Faculty Publications

Publication Date

2018

Disciplines

Critical and Cultural Studies | First Amendment | Higher Education | Higher Education Administration | Political Theory | Rhetoric | Speech and Rhetorical Studies

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that the debate on free speech as pushed by the conservative right is a strategic apparatus to undermine the various diversity initiatives on college and university campuses. While supporters of the right wing extremists around the globe have pushed for various modes of exclusions (social, racial, ethnic, cultural, religious and sexual), here in the United States, such exclusions are most evident in the collapse of academic freedom and the rise of civility codes as students and educators use the platform of free speech to promote various forms of injustices and exclusions. Our neoliberal college and universities and their administrators, I argue, are caught in this precarious and tenuous conflict of protecting academic freedom against the pressures from the outside (the political right) to stage ideas and ideologies that are harmful for the public good in the name of “free speech.”

Document Type

Published Version

Comments

This article is the publisher-created version, also considered to be the final version or the version of record. It includes value-added elements provided by the publisher, such as copy editing, layout changes, and branding consistent with the rest of the publication.

Rights

Copyright © American Association of University Professors, 2018.
Reprinted from the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom: Volume Nine.
Terms of Use for work posted in DigitalCommons@Linfield

Original Citation

Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt
When free speech disrupts diversity initiatives: What we value and what we do not.
Journal of Academic Freedom, 2018, volume 9
https://www.aaup.org/JAF9/when-free-speech-disrupts-diversity-initiatives-what-we-value-and-what-we-do-not

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