ABSTRACT

The current free speech controversy on campus is a clash of two cultures. What I call “1A culture,” after the first amendment, is exemplified in Mill’s liberal vision that education “should not tell us what to believe, but help us to form our own belief in a manner worthy of intelligent beings.” 1A culture clashes with what I dub Title IX culture after the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 1A culture is well-known, as are its critics, but Title IX culture (not Title IX itself) seems averse to 1A culture. After drawing on some social survey data to sketch attitudes and dispositions, I critique two arguments commonly found in Title IX culture.

I examine Jeremy Waldron’s group libel argument in The Harm in Hate Speech and I apply it to campus speech regulation. Waldron claims discriminatory speech represents a form of group libel. Waldron’s particular schema for differentiating between group libel and acceptable content re-invigorates epistemic worries about “regulators getting it wrong” that have faded from the free speech debate.

Even if some speech does not rise to the level of hate, it may still privilege the dominant culture, and this is a reason to censor privileged viewpoints. In “Repressive Tolerance,” Marcuse makes an epistemic and a moral claim. First, it is possible to know which policies, opinions, and movements would promote justice. Second, morally regressive ideals should be suppressed in order to strengthen progressive ones. I express skepticism about the epistemic claim and argue that the moral claim is much weaker without Marcuse’s Marxist assumptions. I apply Mill’s “dead dogma” argument to the concept of repressive tolerance and argue the greatest cost of repression for equality is that Title IX culture will no longer be able to claim it’s derision for 1A culture is epistemically justified.