Abstracts

The Lion, the Scarecrow and the Looking-glass, darkly: Misadventures in the War of the Worldviews

Peter A. Harmer, Professor of Exercise Science

Freedom of expression is the means to an end, therefore, it cannot be absolute. However, it must be given the broadest interpretation if it is to have value. This is particularly true in a university where a deep commitment to critical thinking should provide members of the university community with the intellectual tools to withstand sometimes terrible assaults on their personal sensibilities that are a consequence of the free expression of others.

“To try things themselves”: Freedom of Expression in a Democratic Multicultural Polity

Sammy Basu, Associate Professor of Politics

What sorts of expressions, if any, ought we — liberal-democrats in a multicultural society — to find morally intolerable? This paper consists of four parts. First, I try to affix meanings to ‘freedom of expression,’ and ‘multiculturalism,’ before offering examples of the complexities involved. In part two, I worry briefly about the tropes that often figure in standard arguments for and against free speech. Part three is a lengthy elaboration on a historical exemplar — the precocious arguments of the mid-17th c. English Levellers — of the sort of inspired adhoccery needed today. Finally, in part four, I apply this model and argue that the contemporary democratic and multicultural polity is best construed as a 'working draft' dependent on freedom of expression. Accordingly, citizens ought to allow the widest latitude to free expression, including artistic and humorous speech that is odd, evaluative, transgressive, and/or shocking, but find intolerable ‘fighting words’ that are targeted at and continue to be spoken even though they transmit direct injury as well as speech that insists that any specific group or target is in toto ineligible or unworthy to participate in the polity.

Expression and Identity: Collected Voices on “Freeing Space”

Arminda Lathrop, Communications Director and Project Coordinator for International Debate Education Association (IDEA) at Willamette University

Our identity development and understanding of self are closely tied to the way we perceive the boundaries of freedom of expression and react according to these boundaries. This essay examines the relationship between expression and identity through four unique individuals’ discussions of their experiences in expression and its role in shaping who they have become. The voices of the essay, like bold and distinct paints on a canvas, combine to illustrate the fragile beauty that accompanies the exchange of thoughts and ideas in a diverse, multicultural society.

Speech that Offends: The Treatment of Transgressive Expression and Hate Speech in the United States

Chris Hanson, CLA Student

Living in a multicultural and democratic society often means having to grapple with ideas and expressions that can be shocking, offensive, and generally unpleasant, but there is value in maintaining a diversity of views. Transgressive expression serves as the testing ground for free speech in America because the right of unfettered expression is only guaranteed by those willing to actually test boundaries. The act of testing the limits of speech has most often been taken up by writers, artists, and thinkers who actually ensure that free expression, especially that which is considered offensive, remains protected.

“Forgive me if I am forthright”— or, Conversational Freedom

Tobias Menely, Assistant Professor of English

Free speech, my essay argues, is not a space of abstract potentiality but rather a kind of interchange that must be continually tended to within the concrete domain of actual conversations. Open dialogue has often been described as a foundation of democratic society, because it is in conversation, and not simply expression, that we test each other’s beliefs while noticing and becoming responsible for our differences. However, culturally-enforced restrictions on communicative freedom manifest not only in liminal cases like banned books but also in the normative rules of politeness that circumscribe everyday conversation, in the subtle social imperatives that direct dialogue toward certain subjects and away from others, in the tonal codes that underlie expectations of conviviality and tact. In order to consider the prospects and pitfalls of free-ranging conversation, I turn to J.M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello, the protagonist of which embodies the imperative to speak frankly on difficult and important subjects while reminding us of how disturbing and uncomfortable such talk may be.

When Free Expression Gets Expensive: Legalities, Liabilities, and Realities

Warren Binford, Assistant Professor of Law, Director of Clinical Law Program

Many Americans share a very naïve and idealistic perspective on freedom of expression. We fail to appreciate that freedom of expression is just one democratic ideal that must be carefully balanced with myriad other democratic ideals such as equality and dignity. It is important to recognize our responsibility in regulating freedom of expression—both our own and the expressions of others—to ensure that we maintain a civilized society in a rapidly changing world.

