Lawsuit slaps heart of academic freedom (opinion)

A lawsuit filed in July against the Columbia University chapter of the American Association of University Professors, along with 20 other organizations and individuals, alleged that our public statements in support of antiwar and pro-Palestinian student protests last spring harmed other students by contributing to the campus shutdown that followed. Unraveling the cynical logic of this claim is for the courts. But what is clear from this lawsuit is that the purpose of such recourse to legal theater is not to ameliorate harm. It is to silence public and academic speech.

This effort is part and parcel of a broader attack on higher education, one characterized by legislative attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion; instruction; and tenure; and an epidemic of jawboning by public officials meddling into curricula, campus programming and even the careers of individual faculty members. Following a series of executive orders from President Donald Trump, colleges and universities across the country now find themselves in the crosshairs.

The tactic used against us is what is known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). These suits are brought principally not to win in court but to harass and intimidate individuals or groups into curtailing speech. By entangling defendants in costly and invasive litigation—or even just threatening to do so—plaintiffs can frighten those with whom they disagree into silence. In the context of higher education, this comes at an incalculable cost.

On its own, this lawsuit certainly threatens the speech of Columbia-AAUP. But in the current climate, it also opens a front in the widespread attack on universities as sanctuaries of critical inquiry and reasoned debate. In their mere filing, lawsuits like this one aim especially to chill dissenting speech, including speech that takes place at the intersection of the classroom and the public square. Such legal instruments are a dangerous cudgel that could be used to threaten broad swaths of political and academic speech on American campuses.

Our chapter has precisely sought to combat this hostile environment in the speech over which we are being sued. In multiple public statements made during the height of the campus protests last spring, we condemned partisan congressional meddling in Columbia’s affairs, arguing that this “undermine[s] the traditions of shared governance and academic freedom.” We called for a vote of no confidence in university leadership, who we believe “failed utterly to defend faculty and students” and “colluded in political interference.” And we affirmed the Columbia Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ subsequent vote of no confidence in our then-president for her “failure to resist politically motivated attacks on higher education,” whereby she endangered students and undermined our rights as faculty.

In challenging our statements in support of faculty and students, this particular SLAPP targets both our constitutionally protected public speech and our academic freedom. We are fortunate enough to be represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and civil rights firm Wang Hecker LLP, who have filed a motion to dismiss on our behalf that utilizes New York State’s anti-SLAPP law, one of the 35 state-level anti-SLAPP laws on the books across the United States. But the outcome of a SLAPP shouldn’t depend on your counsel, or the state in which you live. Unfortunately, for many faculty and students faced with a SLAPP, the only available option may well be to self-censor.

Interests committed to the mainstream political consensus have found pro-Palestinian political advocacy on American campuses to be unacceptable. To silence dissent, they have shown themselves willing to use every instrument at their disposal in a manner that recalls the red scares of the early and mid-20th century, when character assassination and blacklists were employed in industry and civil society, including academia. This SLAPP revives such measures, as do the theatrical congressional grillings of college presidents, including our own, and the wave of censorship that has swept over higher education during the course of the past year. In this context, attacks on public speech are also attacks on academic freedom.

Academic freedom depends essentially upon a social contract that remains under perpetual debate both inside and outside the academy. SLAPPs like this one aim at the very heart of that contract, which accords to academics relative autonomy to explore difficult and often uncomfortable truths on the assumption that those truths will ultimately benefit society. Although the classroom, the laboratory and the library are classic sites for the practice and protection of this freedom, the truths pursued there translate to worlds outside the campus gates. Bullying faculty and students into self-censorship in the public square, SLAPPs seek to further silence and constrain the pursuit of uncomfortable truths in the classroom.

Scholarly knowledge consists of truth claims, not dicta. Whether exercised in the classroom or in the public square, academic freedom is therefore the freedom to make and to contest such claims. This goes for all sides in a debate, including the debates still quietly raging on our campuses. However, a stark reality disclosed by SLAPPs is that political force is now poised to govern the contest over truth in place of enlightened reason and democratic deliberation.

If such high-minded concepts as truth claims, enlightened reason and democratic debate seem too lofty for the dirty realism of the day, it is important to remember that these still lie at the core of any academic freedom worthy of the name. Academic freedom is not a narrowly academic matter; it is a matter of determining whether something is or is not true. SLAPPs are designed to decide such questions in advance, in favor of those who can afford the attorneys, or on whose behalf politically motivated law firms work. It is time for us to exercise our freedoms and responsibilities as academics, in defense of our right and that of our students to speak.