More Speech Codes

Douglas Kern makes the case that academia would be better served by making its speech code prohibitions more, rather than less, explicit in TechCentralStation.

Let us have more speech codes on college campuses -- many more. Let us have more detailed, carefully wrought Indices of Forbidden Opinions. Every institution of higher learning in the United States should present its incoming students with a list of all the beliefs that will lead to official disfavor.
It's not a matter of free speech. It's a matter of transparency.

The Larry Summers fiasco has taught us that, at Harvard University, faculty members are not permitted to believe in differences of intellectual capacity between the sexes. Do you suppose Larry Summers might have wanted to know that fact before presenting his now-infamous remarks? Similarly, it seems that comparing 9/11 victims to "little Eichmanns" is not the path to career success at the University of Colorado. But no one told Ward Churchill until it was too late. And for Ward Churchill, the criticism is especially cruel. Oh, how thin a line separates the good anti-American moon-battery that gets you a tenured sinecure from the bad anti-American moon-battery that gets you sacked!

Big academia promulgates the illusion of free speech while quietly enforcing the de facto reality of opinion censorship. It's the worst of both worlds.

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