How do we find an off-ramp?

A panel of University of Wyoming student leaders and administrators discussed political violence and how to have better dialogue. The power went out. We kept going in the dark.

As many people have already noted, the murder of Charlie Kirk—on a college campus, during what was supposed to be a civil dialogue with students—was not only a personal tragedy for his young family and friends, it was an affront to the core American value of free expression. It was also an affront to what college campuses are supposed to be about. Most people—on and off campus—were repulsed by the murder and everything it represented.

But a small number of people celebrated it, including on campuses across the country. Many of their statements provoked reactions from governments and stakeholders, calling (including here in Wyoming) for the students, staff, and faculty expressing these sentiments to be fired, expelled, or otherwise disciplined. Some were disciplined, including at some public schools supposedly bound by the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects even vile speech, as long as it doesn’t intentionally or recklessly incite specific and imminent violence. (As far as I know, no one has been disciplined here at the University of Wyoming, UW, for constitutionally protected speech.) Off campus, some people were disciplined for lesser speech offenses, including Jimmy Kimmel (for spreading a false rumor about the shooter’s political affiliation), prompting fears of a new cancel culture.

September 16 panel

The administration here at UW decided to organize a panel on constructive dialogue, as part of the already-scheduled State of the University event on September 16 (last Tuesday). The panelists included our President Ed Seidel, our Interim Provost Anne Alexander, and three student leaders: Gabe Saint (President of UW’s Turning Point USA chapter), Madeline Bender (Vice President of UW College Democrats), and Hayden Mackenzie (President of BridgeUWYO, UW’s BridgeUSA chapter). I was the moderator.

We decided to make the panel’s theme “How do we find an off-ramp?”, based on the viral quote from Utah Governor Spencer Cox at his press conference following Charlie Kirk’s murder: “This is our moment: Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp?”

Right before the panel started—as President Seidel was finishing his State of the University Address—a thunderstorm knocked out the power to campus and a large part of town. We decided to keep going, using cell phone lights and a small generator to power one microphone. The audience stayed too. Two staff members recorded the panel on their cell phones. Here is the recording, and I copy my introductory remarks and panel questions below.

I want to especially thank our student leaders, who were brave, gracious, and poised. As I said in my concluding remarks: If our students represent the state of the university, then the state of our university is very good.

Introduction

We’re in an important and perilous political moment. Over the past year or so, there have been two assassination attempts on our then-Presidential candidate and now President. There was an assassination attempt on the governor of Pennsylvania. A healthcare CEO was assassinated in New York. The Centers for Disease Control was targeted by a shooter, killing a police officer. Two state politicians were shot in their homes in Minnesota. Little children were shot in a Catholic school in Minnesota. And last week, Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus while trying to have a civil dialogue. On the very same day, two kids were shot in a high school in Colorado. This is just since last summer. There are other examples I could give if we went back further.

It’s important to not overstate the problem, especially in ways that amplify the platforms of people who commit political violence. They remain a small minority of people, and some do it because they want notoriety and fame. Leaders from across the political spectrum have overwhelmingly condemned each of these acts of violence, with rare exception. The same is undoubtedly true of people on our campus—students, staff, and faculty alike. These incidents did not lead to widespread rioting in major cities. The country has also arguably been through worse episodes of political violence before—like the 1960s and of course the Civil War.

And yet, it’s important to not understate the problem either. For example, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression just published their latest college free speech rankings survey, and 1 in 3 students who responded nationally stated that it was sometimes acceptable to use violence to stop a speaker. This 1 in 3 cut roughly equally across all political groups.

Beyond these headlines, we see some people celebrating some of the murders I mentioned. This, too, happened during previous bouts of political violence like in the1960s. But today, social media super-charges it. The algorithms don’t just amplify the most extreme voices, they also flood our feeds with graphic videos of the violence.

Last week, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said: “This is our moment: Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp?”

That’s the question I want to invite our panelists to help us think through: How do we find an off ramp?

College campuses—and college students especially—can’t be expected to solve nationwide problems on our own. But we should be leaders in constructive dialogue, and we’ve been working hard at this over the past few years at UW. Moments like this are where we put our free expression principles and our Wyoming values of confident pluralism and civic friendship to the test.

I want to thank our student leaders in particular for having the courage to participate in this dialogue at this time.

And I also want to say the following to everyone in the audience. Civil discourse doesn’t work without trust. We have to assume the best in each other, and we have to listen charitably to what everyone has to say. So, if there are any reporters or others with a public platform in the audience, don’t try to play “gotcha” with our students who are up here. Recognize that it takes guts for them to be up here. Give them the space and grace to think through these messy issues without fear of being quoted out of context, shamed, or canceled.

