Letter to the Editor: In response to “The ‘right to offend’ goes both ways”

To the Editor:

This is in response to “The ‘right to offend’ goes both ways”by Will Rivitz (Dec. 16).

Will, with all due respect, you are confounding the issue of free speech with the issue of whether speech should or should not be met with social condemnation. These are two different things. As you point out, no one is arguing that First Amendment rights should be curtailed. In this sense, the “right to offend” certainly goes both ways. But you are missing a key point.

Take, for example, the drive to stop people from “appropriating” the attire of a cultural group to which they do not belong as a Halloween costume. This manifested on our campus through posters and discussion. Students used speech as a way to raise and spread awareness. On a few campuses, the administration actually issued costume guidelines.

Now, no one claims such “speech” on campus should be prevented by law. However, some who were aggrieved that their cultures were being used for others’ costumes made it clear that, in their view, this was offensive, wrong and even immoral. Others felt that there was nothing wrong with these costumes, and that the offended groups were being overly sensitive.

No one denied the other’s “right to offend,” in your sense. The argument was about whether this particular action was morally wrong. An analogous situation exists with respect to the issue of renaming the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Wilson College. And to get back to your own example, all would agree that students were legally “within their rights” to protest the expressed views of Ms. Christakis. The relevant issue was whether they were morally right in doing so.

So “[t]hose who are arguing that free speech on campuses nationwide is under attack” arenot“conflating protected speech with repercussion-free speech.” The question — and it is an important one — is whether the repercussions, which have the intended and possibly the actual effect of reducing the expression of certain views, are morally justified.

It seems to me that this is a legitimate disagreement that deserves recognition and discussion, hopefully between reasonable people of good will. It is on a different plane from, and cannot be resolved by, the recognition that “the ‘right to offend’ goes both ways.”