It was a story that could have been out of an episode of “Boston Public.” In fact, it actually did become one: A teacher, in a communications class, is trying to foster a discussion on hurtful speech and uses the “n” word as an example. He means no harm or offense, yet an African American student complains merely because he was a white man using the “n” word. The teacher is fired for his actions after a prominent minister threatens a boycott of the institution if the teacher is not fired.
The difference here is that in real life, the teacher — professor, actually — went to court. Kenneth Hardy, a former communications teacher at Jefferson Community College of Louisville, Ky., had this situation unfold on him. His employers, the college’s dean and president, claimed that he did not have the freedom to speak at will in the classroom, since the classroom is a workplace and employees can be subject to speech restrictions on the job. Fortunately, the Sixth Circuit Court disagreed. Hardy was legally in the right to make such statements in his classroom as part of an academic discussion. Last month, the Supreme Court upheld Hardy’s claims by refusing
to take Jefferson Community
College’s appeal.

It’s easy and proper to argue that these words are inappropriate in most settings– just not this one. It wasn’t as if the teacher was a raving racist who had accosted the first African American student he saw and shouted the word at him or her. He didn’t scrawl it out of malice on a locker or a house. He didn’t intone it menacingly as he burned a cross. What Hardy did, instead, was to use the words to a positive end: using the speech of the racists to explain to his students just how the words hurt others, in the hopes of instilling in them the reasons for not using racial slurs. To then turn around and accuse him of racism for the mere utterance of the words, even with no racial animus attached but merely because the professor was Caucasian, is the height of absurdity.
The college’s actions explicitly state what has become an unspoken reality on campuses, including here at the University. Free inquiry and legitimate speech are only allowed as long as they are politically correct or will not subject the school to any embarrassment. This is the feared “pall of orthodoxy” that in many cases was the impetus for preserving the free speech of the classroom in
the courtroom.
Yet should there be a clamor to fire these professors, no matter how personally distressing and offensive their speech is? Of course not. Even evil speech (and mark my words, the “n” word is as evil as speech comes) can be a springboard to discussion in an academic setting if used in a constructive manner, as Hardy apparently was trying to do. “It is the purpose of the free speech clause … to protect the market in ideas … to an audience to whom the speaker seeks to inform, edify or entertain,” as the court put it in their ruling.
I am one who can claim an almost unending hatred of the Nazis, the Klan and others who would seek to impose an artificial “superiority” over others through words or violence. Their views deserve no First Amendment protection that we rightfully give to more constructive speech. Yet, once we stop legitimate discussions aimed at trying to come to grips with the mindset of those who would use such words, then it is the beginning of the end of academic debate as we know it.