‘A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged . . . [it is] the skin of a living thought that may vary in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.’ — US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

I’ve been dismayed to hear, even amongst the distractions of my Cambodian exile, of recent moves by the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) to impose political censorship upon Farrago, the student paper, for publishing material deemed ‘offensive’ to various minority groups on campus. Judging on my experiences from last year, I can only presume that the censorship motions were spearheaded by a coalition of the Socialist Alternative and Activate (green left) factions, with the possible support of some of the Labor Left representatives. So far, I’ve been unable to get a copy of the offending articles (when I do I’ll post excerpts of them here); but their content, however ‘offensive’, is unlikely to shift my views on the necessity of unfettered free speech in any institution of learning. The following motion, passed by the Students’ Council of UMSU on April 2, tells me pretty much everything I need to know. It obliges (read: forces) the editors of Farrago to fulfill the following:

1. That the next edition of Farrago should contain an apology to women, queer and international students or students of colour who may have been offended by the content of the last edition of the magazine. In particular the pieces by Nesto Cerisier and Ramon Glazov.

2. The apology should also note that Farrago is an independent publication of the Student Union, which fights against racism, sexism and queerphobia on campus.

3. That MUOSS, the Women’s and Queer Departments should be formally invited to reply to the content in the last edition of Farrago.

4. That several pages of the next edition of Farrago be allocated in advance for the purpose of publishing these replies.

A further motion was proposed seeking to ban the offending writers from contributing anything to the magazine for the rest of the year. That this last Brezhnevian move was voted down will be little compensation to Cerisier and Glazov, who will be forever monitored by shadowy Union acolytes for impudent slips of the pen or further transgressions of Union orthodoxy. They might as well have been banned, for all the freedom of speech the Union will now allow them.

Thankfully, a small group of sub-editors and contributors has banded together to oppose these moves by the Students’ Council, and are publishing an open letter to the Council in the next edition of Farrago. As they rightly state:

Farrago‘s value to the student community lies in its being an independent voice for students. This includes being open to the views of all students, without bias on the grounds of political ideology. The Student Council’s motion fundamentally compromises this independence. We recognise that Farrago is an UMSU publication, however we point out that UMSU’s own regulations specify that Farrago is to be an independent publication and that the editors are to use their discretion, as UMSU office bearers, to determine editorial content and to uphold the UMSU constitution.

The motion required that Farrago publish an apology for alleged racist, sexist and queerphobic comment and provide ‘several pages’ for responses from offended parties. Not only has the Student Council interfered with the magazine on political grounds, but we as contributors believe that this censorship sets an intolerable precedent. The motion significantly undermines the integrity of the editorial position, and questions the capacity of the editors themselves. That it was also discussed at the Student Council meeting that the editors should allow office bearers to vet all submissions brings into question the Council’s respect for the constitutional role of the editors, and for press freedom itself.

For anyone who has worked in the Student Union, it comes as no surprise that some of the far-left activist factions have an ambivalent relationship to the idea of press freedom. That certain factions can advocate the censorship of Farrago whilst having opposed, for instance, the Howard Government’s censorship of three volumes of violent jihadi writings by Islamic scholar Sheikh Abdullah Azzam strikes me as the height of inconsistency; and it is unlikely that the writing published in Farrago approached the violent appeals contained in Azzam’s writing. At the time, I supported the campaign to make these books freely available online and argued that the government campaign against ‘terrorist’ speech was patronizing and would ultimately achieve nothing. But I’ve since struggled to understand the selective way in which the principle of free speech has been applied around campus: if Azzam can speak freely, advocating the massacre of Jews, why disallow the innocuous wit of Cerisier or Glazov? It’s difficult to know whether this is hypocrisy or simply bare-faced political opportunism. Either way, it’s clear that the ambivalence to free speech cuts a lot deeper.

Let’s start by ironing out some definitional issues. True, the UMSU Constitution pledges all of its representatives to ‘fight against racism, sexism and queerphobia on campus’. But this passage is so ambiguous it borders on nonsense. What exactly, in practical decision-making terms, does ‘sexism’ mean? State and Federal legislation provides clear definitions, but judging by the way the term is applied around UMSU — pretty much at will — it can mean anything, and therefore means nothing. To take just one example: last year, the four Media Officers (of which I was one) were accused of ‘homophobia’ on the basis of an overheard private conversation (!) in which we allegedly took issue with some of UMSU’s political campaigns and said that the Queer Department did nothing constructive for gay students on campus. None of us can recall such a conversation, the contents of which, in any event, were well within the limits of the law and should have been protected by principles of free speech. But the very fact that the issue was taken to Students’ Council — the Union’s peak student decision-making body — only proves the point made in the alleged conversation: how relevant can a department be that spends its time harvesting union gossip and monitoring private conversations for deviations from the status quo of activist politics? And what does this say about the Queer Department’s commitment to freedom of speech?

