Dawg has another post up chastising free speech advocates for their hypocrisy.

This time, the offender is one Richard Klagsbrun, of the blog Eye on a Crazy Planet. Back in November, Klagsbrun put up a post entitled “The University of Toronto’s Department of Jew Hate and Psychobabble“, in which he focused mainly on the Master’s thesis of Jenny Peto, a graduate student in the university’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Klagsbrun uses Peto’s thesis as a demonstration of the rampant anti-Semitism he sees in Canadian universities. A large portion of Klagsbrun’s post was also published in the National Post.

In his own post, Dawg denounces the “shrill nutbar Israel-right-or-wrong lobbyists” who, in his view, want Peto’s thesis “thrown on a bonfire, along with its author.”

To the best of my knowledge, Klagsbrun, who is a fan of free speech, never proposes that Peto’s thesis should be censored. In a follow-up, he unequivocally states that he does not want Peto or her advisor censored for their views.

My concern is what appears to me to be a pervasive attitude at OISE and to some extent at the University of Toronto. It is an outgrowth of an academic anti-Zionism that is at its substance exactly what the Prime Minister of Canada warned against at the international conference on anti-Semistism last week.

At the same time, I also know that Dawg’s ire is directed not so much at Klagsbrun, but at folks like Professor Irving Abella, quoted describing Peto’s thesis in the Star:

“It’s not scholarship, it’s ideology,” said Abella, a former CJC president. “It’s totally ahistorical; I found it full of untruths and distortions and held together by fatuous and very flabby analysis. It borders on anti-Semitism. . .I’m appalled that it would be acceptable to a major university.”

However, the reaction from Abella and organizations like the CJC doesn’t fit in with the hypocrisy charge, because both him and those organizations (last I checked) endorse Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act. In other words, they’re okay with censorship, so they’re not hypocrites if that is indeed what they’re calling for in this case.

Regardless, Dawg’s post ends with this rhetorical question: “May we finally put to rest the quaint notion that Speech Warriors™ mean what they say?”

*sigh*

I love Dawg, and I am pretty sure when he sticks it to the “Speech Warriors™” he’s not talking about me or anyone else here at The Volunteer.

Nevertheless…

I’ve read about half of Peto’s thesis and will not address her scholarship at this time (if ever.) If you want one sociologist’s perspective on it, Professor Werner Cohn of the University of British Columbia provides his (largely negative) view here.

Rather, I want to talk about hypocrisy and freedom of speech. Since this isn’t the first or the last time a free speech advocate has been accused of hypocrisy, it isn’t the first and won’t be the last time I’ve had to engage in this discussion. My hope is to get started on providing a sort of moral framework that may help people better understand the relationship between the free speech position (as much as there is just one free speech position), moral consistency, and the hypocrisy charge.

A confession: I’m going to have to make some distinctions. They may seem abstract and unwieldy, but they’ll prove useful.

First distinction: teleology versus deontology. Or values versus principles. Or the good versus the right. Pick your preferred terminology.

Liberals believe that an atmosphere of free speech and discussion is essential to the promotion of values that make life worth living. Like clean air, an atmosphere of free inquiry is a public good. This teleological defense of free speech need not go so far as to endorse the view that more speech is always better than less speech. For one, the benefits of more freedom of speech may need to be balanced against the harms that may accrue (e.g. to minorities) when that freedom of speech is used (e.g. by neo-Nazis.)

For this reason, I say that virtually everyone, from speech warriors to Dr. Dawg, accepts the teleological defense of freedom of speech to some degree. We all believe in the importance of what I’ve called an atmosphere of free inquiry. Where we differ — teleologically — is in just how we balance freedom of speech against other goods.

An important point: one’s teleological stance may have nothing to do with one’s position on Section 13(1) or other censorship laws. I believe an insensitivity to this point sometimes leads to charges of moral inconsistencyy that may not be warranted.

The reason there can be a separation between one’s belief in the relative value of free speech and one’s position on censorship laws is because — for libertarians, at least — the proper role of the state is first delineated by principles. John Rawls (certainly not a libertarian)  described the relationship between principles and values, or the right and the good, in this way:

Justice draws the limit, the good shows the point. Thus, the right and the good are complementary, and the priority of right does not deny this.

For Rawls, the priority of right — deontology over teleology — was an essential element of liberalism, or at least any liberalism that could satisfy the constraints of public justification. The upshot of this priority is that moral principle constrains permissible government action, and that when the government promotes values or goods it must do so only within those constraints. Thus, for Rawls, it would not be permissible for the government to deprive some of certain fundamental freedoms to promote the happiness of others, even many others.

If there is a single, consistent speech warrior position, it is that censorship laws, like Section 13(1), violate principles of right. The balance between the value of an atmosphere of free inquiry and other values may be important in other respects (for example: it may determine how individuals should allocate their personal time and resources.) It can even serve as an input to government actions that don’t violate principles of right (Rawls undoubtedly endorsed public funding for universities.) But censorship laws, whatever their value, cross the line into prohibited government action.

(I leave aside the question of how we formulate and justify principles of right, except to note that they cannot emanate from value considerations.)

It is easy enough to understand how a principled speech warrior position could look morally inconsistent, or worse, at least to one who had forgotten or wasn’t aware of the distinction just made. If principles of right are conflated with values, or else ignored all together, then a speech warrior’s refusal to endorse hate speech laws may look like an endorsement of hate speech. Because surely, there is some value to suppressing racist speech, and if it were balanced against the value of permitting hate speech, it is not clear to me that the latter value would outweigh the former. When freedom of speech is justified on the basis of a balancing test, then sometimes censorship will win.

Hence, if we were concerned only with teleology, then the speech warrior who rejected hate speech laws would either be placing too much value on Nazi speech, or would be undervaluing the benefit (i.e. to minorities) of suppressing Nazi speech. In either case, the speech warrior would look like an asshole or a fool.

Libertarians, for the most part, do not base their position on teleology, but on deontology (which is not to say they don’t appreciate the value of an atmosphere of free inquiry.)  Because the principles of right have priority regardless of the outcome of this or any other balancing test, the libertarian can accept that hate speech laws could be good in some respects, while maintaining that it would be wrong for the government to pass or enforce such laws.

This post is getting longer than I expected. I will have to finish it in an update.