Free Speech Summit at the College Brings in Libertarian Leaders

For over a decade now, the topic of “free speech” has dominated the discourse on campuses. Since the first student protests forced colleges to cancel speaking events far and wide across America, conservatives and libertarians inside and outside of academia have decried the perceivedly pervasive censorship perpetrated by academic bureaucracy and illiberal student bodies. The Dartmouth Libertarians, for the past several years the sole body promoting libertarian ideals on Dartmouth campus, sought to bring this issue to the forefront of campus discourse, capitalizing on President Beilock’s initiative to promote brave spaces on campus. On April 13 the club, with support and funding from the President’s office and a series of libertarian organizations, including Students for Liberty and Voices for Liberty, hosted a day-long conference on speech and expression, inviting members of the Dartmouth community and bringing to campus some of the most prominent libertarians and classical liberals. 

The event opened at 10:30am in Rockefeller Hall with a discussion between the Libertarians’ Director of Programming, Jonathan Nicastro, and Nadinse Strossen, former President of the ACLU. Nicastro asked Strossen questions about the nature of speech, and whether hate speech and false speech should be as legally or morally distinct from so-called normal speech. He later shifted the conversation to the context of academia, focusing on the benefits of unfettered freedom of expression, and the risks inherent in any level of academic censorship. 

Strossen, a veteran in the battle for the protection of free expression, gave insightful and thoughtful answers to the questions, emphasizing the benefits of hearing speech with which one disagrees and criticizing advocates of censorship. 

Next to speak was Dr. Peter Boghossian. Boghossian is the primary practitioner of a form of facilitated discussion that he calls “street epistemology.” He first began by taking audience suggestions for topics of discussion, and then took volunteers who were willing to come to the front of the hall and speak. The audience then voted on what topic they would like to see discussed, choosing in the end the topic of gender transition procedures for children, and whether they should be allowed. That last part elicited some confusion, as the primary student on the anti-procedure side had thought that the topic was whether such procedures are moral. 

The student, an anarchist, held that such procedures should be legal, regardless of their immorality. Boghossian, unperturbed, quickly changed the topic to reflect the true nature of the division between the two sides, and aptly led a moderated discussion between the students on each side of the issue. Rather than getting one to defeat the other in an argument, he attempted to get each to see the other’s perspective, prioritizing understanding the other person rather than winning them over. 

His main focus, though, seemed to be on the third student, who was more neutral. Throughout the discussion he asked her whether or not her opinions had changed, 

After Boghossian’s event, the conference adjourned for lunch. After an hour, groups split off into breakout rooms, where student leaders of the Libertarians club lead discussions on a series of topics, from pornography, to abortion, to the treatment of the Israel-Palestine conflict on college campuses. By all accounts the rooms fostered interesting and thoughtful discussion, with disagreements kept respectful. 

At 3pm, attendees were beckoned back towards the main conference hall, where they would watch a series of panels, each moderated by one of the officers of the Dartmouth libertarians. The first, again moderated by Nicastro, focused on the state of conservative and libertarian journalism. His questions focused on government censorship of media, with a particular focus on online censorship. The panel, consisting of Billy Binion, Associate Editor at Reason of Peter Boghossian, Margaux Granath, advocate at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Jason Sorens, Senior Fellow at AIER, and Spike Cohen, Vice Presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party in 2020. The goal of the panel was to discuss speech on college campuses, but the discussion quickly shifted towards academic institutions in general. The speakers, Boghossian and Spike in particular, were skeptical of the usefulness of higher education in its current incarnation, with Boghossian calling for the dissolution of most current universities so that they may be replaced with less biased alternatives. 

Margaux offered the novel perspective of a recent graduate who experienced much of the on-campus censorship and the campus COVID hysteria. Sorens, something of a moderating influence, defended the idea of tenure and the role of academic institutions, while agreeing that many current academics and university bureaucrats abuse academic privilege to push their own political agendas. 

Grayling Peterson, President of the Dartmouth Libertarians, interviewed Spike Cohen. The title of the interview was “On Free Speech Absolutism,” and Cohen certainly lived up to it in his vociferous and nearly unqualified defense of freedom of expression. He dismissed the idea that some speech must be regulated lest it prevent others from speaking, while still criticizing such speech as immoral, and argued that the free and open exchange of ideas will allow for wrong and hateful speech to be countered and dispelled. However, he called for some restrictions on speech that incites violence, or which constitutes a harmful lie. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of his conversation with the 2020 Vice Presidential Nominee for the Libertarian Party was the portion centered on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For those unaware of the machinations of Libertarian Party politics, for which one can hardly be blamed, some in the party are considering nominating RFK Jr. to be their candidate for this election cycle. 

The idea is frankly puzzling, as RFK is not a libertarian, more of an old school progressive environmentalist really, and only agrees with libertarians on free speech and vaccine mandate policy. Cohen seemed more irritated than confused at the prospect, flat out saying that nominating RFK would destroy the Libertarian Party. In his words, nominating a candidate who shares none of the party’s core values, simply for the sake of short-term name recognition, would ruin the party’s credibility among its base of members, essentially sacrificing its long-term prospects for some free ad time. For his part, this author is confused as to why RFK would even want to run as the Libertarian Party nominee. 

The Dartmouth Libertarian’s Free Speech Summit was largely a success. It brought members of the Dartmouth community together, and provided a venue for opinions not normally represented on the standard left-right spectrum. That the College not only allowed but in fact supported such an event is a ray of hope for those concerned about the state of college campuses, as it seems as though the tide may be turning away from censorship, and back towards a focus on free expression.