At hoity-toity Haverford College in Pennsylvania, “microaggressions” can invite macro problems for transgressors of the speech code.
Haverford, which charges students $57,000 a year to attend, recently altered its speech code to ban microaggressions, which, depending on the context, can be deliberate or unintentional slights reflecting a speaker’s bias, or a massive case of oversensitivity.
In other words, they mean whatever people want them to mean.
According to the Foundation for individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, Haverford once offered a blanket commitment to free speech, as protected by the First Amendment.
Its speech code held that “open-minded and free inquiry is essential to a student’s educational development. Thus, the College recognizes the right of all students to engage in discussion, to exchange thought and opinion, and to speak or write freely on any subject.”
In addition, “the College reaffirms the freedom of assembly as an essential part of the process of discussion, inquiry, and advocacy.” “The freedom to learn, to inquire, to speak, to organize, and to act with conviction,” the code says, “is held by Haverford College to be a cornerstone of education in a free society.”
But, as FIRE notes, there was an exception to that policy that one could drive a woke truck through.
That’s because Haverford also said that it “recognize(s) that acts of discrimination and harassment, including, but not limited to, acts of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, tokenism, cultural insensitivity, discrimination based on citizenship status, discrimination based on religion, and discrimination based on national origin, accent, dialect, or usage of the English language are devoid of respect and therefore, by definition, violate this Code.”
“We understand that these discriminatory acts can take many forms, and smaller acts such as microaggressions are also devoid of respect and thus violate the Code.”
Yet the code was changed to move microaggressions from an example of bad behavior to actual bad behavior, albeit one that’s vaguely defined.
The problem is that there is no definition of a microaggression, so students could be punished at the whim of the alleged “victim.”
The revised code also now says, “We also recognize that a person’s political opinions are necessarily intertwined with their values and outlook, and thus influence their practices. These practices may violate the Honor Code. As such, students must be respectful of community standards when expressing political opinions.”
“As the Social Honor Code applies to all of our interactions at Haverford, engagement in political discourse falls within its jurisdiction, and political beliefs may not be used to excuse behavior that violates the Code. If we find that our political beliefs perpetuate discrimination, we are obligated to re-evaluate them as we would any of our beliefs that perpetuate discrimination.”
The code, according to FIRE, also notes, “[C]onfronted students weaponizing the Code’s expectation of respect in order to silence and/or invalidate the experiences of harmed parties — including invalidating experiences of harm by claiming discrimination against a privileged identity (e.g., claims of reverse-racism) or refusing to reflect on their actions — is a violation of the Code. Using one’s political beliefs to justify disrespectful or discriminatory words or actions is also a violation of the Code.”
In other words, if you, as a Haverford student, claim that affirmative-action policies are racist against whites, or simply express other opinions liberal students, professors, or faculty don’t like, you are obligated to be silenced.
So much for all that “open-minded and free inquiry.”
Oddly, college President Wendy Raymond admitted the school was severely abridging its previous policy. In a letter last month to students, she wrote, “[a] reasonable person might see language in this amendment that causes them to worry about whether they are free to share their views, whether a political affiliation, a stance on public policy, or a religious value at odds with others.”
“This shift makes an already bad policy even worse,” FIRE argued. “Indeed, to avoid Code charges under this provision, students will be forced to avoid all potentially controversial political topics.”
But that, it seems, is the goal across all of higher education.
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So much for free speech.