The First Amendment protects a lot of “hostile” speech. For example, it protected a California professor who expressed a yearning for the death of his college president in a campus newspaper — as a federal appeals court ruled in Bauer v. Sampson (2001). And it barred a lawsuit by Hispanic college staff over a white instructor’s racially-charged emails in Rodriguez v. Maricopa Community College District (2010).
But that isn’t stopping the California State University system from moving to restrict “hostile language,” microaggressions, and other speech viewed as hostile.
“A new policy currently being rolled out by California State University system leaders aims to crack down on bias, microaggressions, intimidating behavior, and bullying — but has raised free speech alarm bells,” reports The College Fix:
The “Other Conduct of Concern” policy would oversee discrimination and harassment complaints that do not violate CSU policies or local, state, or federal laws….it will be finalized this month and submitted to the California Auditor in early January.
It requires employees at all 23 campuses to address any and all reports of “verbal abuse,” “intimidating behavior,” “microaggressions that are not pervasive,” “bullying,” “hostile language,” and “acts of bias.”….critics say the end result appears to create a reporting system in which any word or action someone finds offensive can be reported and investigated.
Under the policy, such reports create permanent paper trails and require “corrective action,” such as re-education trainings and restorative justice actions.
“The problem is that calling something a ‘microaggression’ is entirely subjective,” wrote San Diego State University English Professor Peter C. Herman in a recent Times of San Diego op-ed. “…everyone is under surveillance.”….
The policy says that a “supervisor, student affairs professional or administrator will recommend appropriate corrective action. … Supervisors will continue monitoring the environment to prevent any recurrence of the behavior.” All complaints will be documented and “preserved” under the policy, creating a black mark on employees’ records.
“I am very concerned … about the super-broad net this policy casts,” says San Diego State University Professor Arlette Baljon. She notes that the policy states intimidating behavior is not allowed, but does not provide a clear definition of that or require more than subjective perceptions: “everyone has their own cultural and family history and it is impossible to know how your words impact (or if they intimidate) someone else… A couple of months ago someone stood up during a Senate meeting while speaking. For some that was intimidating, I myself never perceived it like that. In other words, it is very hard to know what effect your actions and words have on others, and they most likely will not have the same effect on one person as on another.”
“I think this policy will silence students, faculty, and staff,” she added.
Herman says he is “appalled that a policy designed to remedy problems with Title IX has morphed into a baggy monster making anything anyone finds offensive, no matter how small or occasional, subject to discipline. The trustees should immediately reject this policy as an offense to freedom of speech and common sense.”
CSU trustees appear almost certain to approve the policy, and those who spoke at a November 21 board meeting uniformly praised it, saying it was needed to help change CSU’s “culture.” A few trustees did ask whether more administrative staff would be needed to handle the increase in complaints under the policy. “My concern is that we are setting up a Title IX bureaucracy to handle all these complaints,” but “there’s also an issue about setting a culture change that says we are not going to put up with this crap, zero tolerance, and whatever we need to do to clean up this mess, we have to do it,” said trustee Jack McGrory.
