SPEAKING FREELY
Many members of the W&L community are concerned that campus publications of late have represented a limited number of perspectives about the List and Bracket incidents and, moreover, have spread misinformation about University policy to potentially damaging effect. This site simply reprints several recent contributions to the discourse about "free speech" at W&L that have not been previously available to most of the University community. These contributions largely took the initial form of emails to the head of the journalism department, Professor Brian Richardson, whose widely-distributed email commentaries provide context for many of the posts that follow. We reprint them here with his consent.
These writings have in common a concern that the sorts of arguments for "free speech" that have dominated recent campus publications insufficiently acknowledge the fact that sexual harassment cannot be fully protected as "speech." They also have in common a recognition that efforts to combat the norm of public misogynistic discourse at W&L do NOT necessarily entail a restriction of expression or a lack of commitment to free speech as a crucial foundational principle for a just and safe community.
SPEAKING FREELY ORIGINAL POSTS:
Bell (First Amendment)
Braunschneider (Speech, conduct, and repressive societies)
Diette (Free speech, closed forums, and reform)
LeBlanc (Unpublished letter to The Trident and question of what is journalism)
Mayock (The Bracket, The List, and The Lesson)
Millon (Disrespect)
Radulescu (Free speech and hate speech)
Richardson 5/7/08 e-mail about "Respect" forum (Protection of free speech)
NEW POSTS (in the order in which they were received)
Mills, 5/20/08 (Free speech, SFHB, and continued discourse)
Geiger, 5/21/08 (Response to Mills)
Wheeler, 5/21/08 (Unwelcoming environment)
Abah, 5/21/08 ("On Freedom and Civility," Journalism and/vs. speech)
Levy, 5/21/08 (Response to Speaking Freely)
Geiger #2, 5/21/08 (Response to Braunschneider)
Mills, 5/21/08 (Response to Geiger)
E. Hutchinson, 5/22/08 ("Sign me up!" in response to LeBlanc unpublished Letter to the Editor)
Ashworth, 5/22/08 (In response to and thanks for various actions and events)
Mayock, 5/22/08 (Response to question of not using student media as a community forum)
Vargas (VMI), 5/22/08 (Similar events at VMI)
LeBlanc, 5/22/08 (Letters to the Editor versus this Online Forum)
Millon, 5/22/08 (In defense of the SFHB)
Geiger, 5/22/08 (Clarification of 5/21/08 post)
Sanow, 5/24/08 (Free speech, journalism, private institutions)
Harris, 5/27/08 (In response to Wheeler)
Wicker, 5/30/08 (Social capital)
Bell, 6/2/08 (In response to Harris, on ethics/morality)
LeBlanc, 6/4/08 (In response to Wicker, Real Ladies are Known by the Friends They Keep)
University Policy on Sexual Discrimination, Harassment, Retaliation, and Sexual Misconduct (Complaints against students)
University Policy on Sexual Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation (Complaints against employees)
Martin and Yahr's Proposal for a Policy to Address Harmful Verbal Conduct
Hate Speech and Free Speech (Yale Alumni Magazine May/June 2008)
"Words that Wound." Richard Delgado, "Words That Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults, Epithets, and Name-Calling," 17 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 133 (1982) (posted with author's permission, letter on file).
Free Speech and Human Dignity. Steven J. Heyman. Yale UP, 2008.
Shauer, Frederick, "The Exceptional First Amendment" (February 2005). KSG Working Paper No. RWP05-021 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=668543 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.668543
Page last modified 6/12/08.