Recently a conservative political commentator named Ben Shapiro was invited to speak at Chicago-based DePaul University, the largest private Catholic college in America. However, this invitation was abruptly revoked by the school administration, citing safety concerns over student reaction to his planned event. This is only the latest incident in an increasingly visible history of uninvited guests, predominantly conservative speakers, beckoned by small right-wing student groups before being blocked by concerned administrations.
Situations involving the apparent conflict of free speech and safe spaces tend to lead proponents of either concept to only dig their feet into the mud, convinced that their position is surely the one which history will remember proudly. Yet the question ought to be asked: Is all that necessary? Escalation almost never resolves anything, so let’s take a look at both arguments and examine their respective qualities.
One of the most reoccurring conservative concern with these bans is that they threaten the free speech of the pundits targeted. However, I will argue that this does not apply to our uninvited guests. Protection of free speech, like the other protections laid out in the Bill of Rights, is concerned with a set of legal protections. These are only relevant when comparing citizens (or, as of 2010, corporations) against the government. While you could stretch the argument far enough to reasonably say that public universities are bound by the spirit of the Bill of Rights, there is no correlating obligation for a private university like DePaul.
The other side of the aisle, as it were, is concerned with the violation of safe spaces if conservative speakers were allowed. Analyzing the contours and context of safe spaces is a topic beyond the scope of this piece, yet it is worth highlighting the internal disagreement found among college communities about exactly what safe spaces should be. A deep lack of consensus within the collective college community about what safe spaces represent is, in my belief, what handicaps this position.
To take a step back and examine both perspectives, we find that the free speech argument has been misapplied and the safe space argument is not internally formed enough to be contextually appropriate. Ultimately, I believe it is the right of every community to decide how it acts, yet these reactive twitches, like a regrettable "Nickleback" phase, are something I hope our communities can eventually grow out of.
