A guest speaker debated free speech with students at an event on Feb. 15.
Matt Bufton, executive director of the Institute for Liberal Studies, gave a presentation titled “Free Speech for All: How to Promote Free Speech and Avoid the Culture War” on campus. The event was hosted by Carleton’s Journalism Society.
According to their website, the Institute for Liberal Studies is an Ottawa-based non-profit that seeks to encourage discussion around classical liberal ideas.
Bufton began his presentation by breaking freedom of speech issues into three categories. The focus of Bufton’s presentation was the category he called “private punishment and censorship,” where private citizens may choose to ostracize or punish one of their peers for expressing views they don’t agree with.
“People are suffering consequences from things that they’ve said that other people have disagreed with or found offensive,” Bufton said, citing actions taken against Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd and Senator Lynn Beyak as examples.
“I consider myself sort of a free speech absolutist. I think that there’s pretty much anything you should be able to say, but there are some exceptions” Bufton said, listing fraud, libel, slander, threats, and incitement to violence as examples.
He then asked those in attendance if there should be laws against hate speech and offensive speech. Celestina Bogle, a Carleton student in attendance, disagreed that hate speech and offensive speech are always distinguishable from one another.
“Often times, offensive speech does lead to acts of violence,” she said. “I feel like sometimes offensive and hate can sometimes almost be interchangeable.”
Carleton student Latavia Latanski agreed with Bogle.
“If you’re normalizing offensive speech, it’s very easy for that to turn into violence,” Latanski said. “I don’t really agree with the fact that offensive speech should be normalized, especially in situations where it is offending people. I think that verbal violence can turn into physical violence very fast, and that’s how discriminatory groups develop.”
Bufton ended his formal presentation by offering advice on how to respond to offensive speech.
“It’s unlikely that if you’re someone who believes something, that if a bunch of people show up at a protest to yell at you, yell at the speaker you came to see, and say ‘these views are so offensive, they can’t be listened to,’ that’s probably not going to change your mind,” he said.
Instead, Bufton recommended attending the event of a speaker you don’t agree with to ask critical questions, ignoring the event altogether, or inviting someone who holds the opposite view to speak on campus.
During the question period after Bufton’s presentation, attendees remained to discuss ideas for over an hour and a half. Bogle criticized Bufton’s proposal that sitting down and talking with someone who holds offensive views could change their opinions.
“It almost sounds as if you’re romanticizing how sometimes people can have opinions that are very, very offensive, but if you just sit down and talk to them, you can change someone’s mind,” she said. “It seemed grossly advertised as very easy to do.”
Bufton said that changing someone’s mind on offensive views by talking with them was the “ideal” situation.
“The most effective way to address these things is by allowing them to be spoken about,” he said.
Bufton said that having a civil conversation with someone who holds offensive views is the best way to create change.
“I worry that in situations where people can’t talk about their ideas, then they fall back onto using violence,” he said.
Photo by Meagan Casalino
