After nearly two years spent discussing guidelines for campus speech, the Board of Trustees has voted to adopt six Principles of Free Speech and Free Expression to help guide the Brandeis community in matters of academic freedom and free expression. 

At an Oct. 17 event, University President Ron Liebowitz said of the principles, “They reflect, in my view, the purpose and historic role of the University as a place where the pursuit of knowledge is paramount and a place where ideas and opinions are freely offered no matter how new, controversial, unpopular or even offensive they may be.”

The adoption of these principles was the culmination of a process that began in Nov. 2016, when Liebowitz convened the Presidential Task Force on Free Expression. “In the U.S., we view free expression and academic freedom as fundamental principles,” Liebowitz wrote in a Nov. 22, 2016 statement announcing the task force. “But there is wide debate — among scholars, citizens, University officials, the courts, and the media — about how we define these principles. What do they really mean to us?”

The goal of the task force was to help answer these questions by creating “a set of principles that guides free and robust debate and deliberation among all members of the University community,” according to the same statement.

The task force, led by Prof. George Hall (ECON), was made up of student representatives, Board members and professors from a range of departments. Task force members considered the University’s historical relationship with free expression and academic freedom and sought commentary from the Brandeis community by holding numerous community-wide meetings, per an Oct. 10, 2018 statement from Liebowitz.

By November 2017, the task force had created and released five draft principles, which were then discussed in open meetings with the community. These draft principles became the first five principles laid out in the Oct. 10 statement: “Maximizing Free Speech in a Diverse Community, Developing Skills to Engage in Difficult Conversations, Sharing Responsibility, Rejecting Physical Violence and Distinguishing between Invited Speakers and University Honorees.”

The first principle, “Maximizing Free Speech in a Diverse Community, “explicitly” connects the University’s “free speech concerns” and its “desire for a diverse, inclusive community.” As such, the University has a responsibility to keep conversations from being shut down because of their subject matter and to encourage discussions on “the widest range of political and scholarly opinions.”

The second principle acknowledges that being able to have these conversations will entail “an ongoing educational process” and “the intellectual courage to risk discomfort for the sake of greater understanding.” In this principle, “Developing Skills to Engage in Difficult Conversations,” the University highlights the important role that the school’s curriculum will play in exposing the community to a variety of ideas.

The third principle stresses the importance of sharing responsibility, as every member of the Brandeis community has a “responsibility to foster a just and inclusive campus culture.” It also states that “the humanity of all involved” must be respected and that community members must “bear the moral responsibility” for both their actions and those actions’ impact on others.

Rejecting physical violence is the focus of the fourth principle, which distinguishes between peaceful protest, which is “fully appropriate,” and physical violence or the prevention of speech, which is “unacceptable.”

In the fifth principle, the University distinguishes between invited speakers and University honorees. While campus organizations are allowed to bring outside speakers to campus, inviting someone to campus does not mean the University endorses those guests or their organizations. However, granting an honorary degree “constitute[s] an endorsement of some major aspect of their life or work.”

Before the Board voted to adopt the principles, Liebowitz added the sixth principle, “Institutional Restrictions,” “which discusses time, place, and manner restrictions” on speech, per the Oct. 10 statement. Under this principle, the University may restrict expression “that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the University.”

This sixth principle is comparable to restrictions included in other universities’ free speech guidelines; Liebowitz highlighted Princeton University’s and the University of Chicago’s similar statements in his Oct. 10 announcement to demonstrate the root of this last principle.

The University will now review all campus policies related to academic freedom and free expression to ensure that they are consistent with the newly adopted principles.

—Sam Stockbridge contributed reporting.