At university it's all about curiosity. And that requires free speech.
Stanford could have taken action against Shockley on other grounds, fully consistent with academic freedom. He was accused of telling a Nigerian graduate student at a seminar on quantum mechanics that he did not belong in the class because of his race and should consider just auditing the course. That act of singling out an individual illustrates how poorly the famous physicist understood statistics; it also constitutes a form of discrimination that a university can regulate without violating academic freedom, for Shockley was not evaluating the student's abilities as an individual, but the student's abilities as a representative of a class. But ultimately, Stanford took no action. (The student in question went on to earn a PhD in physics.)
When you tell students and learn what they must not saying is bad, telling them what they say must say often worse. The university's success, Paulsen wrote, rests on the idea “that truth is the sole purpose and not the proof of officially prescribed and quasi-officially desired or at least permitted views.” During the second Red Scare, which began after World War II, the greatest threat to this vision was the loyalty oath. Faculty members across the country were asked to pledge allegiance to the United States and often affirm that they were not and had never been communists. Many who refused lost their jobs – including at the country's richest and most powerful institutions.
Today I fear we are repeating the same disaster, with mandatory (or strongly encouraged) “diversity declarations” and the like. I am often told not to make a big deal out of it because I clearly agree with the goals the statements promote. But this objection misses the point. The question “What's the problem?” This approach reminds me of the philosopher Sidney Hook, who argued in a 1953 essay in The Times that an academic who refused to swear not to be a member of the Communist Party was like a chef who refused to say whether he was the one was that poisoned the food. Hook never for a moment entertains the idea that the hypothetical professor might simply believe, as a matter of principle, that it is wrong to screen the professoriate for ideological conformity.
It was wrong then; it's wrong now.
Make no mistake. I am not against ideology and social movements, unless they hinder academic curiosity. At least on campus you should be able to support Israel in the Gaza war, but you can safely argue that the Israelis have prosecuted the conflict too aggressively; or to support the aspirations of the Palestinians, yet be prepared to unequivocally condemn October 7.
This insight also points toward the proper resolution of other campus conflicts. Take, for example, the recent controversy at the University of California, Berkeley, law school over student organizations requiring invited speakers to be “anti-Zionist,” an explicitly ideological screen. The answer is not to debate whether such requirements violate school rules, but to highlight the ways in which such restrictions violate the norms of curiosity and engagement that are at the heart of higher education. Only dating those they already agree with is one of the worst ways for young people to waste their years on campus.