Op-ed: Tufts can be a haven for free speech

As a soon-to-be-graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine and member of the Tufts community, I wanted to offer some thoughts about free speech. First, I want to clarify that I understand Tufts is a private institution and can make rules about speech/expression that do not have to align with our constitutional rights. However, the rules the university establishes in regards to speech and expression are done so per the will of the student body. Therefore, you the students have incredible power in influencing the way your institution is to be governed. It is with this power that I ask you to become the champion of those who wish to say and do as they please regardless of their background, political views or philosophies. Diversity of thought is equally as important as diversity of sex, origin, culture, ethnicity, sexual preference and gender identity. Furthermore, your campus should be a breeding ground for contentious ideas and differing opinions that can be debated civilly in which the only factors that determine good ideas over bad ones are reason and logic.

I will be the first to admit that I have said and done things in my life that have offended others; everyone has. It's impossible to go through life without instances in which your free will clashes with someone else's. Offending someone or being offended is an inevitable fact of life that no one should shy away from. These interactions can help us learn how to better treat one another and go about discussing controversial topics in a cordial manner. Furthermore, your subjective offense to what someone says, wears or does neither warrants nor allows you to silence them. Obviously, this does not include the threat of violence or inciting violence, in which cases intervention is necessary. But how someone’s shirt makes you feel is not grounds to have them punished for wearing it. Even if the act in question is grossly offensive, that person should be allowed to do it and suffer the consequences of trying to explain their actions to a society wholly adept at public shaming. The point I am encouraging is that regardless of your subjective reality, freedom of expression protects the rights of the offender as much as it protects your rights to say that you are offended. This is a principle that we should defend at all costs and that Tufts students should advocate for on their campuses.

The common rebuttal to my argument thus far is the following: Subjectively offensive statements/actions can make people on campus feel unsafe and therefore, by restricting, regulating and punishing people for subjective offenses, you are making your campus safer. First of all, feeling safe and being safe are two very different things. Obviously, you want students to feel safe on your campus, but again, this returns to an individual's subjective reality about a situation. I feel safe on an airplane while others may not. Some students may not feel safe smoking pot or drinking alcohol while others have no hesitancy. The question students should really be asking themselves is the following: Is Tufts University a safe place? The answer is overwhelming yes.

Just glancing at the campus safety statistics, in 2015, there were 29 reported cases of rape, aggravated assault and burglary on the Medford/Somerville campus, which means that over 99 percent of students did not report such crimes that year. While it is tragic for those who fall victims to these crimes and we should continue to work toward eradicating these numbers entirely, it seems unfounded that inhibiting free speech will lower these numbers. Furthermore, my efforts to find evidence that campus speech codes reduce the amount of physical violence on campus did not yield any significant results. (However, if anyone knows of such studies I would be more than interested to read them.) Therefore, speech codes on campus for the sole purpose of preventing violence appear to be irrelevant at this point in time.

Finally, we need to make the important distinction that being offended by something is radically different than being in physical danger. Physical danger includes instances in which someone has threatened violence against you personally, incited violence or has violated your physical person without your consent. In any situation in which you are in physical danger due to the actions of another individual, intervention is necessary to keep you safe and to punish the perpetrators for their actions. Unless you are in physical danger, you do not have the right to silence or punish others for whatever way they are expressing themselves. In any new environment we enter, we must always assess how comfortable we as individuals feel with the situation around us. If someone says something we do not like, we can ask them not to say it or to explain why they said it. You would hope that the person is decent and will comply with your requests or engage you in discussion, but they still have the freedom to do as they please as long as it’s not harming you. Someone wearing an offensive Halloween costume near you does not all of the sudden put you in danger. You can voice your opinion about their costume, but you do not have the right to punish them for wearing it.

The supposed famous line often attributed to Voltaire goes, “I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This is a principle that all participating in higher education should hold close to their heart. I am optimistic that the Tufts community can become a haven for free speech and expression. As students, you have power to influence what happens on campus and what intellectual dialogue you will engage in. I implore you to invite those with differing views from your own and to entertain them with debate and civil discussion about their views. You defeat bad ideas by letting them defeat themselves, not by silencing them.