Bangert: Offended? Daniels says, 'Deal with it'

In a busy season of graduation stage platitudes, the single best commencement line didn't come from any high school or university dais. It came from the Onion.

"College allowing students individual commencement speakers to make ceremony acceptable for all," was the headline in the satirical online site. The Onion's punch line, in a season of high-profile graduation speaker "disinvitations," was delivered by the made-up president of fictional Boswitch College: "We believe this arrangement will guarantee that none of our students will be forced to contend with disagreeable opinions while observing this momentous milestone."

"One day, I'd like to meet those guys (at the Onion)," said Mitch Daniels, the actual president of the very real Purdue University. "That's great."

The timing of the Onion's account was pretty ripe for Purdue, with its fresh Commitment to Freedom of Expression policy approved by university trustees on May 15, and for Daniels, who immediately afterward spent a Saturday and Sunday overseeing the parade of 2015 commencement ceremonies in West Lafayette.

At Purdue, the former Indiana governor stepped onto a campus with a long tradition of generally skipping commencement speeches from the rich and famous in favor of ones from the university president. Boring in style, maybe. But the theory always has been that the day should be about graduates, not about some newsworthy guest. And the chances of a Purdue president – whether named Beering, Jischke, Cordova or, now, Daniels – getting disinvited for potentially being too provocative have been less than slim.

So it went with spring commencement this year.

As students, faculty and the rest of campus tried to figure out what the new free speech policy might really mean in practice in the coming semesters, Daniels devoted a big chunk of his commencement address to the topic. In particular, he spoke about the presumed right to be offended.

"Were you issued your B.S. detector? That stands for 'bogus statistics,' by the way," Daniels said on graduation day. "I mean, did you learn to think critically, to know when you are being conned, or misled, or indoctrinated? …

"At a minimum, you should have learned that our freedom starts with free speech, and free speech means disagreement, and disagreement means that now and then you will be upset by things you hear and read. Or, as people like to say these days, 'offended.'

"If you absorbed anything of our Constitution, you know that it contains no right not to be 'offended.' If anything, by protecting speech of all kinds, it guarantees that you will be. As they say, 'Deal with it.' And if you are disturbed enough, then answer it, with superior facts and arguments. Your diplomas say that Purdue has equipped you for this."

Daniels insists that he wrote this particular speech at Christmastime, in the lull between fall and spring semesters. But he said he understood how it fell in line with Purdue's new free speech policy, modeled after standards written at the University of Chicago.

Here's a portion of that policy:

"In a word, the university's fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the university community, not for the university as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose."

There are some caveats, including "except insofar as limitations on that freedom are necessary to the functioning of the university" and language about speech that violates the law, falsely defames a person or "constitutes a genuine threat or harassment."

Daniels said there was no pivot point – no ousted guest speaker or marginalized student or suspect faculty member – that inspired the policy. The policy was suggested by resolutions of the Purdue Student Government and the Purdue Graduate Student Government.

"I wouldn't say that was an issue at Purdue, but nationally we did see some people 'disinvited' from other schools for commencements," said Mike Young, incoming student body president and a Purdue Student Government member who voted to recommend the policy this spring.

It's a bit curious that the policy did not make it to the University Senate, which includes the faculty leadership at Purdue.

"A few senators have contacted me to say that, although they agree essentially with the 'Chicago principles,' they would have preferred to have discussed and approved the policy in the Senate, rather than having it announced unilaterally by the trustees without consultation with the faculty," said Patty Hart, University Senate chairwoman. "However, no one to date has challenged the need for a strong defense of free speech."

That doesn't mean there aren't some sideways glances on campus.

In 2013, Daniels was called out after a series of emails surfaced from his time as governor that had him railing against the possible use of historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" as a textbook in Indiana's K-12 schools.

The controversy rallied Purdue faculty members and others around questions of academic freedom. This April, the first $1,000 Howard Zinn Memorial Research Award went to a graduate student in American studies at Purdue. Paul Benhamou, a retired French professor who helped launch the scholarship, said the award will be an annual thing.

"A 'new policy' on free speech from this administration, and a president who wanted to eliminate the writings of Howard Zinn in Indiana, is not believable," Benhamou said. "It is simply a political document and an attempt to give the appearance of tolerance to this administration. I do not trust such pretense."

Daniels brushed off any backwash from his comments about Zinn as governor when it came to the free speech policy at Purdue.

"That would be utterly illogical. That had nothing to do with this issue," Daniels said. "That had to do with middle school, where there was one textbook, one teacher, no debate. And you're talking about 14-year-olds as opposed to students who we think – we hope – have developed filters to think critically."

How will Purdue know its free speech policy is actually working?

"Already at Purdue, we've had a lot of guest speakers that different groups bring, and we want to make sure everyone knows they have the right to do that," Daniels said. "But there are other issues.

"We want to protect the faculty who are simply practicing academic freedom. There have been a whole lot of assaults on that recently (across the nation). A great example of what we want to protect is people speaking out against college administrations. Sometimes, some schools have acted in ways that could be construed as retaliatory. So all of those things are meant to be encompassed."

So maybe the real test will be: On a campus where free speech has been the assumption in the name of wide-open academia, who will be offended first? And who will take the offensive?

Bangert is a columnist with the Journal & Courier. Contact him at mailto:dbangert@jconline.com Follow onTwitter: @davebangert.