Tyranny of the mind at the University of Virginia

When a former vice president of the United States comes to a college campus, most universities roll out the red carpet. A visit by Al Gore to share his vision for ending climate change costs six figures as an honorarium, even if most students today weren’t even alive during his tenure in office.

But when former Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to speak, the police deploy in force to stop the speech because of threatened violence. Not actual police, mind you, but speech police, and not necessarily violence threatened against the former vice president. Instead, students argue that Pence’s mere presence on campus is a form of violence against themselves.

This is the situation at the University of Virginia. The student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, published an editorial titled, “Dangerous rhetoric is not entitled to a platform.” The subhead is even more subversive: “Speech that threatens the lives of those on Grounds is unjustifiable.”

The poisonous pens of the paper’s editorial board declared, “Hateful rhetoric is violence—and that is impermissible.” Specific to Mr. Pence, the board said his views on same-sex marriage, the Black Lives Matter movement, transgender persons, and immigration collectively “spread rhetoric that directly threatens the presence and lives of our community members.” Labeling Pence a “homophobic, racist and transphobic politician,” the editorial lambasted the university administration’s “silence,” which constitutes “a choice to fail to protect the lives of those on Grounds [the school’s word for campus] who Pence blatantly threatens through his rhetoric and policies.” The editors continued this way for several more paragraphs, but you get the picture.

There are layers of error here. To say that one opposes same-sex marriage or does not want to defund the police and does not believe that men should compete in women’s sports is not the same as being “homophobic, racist, and transphobic” or a bigot. To classify legitimate, widely held, mainstream political positions as hateful is a cheap ad hominem, not a serious argument.

Second, nothing in the materials provided in advance of the speech indicates that Pence intends to address same-sex marriage, Black Lives Matter, or transgender rights in his speech. Indeed, the identified topic is the nation’s history, especially its founding era. Thus, it is not the words he will say but his mere presence (“platforming”) that is the problem. Much as with Kristen Waggoner at Yale Law School, it is not what one says in this forum but what one has said in other forums that creates the imperative of silencing.

Third, speech is not violence. Any noses punched or blood drawn will be merely rhetorical devices, figures of speech; no students will be bandaged or hospitalized after attending. Equating speech to violence is to draw a false comparison, to commit an intellectual error. In law, we have a crime—incitement to violence—which is words that lead to violence. But the nature of the crime shows they are two separate concepts: words and violence. They are not the same thing.

Plus, no student will be compelled to attend Pence’s speech, any more than any high school student seeking a university education is forced to attend the University of Virginia in the first place. So the only students subjected to Pence’s perspectives, on the founding or any other topic, will be those who choose to be there in the first place.

All of this is especially insidious at the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson. The former president of the United States had listed on his tombstone the founding of the University of Virginia as one of his proudest accomplishments. Etched in granite on Jefferson’s monument in Washington is his pledge to oppose “every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” What would he think of the students now at his university, establishing just such a tyranny?

And it is doubly ironic because the leading Supreme Court case on student organizations’ free speech on campus is Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia et al. In that instance, the university had denied funding to a Christian student newspaper because of its religious affiliation. The court reversed the university’s policy, holding that the school had to treat all student organizations equally regardless of their viewpoint. That principle holds true here: Public universities like the University of Virginia may not lawfully suppress an event featuring former Vice President Pence while allowing ones featuring former Vice President Gore or his ideological ilk.

Mike Pence has every right to speak at the University of Virginia, the students of Young America’s Foundation have every right to invite him, and to the editors of the Cavalier Daily, the only response should be: Grow up.