Arien Wagen is a senior at Northeastern University and a fellow at FIRE Campus.
When I started at Northeastern University in the fall of 2020, I had no idea how I wanted to spend my time as an undergraduate. Northeastern's campus environment is shaped by its co-op program, and students tend to be very career-focused. Most Northeastern students major in STEM or business fields.
I'm studying business administration, but I've always had interdisciplinary interests and a passion for critical thinking. During my second year, I became very interested in the intersection of politics and philosophy, and that winter I read classics such as Plato's “Democracy” and George Orwell's “1984,” which pushed me to think critically about the role of freedom of speech at the university.
Last spring, I hosted discussions about democracy, liberal education, and personal liberties through Northeastern's Ortelian Society, a small undergraduate company dedicated to classical and unorthodox thought. I also published an article in favor of academic freedom in the Northeastern University Political Review. When I met FIRE's Campus Scholars Program, I saw an opportunity to share my interests with the wider North East community.
As a private university, Northeastern is not bound by the First Amendment such as public schools. In the Free Speech 2022 College Ranking released by FIRE and College Pulse, Northeastern was ranked 155th out of 203, receiving a “below average” rating. Northeastern is also classified as a “red light” institution in FIRE's speech code rating system. Northeast restrictive protest politics it is one of his two “red light” policies.
With the help of FIRE as well as the Institute for Intercollegiate Studies and members of the Ortelian Society, I hosted two mini-conferences to start conversations about free speech and political discourse on campus.
Redesigning political discourse
The first mini-conference began with a lecture by David Corey, professor of political science at Baylor University. In his talk entitled “What is Politics?”, Corey presented a model for understanding the means and ends of politics. He argued that citizens and politicians can understand politics as either cooperative or competitive. Similarly, people can understand politics either as the pursuit of society-level goals or as individual-level goals. Given America's size and pluralism, Corey concluded that the most productive way to understand politics is through the cooperative pursuit of goals at the individual level.
These two mini-conferences engaged dozens of students in discussions about politics and the importance of free speech.
Understanding politics in this way, which Corey calls the “politics of peace,” requires moderation and tolerance. The politics of peace recognizes that using national politics to legislate on culture war issues and other divisive issues is counterproductive because no political victory is permanent. Instead, national policy should focus on broadly agreed-upon goals such as personal liberty.
Following this lecture, the Ortelian Society hosted a tour of Boston's Freedom Trail and a discussion of the work of John F. Kennedy.Speech at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort.” Kennedy's speech took place while the US focused on the space race and the arms race, two societal goals.
The defense of freedom of speech
The second mini-conference began with a talk by Nico Perrino, executive vice president of FIRE, titled “Why should we defend the speech we hate?” Perrino introduced the topic by talking about his childhood in Chicago and his own interest in free speech before introducing theoretical frameworks in support of free speech.
The first theoretical framework Perrino introduced was that of John Stuart Mill market of ideas argument from “On Liberty.” This framework holds that unrestricted reason is the best method that allows people to correct their misconceptions and refine their true beliefs. Perrino also defended free speech on informational grounds: people's speech gives others information about what they believe. As Harvey Silverglate, one of FIRE's founders, says, “it's important to know who the Nazis are in the room” so we don't turn our backs on them.
Perrino combined these theoretical frameworks with relevant bits of history and pragmatic concerns, sharing stories about Maajid Nawaz and Amnesty International, Ann Coulter's recent visit to Cornell, and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He concluded his talk with a brief biography of Nat Hentoff, a graduate of Northeastern University and author of “Free Speech for Me — But Not for You.” The second mini-conference concluded with a discussion of “A Plea For Freedom of Speech in Boston” by Frederick Dogulass and a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
These two mini-conferences engaged dozens of students in discussions about politics and the importance of free speech, helping students think critically about the values that underpin our liberal democracy, such as moderation and tolerance, and why we should defend those values. values against the opposition to preserve our free society.
