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Education Dive
College leaders walk a thinning legal tightrope on free speech
Indiana University's provost denounced a professor's problematic views,
showing how higher ed must balance civil liberties and inclusivity.
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Dec. 9, 2019
The tweet by the Indiana University Bloomington professor went
unnoticed at first. Two weeks passed before the internet unearthed what
Eric Rasmusen, a tenured professor of business economics and public
policy, posted on Nov. 7: an essay titled "Are Women Destroying
Academia? Probably."
In his tweet, Rasmusen pulled a line from the piece: "geniuses are
overwhelmingly male because they combine outlier high IQ with
moderately low Agreeableness and moderately low Conscientiousness." It
was published by Unz Review, a website purporting to share
"interesting, important and controversial perspectives" eschewed in the
mainstream media.
Outrage ensued, launching a national debate about the role of public
institutions in weeding out prejudice on campus when they must also
meet constitutional free speech obligations.
The day after Rasmusen's tweet went viral, Indiana U provost Lauren
Robel declared in a public statement that his views were "racist,
sexist, and homophobic."
His opinions did not "require careful parsing" for her to reach this
conclusion, Robel wrote. Rasmusen in previous postings had deemed not
only women but also gay men and black students unfit for academe,
according to the provost.
To avoid subjecting students to such bigotry, Robel wrote, the
university would force Rasmusen to engage in double-blind grading.
Administrators have set up alternative sections of his courses for
students who do not wish to enroll in his classes.
But to those who cried out for Rasmusen's dismissal, Robel wrote, as a
public university, Indiana U could not infringe on his First Amendment
rights to disseminate his views, even if they were, as she put it,
"loathsome."
"The First Amendment is strong medicine, and works both ways," Robel
wrote. "All of us are free to condemn views that we find reprehensible,
and to do so as vehemently and publicly as Professor Rasmusen expresses
his views. We are free to avoid his classes, and demand that the
university ensure that he does not, or has not, acted on those views in
ways that violate either the federal and state civil rights laws or
IU's nondiscrimination policies."
Administrators have made similarly powerful condemnations before, but
they have generally applied to white supremacists who have circulated
college campuses on speaking tours, or anonymous racist fliers or
graffiti. In 2017, University of Florida President Kent Fuchs tore into
Richard Spencer, a key figure of the alt-right movement, when Spencer
scheduled a talk there, denouncing him as racist and abhorrent.
Pressure from students for university officials to be outspoken on
these issues has amped up in recent years (calls for Rasmusen's firing
were widespread).
Experts say Robel's extraordinary, perhaps unheard of, response will
serve as a template for other administrators attempting to walk a legal
tightrope on cases that have historically remained largely out of the
public eye: balancing the civil liberties of problematic faculty
members with the inclusive environment many students demand.
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