In my last exchange with John K. Wilson, he tried making the case that Indoctrinate U suffers from “biases, distortions, and omissions” and that I am only a fair-weather friend of free speech.

My response pointed out the various ways in which Wilson makes off-base assumptions about my views. It seems that unless Wilson hears me explicitly state an opinion, he simply assumes I hold whatever position he disagrees with most and proceeds to argue against me from there.

And in his latest piece, a response-to-my-response-to-his-critique, Wilson does it again.

As reluctant as I am to encourage him to issue another interrogatory of my views, Wilson does ask three direct questions that merit answers. He introduces his questions in this discussion:

Maloney wonders “why Mr. Wilson believes I only favor free speech for folks I agree with is beyond me.” The reason is given in my article. At times, conservatives in the movie (including Maloney) seem to advocate censorship in a few cases. So I asked Maloney, does he believe that Foothill College should have banned flyers criticizing the conservative student? Does he believe that the professor in Michigan who denounced a student’s op-ed on affirmative action should have been punished or fired? Does he endorse David Horowitz and ACTA’s efforts to stop professors from discussing politics in classes? I didn’t get a clear answer. I have no problem with Maloney expressing his conservative viewpoint and criticizing professors he disagrees with; but I do want to know if he really support free speech for those he disagrees with.

As for military recruiters, I have my disagreements with the protesters and I have no doubt that some of them should be arrested if they step over the line. However, Maloney still hasn’t defended the right of students to protest, and he hasn’t acknowledged the fact that the rights of student protesters have been restricted at many campuses.

I appreciate Wilson’s questions, but first I need to address another one of those pesky assumptions by turning the tables and asking him a question. He claims, “conservatives in the movie (including Maloney) seem to advocate censorship in a few cases.”

So, my question: When and in what way did I “seem to” advocate censorship?

Perhaps Wilson would have me preface each case in the film with a disclaimer: “Warning: Even though the following scene contains no call for censorship, please be aware that the following scene contains no call for censorship.”

Anyway, getting back to his questions...

Question 1: “Does [Maloney] believe that Foothill College should have banned flyers criticizing the conservative student?”

No, I don’t, and I never said I did.

My purpose in going to Foothill was to try to determine if a professor was responsible for producing the flyers in question. If a professor of Ahmad al-Qoloushi wrote flyers disparaging him, it would be a major revelation that would add to the public’s understanding of the story. And because those flyers were literally stamped with the approval of the school, someone in the administration had to know whether a professor submitted those flyers for approval.

Unfortunately, I ran into a comically evasive administrator who stonewalled, stammered and summoned the police. So I never got a straight answer.

In the film, I wanted the audience to see the contrasts among the different handling of controversial flyers at different schools. At a number of schools, rather tame flyers have been censored, sometimes leading to Kafkaesque disciplinary proceedings that drag on for months. Yet in this case, flyers attacking a student by name got the school’s official stamp of approval. Merely pointing out this contrast should not be confused with advocating censorship.

Question 2: “Does [Maloney] believe that the professor in Michigan who denounced a student’s op-ed on affirmative action should have been punished or fired?”

(In the case Wilson references, a professor harshly criticized a student in class over her letter in the school paper. In the letter, the student discussed her multi-racial family and how it informed her opinion against racial preferences.)

In general, I think that a professor who uses class time to give political lectures when the issues involved have nothing to do with the class is acting in an unprofessional manner. Doubly so when the professor is haranguing a student over political views that she never expressed in class and that had nothing to do with the topic being taught.

Do I think the professor should be fired or otherwise punished? Not for this. But I’d hope that someone somewhere in the university would remind this professor what it means to act like a professional.

And if students ever decided to demand a refund for the portion class time wasted on off-topic political rants by professors who repeatedly and egregiously abuse their academic freedom, a school would be on thin moral ground to deny that refund.

Academic freedom bears a cost that is paid for by tuition and tax dollars, and it carries with it the expectation that professors will use that freedom to fulfill their educational responsibilities to students.

Having said all that, I think that professors should be given absolute freedom to discuss whatever controversial topics they wish in the classroom, when it relates to the educational purpose of the class. And outside of class, of course, professors are free to say whatever they’d like.

Question 3: “Does [Maloney] endorse David Horowitz and ACTA’s efforts to stop professors from discussing politics in classes?”

Wilson refers to a person and an organization, each with a long history of activism in academic circles, so I’m not entirely sure what efforts in particular he’s asking me to discuss.

I think my answer above covers my view of political advertising in class well enough.

But in case it’s still not clear where I stand, rather than consign myself to an infinite loop of questions aimed at determining whether I really am a genuine supporter of free speech in Wilson’s eyes, let me offer a rough outline of my thinking:

• People should have the right to speak their minds
• Academic freedom does not exempt professors from criticism
• Feeling offended by speech does not give one the right to suppress it
• People should not be forced to finance the speech of others
• If a person declines to finance the someone else’s speech, that is not censorship
• The right to speak encompasses groups, so that assembly and protest are possible
• A protest that disrupts an event or otherwise interferes with the speech or movement of others is not covered by the concept of free speech

Hopefully this list will help make Wilson’s future assumptions about my views a little more accurate.

But, in the end, it may not matter much. I don’t think I’m going to persuade him. The author of a book called The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education might have a vested interest in not being persuaded by the data and cases covered in Indoctrinate U.

Wilson closes his piece with a plug for one of his other books and a call to “unite in the struggle for freedom of expression.”

As Wilson knows from my previous response, I publicly defended Ward Churchill’s speech rights despite comments that I personally found abhorrent. I’m already on the free-speech-in-the-abstract team. But since Wilson still seems not to believe me, I’ll just end with something I wrote last September:

Erwin Chemerinsky, “a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law” according to the Los Angeles Times, was hired and then quickly fired by the Irvine campus of the University of California. The culprit, says Chancellor Michael V. Drake, was “conservatives out to get” Chemerinsky. Later on, an “emotional” Drake, “his voice at times quivering,” reversed his position and “said there had been no outside pressure and that he had decided to reject Chemerinsky” himself because the professor’s views were “polarizing.”

Given the unreliability of Chancellor Drake’s public testimony, it’s hard to know whether there really was a conservative cabal trying to take out Chemerinsky, or whether he was just the victim of a spineless administrator seeking to avoid controversy. Either way, the only decent thing for the university to do is to re-hire Chemerinsky, assuming he’d be forgiving enough to take the job instead of taking the school to court.

[...]

If there was a concerted effort among conservatives to block Chemerinsky, they probably felt justified in doing so, thinking that they’d just be preventing the dominant campus thinking from dominating another campus. But it’s hard to argue for tolerance of your views when you’re damaging the career of a man whose only transgression is disagreeing with you.

Whatever the sequence of events that led to Chemerinsky’s firing, conservatives who believe that their views deserve better respect on campus must stand with him on principle.

And who knows? Maybe the next time a conservative professor runs into career trouble for his or her views, some decent-hearted decision-maker will think back to this story and remember how not to act.

Respect can be brought back to campus if only enough people have the courage to practice it.