Randall L. Kennedy

“What’s happening to Jewish students and faculty at several elite campuses is so comprehensive and all-consuming that it can only be described as systemic antisemitism,” wrote New York Times columnist David A. French last week.

In reaching this sweeping conclusion, French relied heavily on a complaint filed in federal court against the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The complaint alleges that Harvard has discriminated against Jews and subjected them to a hostile environment, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The plaintiffs assert that Harvard is “a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment” and denounce what they characterize as the University’s “abject failure and refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct.”

The scenario is familiar: A university invites a speaker to campus that outrages some sector of the community. Perhaps the guest is Ann Coulter, Angela Davis, or Mohammed El-Kurd. Angered or disappointed, protestors demand that the invitation be withdrawn.

Many free speech advocates categorically denounce campaigns to disinvite speakers, pointing to such protests as evidence of moral and intellectual rot. They decry even more harshly authorities that rescind invitations, portraying them as shameful cowards.

It’s important that universities host a diversity of perspectives. But, as a strong supporter of free speech myself, I have to say: The reflexive, absolutist scorn for these campaigns ought to be reconsidered.

Many legal protections are grouped under two related but distinct categories: civil liberties and civil rights. The former, which includes the right to freedom of speech, protects individuals from oppression. The latter prevents wrongful discrimination against groups based on race, religion, national origin, or other attributes.

On many issues, devotees of civil rights and civil liberties coalesce. Sometimes, however, they diverge.

Consider hate speech. Civil rights activists tend to argue (and have argued since at least the 1980s) that certain types of speech are so hurtful and offensive to racial minorities that they should be prohibited. In contrast, civil libertarians tend to maintain that virtually all speech, even the most deplorable, ought to be protected.

Nearly forty years ago, then-University President Derek C. Bok wrote an open letter championing a libertarian ethos of free speech at Harvard that would satisfy even its most ardent defenders. His views, he noted, were “in keeping with the main lines of Constitutional thought.”

Six years later, Bok’s words were put to the test. When a Harvard undergraduate hung a confederate flag in the window of her room, Bok rebuffed demands to remove the flag.

“To disapprove of a particular form of communication,” he wrote in an essay for the Boston Globe, “is not enough to justify prohibiting it.”