Culture Wars

Michelle DeutchmanHigher education, and education in general, is caught in the crosshairs of “culture wars” that appear not to have much to do with education, scholars are noting. The latest battle has emerged over the issue of free speech on campus, specifically the freedom to teach about systemic racism and the vestiges of white privilege. Such teaching has come under attack with calls to ban critical race theory, which is playing out in legislators’ attempts to review and restrict tenure for any faculty member who is thought to be teaching “divisive” content.

“One of the greatest threats [in the current fight] is academic freedom and state legislators trying to impose viewpoint-based laws around what can be taught at the university,” says Dr. Michelle Deutchman, executive director of the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement at the University of California.

“Using legislation to try to impact the autonomy of universities is really dangerous,” she continues.

Deutchman points out that there is already a system for reviewing the work of academics and making sure no one is off track. She says peer review, while not perfect, is a much better form of faculty accountability than allowing “people who are not experts in these things, trying to make decisions about the things that underpin” the academic enterprise.

A trojan horse?

Among the latest major legislative pushes for free speech on campus came after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., which sparked the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Then, arguments of free speech revolved around allowing speakers, like Milo Yiannopoulos and Charles Murray, to speak on campus to deliver messages many students opposed as incendiary, hate speech. The most recent reactions, involving faculty censorship and K-12 book bans, followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that spurred a resurgence in the movement.

“As we see movement towards certain issues, we see unfortunately a backlash,” Deutchman says. “Free speech is a lot about power dynamics. … As power dynamics begin to shift, people may be uncomfortable with that.” The problem, she says, is that “some people have bigger bullhorns than others.”