Introduction

• I want to start by just asking each of you the simple question from Governor Cox: How do we find an off ramp?

• Almost every perpetrator of the incidents I mentioned in the introduction was radicalized online. For the students: what has your experience on social media been like? How does it affect constructive dialogue and polarization? How can we help students protect themselves against online radicalization?

• Hyperbole can be a powerful rhetorical device. It is constitutionally protected speech as long as it doesn’t intentionally or recklessly incite specific and imminent violence. But I have also heard a lot of public concern, from all sides, about hyperbole becoming a slippery slope leading to violence. For example, if it’s common to say that words are violence, that people with different political views are Nazis, fascists, communists, terrorists, destroying America, etc., do you think that’s a culture that is going to end up promoting actual violence?

• On the other hand, there are some really deep disagreements in our society, and we can’t work through them by pretending they don’t exist. Debates about immigration, abortion, gender, religion, crime and policing, democracy, and affirmative action, to name a few, cut to the core of people’s identities, their core moral beliefs, their ideas of what America should be about, and their feelings of belonging in our community. They are also contested issues, where a range of viewpoints exist, and where colleges need to be able to foster open and civil discussion and debate.

  For example, I’m an immigrant. So, I understand how some of our international or immigrant students might feel unsettled or othered by calls to radically restrict immigration. But I also recognize that deciding who gets to come into your country is one of the most fundamental roles of government, and it’s perfectly legitimate for citizens of a democratic country to decide they want less immigration. You can imagine similar tensions on the other issues I listed.

  How can we foster a community where people from all backgrounds and viewpoints can have these types of debates and also feel like they belong in our campus community?

• I want to ask President Seidel and Provost Alexander three questions about university policy and practice, and also for your advice, related to specific concerns I have heard recently from students and faculty.

  • A lot of faculty and some students feel like we might be entering a moment—like a mirror image of 2020—where we’re walking on eggshells, and we’re one misspeak away from our administrators panicking in the face of a bad news cycle or pressure from external stakeholders, and firing or expelling us for protected speech without due process. By my count, roughly a dozen faculty have been fired or suspended over the past week across the country for social media comments. Some are also worried about ending up on one of these public lists going around and being opened up to harassment and threats.

    How can UW uphold the appropriate standards of classroom conduct for faculty, but also protect our academic freedom and free expression rights? Can faculty and students exercising their free expression rights trust that the administration will have their backs if there’s a controversy? How can we create a culture where faculty and students feel truly safe to teach, learn, and research freely, pushing the boundaries of thinking like we’re supposed to without looking over our shoulders?

  • I have also heard from some conservative students in the past week who are deeply unsettled in a way that reminds me of things I heard from Jewish students and colleagues after October 7th. They are seeing a small but vocal minority of their peers, and even some faculty, around the country celebrating the death of someone for the sole reason that that person holds conservative beliefs—beliefs which are widely held among Americans and Wyomingites.

    The faculty piece is worth dwelling on a bit. Nationally, faculty skew significantly more liberal than the Democratic party. Imagine if it was the other way around, and most professors were not just conservative, but very conservative. How would liberals on and off campus feel about that? How safe would they feel sharing their views in class? How would they feel if a famous liberal speaker was assassinated on a campus while trying to have a debate, and some faculty were celebrating it?

    So, President Seidel and Provost Alexander: How can we build a campus community where free expression and academic freedom are sacrosanct, but where students also don’t go into their classes wondering if sharing their views might make some of their peers and maybe even a few of their professors wish them harm? How do we thread that needle?

  • Of course, more than one group can feel—and be—vulnerable at the same time. For example, some of our LGBT+ students, staff, and faculty surely feel vulnerable. Over the past two years, a UW sorority has been the target of scorn nationally for having a transgender member, and we’ve recently seen national news stories speculating about connections between the shooters in Utah and Minnesota and the trans community, directing ire against an already vulnerable minority group. How do we support all of our students, staff, and faculty?

• For the students: how can UW better support free expression and constructive dialogue? Events? Activities in the classroom? In the dorms? In Saddle Up? Clear policies and principles followed consistently, regardless of the news cycle and external pressure? Something else?

• How can students themselves support free expression and constructive dialogue, in your day-to-day lives?

• I’ve focused my questions so far on topics directly related to constructive dialogue, but I want to acknowledge other issues that have come up in national conversations about political violence—guns and mental illness, for example—and give each of you an opportunity, if you would like, to comment or reflect on these. In other words, what’s something we haven’t talked about yet, but we should?

• We don’t have time for an audience Q&A, but we invite you all to join us at Poke’s Pub and continue the discussion. [We moved outside the ballroom instead because of the power outage.] There will also be more dialogues like this on different issues throughout the year. Thank you all for coming.