Saving diversity one day at a time

A number of students, staff and faculty have suggested in these pages and elsewhere that the University should remove professor Eric Rasmusen's remarks about homosexuals from his personal Web page. In many instances, these comments have been justified by the need to protect "diversity."\nThe urge is understandable, but it is surprising and disturbing to hear members of the University community suggest that an appropriate response to expression with which we disagree is to seek to suppress it.\nAs a public institution, IU is obligated under the First Amendment to tolerate expression, no matter how many people find that expression offensive. \n"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment," the Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed, "it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable." \n"Indeed," the court has written, "if it is the speaker's opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection."\nThis tolerance isn't the result of some unfortunate oversight of this nation's founders. It is a fundamental principle at the very foundation of a democratic nation born of protest and dissent. \nAs Justice Brandeis wrote more than 75 years ago, the First Amendment reflects the founders' conviction that "discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; ... that the fitting remedy for evil counsels ... is good ones." "... believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law."\nThis would be a fundamental principle of the University even if it were not required by the Constitution. We tolerate a wide range of ideas not merely because we are bound by law to do so, but also because we share a commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression and to the "power of reason as applied through public discussion," rather than "silence coerced by law."\nWe believe, as Judge Learned Hand wrote about the First Amendment at the height of World War II, that "right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all."\nIt is ironic when we justify calls to silence professor Rasmusen by citing to our commitment to diversity.\nMuch of the diversity of which we are so justifiably proud today is the result of courageous people -- including civil rights protesters and gay and lesbian rights advocates -- who, protected by the First Amendment, raised their voices to protest laws and policies and ideas they thought unjust. \nThe same First Amendment that defended their expression from official suppression also shields professor Rasmusen and each of us. Diversity is not served by "silence coerced by law" but rather by the "multitude of tongues" and the "power of reason as applied through public discussion" that the First Amendment protects.\nUniversities -- and IU in particular -- have a proud tradition of celebrating diversity. We deserve that commitment when we seek to silence views we don't share. \nSo rather than lament the University administration's failure to act, we should celebrate its wise restraint and this community's commitment to diversity and to the law that helps safeguard it.