Over at Prawfsblawg, Howard Wasserman poses a provocative free speech theory. It arises from New York University’s choice of Jonathan Haidt as graduation speaker, which some students found disagreeable. Ironically, given that Haidt contends that universities insulate students from unpleasant ideas, student government leaders wrote a letter to the administration requesting that Haidt be disinvited.

Since the announcement on Thursday, April 30, many students have reported feelings of
disappointment, disgust, unenthusiasm, defeat, and embarrassment – feeling that their
commencement, intended to be a celebratory moment, has instead become another instance
of being misunderstood.

What to make of students trying to cancel a strident critic of cancel culture? Wasserman offers a paradigm within which to consider the options.

Snark aside, a serious question: What should a student with genuine disagreement with Haidt (whether based on his viewpoints, the questionable quality of his work, or his condescension towards the very audience he has been invited to address) do? What is the “more speech” that this student can or should undertake?

She cannot debate him because this is not a debate. This forum does not entail Q&A, so “engage, ask questions, and challenge premises” is off the table. Reactions to my prior posts show that I sit on a lonely island in finding First Amendment value in audience heckling that does not prevent the speaker from speaking. My guess is NYU will confiscate signs or other forms of silent protest. NYU might even punish a student who silently protests in the moment, such as turning her back on Haidt. I imagine if a student attempted to walk out during the speech, NYU would not allow her to return for the remainder of the ceremony.

This falls under the logical fallacy category of begging the question. It assumes that a student “with a genuine disagreement” has a right to do something to interfere with, impair, or merely register their disapproval, with the speaker.

What is left for the student? Absent herself from the speech. But that means absenting herself from an event designed to celebrate a lifecycle milestone for which she worked and spent $ 400k over the past four years. It seems unfair to say that Jonathan Haidt has a right to a forum that overcomes the student’s celebration.¹ And again, for the reasons above, the reporters would describe this as another example of refusing to listen to ideas they do not like.

So what is really left for the student? The title of this post.

The title of the post, of course, is “Shut up and listen.” While somewhat less than accurate, since there is no requirement that students walk at graduation, or that they not engage in counter-speech in whatever way suits them best, the point is that if they choose to attend graduation where the invited speaker is Haidt, then yes, at least for the duration of the speech, shut up and listen.

The right of the invited to speak unmolested by the hecklers, and the right of the people present to hear the invited speaker without the interference of those they don’t care to hear would become secondary.

Free speech culture means shut up with your criticisms or disagreements with other people’s speech. Free speech culture means students should accept, passively, without dissent, whoever the school chooses to honor with a speaker gig.

Jonathan Haidt is a Thinker, a Speaker. It is his role to say what he thinks. The students are students. Their role is to receive wisdom, to accept. The universe should be ordered to protect Haidt’s right to speak without hurt feelings.

This is a rather Trumpian misframing of the issue. Speak all you want, so long as your speech doesn’t preclude the speech of the person invited to speak. Nobody says the students can’t jump on a soapbox at the corner of 161st Street and the Grand Concourse and excoriate Haidt to their heart’s content. Maybe people will stop and listen. Maybe people will listen and cheer. Maybe their speech will capture the hearts and minds of passersby such that they will be invited to be the commencement speaker next year. And maybe not. You have the right to speak. You do not have the right to make anyone listen or have anyone give a damn.

But the problem here arose not from the students’ disagreement with Haidt, but from their call to disinvite him. Howard asserts that they have no other option, and must thus be empowered to stand on equal footing by either forcing his cancelation or disrupting his speech. Perhaps NYU’s choice of having Jonathan Haidt as speaker was ill-advised.

But NYU invited Haidt, not the students who disapproved of him to address the graduates. The call to cancel is exactly what Haidt stands against under the proposition that students are not entitled to hear only those ideas they agree with. They are not equivalents.