Boston University: Protect free speech for faculty, students, and staff

We, the undersigned BU faculty, students, staff, and alumni, are deeply concerned about the administration’s decisions to restrict the constitutionally protected speech of members of our community.  

     

During the last week, the BU administration has removed Pride flags hanging in faculty offices and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program office. This Monday, a Pride flag was removed again, noting that it was the faculty member’s second offense. 

These actions run directly counter to the University’s Statement on Free Speech and Expression, which proudly proclaims the university’s responsibility to:  

It’s impossible to square these high-minded principles with the policing of constitutionally protected speech on our doors and windows.  

As a comparison point, Harvard recently revised its campus-use guidance after faculty argued that overly restrictive signage rules were limiting free expression. As the Harvard Crimson reported, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences updated its policy to explicitly allow faculty, students, and staff to display signs in offices, dorm rooms, and other private spaces even when those signs are visible from outside.

For as long as we can remember, BU students and faculty have been free to display any appropriate symbols of their choosing; this changed last fall, when the administration began removing Pride flags and other signs in windows, including those with text saying “Free Rumeysa” and “Free Mahmoud”. In the months since, the administration has offered various justifications, sometimes citing a newly revised “Events and Demonstrations Policy,” other times referencing a longstanding Publications and Publicity Policy. But the real reason is clear: you are worried about offending our increasingly authoritarian federal government, which has launched a crusade against academic freedom and free speech at institutions of higher education.   

We know from history that this kind of censorship creates a dangerous precedent. Today you are removing signs. What speech restrictions will follow? Will there next be rules for what students, staff, and faculty can wear when on campus? Will there be new restrictions on what opinions can be taught and shared in class?  

We also know that these efforts at placation are unlikely to succeed. The Trump Administration’s war on higher education is capricious and indiscriminate, attacking universities across the board regardless of how much they attempt to adhere to the government’s new ideological guidelines.   

Boston University is better than this. We were founded by abolitionists, admitted women from day one, and have long prided ourselves as being a place where debate and expression flourish. It’s time that the university administration stays true to our values and immediately revises its policy to allow students, staff, and faculty to display a full diversity of signs and flags to express themselves.