Civility and Free Speech on Campus
Donald A Downs, The University of Wisconsin, Madison


Over the years, observers have proffered many explanations for the rise of repressive policies and programs on college campuses. Explanations include the onset of such things as political correctness, the rise of so-called educational consumerism as a mindset of students and administrators, the predominance of the commitment to diversity defined in narrow terms, and the lack of intellectual diversity on campus. These explanations certainly cast light on the problem. But a recent conversation made me aware of a neglected explanation that is worth considering: the decline of civility on campus.

At first glance, this proposition seems preposterous. After all, have not many speech codes and related policies been promulgated in the name of “civility”? The answer is no: enforcement of such measures has typically paid only lip service to civility. Civility has often served as a pretext for the enforcement of codes that are actually motivated by the desire to impose intellectual orthodoxy. Political correctness, not civility, is often in the driver’s seat.

A recent conversation with a former naval officer renewed my interest in civility and free speech. The officer stressed that navy personnel at sea take care to uphold formal and informal norms of civility because “you have to maintain interpersonal respect in an environment in which dozens of individuals must live together in such close quarters for weeks on end.” The formalities of civility are a primary means by which community and order are maintained despite the inevitable presence of individual differences and prejudices.

Civility has two primary meanings. The common understanding involves manners and treating others with due respect and basic courtesy. Even this aspect of civility is in jeopardy in our society today, including on campus. Researchers have reported that college students are unprepared for the business world because they lack appropriate manners and etiquette when they graduate.

The second meaning of civility builds on the first meaning; it is best articulated by the sociologist Richard Sennett in his classic book The Fall of Public Man (1974). This meaning defines civility as the maintenance of an appropriate degree of distance between or among individuals as they interact in the public realm and in professional contexts. In such exchanges, we treat teachers, attorneys, or public officials (to mention just three such roles) as individuals who have assumed a special kind of role with concomitant responsibilities. The same principle applies to interactions among individuals acting in their capacities as “citizens.” When acting as citizens, we assume a different posture than we assume with friends or family members, where the “personal” is much more prominent. In public interaction, we wear a “mask” that depersonalizes differences. Preserving an appropriate distinction between the public and the private realms is important to maintaining a healthy polity in which disagreement can flourish, as political theorists from Aristotle to Hannah Arendt have taught.

This is why, for example, members of Congress address one another formally even as they engage in intellectual and moral combat. The formality depersonalizes conflict and exchange, thereby fostering an environment more conducive to disagreement. The same point applies to the exchange of ideas in the public forum, the marketplace of ideas, and the campus.

Sennett feared that the virtues of civility were in decline in 1974, when he published The Fall of Public Man. The trend has no doubt accelerated since then. Many causes are to blame for the decline of citizenship and, by extention, of civility, but Sennett focused on two. First, the onset of the therapeutic ethic (what sociologist Philip Rieff famously called the “triumph of the therapeutic” in his 1966 book of that title), which defines individuals in terms of psychological, personal needs rather than more universal and objective standards of citizenship. The second was the progressive political movement originating in the Sixties that proclaimed that “the personal is the political.” Though the latter movement has had its constructive moments (for example, domestic violence, though once considered a matter of personal familial privacy that should not involve the state, is indeed a proper concern for law enforcement and the state), its undue expansion and acceptance has undermined the civility that is so essential for citizenship and the ability to handle vibrant disagreement.

Another force has entered the picture since Sennett wrote, especially on campus: identity politics. At its worst, identity politics combines therapeutic logic, personal identity, and politics. This combination is inimical to the free exchange of ideas, because it treats vibrant disagreement in matters of race, gender, etc., as a form of psychological assault. For example, this is how many advocates of identity politics reacted when student newspapers published David Horowitz’s provocative advertisement concerning racial reparations in 2001. Considering Horowitz’s advertisement a “verbal assault,” identity politics theorists at Brown asked the school’s interim president to investigate the Brown Herald for “harassment” for merely publishing Horowitz’s provocative essay. To her credit, the interim president refused to do so.

Today’s campus environment witnesses a host of programs and administrative agendas that contribute to the decline of citizenship and civility as defined above. The residential life program at the University of Delaware, which recently has attracted so much national attention, is but the tip of the iceberg. Therapeutic logic, identity politics, and the infantilization of students have compromised belief in the type of mentality that makes public citizenship feasible. The values associated with public citizenship still exist and struggle for recognition, but they are seldom given even equal weight in university politics and administration.

The status of civility on campus is a problem for American freedom, for, as Tocqueville wrote when American democracy was in its adolescence, manners and civility constitute the “forms of liberty” that are necessary to support freedom in the long run. Manners and civility are universal norms to which all citizens are expected to adhere, regardless of the many things -- race, gender, religion, class, and identity -- that divide us. And they foster the conditions that make vibrant debate and disagreement more tolerable and feasible. Is it any wonder that the decline of civility and the decline of free speech on campus have gone hand-in-hand?
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