To President John Marshall, 

I am Gabriel McDowell, a student finishing his fifth and final year at Colorado Mesa University and hoping to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in history, come mid-May. I have no doubt you have guessed the reason for my writing to you. It concerns both your announcement that Jared Taylor had been invited to campus, and Jared Taylor’s response to your announcement. 

I wish to start by expressing my solidarity with you as a believer in free speech and civil discourse. The right to express our values and beliefs without censorship by the federal government is one of the most important liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights. While the application and protection of this right has not always been fair to all Americans, it has undoubtedly aided processes of positive social change, and I hope it will continue to do so. However, people on both sides of the present political divide are losing faith in free speech and abandoning civil discourse.

In the present time, civil discourse is becoming more of a theatrical performance than a genuine meeting of minds. When speakers open up the floor for questions, there are often rules in place to prevent extended conversation and ensure the speaker gets the final word. When a news channel invites someone with an opposing perspective to speak or debate, it is usually obvious that the person they have selected was chosen for their poor debate skills in order to make a show of defeating them. Even our presidential debates have become a dramatic affair where no meaningful discussion is had. In the midst of this, people have begun to believe that changing people’s minds is essentially impossible, and the other side is too far gone to consider reasoning with. A study by the non-profit research foundation More in Common found that the number of Americans who have given up on healing our divisions and who would rather purge society of whatever they deem to be rotten has risen to one in three, a terrifying prospect for anyone who fears intensified civil conflict.

In the wake of these changing attitudes, historical events that have previously been championed as positive examples of free speech in action are being reinterpreted in more cynical ways. Let us consider the example you mentioned in your email regarding Martin Luther King Jr., an idol of mine. Events such as the 1963 Birmingham march and the brutal police response, as well as the police-sanctioned mob violence perpetrated against the Freedom Riders, have been circulated recently as examples proving that First Amendment rights are only protected for those who have a dominant position in society, while those who are vulnerable and need the most protection should expect to see their rights flagrantly violated. Narratives of King’s life and contributions are often now concluded with the riots that followed his death and preceded the passage of the Civil Rights Act, reframing his civil, non-violent approach as admirable but ultimately insufficient to accomplish the goals of the Civil Rights Movement. People are losing faith in the possibilities of positive change through civil discourse and are embracing the belief that only violence can improve society in the face of hateful, unreasonable opposition. This attitude, in a political climate where both sides see themselves as underdogs fighting against powerful forces in government that try to silence them, can only spell doom for the republic. Yet I find myself wondering if what we are witnessing is not the failure of youths to confront vile ideas civilly, but in fact the failure of more experienced adults to confront them at all.

It is in this context that your and Taylor’s announcements have been made. It is all I hear students talk about around campus, on the sidewalks and dining tables. To put it bluntly, President Marshall, the students do not put much stock in the principles you claim to hold dear. They perceive your position on inflammatory speech to be spineless cowardice—not because they necessarily disagree that free speech is important, or that we ought to counter hateful rhetoric with superior counterarguments, but because they do not see you embodying these principles beyond your emails. To the students, your invocations of free speech only seem to be issued in defense of inflammatory hawks targeting the most vulnerable students in our community; your blunt interpretation of the First Amendment, without regard for the legal exceptions outlined for unprotected speech, is seen as enabling; and your calls for civility come only when students retaliate against fighting words. Most damningly, these sermons do not seem to come from an inspiring leader like Martin Luther King Jr., but a man perceived by the student body to hide in his office when the ugliness of real conflict rears its head. 

Jared Taylor seems to agree. He does not appear to appreciate the platform you have allowed him, despite the backlash it is bringing down on you and the potential risk you are taking of encouraging local hate groups to converge on CMU or act with boldness in the months following this event. Instead he calls you a coward and challenges you to demonstrate how easily beatable his arguments are yourself. Yet he does not have to have the final word. As the president of this university, I believe you have the power and ability to steer this event in a direction that will strike a blow against racial segregation and demonstrate the virtues of meeting hate speech with better speech. Why not arrange for Jared Taylor to debate you on matters of diversity and ethnonationalism, or another faculty member of your choosing that you trust to perform well in a debate? You have staffed this school with intelligent professionals who would readily help you assemble counterarguments and prepare you for the showdown. 

I urge you to lead this school by example. Otherwise, the consequences for our world in miniature could be dire. I know from personal experience how powerful a flawed belief can be when it is not effectively challenged and dissected; we cannot simply trust people to recognize the flaws in Taylor’s rhetoric, which he has honed for decades, without offering a challenge. The emboldening effect this speech will have on bad actors in and around our campus will stretch well beyond the day of the event. Students recognize this, they fear this, and they do not believe you are doing enough to prevent these consequences. In this climate, when giving hateful speakers unchallenged platforms is becoming viewed as appeasement akin to that which enabled the Second World War, we are in need of a leader who will stand up not just for our rights, but for our dignity, and for the effectiveness of civil discourse.

Eagerly awaiting your leadership,

Gabriel McDowell