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āGuidelines for Classroom Discussionā Still Stifle Free Speech at the University of South Carolina
Five years ago FIREcriticized the University of South Carolina for the presence of a document titled āGuidelines for Classroom Discussionā in the syllabus of āWomenās Studies 797: Seminar in Womenās Studies,ā a required class for a certificate of graduate study in Womenās Studies. The āGuidelinesā require that students:
1. Acknowledge that racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and other institutionalized forms of oppression exist.2. Acknowledge that one mechanism of institutionalized racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, etc., is that we are all systematically taught misinformation about our own group and about members of other groups. This is true for members of privileged and oppressed groups.3 Agree not to blame ourselves or others for the misinformation we have learned, but to accept responsibility for not repeating misinformation after we have learned otherwise.4. Assume that people-both the people we study and the members of the class-always do the best they can.°Śā¦]7 Agree to combat actively the myths and stereotypes about our own groups and other groups so that we can break down the walls which prohibit group cooperation and group gain.°Śā¦]
We wrote in our letter:
These āGuidelinesā compel students to express viewpoints they might not believe and to make fundamental assumptions with which they might not agree, under the stated, explicit, and coercive threat of being graded poorly for honest intellectual dissent. Such an ideological āloyalty oathā should be anathema to any institution devoted to learning, because it replaces the process of intellectual discovery with the imposition of dogmatic political orthodoxy. Because this class is explicitly a ārequired seminar,ā its ideological requirements violate not only the guidelines on academic freedom of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and USCās own regulations, but also, indeed, the Constitution of the United States.
It is fine for a professor to hold the above views and even to argue for them in the classroom through teaching and assigned reading. But, as we wrote in our letter, ā[I]t is categorically different to require students to hold certain arguments as unquestionable truths in order to participate in a class without penalty (let alone in a required class).ā The University of South Carolina understands and expresses this idea in its statement of āFIRERights and Freedoms Within the Academic Communityā which states:
As members of the academic community, students should be encouraged to develop the capacity for critical judgment and to engage in a sustained and independent search for truth.
[...]The freedom to learn depends upon appropriate opportunities and conditions in the classroom, on the campus and in the larger community.
Itās safe to say that the āGuidelines for Classroom Discussionā in Womenās Studies 797 do not cultivate āappropriate opportunities and conditions in the classroomā for the āfreedom to learnā and certainly do not aid in any way the development of āthe capacity for critical judgmentā or encourage āa sustained and independent search for truth.ā
Five years later, the Guidelines are . This highlights the old adage that āthe price of liberty is eternal vigilance.ā FIREcontinues to encourage the University of South Carolina to change its classroom policy for Womenās Studies 797. Please, give your students the freedoms required by the Constitution and enshrined in your own policies.
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