In the late 1940s, censorship was on the rise in the land of the free. The ambitious senator Joseph McCarthy had taken up a new cause: purging the United States of the nefarious forces of communism. An infestation of Reds had infiltrated the government, the entertainment industry, and the universities, McCarthy claimed, and it was up to the patriots to get rid of ’em. The McCarthyite spirit swept through the State Senate of Illinois, which formed the Broyles Commission, a task force with the frightening power to pursue an investigation into any person, organization, or institution that was suspected of scheming to overthrow the government of Illinois or the United States.
The University of Chicago was under deep scrutiny. Robert M. Hutchins, chancellor of the University, was called to the Illinois General Assembly to address patently ridiculous claims that the University was involved in so-called “subversive activities.” Hutchins addressed the rumors that the faculty of the University may have been Communists: “The University of Chicago does not believe in the un-American doctrine of guilt by association. The fact that some Communists belong to, believe in, or even dominate some of the organizations to which some of our professors belong does not show that these professors are engaged in subversive activities.” He continued, defending the University’s Communist club: “I do not see how the sympathetic feelings of eleven or a dozen students at the University of Chicago can be a danger to the State.”
After arguing for the intellectual freedom of his staff and students, Hutchins excoriated the McCarthyism of the General Assembly, saying that the “miasma of thought-control that is now spreading over the country is the greatest menace to the United States since Hitler.” Hutchins concluded by invoking what would become the famous Chicago Principles: “The policy of repression of ideas cannot work and has never worked. The alternative to it is the long, difficult road of education.”
The University of Chicago is still committed to its principles in 2024: “free expression, open discourse, rigorous argument, diverse perspectives,” as former president Robert Zimmer put them. In 2023, the University founded the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, chaired by professor Tom Ginsburg and board member of the Heterodox Academy Tony Banout. To celebrate the new venture, Ginsburg and Banout have edited The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression, a book of the University of Chicago’s greatest free speech hits. “Freedom of Speech” by William Rainey Harper, inaugural president of the University; “Unrest and the Universities” by Edward H. Levi, president from 1968 to 1975; and the 1967 Kalven Report “On the University’s Role in Social and Political Action” are among the texts reproduced in the book. The editors have also included excerpts from recent Aims of Education speeches by professors Christopher J. Wild, Gabriel Richardson Lear, and Kimberly Kay Hoang.
The spring of 2024 presented the perfect test of the Chicago Principles. After the start of the Israel-Hamas War in October 2023, university campuses became the scene of protests—both those condemning the actions of Hamas and the civilian costs of Israel’s retaliation. Presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology testified before Congress on rising anti-Semitism on college campuses and were severely censured by public commentators for not explicitly condemning anti-Semitic speech. After the president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, condemned pro-Palestine protests before Congress, students built an encampment on the South Lawn of Columbia’s campus. The New York Police Department shut it down on live television. Students across the country followed the example of the Columbia protesters, including those at the University of Chicago.
The encampment at the University of Chicago quickly drew the eye of University president Paul Alivisatos. He wrote in an email to the student body that “[g]iven the importance of the expressive rights of our students, we may allow an encampment to remain for a short time despite the obvious violations of policy.” Those “violations” were sleeping on campus overnight and erecting unauthorized structures. He reserved the right for the University to move upon the encampment: “If necessary, we will act to preserve the essential functioning of the campus against the accumulated effects of these disruptions.”
President Alivisatos’s forewarning to protestors was not inevitable or even in line with the administration’s established policies. In a 2014 report titled “On Protest and Dissent,” a faculty committee returned that the University should not rule out unauthorized protests on the basis that they were unauthorized: “The University should, to the maximum extent it can, adopt the same approach of restraint when spontaneous demonstrations happen; if possible, the University should facilitate those protests as well.” This stance is markedly different from the Alivisatos administration’s reluctant allowance of the encampment. In 2024, a significant number of faculty members signed a letter that made clear their displeasure with the administration’s new position: “Disbanding the encampment means violating the principle of free expression on campus, and the public will understand it to be a violation of this principle.” Faculty also alleged that there was no significant disruption to the daily life surrounding the encampment, and there had been no violence perpetrated by the students participating in the encampment. Nonetheless, a week after Alivisatos’s warning, University of Chicago police officers shut down the encampment in an early morning raid.
