Randall Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School, said during Thursday’s debate on free speech that disinviting speakers is a form of free “expression.”

in discussion In an interview entitled “Does Harvard University Support Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity?”, President Kennedy defended the university’s free speech record against Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. Harvard University received a “terrible” ranking from the Individual Rights Expression Foundation in September. lowest Of the 251 schools that allowed free speech.

“Declining an invitation is itself a form of expression,” Kennedy said. “Suppose the people making the invitations operated in a corrupt manner or in a manner that you would appall.”

“When the higher-ups here invite someone, I say, ‘Well, I’m a member of this community, but I don’t like it.’ I want this person to be uninvited,” Kennedy continued. “Maybe I’ll win, maybe I’ll lose, but in principle I don’t see any reason why just issuing an invitation should stop the discussion.”

Kennedy later clarified that while he did not support yelling at speakers, he thought it was acceptable to rally the community to ask organizers of speaking events to rescind their invitations.

“My point is, there is no reason in principle for members of the university community to ask the authority that issued the invitation to a speaker to reconsider and revoke the invitation,” Kennedy told the Daily Caller News Foundation. That means there is no problem.” “In principle, there is nothing that would cause the issuance of an invitation to speak to be a decision beyond reconsideration.”

FIRE’s report notes that since 2020, there have been four successful attempts to deplatform speakers and four attempts to suspend speaking events. (Related: House committee accuses elite university of ‘deliberately obstructing’ investigation into Jewish student assault)

“Calling the cancel campaign ‘free speech’ does not change its purpose, which is fundamentally opposed to free speech,” Turley told DCNF. “While technically this is a form of speech, it undermines the essence of free speech values ​​in higher education. You are trying to ensure that dissenting voices are not heard on campus. .”

During the debate, Kennedy also defended comments made by former Harvard University president Claudine Gay during a December 2023 Congressional hearing on anti-Semitism, in which she questioned whether calls for genocide against Jews violated university policy. He refused to make a statement. He insisted Gay’s response was “the correct one.”

In December, the House Education and Labor Committee launched an investigation into anti-Semitism on Harvard’s campus. Commission Chair Virginia Fox released an investigative report in September, saying, “These administrators have failed Jewish students and faculty and failed to clearly demonstrate that anti-Semitism will not be tolerated. In this case, Harvard University may have failed to meet its legal obligations.” Responsible for protecting students from a hostile environment. ”

“Harvard University has been the target of a very powerful and very well-orchestrated smear campaign,” Kennedy said. “Nowhere is this more evident than in the way this committee, chaired by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, seeks to intimidate and harass this and other universities. ”

Harvard University did not immediately respond to DCNF’s request for comment.

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