Should speech on campus be subject to control from school authorities? We have been getting lots of that over the last few decades, with speech codes, “bias response teams,” and so on. The idea behind that approach is to prevent “bad speech” — much as the Soviet Union tried to prevent the dissemination of ideas it didn’t want.


On the other hand, many Americans argue for a completely laissez-faire approach to speech on campus: No controls at all.

In today’s Martin Center article, Emily Chamlee-Wright (formerly a professor of economics and now president of the Institute for Humane Studies) argues that there is a third way that few people consider. She points out that there can (and should) be regulation of speech from the bottom. By that she means that the faculty should do their part to regulate what speech (talk, writings, images) get into the classroom.

Here is her case:

This power of bottom-up regulation fosters order and minimizes harm — and is already built into the market. In markets, consumers provide the most basic form of bottom-up discipline, punishing businesses with lost earnings if they do not meet customers’ demands. Creditors, contractual obligations, and the prospect of civil legal action if the business harms its customers or employees also serve as source points for bottom-up regulatory discipline, helping to ensure that businesses are run safely and according to sound business practices. When I look at the market, I see some things that I might describe as “anything goes” (e.g., “What happens in Vegas…”), but mostly what I see is a lot of people engaging in orderly, safe, and morally acceptable transactions.

Carrying that observation into the college realm, she continues:

The same is true in the academy where the faculty provide the most basic form of bottom-up regulatory discipline. In their choices of readings, guest speakers, and research topics, academics select what comes into and out of the classroom, university public spaces, and scholarly research. The gatekeeping authority I describe here is a regulatory process — a process grounded in the fact that faculty possess the disciplinary expertise and local knowledge of their institution needed to render informed judgment. Given the importance of reputation in higher education, faculty have a strong incentive to consider their choices carefully and to exercise sound judgment. Peer review of teaching and scholarship serve as other sources of bottom-up regulatory discipline within and across the academy.

I think that’s wise, but what do we then do about faculty members who aren’t honest brokers when it comes to speech? College leaders who are committed to free speech will have to deal with the large number of faculty who see their role as “change agents” and try to prevent ideas they dislike from reaching students.

This is a conundrum.