The encampment and its counter-protests were not perfectly peaceful. Someone tore down a Maroons for Israel installation multiple days in a row, and a clash between fraternity brothers and encampment members took place, complete with blows exchanged. But these violations, prohibited by University policies and the committee report “On Protest and Dissent” (“People engaged in protests … have reciprocal obligations of respect”), were not the main reason for the encampment’s removal. President Alivisatos instead cited his administration’s commitment to institutional neutrality. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, President Alivisatos claimed that despite genuine discourse with protest leaders, the administration and protesters were unable to agree upon divestment from the war, a move that would have compromised the University’s institutional neutrality.
“Universities are not neutral,” Edward H. Levi said in his inaugural convocation address in November 1968. “They do exist for the propagation of a special point of view; namely, the worthwhileness of the intellectual pursuit of truth … This view does not remove universities from the problems of society.” In the same speech, he critiqued the Vietnam War: “The outrage of this war continues.” In the 2014 report on protest, the committee sponsored a philosophy of protest that was not upheld by the University in May 2024: “Dissent and protest should be affirmatively welcomed, not merely tolerated, by the University.” Hardly a neutral position.
The encampment should not have been taken down. The students who participated were exercising their right, as stated in the Chicago Principles, of complete freedom of expression on all subjects. President Alivisatos argued, quoting those principles in an email to mark the start of the autumn quarter, that the search for truth “must allow for the fullest extent of dialogue possible, even that which … we find ‘unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.’” Many found the encampment unwelcome, disagreeable, and deeply offensive. But it was protected by the Chicago Principles. The University’s right to remain institutionally neutral does not mean the students’ right to protest is revoked the moment that the administration decides the protesters’ demands cannot be met.
Where do we go from here? Well, the University of Chicago has not proven as weak as Columbia, removing student groups because donors may find them offensive. Yet the University’s free speech principles remain troublingly ambiguous, perhaps out of fear of what a full embrace of free expression might bring. It is also sincerely frightening to behold in Congress the same kind of intimidation by the state taking place that the Broyles Commision and the larger evil of McCarthyism sponsored. University presidents should not have to testify before Congress and haggle over the speech of their students, nor should they acquiesce to demands and threats for fear that they be removed from their appointments.
In a similar time of protest and discomfort, President Levi said, “The human condition and aspirations being what they are, dissatisfaction is to be expected and nurtured.” The University should recall its own words when dealing with future illegal and disruptive protests. The Kalven Report, though it does restrict the University’s endorsement or statement on any sort of political event, argues that “this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest.” “In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting,” the report concludes.
In an ideal world, protestors should uphold the values of free expression espoused by the Chicago Principles if they use them as a defense. As argued by former president Zimmer, who quoted physicist Richard Feynman, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” Protestors of any kind should examine their own motivations, realize their own biases, and respect disagreement. In the words of Zimmer: “Without discomfort and the challenge that stimulates it, there is no escape for thought being submerged by an ongoing state of self-deception.”
Robert M. Hutchins’ public response to the Broyles Commission is striking in light of this year’s controversy: “A university is a community of scholars. It is not a kindergarten; it is not a club; it is not a reform school; it is not a political party; it is not an agency of propaganda.” If we are to learn from such times of political and social unrest, it is crucial that the University of Chicago provides the unrestrained freedom of expression that it claims to provide. The discomfort is part of the process—that is the worth of the Chicago Principles. It is only in accepting this discomfort that we can engage in the “long, difficult road of education.”