(The Center Square) – A speaker at the University of California San Francisco said “whites are psychopaths” and “it (is) written in the law you can rape black women,” sparking national outrage.
Amid rising calls for censorship on college campuses in response to “divisive debates and discussions,” free speech experts emphasized the importance of college administrations’ neutrality, as exercised by UCSF, on matters of constitutionally protected free speech.
As part of Black History Month event, author Dante King delivered a lecture sharing a title with his upcoming $1,295, 8-week course, “Diagnosing Whiteness and Anti-Blackness: White Psychopathology, Collective Psychosis and Trauma in America.”
In his lecture, he also claimed that white “behavior represents an underlying, biologically transmitted proclivity with roots deep in their evolutionary history.”
A video of the lecture reposted on X went viral, rapidly accumulating 2.2 million views, with pundits calling the lecturer “racist” and “bigoted” for his remarks.
King’s speech comes as universities across the country are enacting a flurry of speech rules aimed at preventing perceived psychological harm to students, especially in the aftermath of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. Free speech experts, meanwhile, maintain that free speech — even uncomfortable speech — is fundamental to free inquiry and learning.
“What we saw UCSF do recently is what we want all colleges to do in controversies around protected speech: be neutral. Universities should get comfortable again playing host to even the most divisive debates and discussions. That’s the purpose of a college campus,” said Alex Morey, Director of Campus Rights Advocacy at the free-speech civil rights group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, to The Center Square.”
“Too many colleges in recent times have strayed and find themselves constantly wading into political debates or taking sides against scholars or students,” continued Morey. “That sets these administrators up for disaster, particularly when situations like Israel/Palestine arise and campuses are sharply divided.”
According to FIRE, California is home to some of the nation’s worst censors in higher education. While FIRE did not analyze UC SF, the other schools in the University of California system ranged from “average” to “poor” in its free speech rankings, with flagship UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles universities coming in as “slightly below average.”
