The insidious conspiracy to provoke college students into saying silly things

Michael Simkovic has a blog post describing and denouncing a plot by “a network of organizations funded by wealthy conservatives and libertarians including the Koch Brothers” to discredit universities. [UPDATE: At Professor Simkovic’s request, I emphasize that Professor Simkovic uses the term “network,” not “conspiracy,” in his post]. Simkovic’s critical piece of evidence is a speech by that master Conspirator, Eugene Volokh, who gave a talk in New York City sponsored by a libertarian think tank, the Institute for Human Studies. In his talk, Volokh advised speakers (in Simkovic’s words) to express “controversial conservative and libertarian views on campus, draw the ire of their university administrations and progressive students, and document the incidents for him so that he could publicize them through his blog, the Volokh Conspiracy, which was then distributed by the Washington Post.” By video-recording studnets’ disruptive antics, these conspirators intend to “discredit universities in the eyes of conservatives, libertarians, and moderates.”

According to Simkovic’s post, the problem with these conservative speaking events is that “[m]any lectures about ‘free speech’ are not really about ‘free speech,’ but rather are intended to provoke a reaction that will discredit universities.” Simkovic advises students and journalists not to take the bait: Do not attend the events, and these agents provocateurs will just go away.

Both Simkovic’s juxtaposition of “free speech” with provocation and his tactical advice strike me as misguided. Using speech to to provoke a foolish reaction from an audience is a core purpose of free speech. Moreover, encouraging students to boycott speakers who provoke them into silliness is a bad idea, because it conceals a problem that needs to be solved: Many of our students cannot tell the difference between an epithet that deserves to be shouted down or boycotted and a reasoned argument that requires a reasoned response.

Consider, first, why insincere speech that reveals an audience’s bad values is useful. Obtaining information about what an insular group really thinks is difficult to the extent that such groups obfuscate with vague abstractions when broadcasting their views to outsiders (“Down with racism!” “Crush the patriarchy!”) To gauge the specific content and intensity of such groups’ views, one has to confront them with a specific position and see how they react. Consider, as an example, the IWW organizer Frank Little’s reading the Declaration of Independence in Spokane in order to provoke the police into arresting him. Little’s goal was not to provide information about the Declaration of Independnece (presumably widely available in print in 1910) but rather to provide information about the vicious bullying of Spokane law enforcement. Revealing this information is an important purpose of public expression: Sometimes the information that one wants to elicit with one’s speech comes from the audience, not the speaker.

A conservative speaker who offers an anodyne opinion in order to provoke an unreasonable reaction is likewise providing a useful service in revealing the current sad state of students’ stunning incapacity for reasoned argument. For instance, Josh Blackmun provoked some CUNY students into mindless “four legs good, two legs bad” chanting simply by showing up on campus, apparently because Josh had earlier criticized DAPA/DACA’s legality. For the record, I believe that both DACA and DAPA constitute exercises of proper prosecutorial discretion. But the question is a close one: The depth of these kids’ immaturity is starkly revealed to the world when they respond to Josh’s past criticism of DACA/DAPA only by shouting “shame on you!” in unison. Revealing that ignorance/indifference to intelligent argument is not an insidious conspiracy: It is an important public service.

Simkovic’s tactical advice, therefore, strikes me as misguided because it papers over rather than addresses the problem of students’ intellectual immaturity. The deepest problem with those chanting students, in my view, is not that they interrupt speakers. (Josh was not interrupted for very long, after all). The deeper problem is that they cannot distinguish between a Milo Yiannopoulos and a Josh Blackmun: These students’ tastes in argument are so debased that all views different from their own sound the same to them. White supremacist gibberish and reasoned opinions about the scope of the President’s executive powers all get the same treatment, because the students simply cannot tell the difference. Telling students to boycott everyone who offends them does not solve this problem: It merely conceals it.

So here’s some alternative advice. When someone like Josh comes to campus, how about sitting quietly during the talk, waiting for the Q&A, and then asking him an intelligent question about how he distinguishes between DACA/DAPA and all of the past Presidents’ issuing of work authorizations to unlawfully present people? (I guarantee that you will get an answer: Josh is not shy about sharing his views). Invest the time that you would otherwise spend on poster-making to read up on Article II and prosecutorial discretion. Save the chanting, posters, or boycotts for people who have nothing to say.

Of course, this alternative strategy will require students to be able to distinguish between an argument and an epithet. But that inability is precisely the problem that conservative campus speakers have revealed. Covering the problem up with a boycott might make the students look less ridiculous, but it will not make them more discerning.