graduation.JPG

Graduates celebrate after receiving their degrees during the 2014 University of Oregon graduation ceremony at Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene.

(Chris Pietsch/The Register Guard via AP)

By Kyu Ho Youm

While discussing cultural sensitivity under international public relations codes of conduct, I asked my strategic communication law students in May: "How many of you might feel uncomfortable if I said, 'America remains the land of freedom and opportunity?'" One student raised his hand.

As he explained why my comment about the United States, my adopted country, might discomfit him, I wondered, albeit for a fleeting second, whether the University of Oregon's Bias Response Team (BRT) would call me for an "educational conversation." Yes, if someone filed a possible micro-aggression complaint.

Since 1999, the BRT has sought to "provide targets of bias a safe space to have their voices heard, to promote civility and respect, to effect change around these important issues in a quick and effective manner, and to ensure a comprehensive response to bias incidents." The BRT and its annual report have attracted national media attention recently, including from The Washington Post and the National Review. The headline-grabbing attention has been highly critical, given the BRT's overreaching responses to a number of frivolous complaints.

One case is especially ironic and noteworthy. An anonymous UO student reported "feeling unsafe due to other students expressing anger about oppression." How did the BRT handle the complaint? A BRT case manager, in what sounds like the dispatching of the thought police, "referred [the complaint] to Housing Staff to communicate community standards and expectations to the entire hall."

It gets worse.

As a media law teacher-scholar and a former campus newspaper adviser, I was stunned by another case that has made UO a laughingstock in the national press: "An anonymous student reported that a newspaper gave less press coverage to trans students and students of color," the BRT report stated. "Response: A BRT Case Manager held an educational conversation with the newspaper reporter and editor."

The BRT's ham-handed way of dealing with a student's complaint about the Daily Emerald's coverage was embarrassingly misguided. And it was a lost teachable moment for the BRT.

First Amendment attorney Charles Glasser adjures the BRT to take a more enlightening approach: "Students need to learn that living in a vibrant democracy requires being able to hear upsetting ideas without losing your mind. The same democracy allows -- even encourages -- responsible counter-speech. You could even teach them to write a coherent letter to the editor."

The University of Chicago's widely praised report of 2015 on freedom of expression offers good guidance about encouraging, not discouraging, free speech in academia: "Debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrongheaded."

UO ought to join other schools, including Princeton University, in adapting and adopting the University of Chicago's free-speech statement as its framework for campus expression. As a Supreme Court justice once opined, the best corrective for bad speech is good speech, not censorship or punishment.

I have engaged with my journalism and law colleagues on the BRT in recent weeks. Few have been eager to step forward and express their thoughts on the BRT. And I have been advised to be more "politically astute" in taking issue with the BRT and its impact on the UO faculty, staff and students.

A discerning UO colleague, who has endured a real-life chilling experience with the BRT, has told me: "Now that we have become a laughingstock to the entire nation due to our relationship with the BRT, nothing could be more important than discussing this issue with the entire faculty and staff."

I agree.

Those of us who understand that free speech versus cultural sensitivity is not a zero-sum game should scrutinize the BRT in an uninhibited, robust and wide-open way. As Professors Jeffrey Aaron Snyder and Amna Khalid at Carleton College cogently noted in their New Republic article: "BRTs are fatally flawed" and that "BRTs will turn the genuine, transformative educational power of diverse voices into a farce."

I'd like to applaud my journalism and communication colleagues for leading the UO conversations on the BRT. The BRT has been entrenched in the UO community as part of its institutional machinery for the past 17 years, but it has been subject to little scrutiny throughout its entire history.

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Kyu Ho Youm is the Jonathan Marshall First Amendment Chair professor at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.