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Taboos on fields of inquiry are increasingly accompanied by bans on language. According to a growing number of academic theorists, the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech can be legitimately laid aside for worthy reasons. Chief among them is if it interferes with what is billed as a new and nonconstitutional right: the right to avoid having one's feelings hurt, or what Botstein calls a "subjective interpretation of harm." Thus dozens of universities have introduced tough new codes prohibiting speech that leads to, among other things, a "demeaning atmosphere," and some of them have suspended students for using epithets toward blacks, homosexuals or other minorities, not only in classrooms but also in dormitories, in intramural sports and even off campus altogether.
"Freedom of expression is no more sacred than freedom from intolerance or bigotry," says John Jeffries, a black who is associate dean of the graduate ( school of management and urban policy at New York City's New School for Social Research. But on some campuses, hostility to white males is more or less condoned. The University of Wisconsin at Parkside suspended one student for addressing another as "Shaka Zulu"; yet the university's Madison campus held that the term red-neck was not discriminatory. At some schools, professors teach that white males can never be victims of racism, because racism is a form of repressive political power -- and white males already hold the power in Western society.
At Brown University, President Vartan Gregorian redefined the racist, wee- hours tirade of a drunken student as unacceptable behavior rather than as protected free speech and, having thereby finessed First Amendment concerns, expelled the offender. Although Gregorian insists he was responding to the whole set of circumstances, his explanation is widely disputed. Says Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff, a First Amendment activist: "Gregorian is engaged, unwittingly I suppose, in classic Orwellian speech."
In an unlikely tactical alliance to ban such activities, Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois, a conservative Republican, this month introduced a bill with the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union. The measure is designed to discourage private colleges from disciplining students "solely on the basis of conduct that is speech or other communication." It is given a good chance of passage.
In the nation's elementary and secondary schools, the polarization is not yet so extreme. But increasingly curriculums are being written to satisfy the political demands of parents and community activists. In some cases, expediency counts for more than facts. New York State officials, for example, have responded to pressure from Native American leaders by revamping the state high school curriculum to include the shaky assertion that the U.S. Constitution was based on the political system of the Iroquois Confederacy. In Berkeley, chicana activist Martha Acevedo, who is vice chairman of the school board, has blocked adoption of new textbooks despite state approval for their multicultural approach. According to her, the books lack "positive role models." She cites the depiction of a 19th century Hispanic Robin Hood-style figure who is shown in one text on a wanted poster.