Harvard University has long been a center of controversy. Often it’s an embarrassment to the university. But the Dean of Social Science there, somebody called Lawrence D. Bobo, has come up with a brilliant solution: Make the faculty shut up. Bobo’s babble just has to be read to be believed:
Is it outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention into University business? And does the broad publication of such views cross a line into sanctionable violations of professional conduct?
Yes it is and yes it does.
A faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government — to intervene in Harvard’s affairs.
That’s to say, if faculty members publicly criticize Harvard, that might encourage the lowly people outside the ivy tower to criticize us, and we can’t have that.
Fine, Bobo. If you don’t want “external actors” like me, an ex-employee, to criticize your little school in Cambridge, then first advise it to stop issuing press releases, asking for donations, recruiting students, and accepting government money. Then we outside peasants will be glad to ignore you.
Naturally, Bobo cites Schenk v. United States, where the Supreme Court ruled you can be locked away for criticizing government policy: “The truth is that free speech has limits — it’s why you can’t escape sanction for shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” All censorship advocates seem to feel obligated to affirm their loyalty to Wilsonian tyranny.
He soon lets it slip that it’s these disrespectful students that really irk him. “Do we allow individual faculty with large external platforms to invite external interference and encourage student misconduct without consequence?” He dreams of a vanished world (which never existed) where students respectfully say, “Yes, sir” to their professors and never question them.
Bobo the Clown has provided the country with a good laugh, I’ll grant that. In these times, that’s something.