Committee reevaluates University free speech policies

The Graduate Student Council (GSC) heard updates from the University’s free speech committee about new policies, as students and administrators debate free speech boundaries amid protests on the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. Bernadette Meyler J.D. ’03, a Stanford Law School professor who chairs of the University’s Ad Hoc Committee on Free Speech, delved into proposed policies for free speech on campus at the GSC meeting last Tuesday.

Meyler presented the proposals to the Undergraduate Senate (UGS) last Tuesday and intends to present them to the Faculty Senate on May 30.

The Committee on Free Speech was established last February by the Faculty Senate to address four guiding questions on the “correct” way to address free speech in academic environments. Its founding motion states that the committee will determine which actions by the University and its community have suppressed or encouraged free speech and potentially recommend policy changes.

According to Meyler, much of the committee’s work to date has involved meeting with campus stakeholders, with a focus on protected identity harm reporting and the Office of Community Standards’s event approval process. 

Meyler specifically mentioned meetings with the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias and the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Communities Committee. The free speech committee plans to present conclusions to the Faculty Senate next month. 

“[We] still have time to integrate some more feedback from students,” Meyler said.

While she did not share specific policy reccomendations, Meyler outlined the committee’s three-pillared approach, which aims to extend 1974 Academic Freedom guidelines for faculty to students, and issue statements on freedom of expression and institutional restraint when statements are issued on national or international issues.

According to Meyler, the committee’s recommendations would be to both the Faculty Senate and Stanford’s administration. However, Meyler explained that the committee was not yet ready to share more concrete policy recommendations.

GSC Deputy Chair and fourth-year Ph.D. candidate Emmit Pert introduced questions about selective enforcement. He raised ongoing controversies surrounding the University of Southern California, which decided to cancel commencement ceremonies following safety concerns and pushback to removing a Muslim speaker, as well as incidents on campus, like when Stanford administration removed the sit-in at White Plaza last month. 

“I get concerned when Stanford has a lot of things that are prohibited but not enforced. They can go and cherry-pick the things they decide that they want to start enforcing at some point,” Pert said.

Meyler acknowledged the concerns: “We are trying to figure out ways to ensure consistency of applications across situations and across groups,” she said.

“From a first amendment vantage point, there wouldn’t be a general right to give a commencement speech, but once you allow commencement speakers, making a viewpoint-based distinction or a content-based distinction between them would be a violation of the Leonard Law,” Meyler said.

The Leonard Law, passed in 1992, brings private California universities to the same standard of protecting free speech as the state’s public universities.

Meyler said that the committee also considered an approach grounded in institutional restraint, as opposed to institutional neutrality, inspired by Princeton University’s policies.

“Not taking a stand often is not neutral,” Meyler said. “It’s about refraining from intervening in charged political debates, domestically and internationally … The line that we are currently drawing is between things that are directly central to the mission of the University and the values of the University.”

Councilors voiced concerns and suggestions to the committee. 

Councilor Áron Ricardo Perez-Lopez, a Daily staffer, asked about guidelines on when law enforcement would interact with protestors. 

Another councilor, Perry Nielsen Jr., raised a question about the committee’s investigation into the Protected Identity Harm (PIH) reporting process.

Concerns emerged over the PIH process and limited consequences.

While the committee debates a conclusion, Meyler offered a personal opinion: “Right now, I don’t know that we’ve found the right balance in terms of how to protect people against experiencing harm in their daily life while also giving ample latitude to speech.”

While she believes a speech code isn’t necessary, she said more structured interventions were necessary to ensure a balance between the two.

Referencing Thomas Grey’s 1996 reflection on Stanford’s previous speech code, Nielsen said that a conduct code could bring Stanford’s policies closer to that balance.

Councilors also clarified a miscommunication around ASSU elections. Candidates needed to manually choose to run for both at-large and school-specific seats, but many were unaware and only ran for the at-large seat. The ASSU elections commission decided to allow candidates to opt into the school-specific seats.

Upcoming Zoom-based forums were also planned to allow students a more direct communication line to express concerns about healthcare. According to Nielsen, while Vaden has internal pathways to advocate for students, “from a student perspective, you don’t really know that process is happening and you don’t have as much transparency on what those people in the office are advocating for you.” 

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