Dear Editor,
Free speech on campus is facing its most serious test in decades. The recent killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, gunned down while addressing students at Utah Valley University, was a chilling reminder of how far some are willing to go to silence ideas they disagree with. Kirk’s assasination didn’t happen in isolation. According to a new report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, more than a third of students now say violence is sometimes acceptable to stop campus speech. Last April, hundreds of college and university presidents–including Trinity’s outgoing president, Joanne Berger-Sweeney–warned against political interference in higher education. These troubling trends demand a recommitment to the core values of liberal education: free inquiry and free expression.
The last edition of the Tripod included an opinion piece by Alex Gervais ‘28, titled “FOrging a Conservative Trinity,” in which the author criticizes the Formal Organizations program’s decision to hire Professor Adam Kissel, a conservative think-tanker who had previously worked for the Department of Education. While taking great pains to clarify that he’s in favor of free speech for conservatives, Gervais says that Professor Kissel’s views are so extreme that President Lugo should “review” (revoke) his contract.
To Gervais, working for President Trump puts Kissel far beyond what we can accept in polite society. He imagines a world where Trump is a marginal figure, consigned to the fringe of American politics; if only we could “see no evil, hear no evil,” Trump would simply melt away. This is not the case. 77 million Americans voted to elect Trump in 2024, he won 49 states in the Republican primary. Like it or not, conservatives are the dominant force in American politics today, and they can’t be brushed off that easily.
Shrinking the bounds of acceptable beliefs on campus to exclude half the country would profoundly deprive Trinity students of the opportunity to understand the world around them. No amount of smearing those who disagree with you as “alt-right,” “fascist” or “the most evil professor of all time” can change that. I came to Trinity to be exposed to new ideas, not sheltered from them.
Rather than welcome the opportunity to get an insider’s explanation of Trumpism, Gervais demands the administration intervene, lest an unsuspecting Trinity student encounter Professor Kissel’s views. Having the opportunity to engage with such an accomplished figure in the classroom–even one you disagree with–should be an exciting prospect, not cause for outrage.
But in a larger sense, Kissel’s specific beliefs don’t matter. It isn’t President Lugo’s job to determine which types of conservatives are allowed on campus and which are not. Trinity shouldn’t require professors to hold the “correct” position on transgender issues or pro-Palestine protests anymore than they should require them to sign a loyalty pledge to the Constitution or take communion in the Church of England. If Trinity takes academic freedom seriously, then calls for an explicitly politically motivated firing must be dismissed out of hand.
In 2019, when an online campaign demanded the removal of sociology professor Johnny Williams, President Berger-Sweeney defended him. Understanding the chilling effect that punishing a professor for exercising academic freedom will have, she seized the moment to reassert Trinity’s commitment to “freedom of expression and inquiry.” She realized what was at stake: without the ability to research, publish, teach and think freely, professors are trapped between the isolation of the ivory tower and the whims of the culture-war.
As Trinity enters uncharted waters, now with President Lugo at her helm, I hope we heed President Berger-Sweeney’s parting advice to the community: “Let us all be grateful for the treasures that Trinity has to offer and protect the academic freedom that advances human knowledge. Let us cherish these golden days and borrow the graces of generations to come.”
– Elliot Louis ’27
Well said Elliot!!
At least as dangerous as “shrinking the window of acceptable belief” is expanding it to include, for example, the defense of calls for “full military occupation of these [unnamed] cities until the crime desists” or advocating that executions be made public and that “at a certain age” children should be initiated into the ritual of watching them. These and many other quite extremist views are all positions that Charlie Kirk held and defended, and we make a serious societal mistake if we treat them as though they are harmless mainstream political opinion. Those who want to defend them cannot, in good faith, seriously object to those who would call attention to the extremism of the views themselves.
Finally, we would do well to remember the paradox of tolerance that Karl Popper outlined in his book “The Open Society and Its Enemies.” Popper–a staunch critic of Marxism and other forms of historicism (and so not someone one could easily dismiss as a leftist thinker)–articulated this paradox in a long endnote to Chapter 7 of “The Open Society and Its Enemies.” It is worth quoting at length:
“[U]nlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.” (Popper, “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” p. 581)