In response to a campus-wide e-mail from President Maud S. Mandel, Junior Isaac Rivera shares his love for Williams and outlines his concerns about the perils of identity politics in an academic environment

Over eight years ago, when he canceled a planned speech by John Derbyshire, then-President Adam Falk wrote that the college should only cancel speakers “in the most extreme circumstances.” There was a line, he said, and he found it with Mr. Derbyshire.

Last spring when I was in Williamstown, I saw staff from Facilities (Buildings and Grounds in many of our day) spray-blasting pro-Palestinian graffiti off Hopkins Steps. Yesterday, Tuesday morning, November 12, student founds pro-Palestinian graffiti various locations around campus, including the entrances to Thompson Chemistry Lab, Schow Science Library, and the door of Goodrich.

Last night, Sunday November 3, 2024, vandals scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti and vandalized a table with a display celebrating Jewish and Israeli heritage just outside the Frosh Quad.

A week ago today, on Sunday, May 5, 2024, as I was preparing to leave Williamstown and head home to Los Angeles, I stopped on the encampment on Sawyer Quad (what we once, as I recall, called Stetson Lawn) and attempted to engage some of the protesters.

Two weeks ago, on Friday, April 26, in an e-mail to the campus community, President Maud S. Mandel announced that after the disruption of the third program on the War in Gaza and the International Context, "the matter will be referred to the College’s standard disciplinary process."

“Free speech”, I read on Coleman Hughes’s Twitter feed while in Williamstown, “is never about protecting speech you agree with. It’s always about protecting speech you hate.” He was reflecting on the protests/encampments at Columbia University, his alma mater.

When Niko Malhotra ‘24, the student on our Steering Committee learned I would be in WIlliamstown this week, he invited me to attend a program of the Society for Conservative Thought which he chairs, “Faith in the Halls of Power: Why Faith and Public Life Go Together in the American Experience”. The speaker was Tim Goegelin, Vice President of External and Government Relations for Focus on the Family, a social conservative organization.

Last night, Thursday, April 25, 2024, students disrupted the last of three programs on the War in Gaza and the International Context. President Maud S. Mandel, who was present, reacted swiftly and appropriately. Please read the full text of her letter to the campus which we include below.

In an interview with WAMC Northeast Public Radio, President Maud S. Mandel was asked about the protests at Columbia University and defended free speech

In our webinar last week, we asked our student panelists what the college could do to signal institutional support for free speech. Each offered suggestions, which, if implemented, we believe would confirm Williams College’s commitment to free speech.

Those removed from campus life today sometimes come to understand college life by what we see and read in the media. Since an angry rabble disrupting a lecture is more newsworthy than students quietly listening to and asking thoughtful questions of a speaker, we come to believe that disruption is endemic. And that students would rather protest those putting forward opposing views than consider their arguments.

For nearly six months now since the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, Americans have been paying closer attention to colleges and universities. We have seen violent protests, speakers shouted down, and students intimidated at institutions where ideas should be argued and discussed and differences respected.

While we support the right of the Queer Student Union, along with two other student groups, to host the “Deconstructing Pinkwashing” Panel, we are concerned that the Williams Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) helped make the event possible.

“Students”, I wrote, concluding my post defending their right to air all manner of opinions, “need to learn to respond to ideas, even controversial and contemptible ones, with thoughtful arguments.”

Just over eight years ago, on February 28, 2016, then-President Adam Falk announced that he was cancelling a speech by John Derbyshire scheduled to take place at Williams. The controversial right-winger had been invited by a student group, Uncomfortable Learning.

A Political Science professor who embodied the ideals of our alma mater passed yesterday, January 25, 2024. Kurt Tauber was 101.

For many of us, Williams was a place where we were exposed to a great variety of ideas and perspectives, whether in the classroom, in conversations with our peers and our professors, or at lectures, debates, panel discussions, and other forums. We believe college policies should make it easy for faculty and students, whether independently or as part of or in tandem with student clubs or academic departments to bring in speakers and otherwise organize events.

Free speech at Williams means that students, faculty, administrators, and invited guests can speak their mind without sanction from the college. It also means that others respect their right to speak, letting them have their say before responding. That is, if they choose to respond. Free speech also allows others to consider speakers’ remarks silently – or to just ignore them.

In a recent segment on CNN, Fareed Zakaria observed: American universities have been neglecting excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas — many of them clustered around diversity and inclusion. It started with the best of intentions.

