about the lack of critical thinking
skills of younger Americans.
Colleges and universities that refuse to respect and
enforce our laws and the Constitution should not be subsidized
by the United States of America. Our taxpayers should not have
to pay for infringements against our Constitution. If schools
want to go it alone free of taxpayer money, they can and should
do whatever they want to do, and many has been said that about
here today. The schools that take our taxpayer money should
follow the Constitution and be thankful that we have it.
Not all colleges and universities have succumbed to this
political correctness. We know that Mitch Daniels made a very
strong statement in 2015 at Purdue to protect academic freedom
and individual liberty. John Ellison at the University of
Chicago, not exactly known as a conservative bastion, did the
same thing, denouncing these free-speech zones and things like
that.
And I would like to also finish with the idea that the real
world, the one where us carpenter apprentices and journeymen
carpenters grow up, by the way, doesn't recognize free-speech
zones. Colleges and universities that promote them are
committing what I consider to be educational malpractice,
failing to prepare students for a life beyond the cocoon of
campus. Higher education should be a platform for the peaceful
exchange of ideas and debate and formation, where learning
comes from having one's beliefs challenged and having to defend
them. That is what the original university was about, and that
is what we need in America. If we can get back there, then
maybe we will find that we have a new generation of critically
thinking Americans that can take our country to even greater
heights.
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for having me.
Mr. Jordan. You bet. I thank the gentleman.
The gentlelady from Florida is recognized, Mrs. Demings.
Mrs. Demings. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And, you
know, we have had, I believe, a very robust conversation today
about the First Amendment, which we know is guaranteed by the
United States Constitution. We have talked about a lot of
things, but we have also talked about a young woman who was
attending American University, was elected as president of the
student government by her peers, and instead of celebrating,
was a victim of harassment, she was threatened, victim of cyber
bullying and hate crimes. I believe that Taylor Dumpson
represents thousands of students in this country who are just
trying to live the American dream.
And since one of my colleagues thought it necessary to
issue out an apology today, I would like to issue an apology to
Taylor Dumpson for what she had to endure, someone who was
doing it right and was the victim of hate crimes, not just hate
speech but hate crimes, as investigated by the FBI.
That is my statement, Mr. Chairman.
And I would also like to ask permission to enter a
unanimous consent to introduce an article ``KCC responds to
political organization's lawsuit'' into the record.
Mr. Jordan. Without objection.
Mrs. Demings. Thank you so much. I yield back.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentlelady.
We will close out here with a few more questions, but
first, I do want to recognize Ms. Taylor Dumpson as well.
Obviously, what happened to you on campus is wrong, should not
be tolerated, and is just disgusting. But we appreciate you
overcoming that. And the fact that you are a student government
president, someday, you are going to be sitting up here doing
this same kind of hearing, and we look forward to those days in
the future as well.
But my guess is at American University they probably had
some diversity training. They probably had some bias training.
So maybe this gets to the point Mr. Carolla made earlier. It is
not all the bias training and diversity and these tests kids
have to take now or students have to take now.
Well, let me just go to Mr. Shapiro. Do you think the bias
training is something that is actually helpful?
Mr. Shapiro. I don't think it's effective. I think that, in
fact, it tends to alienate a lot of the people who feel like
I'm not a racist, why am I being forced to endure the
implication that I'm a racist and I have the necessity of
undergoing bias training.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. I mean, it seems to me that either
Americans--their bias training is not any good or it is just
largely probably not ----
Mr. Shapiro. People who tie nooses around bananas are not
going to be dissuaded from doing so by bias training. They are
garbage human beings.
Mr. Jordan. To Mr. Carolla's point, right, it is a lot more
about what kind of background and belief system they bring to
the university.
Mr. Carolla. I agree wholeheartedly. That starts at home.
Anyone who has been in the corporate world knows you have to
have sexual harassment training as well, and the cases of
sexual harassment have probably gone up tenfold since the
training began, so I don't see any direct line from training to
effective application of it.
Mr. Jordan. In fact, it could be almost the converse,
right?
Mr. Carolla. I feel it is, yes.
Mr. Jordan. Yes.
Ms. Strossen. But Mr. Carolla also talked about the
positive impact of actually working together with a diverse
group of people, and I think that's what we have to do. We have
to bring people together in education and work and other
contexts.
