8 - Places of Higher Learning

Summary

As the Supreme Court has noted, universities “began as voluntary and spontaneous assemblages or concourses for students to speak and to write and to learn.” Although they frequently tout their commitment to First Amendment freedoms, the policies and practices of today's American colleges and universities frequently evince ignorance with respect to basic free speech principles. In particular, like many officials, college and university administrators often look with disfavor upon and seek to restrict public expression and displays of contention.

Although scholars and commentators have paid much attention to the infamous “speech codes” adopted by some universities in the 1980s and 1990s, the transformation of public spaces on university campuses has gone largely unnoticed. Places of higher learning have essentially become mirror images of the expressive topography outside campus gates. Today public colleges and universities are governed by “public order management systems” similar to those that have stifled expression in other places on the expressive topography (see Chapter 6). On many campuses, officials erect and enforce the same sort of buffers, bubbles, and “free speech zones” that inhibit public expression off campus. Indeed in some places of higher learning the situation is actually far worse than elsewhere on the expressive topography. In addition to often hidden but in many cases still-operative speech codes, campus administrators rely upon standardless licensing schemes, onerous fees, notice and registration requirements, restrictions on use of campus spaces by “outsiders,” and even outright content and manner bans to restrict expression in public areas.