Page 8
Deceaiber S, 1988
Academic Freedom, Dissent, Civiiity:
Remarks to Faculty Council
By Paul Hardin, Chancellor
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The topic of my report today is three
fold: academic freedom, dissent and
civility at Chapel Hill.
A. Academic Freedom
I read the Carolina tradition as deeply
committed to this vital principle. Speak
ing very personally, it is one of the most
important values in my life and work.
In this nation academic freedom derives
from the First Amendment to the Con
stitution of the United States. As a
public university we are bound legally
by the words and court interpretations
of that First Amendment and the Four
teenth, the amendment which made ap
plicable to states and state agencies the
first, which had applied originally only
to the national government.
You will hear me refer often to
Carolina as a robust market place of
ideas, and you may be sure that I v«ll
oppose publicly and vigorously all at
tempts to diminish on this campus the
legal protections of the Constitu
tion—whether those attempts come
from on campus or off.
In 20 years as president of privately
supported, church-related colleges and
imiversities in which free speech does
not enjoy the same full legal protection
as on public campuses, I never once ap
proved or permitted any act of censor
ship or any other curtailment of free
speech. My position was that freedom
of speech and expression on the campus
of a good independent or church-related
institution must never be less than the
freedom required by law on public
campuses.
Thus, by my personal philosophy,
the withdrawal under pressure by a
privately supported college of an invita
tion to Jearme Kirkpatrick to speak on
that campus is just as illiberal and egre
gious as a speaker ban law in North
Carolina! To me, the First Amendment
means no prior restraint, no censorship
of publications, no bannii\g from the
campus of speakers or other visitors on
the basis of their utterances or opinions.
Are there legal limits to free speech?
There are. The famous hypothetical
case is the Holmesian one: We are not
free to shout "Fire!" in a crowded
theatre. There are laws that restrict por
nography, and I have publicly criticized
coarseness, obscenity and particularly
racist comments, but I have never per
sonally encountered the legal limits or
felt compelled to prevent or punish
speech. Never once.
B. Dissent
An important sub-topic under the
First Amendment is the right to dissent.
Dissent via the spoken or written word
is part of the larger right. Members or
guests of this academic community
should not expect their views, com
ments or actions to be immune to
criticism or dissent. To paraphrase John
Stuart Mill; I may hold the truth, but I
hold it by accident if I have not heard it
challenged, not merely by a devil's ad
vocate, but by someone who believes
profoundly the opposite of my own
belief.
I thiiik that all speakers on this or any
other campus, whenever there is con
troversy should agree to open discus
sion for some reasonable period of time
folloMong their addresses.
Dissent, in the liberal tradition of the
First Amendment, is and should be pro
tected beyond verbal communication.
Symbolic speech, in the form of
demonstrations, picketing and the like,
is a familiar part of campus life in the
United States.
The legal limitation on dissent is
disruption—clear interference with the
rights of others either to speak and be
heard or to carry forward their own
legitimate daily activities. We all know
that theoretical distinction. Actually, I
think we also would probably agree on
when the line is crossed in most specific
instances. However, liberal university
communities, including this one, do not
rush to judgment and do not find easily
that the bounds have been exceeded.
We tend to bend over backward and
permit some minor and short-term
disruption as a reasonable cost of an im
portant freedom, the freedom to dis
sent. However, we should never
tolerate more than minor brief disrup
tion. To do so is the opposite of liberal.
In this remarkable country, as in few
others, our respect for the freedom to
dissent often leads us to be tolerant even
of civil disobedience, the deliberate
breaking of laws in order to make dis
sent dramatic.
I am deeply interested in the topic of
civil disobedience. I have my own views
on the subject which I have enjoyed
sharing in law classes, and in American
literature, political science and other
classes when such advocates and practi
tioners of civil disobedience as Mahan-
das K. Ghandi, Henry David Thoreau
and Martin Luther King Jr. are under
study.
The public tolerance of civil disobe
dience depends, I susp>ect, on such
variables as the following:
(1) The gravity of the wrong pro
tested or importance of the cause
advanced;
(2) The relevancy of the legal viola
tion to the alleged wrong or cause;
(3) The severity of the harm flowing
to others in consequence of the act of
civil disobedience; and
(4) The relationship of those in
convenienced by the act of civil disobe
dience to the alleged wrong.
In my view public agencies, including
states, tov^ms and state universities, can
not by their nature approve civil disobe
dience. The essence of civil disobedience
is the absence of permission. It is an in
dividual's decision to violate the law
with a full realization that the act is il
legal and a willingness to accept the
legal consequences of the unlawful act,
as a means of dramatizing the impor
tance to the actor of the cause being ad
vanced or the injustice being protested.
At the beginning of my tenure as
chancellor, may I respectfully ask all
members of this community to examine
both their own understanding of
Carolina tradition and their personal
convictions on issues of freedom and
dissent. I hope we would agree on at
least broad principles under discussion.
C. Civility
1 respectfully call upon all of us to
handle our disagreements in this com
munity with mutual respect and civility.
Some recent manifestations of disagree
ment in Chapel Hill have been appall
ingly crude and unacceptable. I will be
shocked and dismayed if it turns out
that members of this university com
munity were responsible for the two re
cent break-ins which involved threaten
ing notes and the menacing placement
of deadly weapons. I am disgusted that
a member of our Housing Department
and a student have received anonymous
calls with racist slurs and that another
student received a racist letter and had
his bulletin-board set on fire.
This community must clearly an-
novmce its disapproval, not only of ac
tual threats of violence, but also of
racist graffiti, remarks or publications.
If the law does not always permit us to
punish such outrages, it surely does per
mit us to condemn them publicly and
unequivocally. Robert Frost once
characterized a certain kind of liberal as
"one so altruistically moral he won't
take his ovm side in a quarrel." We are
often obligated, I think, to exercise free
speech as well as to protect it. I hereby
condemn and express my disgust over
the recent rash of threatening and racist
utterances and acts. I also ask anyone
who is able to do so to identify any per
son or persons who engaged in this
threatening conduct.
Now, a final word about civility and
about how decisions are made on this
campus.
In my scant four months here I can
recall four or five instances in which
persons whose sincerity I do not ques
tion have sought to force me by
pressure to act or speak in a certain way
or to adjust my agenda as chancellor to
their personal wishes. Those persons
and all others deserve to know that I
will not make decisions in response to or
reaction against public demonstrations,
threats to launch much larger
demonstrations, newspaper ultima
tums, threats to withhold donations,
threats to seek punitive or repressive
legislation governing student fees and
the like. Such pressures are, in a word,
irrelevant to my decision-making
processes.
I honestly cannot think of a single in
stance in 20 years of presiding now over
four institutions of higher learning in
which I have made a decision either in
positive response or in negative reaction
to threats or other pressures. I am in
fluenced every day by reasoned argu
ment, whether advanced by an in
dividual student, an advisory commit
tee, a petition, a group of peaceful
demonstrators or a letter from an alum
nus or parent or trustee. It would not be
fair, however, to the University or to
the countless constituents who seek to
influence decisions through a collegial,
reasoned process if I made on the basis
of pressure decisions which I honestly
did not feel were both wise for the
University and respectful of collegial
process and the differing opinions of
others.
Thanks for listening! I look forward
to hearing your responses to my
remarks and your own convictions
about academic freedom, dissent, and
civility during the later discussion today
and in our future conversations. In case
I haven’t told you lately, I like my new
job and my new colleagues!