Dear WKU Faculty, Staff and Students,
Two weeks ago, a student organization guest speaker announcement captured the attention of many students, faculty, staff and alumni. It also provoked questions about why WKU would allow this event to occur and requests for an institutional condemnation of the speaker.
As guardians of free speech, universities have an obligation to establish an environment where a wide range of perspectives are exchanged, even if the ideas presented are different from our own, offensive or even contemptable. Furthermore, as a public university WKU is compelled by law to do so. The Campus Free Speech Protection Act, passed by the Kentucky Legislature and signed into law by the Governor in 2019, prohibits WKU from disinviting speakers who have been invited by students, faculty or staff and obligates the university to ensure that invited speakers are not disrupted or restricted. We cannot tolerate a “heckler’s veto” intended to disrupt or cancel an event and, in turn, suppress the speech of the speaker.
Any registered student organization may reserve space on our campus to host meetings, events and activities, including guest speakers. However, when individuals or groups visit our public campus, it does not mean that the university supports, endorses or agrees with the views presented. If you disagree with a speaker’s content or character, you have a range of options: attend, listen and question; don’t attend or don’t listen; create counter programming somewhere else on campus that highlights a different perspective; or make your opposition heard through peaceful protest. All these forms of expression will likely occur on our campus this week – supporting the idea that the cure for speech with which we disagree is not less speech but rather more speech. The capacity to disagree is a cornerstone of democracy, more important now than ever in our deeply polarized world.
In response to those requesting that the university publicly condemn this event, its speaker and content (and to those who do so with other issues of the day), WKU intentionally refrains from engaging in matters tangential to our core mission of educating students, knowledge creation and dissemination. Outlined in the Chicago Principles and the 1967 University of Chicago Kalven Report, institutional neutrality allows universities to create an environment where the free exchange of ideas is not stifled by official institutional statements or comments from leadership.
Guided by the concept of institutional neutrality, WKU does not take positions on local, national or international issues unrelated to higher education or the university directly - clarifying that students and faculty are the instruments of dissent and critique. The university creates the space for the critics to operate but is not the critic itself. If WKU were to compromise our institutional neutrality in response to donors, alumni, politicians, activists and others, we would jeopardize our faculty and students’ ability to challenge controversial and uncomfortable ideas.
This week provides us with an opportunity to demonstrate to the broader community that WKU is a place that defends the ideals of free speech, academic freedom and inquiry, even when challenging to do so. Thank you for helping us to do so in a safe and respectful manner that showcases who we are as an institution.
Best,
Timothy C. Caboni
