Hate Speech and the Brown Speech Code

The Brown ACLU recognizes and affirms the importance of fostering a positive racial climate on campus. However, these efforts must focus on changing opinions through positive inducements and educational programs, not negative sanctions. To restrict the expression of mere opinions, however repulsive those opinions may be, only stifles debate and prevents an open and honest discussion of values. As currently drafted, the University's speech code simply forces racist, sexist, and homophobic opinions underground, rather than working to educate and change the minds of those who espouse them. This kind of speech code is not progressive, because it only creates the illusion of change without actually working to eliminate the various -isms it purports to combat.

Nevertheless, the Brown ACLU recognizes the existence of some particularly vicious manifestations of verbal assault and harassment which can legitimately be regulated, because they go beyond the simple expression of ideas and cross over into the territory of deliberate threats and intimidation.

Consonant with these concerns, we have drafted a new definition of harassment which - though more specific than the current definition -- represents a significant loosening of the traditional ACLU stance on hate speech. Rather than categorically rejecting hate speech regulations based on the danger of "slippery slope" expansion, we have proposed a set of regulations which -- if applied by an appropriately restructured disciplinary system that avoids expanding the regulations beyond their original meaning -- will pose a minimal threat to freedom of expression on campus. This definition, contained in our October 2000 proposal on Code of Conduct reform, supersedes our earlier 1996 Hate Speech proposal.

Regrettably, we do not believe that the current disciplinary system maintains enough accountability to warrant this level of trust. Only a reformed UDC, made fully accountable to the student body and subject to constant faculty-student oversight, will be an adequate safeguard against a "slippery slope" erosion of free speech. For this reason, our revised harassment regulations are integrally tied to our proposals for structural reform, and should only be considered after discussion of these structural reforms.