The Difference Between Can and Should: Protection and Exercise of Free Speech in a Democracy

Joseph Kaczmarek, CLA Graduate, 2007

Freedom of speech is essential to both personal liberty and healthy democracy. Because of this, and because of the substantial liabilities inherent in speech regulation, governments should avoid restricting speech when at all possible. On the other hand, our society would benefit from a greater awareness of, and respect for, the difference between what we are allowed to do and what we ought to do.

Freedom of Expression

Douglas R. McGaughey, Professor of Religious Studies

Freedom and expression are two sides of a single coin. This paper examines freedom from the perspective of expression and the use of symbols in that expression. Freedom of expression involves more than to merely confront one’s audience with alternatives. The capacity to choose among given alternatives is in fact not freedom, but liberty. Much expression in the market place, in political parlance, and in the academy is concerned with liberty, not freedom. Whereas liberty is externally capable of restriction, freedom is not. Civic law can and must restrict liberty in order for society to function, but freedom itself (the transforming power of creativity) cannot be controlled by the civic law.

Freedom is at the core of what makes it possible for one to become human. Freedom distinguishes humanity from other species in degree if not kind. It is the capacity not to have to be satisfied with the world as it is but to imagine and initiate the shaping of the world as it can and should be. Freedom as a causal capacity compatible with, but not reducible, to physical causality, is a necessary presupposition since it is neither provable nor disprovable. As a necessary presupposition for us to be who we are in the order of things, we alone can and should hold ourselves responsible for what we do with this freedom.

Listening As Letting Go of Comfort and Embracing Difference: Responsibilities of the Listener in Freedom of Expression

Cassandra Farrin, Interim Director of Community Service Learning, TIUA

When we hear the phrase, “freedom of expression,” we all too often focus on the person speaking, rather than on the person who responds to him or her. In actuality, communication is a two-way process that is complex, dynamic, and highly reliant on context. Without denying the responsibilities of the speaker, it is important to consider that (1) we can assume what the other person has to say is important unless proven otherwise, (2) we have the power to look past the words a person uses and seek the purpose behind those words, (3) we have the responsibility to figure out how to relate to a person better through our communication with him or her, and (4) we have the right and responsibility to make an appropriate response to the other person.

censor this essay

Rich Schmidt, Interlibrary Loan and Electronic Reserves, Hatfield Library

Despite frequent rumors to the contrary - and increased governmental interference - freedom of expression is still going strong in this country. Unfortunately, this right for which so many have struggled, fought and died is most often being used for celebrity gossip, message boards and reality shows. Important topics like race relations have been reduced down to shouted slogans, overreaction, and perceived slights. Our freedom to express is still there; we just choose to ignore and/or waste it far too often.

Between Freedom of Speech and Cultural Diversity of Expression: Bureaucratizing the Multicultural Imagination

Nathaniel (Nacho) I. Córdova, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Media Studies

The collapse of a politics of difference into a politics of cultural recognition, along with a persistent lack of self-reflexivity, and rampant essentialism, have redounded into a bureaucratization of the multicultural imagination. The result has been increasingly atherosclerotic notions of multiculturalism, diversity, and freedom of expression that limit the rapprochement necessary to help us dispense with reified notions and move forward with an inclusive and just conception of plural community. This essay proposes a return to multiculturalism as an individual and institutional commitment to a pedagogy and politics of difference.

Great Liberty, Greater Responsibility: Free Expression at Willamette University

Shannon Lawless, CLA Graduate, 2007

If we wish to be responsible citizens in a peaceful and just multicultural democracy, we must debate with the intent of understanding, not of condemning, and only after investigating the facts as thoroughly as possible. This essay analyzes the Most Offensive Costume Party Ever, the Concerned Students for Social Justice Protest, and the lynching demonstration that occurred at Willamette University during the 2006-07 academic year. If we refuse to be governed by our immediate and emotional reactions to these events, we may find value in expression that originally disgusted us, and danger in speech that initially seemed innocuous.