Just as Hollywood recognizes outstanding performances each year at multiple award shows, colleges are also under the same pressure, ranked on everything from academics to Greek life. DePaul’s academic ranking is definitely respectable, and for the past six years has sat comfortably in the top 20 percent of schools with the most diverse student populations. However, just as the outstanding performances are recognized, so are the areas that some say need improvement.DePaul was recently included in an article written by Greg Lukianoff, posted on “The Huffington Post,” titled, “The 12 Worst Colleges for Free Speech.” Lukianoff is the president of an organization called Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, for short. Their mission, according to FIRE’s Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, Will Creeley, is “to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience-the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity.” With that in mind, they have set up a website on which students can alert FIRE of injustices on their campuses.
DePaul ended up on Lukianoff’s short list after a number of incidents occurred at the university, cases in which FIRE deemed necessary to intervene. The first incident listed occurred in 2005, when students on campus were forbid to protest a campus visit by University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill. Churchill is a political activist, most famous for his stance on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, saying they were a natural and unavoidable occurrence based on unlawful U.S. government policy.
According to an article in the FIRE archives, “(FIRE) intervened after the university banned its College Republicans from posting flyers protesting Churchill’s visit and actually changed its own rules to prevent the organization from attending a workshop that he would be leading.”
More recently, FIRE accused DePaul of “denying recognition to the student group, Students for Cannabis Policy Reform – first saying that the university wasn’t ready to “manage” the group’s message, then saying that allowing the group on campus might promote poor decision-making in matters of student health,” according Lukianoff’s article. DePaul’s Vice President of student affairs, James Doyle, argues this, saying “My issue was advocating a group on campus that was interested in legalization of the drug. I would, however, fully support a program for open discussion and debate on campus, and that is the main difference.”
Doyle goes on to reference the DePaul University guiding principles on speech and expression, and makes it clear that DePaul has strictly adhered to these guidelines. They are on the DePaul website, and clearly state: “DePaul is dedicated to engaging diligently and proactively in discussions concerning the many difficult issues raised by speech and expression in a university community with diverse beliefs and values. No set of guiding principles or policies can ever do justice to the range and difficulty of these issues. These guiding principles, while not policy, are intended to serve as a framework for those ongoing and challenging discussions.”
Associate Vice President for student affairs, Cynthia Summers, echoes Doyle’s view on free speech. She said, “Allowing discussion and expression of ideas is exactly what you want to do on a college campus. What we can’t allow is the disruption of work-whether that’s in an office or in a classroom.”
DePaul is broadly known for being a very diverse and liberal campus. Doyle gave many examples in which the university was criticized for being too tolerant, and put up with things that many people found offensive. This includes issues such as immigration, border security and the controversy surrounding the Palestinian situation.
FIRE said it will continue to fight with universities every step of the way. Creeley acknowledges that it is hard to narrow down the list to just 12 schools in the nation, and one must wonder at what point opinion plays a part in the decision-making process. Creeley defends the article, saying, “It is unfortunate but true that many colleges could have made our list. And because determining the worst 12 schools for freedom of speech will always be inherently a subjective judgment, others may disagree with our selections. However, we are sadly confident that each of the schools we chose for the distinction deserves their position.