Compulsory Speech

by
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
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In recent years, a disturbing development has taken place in America’s universities. People who apply for faculty positions, and those who are on the faculty and want to be promoted are required to make “diversity statements,” in which they declare their commitment to DEI—diversity, equality, inclusion—and detail their activities on behalf of this goal.

Here is an example of this: at UCLA, applicants to the faculty have to sign this: “Diversity statements usually are no more than two pages and speak to your experience, capabilities, and commitment to working with people from different backgrounds and to advancing a more inclusive, diverse and/or equitable academic environment. You can demonstrate these values through your teaching, research, and service. Keep in mind that diversity can mean a number of things including race/ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and military veteran status among others. Diversity statements will be listed explicitly as required documents in some job applications. If the position does not require a diversity statement, you may want to incorporate these values in your cover letter and teaching statement.

Getting Started: Questions to reflect on as you begin:

Experience and Identity: How have my experiences enlightened and empowered me? How do my previous experiences inform how I engage with others? Do I embody an under-represented group in my field? If yes, how and why is that meaningful?

Research and Teaching: How have I incorporated what I’ve experienced and learned into my teaching and research? How will I continue to make my classrooms diverse? How is my approach unique?

Collegial Collaboration: How have I handled working with someone whose background is unfamiliar to me? What have I learned from these experiences? How do I help to establish and to maintain an inclusive climate?

Vision for the Future: How will I demonstrate a continued willingness to learn and grow? How will I work to correct problems of recruitment and retention of groups underrepresented in my field?

Guidelines:

Consider these tips, adapted from UC Davis’s Academic Affairs website, in crafting your diversity statement:

• Demonstrate your COMMITMENT to use your position to be a force of enlightenment and change by opening up opportunities to first-generation and underrepresented students.
• Describe how you have CREATED programs that provide access and establish a pipeline for students in traditionally underrepresented groups.
• Show how you ENRICH the classroom environment through exposure to new perspectives on cultures, beliefs, practices, tolerance, acceptance, and a welcoming climate.
• Demonstrate how your research provides EXPOSURE for individuals historically excluded from disciplines on the basis of their gender or ethnic identity.
• Speak to your LEADERSHIP in any capacity that tangibly promotes an environment where diversity is welcomed, fostered, and celebrated.
• Discuss MENTORING students from traditionally underrepresented groups and at-risk students.
• Describe your OUTREACH to members of student clubs, organizations, or community groups whose mission includes service, education, or extending opportunity to disadvantaged people.
• Show RECOGNITION of the challenges members of society face when they are members of underrepresented groups; or because of their religious, ethnic, or gender identities or orientation.
• Detail SERVICE that promotes inclusion by striving to dismantle barriers to people historically excluded from the opportunities that all have a right to enjoy.”

Of course, “diversity” is a big scam. You can be sure that UCLA is not aiming to hire more conservative and libertarian professors! But regardless of how you feel about diversity. isn’t there something deeply offensive about requiring people to make such statements? Isn’t this a form of compulsory speech?

You might object that an employer is free to set any requirement he wishes as a condition of employment. If you don’t want to write a diversity statement, you aren’t being forced to do so. You won’t get a job at UCLA, but you have no right to such a job anyway.

What this objection overlooks, though, is that UCLA is a “public” university. It is not a private employer. By what right does an ostensibly public institution require people to commit themselves to views many people do not share? What is the next step? Requiring that all faculty applicants be members of the Democratic Party?

Of course, the problem isn’t confined to UCLA. Practically all universities in the United States receive federal funding and thus have to conform to the federal government’s “diversity” policies.

This situation can sometimes put job applicants in a completely untenable position. Some states, such as Florida and Alabama, have banned diversity requirements. But these states, like the rest of the country, are still subject to federal requirements, which mandate “diversity” from universities that get federal money. A job applicant will thus be in violation of state law if he does what is required to get a job.

How do university departments evade the manifest incongruity of imposing a partisan set of beliefs on values on people who do not share them? How would they defend themselves against a lawsuit that charged them with compelling speech? One way they might do so is to argue that “collegiality” is a reasonable job requirement, and that commitment to “diversity” is an expression of “our shared values.” If you don’t accept diversity, you won’t be denied a job because of your political opinions. That would be too brazen. You will be denied a job because you aren’t collegial.

I have concentrated on university jobs, but this is not the only area in which we are faced with the disturbing phenomenon of compulsory speech. As is well known, in Colorado and other states, cake makers have been required to put messages on their cakes that are deeply offensive to them. Usually, these cases involve homosexuals who insist that the cake makers publicize their values. The Supreme Court has so far sided with cake makers who refuse to do this, on grounds of religious freedom, but Colorado continues to bring new actions against the cake makers, in defiance of the Supreme Court.

In order to solve the problems inherent in compulsory speech, our best approach is to follow the great Murray Rothbard. “Free speech” is not an independent right but derives from our natural rights of self-ownership and property acquisition. In all free speech issues, the key question is: in whose property does the speech take place on? As Rothbard points out in Power and Market, “Take, for example, the ‘human right’ of free speech. Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate ‘right to free speech’; there is only a man’s property right: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners.”

Let’s do everything we can to promote a true Rothbardian solution to the monstrosity of “diversity.”