On February 5, 2024, the Departments of Philosophy, English, Political Science & Public Administration, the Institute for Human Rights (IHR) and the Social Sciences and Justice Research center (SSJR) co-sponsored an event to host Dr. Elizabeth Niehaus at the Hill Student Center Alumni Theater for a conversation on free speech in classrooms. Dr. Niehaus is an Associate Professor and the Graduate Faculty Chair at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Dr. Niehaus discussed her research, focusing on potentially offensive rhetoric students have the capacity to express in classrooms. She conducted in depth interviews to highlight how students think about potential harmful speech, and how they think about their own speech within a classroom setting. During the event, she shared with the audience many of the general themes that emerged while she conducted her interviews. One of these themes emphasized the complexity of the topics discussed in a classroom setting, while another theme she detected in her research was the question of what students expected from a collegiate education. Still, another theme that emerged during her research was what it meant to be harmed in a classroom discussion, and what kind of emotional or mental toll this harm could have on someone. This also led to a discussion of who is a legitimate victim of harm, and who should be held accountable for causing harm? Dr. Niehaus explained, on the matter of accountability, that some of her interviewees also brought up the question of intent and whether accountability should focus on the intentions of the person causing harm, or the outcomes of the harm caused, regardless of the intentions. Most interestingly, connecting the previous theme to the next one, Dr. Niehaus scrutinized the way many of the students she interviewed also spoke of a person’s speech reflecting on their character or morals. The interviewees questioned whether the speech one expresses within the classroom should impact the way they are perceived outside of the classroom setting. As she explained, many social connections students make in college transform into professional connections in the future which can have widespread consequences on their academic and professional future. Towards the end of the conversation, Dr. Niehaus spoke to the issue of the mainstream crisis narrative of “self-censorship” which has, in effect, led students to censor themselves in classrooms. Finally, she addressed the massive influence donors and mainstream news (and media outlets in general) have on free speech within institutions, especially academic institutions.
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