Imagine a student in the campus library at PennWest California, emailing off-color Charlie Kirk memes back and forth with her best friend at Cheyney University, which is also part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. Another student walks by, sees the emails, and reports them as “offensive.” A week later, the PennWest student gets hauled into the dean’s office and told that she is being referred to a disciplinary committee, while her friend over at Cheyney never even gets so much as a stern email.
Before becoming part of PennWest in 2022, California University of Pennsylvania maintained an email policy FIRE criticized for restricting protected expression. Cheyney University, meanwhile, has its own acceptable-use restrictions, including a prohibition on using university resources for “hate speech.” The disparities between the schools are representative of a larger problem. PASSHE campuses lack a uniform, system-wide statement affirming their constitutional and ethical duties to protect free expression and inquiry. Although more than 120 colleges and college systems have adopted the “Chicago Statement” since 2015, within the PASSHE system, each university has its own statement on free expression. Some are buried deep on campus webpages and appear to exist only to satisfy legal obligations, as at Kutztown University. Other PASSHE campuses fare somewhat better, like West Chester University, where free expression is tied to a longer history of student and minority civil rights.
Because of the patchwork nature of individual PASSHE schools’ commitments to free expression, it is entirely possible that students emailing between two campuses would face different outcomes. This is not sensible policy for a state school system. Nor does it benefit the students or faculty at PASSHE institutions. Conflicting policies create confusion. For example, Commonwealth University does a disservice to its students by attempting to square contemporary inclusivity rhetoric with its obligations to free expression. West Chester University correctly notes that “hate speech has no legal or widely accepted definition,” while Commonwealth offers its own definition before acknowledging that hateful or offensive speech remains constitutionally protected. And students in particular need clear guidance. Even at Slippery Rock University, whose webpage goes to considerable lengths to explain free expression and its limits, some students appear confused about those limits. Protesting a campus appearance by detransitioner Chloe Cole, one student told The Rocket, “Whenever your free speech is demeaning, targeting others or hateful, I believe that passes the line of free speech.” But, of course, offensive or hateful expression does not automatically fall outside First Amendment protection.
A recent report, of which I am a coauthor, argues that all PASSHE stakeholders — students, faculty, administrators, Pennsylvania taxpayers — are best served if the system has an explicit free expression statement. A system-wide free expression statement offers myriad benefits. First, a statement protects academic integrity. The Kalven Report is clear that the university’s purpose is epistemic. It stress-tests old ideas and offers better ones. The Kalven Report’s primary recommendation, that universities adopt a policy of institutional neutrality, is in service of that goal. A free expression statement complements institutional neutrality by protecting the open inquiry essential to academic integrity. A free expression statement sets clear community norms, promotes transparency, and could help prevent hecklers’ vetoes. A system-wide statement would also provide a common standard against which individual campuses could evaluate their policies and practices. It wouldn’t eliminate conflicting policies, like the IT use policies at PennWest or Cheyney, or guarantee consistent enforcement, but it would establish shared principles to guide administrators and hold universities accountable.
Students should be educated about their right to free expression, not punished disparately for using it.
There are good reasons, both financial and ethical, for PASSHE to take a proactive approach to free expression. The ethical justification is obvious. Strong, unbiased universities produce a capable, democratic citizenry. The report also discusses the financial rationale. With the exception of Slippery Rock University, the PASSHE campuses with the most vigorous positions on free expression are Shippensburg University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In addition to their shared PASSHE membership, Shippensburg and IUP have something else in common: Both have faced public controversies over free expression that may have helped shape their current commitments.
In 2008, Shippensburg settled a second lawsuit challenging its speech codes, after reinstating restrictions on Christian students from posting banners, which it had agreed to eliminate under a 2004 settlement. In 2018, during a course on Christian theology at IUP, feminist professor Alison Downie showed a TEDx Talk featuring a transgender minister, after which student Lake Ingle got into a heated exchange with Downie, primarily over her decision to let women speak before men in class, according to Ingle. Downie ended up reporting him for classroom misconduct. The episode was widely reported, and versions of the story differed, but it demonstrated a clear need for explicit boundaries. In the absence of a statement on free speech, this already complex case was not decided based on clear policies, but in the public eye. As a result, IUP now hosts the “IUP Free Speech Project.”
Adopting a system-wide free expression statement would be neither radical nor innovative. It would establish no new rights or exceptions. Instead, it would make existing rights explicit. Such a statement would establish a shared standard for transparency, accountability, and consistency. It might even save Pennsylvania taxpayers money. However, the largest impact would be on students. The PASSHE system has the opportunity to educate its students on the civic importance of deliberative, civil discourse. Instead of creating confusion or weaponizing questionably legal policies, it could provide clarity. Students should be educated about their right to free expression, not punished disparately for using it. A declarative statement would provide this. Both the PennWest California student and her friend at Cheyney would know their free expression rights are not abridged as soon as they pass a “Welcome to Campus” sign.
