Universities Need More Reason—Less "Expression"

Another academic year will bring a lot of debate about the nature of debate on college campuses. It is tempting to say that if the First Amendment is the gold standard of public debate, why not import it wholesale into the university, even if the institution is private and beyond the Amendment’s formal reach? In fact, enthusiasm for applying the modern First Amendment in full to the campus is the position of much of the classical liberal right, because they see it as the way to protect conservative dissenters from left-wing university bureaucrats. Yet the fit between the modern First Amendment and the university as originally conceived by classical liberals is far from perfect. A university is an institution for finding truth by reason. But modern First Amendment doctrine is a charter for expression, protecting speech and even conduct with little, if any, rational content.