The freedom to say what we want to say is a sacred right in our western democracy. Protecting speech is recognized as a way of ensuring that there are checks on power and authority. Free speech is a right engrained in the Jewish tradition. The Torah makes clear that we are encouraged to challenge authority and to speak what is on our mind. The great Jewish philosopher and commentator Moses ibn Ezra wrote in the 11th century that, “When a person refrains from speech, the ideas die, the soul stops, and the senses deteriorate.”
Of course, defending the right to speak means that we often must protect even speech that we deem offensive and morally repugnant. This was the argument made by university presidents at the recent congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses.
But is free speech everything? Is the protection of my right to say whatever I want to say the solution to the world’s most challenging problems?
It seems to me that what was missing from that hearing and from our college campuses was an equal dedication to the responsibility of listening.
On college campuses today, there are now festivals of shouting – gatherings where groups of young people use their speech to demonstrate how right they are – refusing to hear anything but the sounds of their own voices. These campuses are no longer marketplaces of ideas – where learning and thinking and wondering is taking place but rather, narrow-minded spaces for the most offensive and threatening of cacophony.
Our protection of these spaces as the ultimate goal is coming at the expense of developing forums where real listening takes place. We are overeager to give people the right to speak and less interested in teaching them the responsibility of listening.
What frustrates me so much about the anti-Israel protests on college campuses is the complete lack of understanding from those involved. They feel instead of actually knowing – and because they are never engaged in any process of hearing any other opinions or views, because they are so interested in protecting their own speech instead of hearing any other, they make their minds up blindly.
Along with the right to free speech comes the responsibility to listen – our tradition emphasizes listening as the ultimate means of gaining sense of our purpose in this world. The mantra of our people – the text that Jews know best – is the Shema – which tells us to pay attention, to listen and to hear – not simply to fall into an abyss of our own speech but to listen beyond.
This should be the value considered most sacred by our universities – instead of seeking only to protect the most vile and threatening of speech, our universities should teach their student bodies to truly hear and understand the world around them in all of its complexity.
