What happened to freedom of speech?

There is a movement in the United States to make speech 'safe,” especially for students.

My friend the influential writer for The Economist, David Rennie, who writes under the name of Lexington, wrote a powerful article titled, 'Trigger-unhappy: Student ‘safety' has become a real threat to free speech on campus,” in the June 13 edition.

He was in Iowa a week ago to again cover the Iowa caucuses and he used his 'spare time” to write an article on the fast-spreading policy at colleges and universities which strives to cleanse teaching to create, in his words, ' … a psychologically safe learning environment, avoiding ideas or imagery that might prove distressing.”

Unfortunately for Iowa one of the egregious and now infamous cases of this was the exhibit by a University of Iowa professor of an installation on campus that was a ' … canvas effigy based on Klan robes, screen-printed with news cuttings about racial violence …”

Black students feared for their safety. The university administration ordered the installation removed. The professor had been hired as a talented 'socio-political-artist.” He explained that the work was intended to spark a discussion about racial violence. He is deeply opposed to racism. Regardless, top administrators at the University of Iowa issued at least two apologies for his offending and scaring students and they never acknowledged the symbolic value of this work. The professor left after the term ended.

Of course, genuine threats to safety, racist inciting, bringing a Bowie knife to a class of 20 students and playing with it (yes, that happened in my class - security was alerted and the problem taken care of), or other dangers must be addressed.

However, as Rennie correctly wrote, universities are centers of learning and research. Some of it is, by definition, about difficult subjects. That includes war, slavery, religious strife, pandemics and deadly disease, the Holocaust, disturbing sexual issues, mind-blowing legal discussions, mass extinctions, apocalyptic events such as meteor impacts on Earth and the end of life on the planet, etc.

My 'Latin American Politics” course contains some of the most chilling political brutality from the Spanish conquest's torture of Incas and Aztecs, to the horrors of the Chaco War in Paraguay, to the murder and torture of many military regimes and dictatorships, including genocide in Guatemala. Understanding these acts of violence is crucial to understanding Latin American politics. Must I strip these out of my class?

Iowa State University professor Bong Wie is the head of the Asteroid Deflection Research Center, in Aerospace Engineering. A student involved in that program has the right not to feel 'safe” don't you think?

If professors are required to cleanse their material and try to second guess what could be deemed 'unsafe,” that constitutes 'prior restraint.” Cornell University Law says, 'In First Amendment law, a prior restraint is government action that prohibits speech or other expression before it can take place.” 'The landmark case of Near v. Minnesota, (1931), settled the issue, with the U.S. Supreme Court finding that the First Amendment imposed a heavy presumption against the validity of a prior restraint,” according to The Legal Dictionary.

Rennie's column has reached the Economist's 1,574,803 and Internet subscribers, 100,000 unique digital subscribers, and millions more who can access selected articles for free. After his column ran I personally got dozens of emails from friends and journalists especially from Europe and Latin American asking me about this case. One Chinese journalist acquaintance now living in France emailed me, 'This sounds just like Chinese university.”

As a result of its actions in the sculpture case the University of Iowa has seriously damaged its reputation by capitulating to outraged students without thoughtful consideration of the consequences. As a result, the First Amendment now has a deep dent in it.

Rennie concluded his interesting column with the chilling, 'A perfectly safe university would not be worth attending.”

' Steffen Schmidt is professor of political science at Iowa State University. Comments: Steffenschmidt2005@gmail.com