POCC, George testify before House subcommittee on free exchange of ideas

Princeton Open Campus Coalition co-founder Joshua Zuckerman ’16 and McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence Robert George testified at a House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

The hearing centered on whether tax-exempt colleges and universities are using the tax code to avoid upholding their commitment to create an open marketplace of ideas on campuses.

According to the committee website, the hearing was announced by Oversight Subcommittee Chair Peter Roskam (R-IL), following an incident at Georgetown University Law Center when a student was barred from distributing campaign material for a presidential candidate.

In his testimony, Zuckerman said that his coalition believes that the protection of free speech is vital to the flourishing of the university.

Zuckerman noted the BJL sit-ins last November when protesters called for increased faculty cultural competency training, affinity housing for students interested in black culture and mandatory courses that present the ‘struggles of minorities.’

He noted that his coalition opposes these demands due to their destructive effects on the free flow of speech and thought. These demands, if accepted, may lead to University sanctioned orthodoxies, he said, and those who defy them will be labeled as racists and slandered publicly.

Zuckerman also noted that many POCC members, since formally opposing these demands, have been subjected to ad hominem attacks. For instance, a black student and co-founder of the coalition, after expressing dissenting opinions in a Facebook post that the demand for affinity housing creates self-segregation, was labeled as a “race traitor,” he added.

According to Zuckerman, when a white POCC member pointed out the hypocrisy of certain racially-driven demands in a campus publication, a group of black protestors screamed at her and demanded she not be allowed to participate in a campus forum about the issue.

Numerous students have confided to POCC about their opposition to the demands raised last November but are afraid of being subjected to attacks, Zuckerman said.

“This is what we are seeing today. These demands haven’t even been implemented. Imagine what would happen if the University itself were to vindicate the protestors’ worldview and thereby reinforcing the notion that those who disagree need to be reeducated,” he noted.

Zuckerman also rebutted an op-ed written in the Daily Princetonian by one of the students who organized the protest. In the op-ed, the student claimed that freedom of thought, when threatening to the safety of others, should not be tolerated.

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But no one is unsafe at Princeton, Zuckerman said, citing that there has not been a single instance of violence and no one is calling for the subjugation of minorities. Anyone who does so will be condemned, he said.

Though free speech currently enjoys protection at Princeton, protesters are seeking to change that, Zuckerman said, adding that protecting free speech is a mission that should transcend partisan ideals.

George noted a lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty as the problem for campus illiberalism.

There’s great value in intellectual diversity, he said, citing the positive impacts of the James Madison Program that he founded 15 years ago.

“[Many] praise the Madison program for turning monologues into campus dialogues,” he said.

Debates stemming from a difference in viewpoints from multiple scholars make a more enriched learning environment, George noted.

George also noted that he co-taught a seminar with former University professor Cornel West GS ’80, a scholar who George identified as at the left-end of the political spectrum.

“Professor West and I cooperate across the lines of ideology division and political difference in the common project of seeking truth,” he said.

The seminar, which presented a diverse array of writings, including those by Socrates and C.S. Lewis, through multiple perspectives, taught students the value of respect and civility, George said.

“The spirit of truth seeking […] is a spirit open to the possibility that one may in fact, be wrong,” George said.

The hearing, titled “Protecting the Free Exchange of Ideas on College Campuses,"took place Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. in room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building and lasted about two hours.