Last week, in addition to publishing junior Noah Cape’s smart piece in support of Israel and in favor of open discourse, The Record also published a strange letter faulting the student paper for “platforming of a piece with factual inaccuracy and hateful speech”.

The week before last we wrote that many Williams students are afraid to defend Israel, feeling they will be marginalized if they speak out.

Yesterday, in response to concerns that she had been silent in the wake of Hamas’s unprovoked terrorist attacks on Israel, President Maud Mandel e-mailed Williams students, faculty, and staff, addressing her silence and inviting everyone to join her at a campus vigil next Monday.

Across the country, in living rooms, at kitchen tables, Americans are talking about the Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel. Twitter is aflame with all manner of individuals providing facts and offering commentary.

Last week, we reported on the FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) ratings showing that while the climate for free speech at our alma mater was improving, the college still ranked below average.

Whenever we alumni interact with current Williams students, we often hear the same thing: they’re afraid to speak out lest their remarks be misconstrued or they be shamed or otherwise shunned for saying the wrong thing. Faculty and administrators are also aware of the problem.

When we invited Niko Malhotra ’24 to join us as a student representative on our steering committee, he readily agreed, sharing a piece he had written for the Record, insisting that “Williams commit to free speech”.

Many of us have long been aware of the increasing politicization of the humanities and social sciences, but until recently, this trend did not impact STEM fields, Division III at Williams. In a recent paper, our own Luana Maroja, Professor of Biology, Chair of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Program, together with Jerry Coyne from the University of Chicago, observe:

Four years ago, in response to controversies at a number of colleges and universities including Yale and Evergreen College State College in Washington State as well as some of the rhetorical charges leveled at our own alma mater, our own Professor of Political Science Darel E. Paul penned s smart piece on the changing meaning of listening on campuses across the country (and perhaps even around the world).

In a recent piece published in the Journal of Controversial Ideas, our Professor of Biology Luana Maroja joined twenty-six other academics in defending merit in science. In their piece, they addressed some of the problems facing research across the disciplines and defended many of the ideals we are championing here at the Williams Free Speech Alliance.

In the second of two pieces Philosophy Professor Steven B. Gerrard published in Bloomberg in September 2019 (which we referenced in this post) he decried what he calls "the comfort college" for discarding "the very tools needed to achieve true justice".

Serous threats to free speech at our alma mater first emerged during the tenure of the college's immediate past president.

Because we are champions of the Chicago Statement (also known as Chicago Principles), we are citing Philosophy Professor Steven B. Gerrard on this #FacultyFriday. In 2018, he pushed for Williams to adopt it.

All too often, college (and university) professors who favor cancelling speakers or otherwise constricting campus discourse make the biggest headlines. At the same time, countless professors and adjuncts doing the serious work of academia, teaching, researching, counseling, garner little—if any—media attention.

When one of my class agents e-mailed me reminding me of the upcoming deadline for this year’s alumni fund, I wrote back, thanking her for the reminder, but explaining why I was reducing my contribution to just $9.

The following is an email sent from Steve H Corkran to Society of Alumni President Tom Gardner

A mob kept disrupting a speaker I invited to campus. The president calls that a success. 'You’re a racist white supremacist!” a Williams College student shouted at Christina Hoff Sommers, after she finished a recent campus talk on feminism.

It’s summer in Williamstown: a wonderful time to step out onto campus and feel the embrace of mountains on all sides. And yet this summer also feels like the quiet eye of a far-reaching storm, swirling with debate of many issues.

Last year, in the fall of 2018, I tried to stand up for campus free speech. A small group of faculty at Williams College in Massachusetts, where I teach philosophy, had circulated a petition to have our institution sign a national pledge of allegiance to principles of free expression that originated at the University of Chicago.

In higher education, academic freedom and a tolerance for a variety of perspectives are vital. However, time and time again colleges and universities bend to the will of social media pressure and undermine this core mission.

Threats to free speech and academic freedom on campus constantly change: One year, it’s speech codes and federal government overreach that present the greatest danger. The next, it could be speaker disinvitations and heckler’s vetoes.

As campuses grow more hostile to free expression, it may be up to alumni to tip the scales in favor of individual rights. Long after alumni leave campus, they remain some of higher education’s most powerful constituents.

“Because the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn . . . . [I]t is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”