Free Speech, But Within Reason

Opinion – By Savannah Bloom

May 4, 2025
Campus activists successfully defended free expression this week by ensuring nobody could hear the person expressing it.

I believe in free speech. I want to start there because apparently there has been some confusion following Wednesday’s protest outside Harkness Auditorium, where several hundred students gathered to defend marginalized voices by screaming continuously for approximately two hours.

Personally, I thought it was beautiful.

The controversy began when the Institute’s Forum for Intellectual Diversity invited conservative psychologist and author Jordan Peterson to campus for a lecture titled Responsibility, Meaning, and the Individual. Concerns were raised almost immediately, particularly around the decision to provide an institutional platform for ideas many students consider harmful. There was also the more practical question of why students should be expected to sit quietly while those ideas were expressed, which struck many of us as an unusually passive interpretation of higher education.

By Tuesday afternoon, the Coalition for Inclusive Dialogue had convened an emergency meeting in the Student Wellness Annex. We discussed several possible responses, including a counter-lecture, a moderated discussion, and distributing literature outside the event. After nearly three hours of thoughtful deliberation, we agreed that further dialogue would be inappropriate.

Instead, organizers developed a comprehensive response strategy involving whistles, portable speakers, coordinated chanting, several drums, and one extremely loud sophomore named Kayleigh. The objective was not to prevent Peterson from speaking. He had been invited by the Institute, and nobody disputed his legal right to stand behind a podium and move his mouth. Our concern was with the secondary distribution of those ideas through sound.

That distinction is important.

Some critics have called this “censorship,” which is simply inaccurate. Censorship occurs when the government prevents someone from speaking. We are students. We do not have a government. We have committees, working groups, advisory councils, review boards, conduct panels, and a Student Assembly with limited disciplinary authority. These are entirely different things.

When Peterson arrived, demonstrators formed what organizers described as a “protective perimeter of democratic resistance” around the auditorium entrance. Anyone attempting to attend the lecture was respectfully asked why they felt entitled to expose themselves, and by extension the surrounding community, to potentially harmful viewpoints. Most people were receptive to this conversation. Those who were not were redirected for further dialogue elsewhere.

Once the lecture began, approximately forty students entered Harkness Auditorium and distributed themselves strategically throughout the audience. Peterson managed to speak for almost eleven seconds before the first chant began. “No hate! No fear! Fascists are not welcome here!” spread quickly through the room, followed by whistles whenever he attempted to respond.

It was honestly empowering. For too long, free speech has been treated as though it primarily concerns the person speaking, rather than the people standing nearby who would prefer that person stop.

Peterson tried several times to continue his lecture, but each attempt was met with whistles, chanting, or reminders that “HARM IS NOT DISCOURSE.” Eventually, he stopped speaking and stood quietly behind the podium while the demonstration continued around him. That was when I realized we were finally having the conversation this campus needed.

Things became emotional around the forty-minute mark. Peterson attempted to argue that disagreement is an unavoidable component of intellectual life, at which point Kayleigh shouted, “THAT IS LITERALLY VIOLENCE,” and received one of the largest rounds of applause of the evening. Peterson removed his glasses, looked down at the podium for several seconds, and began to cry.

I know some conservatives have since characterized this as bullying, but I think that interpretation misses an important opportunity for growth. For perhaps the first time that evening, Peterson was no longer trying to impose his perspective on the room. He was listening.

Afterward, campus security escorted him through a service corridor while demonstrators remained outside chanting about the dangers of fascism. Some students have since suggested that preventing political opponents from assembling, disrupting their speeches, intimidating people who attend their events, and establishing categories of permissible political expression bears an uncomfortable resemblance to authoritarianism.

This comparison is both offensive and historically illiterate. Fascism is about silencing people you disagree with. What happened Wednesday was a community deciding, democratically and almost unanimously among the people doing the shouting, that certain ideas should not be heard.

I genuinely do not understand why people keep struggling with this distinction.

Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Sometimes those consequences are criticism. Sometimes they are social disapproval. Sometimes they involve approximately 300 people surrounding the building where you are speaking and producing sufficient ambient noise to render your speech physically unintelligible. None of this prevents you from continuing to speak. It merely alters the number of people capable of hearing you.

That is democracy. Democracy requires participation, and participation is not required to occur at conversational volume.

The Institute administration released a statement Thursday reaffirming its commitment to “open inquiry, peaceful protest, and the continued structural integrity of Harkness Auditorium.” Administrators also announced that future controversial speakers may be asked to submit prepared remarks to the Student Coalition for Inclusive Dialogue fourteen days in advance, allowing potentially harmful passages to be identified before members of the community encounter them without adequate preparation. Speakers who decline will remain free to express themselves at one of several designated open-inquiry locations currently being considered near the wastewater retention ponds.

Honestly, this feels like progress.

Nobody is saying conservatives cannot speak. They absolutely can. Free expression remains one of the foundational principles of Baitman’s Institute, provided that expression occurs responsibly, inclusively, at an appropriate time and location, following consultation with affected stakeholders, and without introducing viewpoints that might undermine another person’s ability to participate safely in the discussion.

Speech carries responsibilities. Chief among them is the responsibility to consider whether speaking is appropriate in the first place. If someone cannot exercise that responsibility voluntarily, there is nothing authoritarian about a community helping them arrive at the correct decision.

That is not censorship. That is care. That is not intolerance. That is inclusion.

And that is why I am proud of what happened Wednesday. When authoritarianism arrived at Baitman’s Institute under the banner of open debate, hundreds of students stood together and defended free expression the only way we could.

We made absolutely certain the wrong people could not talk.

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