Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a scholarly organization of nearly 7,000 members holding diverse views on a whole range of politically contested topics. Despite our many differences, we’re united by a commitment to the principles of open inquiry.

When it comes to political topics—the proper response to a pandemic, how to vote in an upcoming election, or the best way to resolve the conflict in the Middle East—HxA does not presume to speak for our members, who hold diverse opinions about these political topics and more. And in some cases, we legally cannot take a position.

But on questions of campus policy, or public policy that directly impacts universities, including those relevant to the political protests that are currently roiling our campuses, HxA does take a stand.

HxA strongly supports the rights of student and faculty members to use public spaces on campus to express their political and moral views. We support this right of campus members—on all sides—even when they convey messages that other members of the campus community may find alarming, offensive, or even hateful.

Recent scenes of buildings being vandalized, and heavily armed police storming campus and forcefully arresting students and faculty members, are rightfully alarming to anyone who views universities as near-sacred spaces for the pursuit of knowledge. But the decisions and actions that led to those distressing scenes must also be considered.

During times of protest, as at all times on campus, universities necessarily enforce rules that govern the time, place, and manner of expression. These rules, crucially, must be neutral regarding the viewpoint and content of expression. Such rules are essential to promoting lively discussions on campus, discussions that encourage participation from all members of campus—those in the campus majority and minority, the quiet and the loud.

Highly publicized campus protests such as those at Columbia and UCLA, have not only a free speech dimension by which protestors exercise their right to call attention to neglected issues, but also a coercive dimension by which some students seek to force change by threatening to disrupt the normal operations of the university.

At some universities, students have successfully used threats to extract promises from the administration which, absent the threat, would not have been granted. Some university leaders ended protests by making strategic concessions. HxA believes that agreements that are entered into under threats are unlikely to be genuinely free, open, and mutually respectful. Such agreements also incentivize similar patterns of coercive behavior in the future.

The free speech of such protesters is rightly protected; the threats and disruption of university functioning are rightly not.

In response to clear rule violations, university leaders should consistently publicize and enforce standard university sanctions (including, at the limit, suspensions). Municipal police should be called to campus only in the most extreme cases.

Of course, campaigns of civil disobedience are always an option. Historically, some such campaigns are now rightly valorized. But, like the most famous of their antecedents, those who take up the torch of civil disobedience should be prepared to accept the consequences as a part of their act.

HxA objects to attempts by any campus constituency to “capture” the prestige of their university and attempt to enlist it on behalf of a political cause of their own. We condemn the tactics of protestors that have disrupted learning at universities around the country this spring. Intimidating students in the dorms, classrooms, dining halls and libraries; imposing political litmus tests to bar students from campus spaces; and destroying property. These tactics have forced universities to abruptly cancel in-person classes and move them online, reschedule or abandon usual grading policies for finals, and cancel or truncate graduation ceremonies. These tactics are purely political and inimical to the functioning of the university as a community of learners.

University leaders have a responsibility to enforce the rules that keep their campuses open and allow students of every viewpoint to continue learning on their campuses free of harassment, intimidation, or violence. This means that university leaders must intervene in protests when violations of policy are clear, and such interventions must be made firmly and consistently to ensure that education continues on campus.

HxA believes that our universities are made better when ideas are freely contested in a spirit of open inquiry. Both the destructive nature of some protests, and the inappropriate response of some university leaders to appropriate protests, show that we have much work to do.

John Tomasi

For more on the campus protests, watch our pop-up conversation from April 30th with John Tomasi and Musa al-Gharbi.