Photo credit: Babs Reh, Flickr
by James A. Bacon
Congratulations to Virginia Commonwealth University for winning a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) after making conscientious efforts to improve its formal free-speech policies. VCU is now one of five universities in Virginia and only 64 nationwide with the designation.
Since 2018, VCU revised several policies governing dorm room decorations, computer use, student conduct, sexual harassment, and reservation and use of campus spaces. But VCU’s sex-based misconduct policy remained a problem, according to FIRE.
“VCU’s old policy included a laundry list of behaviors, such as mocking and name-calling, that the school might have classified — and therefore made punishable — as sexual harassment. It was both overbroad and vague,” said FIRE in a statement.
“A single insult or joke does not qualify as sexual harassment,” explained Laura Beltz, FIRE director of policy reform. “It has to actually be a part of a pattern of conduct that meets that definition of harassment before being punishable. But that was not made clear under the old policy. For all students knew, they were always one strike away from getting in deep trouble on account of something they said.”
Following a November higher-ed summit in which Governor Glenn Youngkin urged Virginia’s public universities to draw up plans to support free speech and viewpoint diversity, VCU administrators met with Beltz. The university revised its policy to make it clear that student words had to meet the policy’s definition of harassment to be punishable.
“A university’s role is to create an environment that supports free inquiry and free expression – we learn and grow through being free to examine new and different ideas,” said VCU President Michael Rao. “Even when we disagree, it’s important to treat other people how all human beings should be treated – with civility, professionalism and respect.”
Virginia now has the third-most green light-rated universities in the country, trailing only North Carolina (with 15) and Mississippi (with six). The University of Virginia, George Mason University, the College of William & Mary, and Radford University also have green lights.
Good news, but… VCU should be applauded for reviewing its policies to protect free speech, and Governor Youngkin deserves credit for prodding VCU and other universities to build free-speech protections into its written policies. But there’s a lot more work to do.
Putting formal written policies into place is just the first step. As we have learned from our close observation of UVA, those policies also have to be administered in a fair and impartial manner. Equally essential is creating a free-speech culture where faculty, students and staffs don’t live in fear of Twitter Outrage Mobs, social ostracism, and ideological favoritism by instructors.
At UVA, for instance, the fact remains that a large percentage of students and faculty refrain from speaking on controversial topics, particularly those relating to race, sex, gender, “equity,” or “social justice.” In recent months the problem has been most pronounced among Jewish students, many of whom have taken to hiding any signs of their Jewish identity and suppressing expression of their views about the Israel-Hamas conflict, as we have amply documented on the Jefferson Council blog. While espousing sympathy in public statements for both sides of the conflict, the Ryan administration has sponsored a series of speakers and programs that are overwhelmingly biased in favor of anti-Israel viewpoints.
An even tougher nut to crack is the partisan/ideological imbalance at UVA and other universities. Some professors do encourage all students to speak freely in class but only a handful expose students to the rich tradition of conservative, libertarian and classical liberal thought that would provide them the intellectual armature to contest the dominant leftist discourse.
Tweaking formal policies is an important step toward creating a truly free and vibrant intellectual climate. But until university presidents transform campus culture, truly free speech and expression will remain an aspiration rather than the reality.
James A. Bacon is executive director of the Jefferson Council, an alumni organization at the University of Virginia that supports civil dialogue, intellectual diversity, and the free exchange of competing ideas.
