By Alberto Giubilini

Oxford Martin School and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanitites, University of Oxford

For further discussion on this topic by Dr Giubilini see his oped in The Irish Times

Last month I was invited by Oxford’s Students for Life (OSFL), the pro-life student organisation at the University of Oxford, to take part in a public debate where I was asked to argue against their motion that “Conscientious objection in healthcare, concerning beginning and end of life issues, benefits society as a whole.” Having worked on conscientious objection in healthcare (e.g., doctors not being willing to perform abortions for personal moral or religious reasons) in the past, I thought (and still think) I had some very strong arguments against conscientious objection in healthcare in general, and conscientious objection by religious doctors in particular. I was very keen on challenging the pro-life position on this topic. I therefore accepted the invitation, although I was a bit surprised by it, given that OSFL were presumably aware of my positions on topics that for the pro-life are very sensitive, such as the ethics of abortion or of infanticide.

But I was curious to see and test to what extent the pro-life community was really committed to freedom of speech and would allow me to defend my views, so diametrically opposite to theirs. During the event, I therefore tried to push my arguments to their most extreme conclusions and to be as provocative as possible; for example, at some point I suggested that an unwanted pregnancy is comparable to a disease and that therefore doctors have a duty to medically treat it by performing an abortion. I have to say I saw many people in the audience jolt in their chairs, which I did expect. Nonetheless, after my talk there was a very civil and calm discussion: the pro-life defenders debated my arguments, allowed me to reply, and thanked me at the end of the debate for my participation and what they considered challenging views.

This episode assumes relevance in light of another episode that occurred a few weeks before that and which also involved OSFL. Actually, it is worth noting that the event in which I took part was held in a small room at Trinity College because Queen’s College denied OSFL the use of one of its rooms, after the episode I am about to relate.

OSFL had organised an event to discuss, from the pro-life perspective (as you would expect from a pro-life group), the proposal to legalise abortion in Ireland. Of course, the invited speakers were very critical of the idea. In particular, among them, there was Irish Times correspondent Breda O’Brien, well known for her opposition to abortion. The event was disrupted, and speakers prevented from speaking, by a group of pro-choice feminists. According to reports, some members of the Women’s Campaign (WomCam), a feminist pro-choice subgroup of the Oxford Students’ Union, “stood and began to chant continuously until O’Brien was forced to stop,” and they squeezed out people who wanted to attend the event.

As reported by OSFL’s co-president Anna Bamford, “It was impossible for the committee or security to engage in any meaningful manner with the protestors. This continued for approximately 40 minutes: protesters shouted, jeered, stood in front of the projector and chanted.” Eventually, police needed to be called, but the start of the event was prevented for almost an hour. WomCam defended themselves from the accusation of violating the pro-life group’s freedom of speech through the following statement: “Bodily autonomy is not up for debate; it is not a question of opinion. Access to healthcare is a basic human right.”

This statement conveys several confusions. First, it simply assumes that abortion is above all a matter of access to healthcare as opposed to, say, competing notions about what constitutes a person. In other words, it is to assume the very thing that is being debated, a serious fallacy. The statement also shows an apparent incapacity to distinguish substantial moral issues (i.e., whether women’s bodily autonomy should be the prevailing consideration in the ethics of abortion) from the more fundamental issue of freedom of speech, i.e., the liberty of individuals—whether pro-choice or pro-life—to freely defend their positions, especially in academic settings.

The New Bigotry?

We live in an age of political correctness. The tendency to exclude certain topics from public discussion because they might offend certain groups – which defines political correctness – is apparent both in academic settings and outside “the ivory tower.” For example, many comedians have recently lamented that political correctness is killing their shows, because the range of what counts as politically incorrect has expanded. But of course this is not only a problem for comedians. Academics sharing certain ideas with the lay public often encounter similar problems. A few years ago I co-authored a controversial paper on the ethics surrounding after-birth abortion, or infanticide. Many pro-life and some pro-choice individuals as well, were offended by the ideas expressed in that paper, and reacted not just by challenging the arguments offered, but also by sending death threats to the authors or by suggesting that the topic should not even be up for discussion. Some – both within and outside academia – suggested that, given how offensive the topic was, such reactions were understandable, if not justifiable (a comprehensive analysis of the relevant events can be found here).

There is a more general problem underlying this type of reaction, however, a problem that concerns both academic and non-academic debates. Here, I want to focus particularly on academic debates. In academia the problem in question is created not only by people who are pro-life or conservative generally, as one might be inclined to think, but also by so-called “liberal” and progressive people. Let’s start by discussing what the problem is.

The problem I am talking about is that on university campuses there is today a tendency towards bigotry. Being offended by certain topics to the point of wanting to shut down discussions can, in certain circumstances, turn political correctness into a kind of bigotry. Following the dictionary, we can define bigotry as “intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.” In this dictionary sense, bigotry does not describe the content of one’s moral beliefs, but rather the extent to which someone is prepared to expose her ideas to counter-arguments and evidence. Also a more philosophical definition of “bigotry” – such as the one provided by John Corvino – does not tie bigotry to any particular political or moral view, whether “conservative” or “liberal.” According to Corvino, bigotry is “stubborn and unjustified contempt toward groups of people, typically in the context of a larger system of subordination.”

