Steven McGuire talking to Cornell community members about free expression, April 13, 2023 (Photo by Samuel Kim)
This past Thursday, Steven McGuire, the Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), spoke to students about campus free expression.
Dr. McGuire discussed both the importance of protecting free expression in universities and specific proposals for improving campus discourse. The talk was co-sponsored by the Cornell Republicans, the Cornell Political Union, and this very publication.
From conservative academic to full-time free speech defender
McGuire described his journey from being a conservative academic studying political theory to entering his current role at ACTA. In 2015 and 2016, McGuire noticed that campus discourse started to change for the worse, specifically while he was at Villanova University. During his time there, the university’s Matthew J. Ryan Center invited American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray to speak. Murray was known for his controversial book The Bell Curve.
Murray’s event at Villanova was scheduled to take place only a month after protesters shut him down at Middlebury College. Recalling how the school prepared for the event, McGuire said that the center wrote a couple of op-eds “explaining why we’ve invited Charles Murray, that we haven’t invited him to speak about The Bell Curve.”
There were protests against the Villanova event. “They brought an extra police presence on campus,” McGuire told the audience assembled in Warren Hall, “So we had police motorbikes, police with dogs.” The program also had to be moved to a different location, so that the speaker could easily be evacuated. “The event was disrupted for about the first 15 or 20 minutes,” McGuire added. Despite this, the event moved forward. In short, it was an “eye-opening experience” for McGuire.
McGuire’s work in academia also shed light on the state of free expression. As a political theorist, he found it difficult to avoid discussions about politics in his classes. Previously, McGuire found no problem connecting theoretical concepts to contemporary issues.
That changed with the election of then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. McGuire had an increasing sense that students not only wished to avoid talking about Trump, but also did not want to talk about anything controversial. However, McGuire felt that part of teaching political theory was to engage and think about difficult issues posed by controversial discussions.
It was after seeing this that McGuire joined ACTA in May 2022 as the Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, with the objective of promoting free expression and intellectual diversity on campuses.
Current threats to campus free speech
McGuire cited several statistics from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) on Cornell’s campus discourse. According to FIRE’s survey, 62% of students report having to self-censor at least occasionally. Out of 203 universities, Cornell ranked 188th in perceived administrative support for free speech.
He pointed out a lack of political diversity at Cornell among staff and faculty. The Cornell Daily Sun’s reporting found that 98% of faculty and staff donations went to Democrats and more left-leaning political action committees in 2020. Only four professors donated to President Trump’s re-election campaign or Republican groups.
Ann Coulter’s visit was also brought up by the speaker. In November 2020, conservative commentator Ann Coulter ‘84 visited Cornell with the intention of talking about the recent midterm elections. However, when the event began, she was interrupted with protest chants, circus music, and “raspberries” blown by demonstrators.
“[These disruptions] do seem to be happening with increasing regularity,” McGuire noted. He highlighted the recent case of swimmer Riley Gaines, who was met with protests at San Francisco State University. Gaines was escorted to a classroom after the event, where she said she was barricaded for three hours. The March 9 disruption of Judge Kyle Duncan was also mentioned during the event. Both Stanford’s president and law school dean have since apologized to Duncan.
“Cornell is not alone in terms of having had an incident where a speaker was shouted down,” McGuire remarked.
The Gold Standard
ACTA’s Gold Standard for Free Expression, McGuire explained, is a “20-point program for supporting and improving free expression on-campus.” Using this plan, ACTA launches “campus freedom initiatives” at colleges and universities. Cornell was the third school targeted by the initiative.
One recommendation of the Gold Standard was to include “a free expression unit in new-student orientations.” Since students already go through orientation programming before starting school, McGuire suggested that schools organize an event introducing students to free speech and its importance.
Another suggestion was for universities to adopt both the Chicago Principles and the Kalven Report. Adopting the Kalven Report would mean that universities would maintain institutional neutrality. This means “the university itself, as an institution, will not take positions on controversial social and political issues of the day,” McGuire said, “The university is a home for critics. It is not itself a critic.”
ACTA’s Gold Standard also recommends that universities “sponsor campus debates that model civil discourse.” McGuire expressed optimism for Cornell, as the university just announced a free expression theme for the 2023-24 academic year. Cornell announced, “The Ithaca campus plans to host a series of ‘cornerstone’ events over the course of the year, but academic units and departments and student organizations will organize many others across campuses, including at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City.”
McGuire Responds to Audience Questions
Audience questions broached multiple topics, ranging from the effects of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on free speech to the causes of relative intellectual homogeneity in academia.
When asked by a student about how to increase peer engagement in free speech issues, McGuire acknowledged that, “People tend to become more interested in politics when it affects them in a very direct way.” What students can do, he suggested, is organize activities where peers can express their views. This would encourage a culture of intellectual and viewpoint diversity, in his view.
Another audience member asked about Ron DeSantis’s appointment of a more conservative board of trustees at the New College of Florida. McGuire said the ideal would be that a university would “not be subject to really controversial partisan politics.” However, though he is willing to reform the universities from within, McGuire expressed skepticism of this.
“I think that then opens the door for the possibility that there needs to be certain kinds of external pressures that are brought to bear on universities in order to make them more like what they ought to be,” McGuire added. Appointing new members to boards of trustees as governor would not be problematic in principle, McGuire said.
“Banning speech in the classroom, I am never for that,” McGuire emphasized. He expressed concern over Florida H.B. 999, which “would require faculty to censor their discussion and materials in general education courses,” according to FIRE. “There’s elements of that bill that are just unconstitutional,” McGuire noted.
Free Speech at Cornell
This is not the first event on free speech hosted at Cornell. This publication hosted FIRE’s executive vice president Nico Perrino in early February to talk about civil discourse.
The university administration has also demonstrated a greater commitment to civil discourse and free expression. University president Pollack rejected the Student Assembly’s Resolution 31 on “mandating content warnings” earlier this month. Cornell has also just announced a free expression theme for the 2023-24 academic year.
An earlier version of this piece stated that Dr. Steve McGuire joined ACTA in May 2021 as a Campus Freedom Fellow. McGuire joined ACTA in May 2022 as the Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom. Additionally, the piece originally said an audience asked a questions about the New College. This has now been changed to the New College of Florida.
