Last year, the Committee on Student Life (CSL) found Tufts' conservative magazine The Primary Source guilty of harassing students with the publication of a satirical Christmas carol parody, entitled "O Come All Ye Black Folk," and a subsequent piece about Islamic extremism.
The committee ruled that the Primary Source would be required to print bylines on all of its articles, attaching a condition to the group's funding.
Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser, supported by President Lawrence Bacow, promptly reversed the decision on the grounds that student speech should not be subject to conditions. In an e-mail to the entire student body, Bacow concurred with Glaser's decision, arguing that "the appropriate response to offensive speech is more speech, not less."
That is why the statement Bacow made on Wednesday announcing the creation of a Task Force on Freedom of Expression at Tufts should leave students scratching their heads.
The stated charge of the task force is to both "preserve freedom of expression" and to "protect members of the community from harassment without defining it so broadly as to require the university to respond to offensive speech with administrative action," according to its description on Tufts.edu.
These goals, while admirable, draw a line too thin to be walked, and represent a clear step backwards from last year's well reasoned decision that the Primary Source would not be punished for the offending articles.
After studying issues of speech at Tufts - with specific attention paid to preventing harassment - the task force will present recommendations to the Board of Trustees, who will then choose whether or not to add policy regarding the freedom of speech.
The creation of a group devoted to forming such a policy is worrisome, as any new speech policy would put the regulation of speech at Tufts in the hands of the university - rather than allowing student speakers and publications to censor and regulate their own speech.
If the trustees decide on a policy that enshrines free speech further in the Tufts community, the practical change would be minimal; organizations like the Primary Source would still be permitted to publish even unpopular or offensive material without facing punishment. Given Bacow's and Glaser's rejection of the CSL decision, this will be the case even without a new speech policy.
But a policy that serves to "protect members of the community from harassment" as a response to the CSL decision could potentially open the door to regulation or even censorship of student speech - now backed by the authority of university policy rather than the small group of faculty members that make up the CSL.
If Tufts seeks to protect unpopular voices rather than marginalize them, it should move toward less university involvement in the regulation of speech at Tufts - not more.
To Bacow's credit, he seems to personally understand the value of free speech on campus - after all, he did not see the Primary Source's controversial articles, which he described in an e-mail to the student body as personally "offensive," as a justification for limiting their speech. He opted instead to protect their right to express themselves even when it was in poor taste, and the new task force appears to be a well meaning extension of that philosophy.
Bacow's intentions here are good, but he should be sure to tread carefully as he seeks to execute them.
