Macalester Aaup Statement On The College’s Censoring Of The Taravat Exhibition And Issues Of Artistic And Academic Freedom
The Law Warschaw Gallery at Macalester was designed by HGA Architects and Engineers, a renowned national design firm whose designs seek to give expression to the vision of the clients they serve. It was important for the college that the design of the Studio Art Building, the Commons, and the Gallery be filled with glass to break down the “silos” between art, theater, and music. The architects worked closely with then Provost Kathleen Murray and faculty and staff of the Art and Art History Department to ensure their design for the gallery would meet that goal. The gallery design abandoned the outmoded “white cube” aesthetic, opening up its space to the surrounding environment instead, especially the open, light-filled, two-story art-commons, where students and visitors could see art featured in the gallery even after hours. The art gallery is a gem, purposefully designed to let in both light and the public gaze. It is an asset the college should be proud of.
In the spring semester of 2023, following an incident at Hamline University where an instructor was falsely accused of Islamophobia, some students at Macalester complained about an art exhibit on campus by an Iranian American artist, whose work responds to the contemporary uprising by Iranians against that country’s theocratic regime. In response to those students, who found some of the material on display objectionable, and who lobbied to have the exhibition closed, the college “paused” the exhibit for several days and veiled the glass walls of the gallery with black curtains to prevent people seeing in. The college thereafter re-opened the exhibit, with the curtains removed, but replaced by other barriers to prevent people outside the exhibition space from seeing the offending art “non-consensually.”
The Macalester chapter of the AAUP is deeply concerned by the disregard for our own artistic/conceptual vision in the gallery’s design that the administration’s actions index, and by the administration’s disregard for the principle of artistic freedom and the freedom of speech. In an op-ed in the Star Tribune, President Rivera rejected the characterization of this act as censorship, or as an “infringement of academic and artistic freedom,” asserting that “freedom does not relieve us of our ethical responsibility to be kind to one another.”
She also said, “To characterize our approach as censorship is cynical and misses two important points. The first is that this was not a case of constitutionally protected freedom of expression. The second is that we preserved the exhibit intact, without alteration, so it could continue to be viewed. As educators, we treated this as an opportunity to listen and learn. We upheld the principle of free inquiry, allowed time for important dialogue, and attended to the concerns of students who chose to make Macalester their intellectual home.”
We respectfully disagree with the President’s assertion that this was not an act of censorship. She is correct that this was not constitutionally protected speech, inasmuch as Macalester is a private institution that is not bound by the First Amendment. But to assert that misses the point. As an institution of higher learning, it is Macalester’s responsibility not only to promote debate and the untrammeled exchange of ideas, but to model how that should take place for all members of its community and for the public at large.
The college’s decision to pause and veil the exhibit was taken, as the President herself makes clear, on grounds of kindness, and not on academic grounds. The concept of freedom of thought does not allow for the pausing of thought (here expressed through art), nor for its veiling; both actions are partial, in that authority is intervening to limit, to frame, and to channel how certain ideas may be expressed, and by so doing, to stigmatize them. In Taravat, the administration did so by erecting barriers to veil the images, and by posting prejudicial disclaimers and a student petition against the exhibition on the door to the gallery. Under Macalester’s novel doctrine of “unintentional viewing,” someone would have to opt in to speech rather than opt out of it. That is not how the freedom to express oneself has been understood in the United States, and it does not model for our students that most important of American values.
The Macalester administration is not the participant in speech; it is the guardian, and as such, it must not only be non-partisan, but be seen to be so. People who occupy or pass through public space, like the Law Warschaw Gallery and its surroundings, are not exempt from speech (and art) that might offend them, nor need kindness be invoked to shield them from potential offense. To the contrary, to limit speech or veil it is in itself an act of unkindness, to the speaker and to those who approve of the speech. The remedy, as the Supreme Court ruled in Cohen v California, is for the party offended to avert their eyes, or to walk away. By choosing instead to veil the artist’s work, in a gallery expressly designed for the public to see its exhibits freely, the administration did indeed act to censor the artist’s freedom of expression and to undermine the College’s own values. By veiling Taravat, and hedging it around with warnings, Macalester repudiated the vision of artistic freedom the gallery was expressly designed to promote.
We believe that the primary beneficiaries of a campus climate where the free exchange of ideas is upheld are the students. We reject the false dichotomy the administration’s argument implies between freedom of expression on the one hand, and the goal of making the college more diverse, equitable, and inclusive, on the other. These two values do not contradict each other. The freedom of thought benefits from a diversity of voices, and all those voices must be given the space to be heard. In this instance, however, the college acted not to promote that diversity, but to limit it. It acted not to promote inclusivity, but to privilege some voices over others.
Rather than limit speech, we encourage members of the Macalester community to engage in dialogue with each other when they find speech offensive, and to seek to understand, rather than silence, another’s point of view.
We believe that this action by the college has implications for the freedom of the faculty to teach. The justification of “kindness” as a reason to constrain speech is a subjective doctrine. Who determines when speech constitutes unkindness? Unkindness also arises when those who hold unwelcome ideas are prevented from expressing them, or have those ideas constrained in some other way. It sends a message to faculty, and especially to those faculty who lack the protection of tenure, that their speech may indeed be subject to policing should the administration find it “unkind.”
We affirm the principle of academic freedom, which protects the right of the faculty to teach and do research as their professional judgment determines, as well as to speak freely on matters relating to the governance of their institution and their role as citizens.
We encourage students and administrators to learn more about the reasons that academic freedom and tenure were created to protect the work that scholars do; and to ensure that colleges and universities maintain their role in the larger society, which is to produce knowledge for the greater good, as well as to protect scholarship and the open exchange of ideas for their own sake. We invite them to learn about the role of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the organization created to articulate and defend those values, whose labor over the last century has created the modern faculty as we know it, with its commitment to academic freedom, tenure, and the principle of shared governance.
Relevant AAUP Links
Macalester College AAUP 