Bowman and Gelber on Responding to Hate Speech: Counterspeech and the University @Prof_KBowman @KGelber @michiganstateu @UQ_News

Kristine L. Bowman, Michigan State University, and Katharine Gelber, University of Queensland, have published Responding to Hate Speech: Counterspeech and the University at 28 Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law 248 (2021). Here is the abstract.

How should universities–and specifically university presidents–respond to hate speech on their campuses? Most responses to this question revolve around whether the hate speech should be restricted, but we take a different approach. Instead offocusing on the hate speech, we focus on what a university leader can say to disrupt the harm that the hate speech causes, while also allowing the hate speech to proceed in line with First Amendment protections and principles. Drawing on speech act theory from philosophy of language, we argue that a university leader’s silence in these situations whether literal or in the form of ineffective counterspeech is not a neutral response. Such silence accommodates injustice. However; a leader who engages in counterspeech can challenge the hate speech’s legitimacy and prevent it from resetting the terms of debate in such a way that the discrimination in the hate speech becomes normalized, even if this counterspeech cannot undo the harm entirely. Thus, the kind of counterspeech that university leaders undertake matters a great deal. If it challenges the implied authority of the speaker and seeks to counter the inegalitarian norms the hate speech embodies, counterspeech can mitigate the harms of hate speech and simultaneously enhance the free speech environment on campus. This Article thus does three things. It contributes important insights to the specific literature about free speech on campus, it contributes more widely to the literature about free speech and harmful speech, and it suggests a way of systematically refraining thinking about the boundaries between free speech and harmful speech in campus debates.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.