Mr. Jordan. You know, and it has been my experience some of
the strongest advocates for left policy and--but I always use
the example one of my good friends is Dennis Kucinich, and you
cannot get further apart than Jim Jordan and Dennis Kucinich,
but we have respect--and a lot of times where we really work
together is on civil liberty issues, these kind of issues. That
is why I so appreciate this panel we have here today. I mean,
that is how it is supposed to work.
So, there was talk earlier about a speech code. It seems to
me the speech code is the one that is right behind me, right?
Isn't that the speech code in America, the First Amendment
itself? Speech code and common sense, as Mr. Carolla has talked
about.
So, Mr. Shapiro, your thoughts on a speech code. Shouldn't
it be the First Amendment? Shouldn't that be sufficient?
Mr. Shapiro. Absolutely. And I think that we're moving into
very dangerous territory when we start identifying speech as
violence, and that I think is what's happening more and more
often in our politics. I think it's happening on college
campuses. When you start saying that what you say offends me to
the point where I'm going to treat it as violence, then we are
moments away from an actual violent conflagration, and that has
to stop immediately.
Mr. Jordan. Do you think, Mr. Shapiro, that some of the
things we have seen from the Federal Government are
contributing to the what I would describe as, you know, a crazy
situation we see on many campuses, situations you have had to
go through and live through? Do you think some of the things
that the Federal Government has done are chilling free speech
on college campuses? And specifically--and frankly, what
prompted my renewed interest or greater interest I should say
in this series of hearings we are having on the First Amendment
was a few years ago when we discovered that an agency with the
power and the ability to intimidate and impact people's lives,
the agency known as the Internal Revenue Service, was
systematically and for a sustained period of time targeting
people for their political beliefs. Do you think that has some
chilling impact on what may in fact be happening on our--what
is in fact happening on our college campuses?
Mr. Shapiro. I mean, sure, when people have an enormous
amount of power, whether it's at an administrative level or at
the Federal level, they tend to use it in ways that benefit the
side that they control, and that's--that has--I mean, I think
you've seen this--it's a completely different topic, but I
think that you've seen this in the context of how a lot of the
sexual assault hearings are taking place on campus now where
they're taking place under title IX auspices and they don't
actually follow any sort of constitutional due process
procedures. That's an area where the Federal Government has
gotten involved and really overridden individual rights.
And, listen, nobody is in favor of sexual assault. Everyone
wants to see rapists prosecuted, but we need to come back to
some sort of rational standard of application, not just what we
wish we could do in some sort of utopia.
Mr. Jordan. Just two final points, Mr. Raskin raised the
point earlier that the majority party invites four of the
witnesses, that the minority party invites one. It is standard
practice. I would point out of the four witnesses I think
probably two come from--four majority witnesses, probably two
come from the left on the political spectrum. Mr. Shapiro
hasn't exactly been a fan of the current administration, and I
don't know exactly what Mr. Carolla's--I tend to--I would think
he is fairly libertarian but I don't know if he is Republican
or Democrat.
So, we tried to invite people who believe in the sign that
is behind me, that is what we tried to do, and people who are
willing to defend it, who are willing to say that this is
paramount to the American experience and who we are as a
nation, and that is what the series of hearings that we are
undertaking in this committee are all about.
So, final question is to the heckler in the middle. When is
the movie coming out again?
Mr. Carolla. No Safe Spaces, Dennis Prager and myself have
gotten together to do this subject, but the 86-minute version
of it not the 477-minute version. Yes, my bladder is very angry
at you. I think it's coming out mid, early 2018, so look
forward to that.
Mr. Jordan. Well, we look forward to it as well.
I want to thank each of you for being here today and
participating in this important hearing, and we look forward to
having more. And frankly, what we are going to do, we may
invite some of you back, but we certainly want to have some of
the students, maybe even some of them who are in the room--the
gentleman from Alabama, I am sorry.
Mr. Palmer. I just want to thank the students for coming,
and I hope you look back on this and count this as one of the
best days in your education that you have ever had.
I yield back.
Mr. Jordan. I thank the gentleman.
With that, we are adjourned.
Ms. Strossen. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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