The most important point, however, is the way the concept of ‘queerphobia’ can be stretched to encompass pretty much anything the Queer Officers want it to. Within this boundless paradigm, criticisms of the Queer Department and its Officers are blown out into homophobic attacks against all queer students, against the very notion of queer identity. To debate the necessity of the Queer Department or discuss whether queer people are so disadvantaged that they need special bureaucratic dispensations — both legitimate debates that should take place in any university — are suddenly placed beyond the pale. Like the ancient crime of lese majesté, personal criticisms of queer persons and/or Officers are seen to indicate nothing less than treason against a authority ordained and legitimized by an extra-rational force exempt from intellectual critique. The message to students is clear: certain types of authority are not to be judged or criticised. UMSU is all for freedom of speech (of course!), but only the sorts that its representatives happen to personally agree with. Now, imagine if the University of Melbourne authorities were to use the same logic to silence dissent about the Melbourne Model reforms: the UMSU left would be in an endless ferment about their right to protest freely — and rightly so. But disagree with the protesters, and you might find your right to do so openly simply voted out of existence, as nearly happened to Farrago contributors Glazov and Cerisier.

The UMSU Constitution is hopelessly defective in pledging the Union to fight racism, sexism and queerphobia without providing sensible or stable definitions of what these terms actually mean. Contrary to what some might think, they are not fixed, rigid concepts, and academics have spilt gallons of ink in pursuit of definitional accuracy in debates about racism and sexism. A Constitution, meanwhile, is supposed to provide a neutral framework within which the legislative, judicial and executive functions of a government are carried out, putting inviolable limits on the powers that the government can exercise vis-à-vis the rights and duties of individuals. Imagine UMSU’s constitution was applied to a nation-state: the terms ‘sexism’, ‘racism’ and ‘queerphobia’, offered so loosely, would be open to political manipulation by any political group that had the will and the power to do so. And once the definitions were realigned and solidified, and it was accepted that they were to override personal liberties (as was implied by the Council motion of April 2) almost anything would become justifiable. This is democracy in only the shallowest sense of the term, shorn of the predictability guaranteed in liberal societies by the rule of law. As a citizen, you would simply not know where you stood.

Letting Queer or Women’s Officers decide what is or isn’t homophobia or sexism is qualitatively no different from letting George W. Bush decide what is or isn’t terrorism: both have every reason to err on the side of exaggeration. Just as Bush has a political interest in seeing terrorism around every corner, so too do radical Queer Officers have every incentive to turn up instances of ‘queerphobia’ everywhere on campus. This pattern is universal: as a person’s position becomes gradually undercut by social progress or self-inflicted irrelevance, the engine of self-preservation takes charge, spawning scapegoats and identifying fresh new targets for attack. The very aim of ‘fighting queerphobia’ on campus — as if it were surging against the walls of the campus like the barbarian hordes — predisposes the Union to exaggeration. Homophobia, like terrorism, undoubtedly still exists, and seriously; but setting a subjective — and therefore constantly fluctuating — benchmark based on emotion is violently unpredictable and lends itself to personal abuse. Policing speech on campus may seem like a good means of vicariously taking part in the fight against homophobic violence in society, but to label certain forms of speech or communication as homophobic or terroristic simply because one feels that they are is a direct challenge to the idea of free speech itself.

Disagreeing and arguing is what mature, intellectually adventurous students do: it shows that they’re learning critical skills in their time at university. The Student Union should empower students, not infantilise them. It should provide leadership rather than self-esteem, representation rather than protection from offensive speech. Overall, it should treat students like independent, intellectually-engaged adults, not as a horde of mindless piglets fleeing from ‘offensive’ speech to suckle safely at the big-tit of High Bureaucracy. Most students — and about half of UMSU representatives — are nothing like this: they would all prefer the uncomfortable challenge of spirited debate, and occasional personal offense, to the kindergarten morality of student censorship. Let Glazov and Cerisier write and submit freely: they are, like all who write and debate ideas, a vital part of the democratic process. Some Union representatives could take a page or two from their book.