Lots of Censure, No Censor

In a highly controversial decision this spring, Brown University officials expelled a student for shouting racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay epithets at an undergraduate in a nearby window. At other schools, such as Stanford University, a resolution was passed prohibiting similar types of "hate speech," or speech that is deemed intolerant of others.

Despite this nationwide trend towards restricting offensive and insensitive speech, Harvard has maintained a "centrist" position. Last year, after much debate, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) approved free speech guidelines that would censure, not censor, "hate speech." Protection of the First Amendment remains the primary goal of the University, Harvard adminstrators said.

"At Harvard, we have always taken a broad interpretation of the First Amendment," says acting Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky. "We have been fairly strict in protecting free speech."

Said the report, "free interchange of ideas is vital for our primary function of discovering and disseminating ideas through research, teaching and learning. Curtailing of free speech undercuts the intellectual freedom that defines our purpose."

Harvard's guidelines were drawn broadly to allow for dissent. Punishment would be administered only in cases in which dissenters broke University rules and not because of the political content of the dissent, according to the report.

The report added, however, that the University would take disciplinary steps should behavior or speech prove to be continually disruptive in its "grave disrepect for others" because of their "race, gender, ethnic group, religious beliefs or sexual orientation."

Under Fire

This year, Harvard's free speech guidelines came under fire from some students and parents for being too lenient on "hate speech" in its handling of the Confederate Flag controversy.

In accordance with its new free speech guidelines, the University did not forbid a Kirkland student from publicly displaying a Confederate Flag although many said they found the symbol offensive and insensitive, calling it a symbol of Black oppression and slavery.

Rather, the University, through a letter from President Derek C. Bok, encouraged the student to voluntarily remove the flag but said that the student's right to display the flag would not be restricted.

Despite administrative and peer pressures, the student, Bridget Kerrigan '92, said she would not remove the flag, which she said stood for her Southern pride.

In response to both Kerrigan's flag and the University's stance on the issue, several other students became involved in a symbolic free speech debate. Cabot House resident Timothy P. McCormack '91-'92 hung a Confederate flag in his dorm room window as a sign of support for Kerrigan's right to hang the flag, while Cabot House resident Jacinda T. Townsend '92 counteracted by hanging a swastika from her dorm room window, in an attempt to stretch University policy to such a limit that it would eventually ban such offensive symbols.

Despite these criticisms, the University still maintained that the protection of the First Amendment should remain the primary goal of an educational institution. "If we mean to deviate with some fashion from the First Amendment, then we're up to some very serious business," said Bok