The aforementioned reactions of some pro-life (and, to a smaller extent, of some pro-choice) people to the after-birth abortion paper are a clear example of bigotry. But it would be a mistake to think that in academia bigotry is a prerogative of the pro-life or conservative camp. Actually, as the feminists’ disruption of the OSFL’s event demonstrates, pro-lifers and conservatives in academia are often victims of bigotry on the part of (some) feminists, pro-choice supporters, and liberals more generally. This is because bigotry is a function of the (un)ease with which someone is offended by other people’s opinions or even by scientific hypotheses, and there is no reason to think that feminists, so-called liberals or pro-choice advocates are less susceptible to being easily offended than conservatives. One can hold the most progressive or liberal ethical and political views and still be a bigot in the sense of I have defined . As Teresa Bejan recently wrote in an article in The Atlantic, today, “[w]hile conservative students defend the importance of inviting controversial speakers to campus and giving offense, many self-identified liberals are engaged in increasingly disruptive, even violent, efforts to shut them down.” As a self-identified liberal, I have to say that, sadly, this claim finds confirmation in my experience.

Various changes in academia in recent years testify to the rise of political correctness and also, I want to suggest, of a dangerous tendency towards bigotry that fosters a climate of hyperprotection towards students and the academic community in general, to the point of excluding certain topics or words from discussion in universities. For example, the rise of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and speech-policing through bias-response teams can contribute to a culture characterized by intolerance, illiberalism, and the erosion of academic freedom. This culture risks undermining at least three very important goals of colleges and universities. First, as John Stuart Mill argued, free exchange of ideas—especially controversial ideas—is an essential means of discovering truth. Second, free exchange of ideas provides a forum for a vulnerable minority to argue for their position on an equal footing with the powerful majority—lifting up those who otherwise wouldn’t have the power to make their voice heard. Third, one could even argue that free exchange of ideas is good when practiced for its own sake.

Unfortunately, some academic communities are curtailing free exchange of ideas with regard to certain topics. The abortion debate provides a good example of how political correctness and bigotry often tend to prevail over free speech and academic freedom, and often not because of the attitude of conservatives and pro-life supporters.

Forty years ago it might have been revolutionary, courageous, and politically incorrect to publicly defend abortion as a woman’s right. Today, although abortion is still illegal or stigmatized in many places, we are witnessing, in academic circles (though not in the whole society), an opposite tendency. Arguing against abortion in academic settings is becoming increasingly more politically incorrect: it is seen as unacceptable because it is taken to be offensive to women and to threaten their right to abortion. In academic circles, supporting abortion, for example campaigning for women’s right to abortion on university campuses or organizing pro-abortion debates, is the new conformism.

Now, conformism is not bad per se; however, it becomes worrisome – and dangerous – if conformists mistake the fact that most people agree on a certain issue, such as, within academic circles, women’s right to abortion, with an alleged right to silence anyone who does not share the majority’s view. And even more worrisome is the fact that universities themselves have sometimes acted out of this perspective when responding to anti-abortionist initiatives.

This state of affairs should be condemned regardless of what one’s views about abortion are. People should be free to argue and campaign against abortion—or, for that matter, against any issue, from same-sex marriage to euthanasia—even if (we think) they are mistaken. It should be clear that this is not meant to be a defense of normative moral relativism, but of the value of a healthy pluralism that only freedom of speech and academic freedom can preserve.

Of course, freedom of speech and academic freedom should have certain limits. In particular, there are plausible arguments that so-called hate speech should be restricted, provided we can clearly circumscribe “hate speech” and we resist the temptation to apply this label to any kind of speech we dislike. According to its legal definition, hate speech is “speech that is intended to insult, offend, or intimidate a person because of some trait (as race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or disability).” What is worth noting here is that hate speech is defined by the intention of the speaker to insult, offend, or intimidate. But different positions in the abortion debate, whether for or against abortion, are certainly not instances of hate speech. In the same way as those who put forward arguments for a right to abortion do not intend to offend or insult the pro-life, but only to defend a certain moral view on abortion, also those who oppose abortion do not intend to offend, insult, or intimidate women or pro-choice advocates, but only to defend a different moral view on abortion. Not being instances of hate speech, and, more in general, not being motivated by the intention to offend others, both positions are (or should be) protected by principles of free speech and academic freedom.

Thus, that some feminists or some women are offended by anti-abortion events is an irrelevant consideration: the pro-lifers do not have an absolute duty not to unintentionally offend pro-choice feminists, who in turn do not have an absolute right not to be unintentionally offended by pro-life arguments. Granted, the distinction between what is intentional and what is merely foreseen or foreseeable is notoriously a fishy one, and there will certainly be some cases in which the distinction is blurred. But in fact, in most cases in which issues of freedom of speech arise, it will be relatively easy to distinguish a claim made with the intention to offend someone and a claim that offends only unintentionally (whether foreseeably or not). Thus, for example, anti-abortion messages will probably offend many feminists or many women who did have an abortion, in the same way as pro-abortion messages will probably offend many pro-life supporters. But none of these messages are typically expressed with the intention to offend someone; therefore, they should be tolerated and indeed, if we value free speech and academic freedom, encouraged.

Since events that are not intentionally offensive are protected by principles of free speech and of academic freedom, trying to shut down these events, as did both the feminists of the Oxford Student Union and the pro-life individuals who sent my co-author and me death threats after the after-birth abortion paper, means neglecting basic principles of free speech and academic freedom, or at least having a too narrow and limited view of what these principles mean. On the occasion of the two events organized by OSFL, conservative and pro-life people have shown a greater commitment to freedom of speech and academic freedom than “liberal” and pro-choice feminists.

Some Practical Suggestions

Here are some principles or rules that I believe everyone, regardless of the ethical or political views they hold, could and should agree to in an academic setting: