Say what you will about Jonathan Rauch — really, say what you want, he’ll defend your right to do so.
Scholar, journalist, gay rights activist, First Amendment advocate and author Jonathan Rauch spoke in Sykes theater on Wednesday about the importance of free speech and how laws preventing hate speech can actually hurt the minorities they are written to protect. Rauch, who has written numerous pieces about his experiences as an openly gay author in publications like The New York Times, The New Republic and The Atlantic, drew around 200 students and community members to his lecture, “Why Free Speech is the Only Safe Space for Minorities.”
After a short introduction by political science professor Chris Stang, Rauch began by thanking the administration and attendees. “I especially want to thank everyone here who does not think they’re going to agree with the speech,” he said. Rauch’s speech comes at an interesting time for West Chester students, with the highly controversial visit from hate group Matthew 24 having sparked conversation about speech codes only a few weeks ago.
Rauch started by leading the audience through a short history of conflict that he attributed to speech codes, from the riots in 2017 at UC Berkeley over the visit of controversial political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos to the assault on political scientist Charles Murray at Middlebury College. He then told the story of a Harvard student who he spoke to about the current dialogue surrounding race, sexual orientation and gender. Rauch asked the student why he hesitated to talk about any of these issues. The student responded, “because it’s all downside.”
This is where Rauch arrived at the core of his speech. “Statements that are false, seditious and inflammatory should not just be allowed, but protected,” he said. No stranger to false, seditious and inflammatory speech aimed at his sexuality, Rauch’s statement caused a variety of reactions among students. “It’s the most counterintuitive idea in society, but also the most productive,” he said to an audience of vigorous nods, inquisitive stares and narrowed eyes.
Taking the crowd on a tour of the history of “microaggressions” and “safe spaces,” two concepts that sit at the center of the current dialogue around free speech, Rauch cited these terms as having snowballed from George H.W. Bush-era policies surrounding a “hostile work environment.” As these concepts spread from the workplace to the professional world to universities, they ended up stopping the exchange of ideas that gave oppressed groups more power to begin with, Rauch claimed. He gave the example of Ken Howell, a University of Illinois professor, who was fired for teaching in a religion class the Catholic belief that homosexuality is a sin.
Following this historical background, Rauch gave what he called a “five-minute tour” of his belief in the ineffectiveness of speech laws. Among these justifications were several historically researched and philosophically supported tenets as well as some ideas from Rauch’s own experience. He discussed the right of the hearer to listen to uncensored speech to better themselves, a concept proposed by Frederick Douglass in 1860. He also brought up John Stuart Mill’s argument that to better oneself, one must be exposed to disagreement and difference of opinion. On a broader scale, Rauch questioned how effective these speech codes would be, saying that they would only serve to diminish conversation among informed people too scared to violate them. He also debated the assumption by people advocating for these codes that their group would be the one in power, enforcing them, arguing that often those who are actually in power have inconsistent motives.
In the last large section of the lecture, Rauch recounted the story of Frank Kameny, whose dismissal from his job in the U.S. government on the grounds of his sexuality led him on a decades-long campaign to overturn laws that oppressed the gay community. He filed the first U.S. court lawsuit over sexual orientation, became the first openly gay candidate for Congress and attended President Obama’s signing of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010. Rauch argued that Kameny’s struggle to overthrow homophobic legislature was deeply rooted in his right to speak freely and that any established speech codes would have only hurt Kameny’s ability to combat the unfair system.
Rauch ended the lecture by discussing what he saw as the “miracle” of progress in gay rights over the past few decades. “You couldn’t turn on the radio when I was a kid without hate spewing from pulpits across the country,” he said. “We were a stench in God’s nostrils … I submit, ladies and gentlemen, that [the change since then] was a miracle.” He attributed this miracle to the ability of underprivileged Americans to exercise their free speech in protest. “How did we do it? Our voices. The answer is our voices,” said Rauch. “We spoke. We said things that people thought were absolutely ridiculous.”
Bringing the speech back around to Matthew 24, Rauch challenged the audience to confront the group by exercising their own free speech. Instead of censoring the group’s message of hate, he advocated instead for minority groups to speak out, to use the same tools the First Amendment guaranteed the group against them. “That was Frank Kameny’s method. He never called on anyone else to be silenced, but he also never failed to confront a bad idea when he saw one.”
The question and answer session, which extended well over the initial time advertised for the speech, centered around privilege, the definition of hate speech, discrimination in the military and more. Attendees carried on the conversation as they filed out of the lecture, still discussing the role of the First Amendment in such a turbulent time.
“West Chester was awesome,” said Rauch after the crowd had dispersed nearly an hour after the official end of the event. “A lot of people came and everyone was very engaged, and I know everyone didn’t agree with what I had to say, but I could not have asked for a more fair hearing … I’d like to come back to West Chester someday.”
Whatever the fate of speech codes around our university and country as a whole, the conversation about conversation will continue to be had as long as there is one person to say something and another person to disagree with them.