Yale Law School's Keith Whittington: ‘A Conservative Free-Speech Rock Star’

G. Patrick Lynch (Law & Liberty), A Conservative Free-Speech Rock Star:

Shortly before I called Keith Whittington to begin our interview he was slightly surprised when I told him we’d do it over Zoom to help me transcribe the conversation. When we got together later that day I found out why: he had been wearing a Pink Floyd tee shirt and wanted to change to look professional. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that America’s foremost conservative defender of free speech is a fan of psychedelic rock and heavy metal—Black Sabbath specifically. When he first arrived at Princeton as a young, untenured faculty member, the graduate students started a rumor that he was in a heavy metal band, based on the frequency with which he played the music in his office late into the night while working.

No matter what you think of heavy metal, it worked for Whittington. Now with an endowed chair in politics at Princeton and a soon-to-be-occupied chair on the faculty at the Yale Law School this fall, his wide-ranging research interests in constitutional law and his prodigious work ethic have catapulted him to the forefront of academia and the campus free speech movement. Who better to talk to if you want to get a sense of the challenges and nuances of the campus free-speech debate? ...

The fruits of his efforts include an organization dedicated to protecting campus speech, the Academic Freedom Alliance, comprised of a very impressive collection of scholars and practicing attorneys from a wide range of specialties. Two of his most recent books, Speak Freely (2018) and You Can’t Teach That! (2024), address campus speech from two different but complementary perspectives. ...

With the challenges to improving the intellectual climate on campuses today and the rising interest in “alternative” right-leaning universities, I asked him what institutional reforms he’d suggest to help American universities go down a more open path. He told me that he had long warned many of his colleagues that unless they “cleaned up their houses,” universities would be devalued or that politicians would try to intervene. He noted that the frustration with universities in the early twentieth century led to the founding of Stanford and the University of Chicago as new institutions with modern sensibilities and goals. The founders of those schools, much like their counterparts today at the University of Austin and elsewhere, looked at the Ivy League and saw them as “dead ends” and started their own schools, which ultimately led to competition and overall improvement. Whittington therefore endorses competition, experimentation, and pluralism among universities. He cited the prospect of a Great Books university or more technical scientific schools as examples of experimental models.

But he doesn’t want to give up on the existing universities. They must carry out their missions better than they are currently. And he acknowledges that outside pressure may be necessary—but it should focus on adding new voices and reopening debate. While expressing concern about the content of many of the bills now under discussion by state legislatures, he nevertheless supports those that provide enhanced protection of free speech. He cited examples like the Hamilton Center at Florida and banning DEI statements in hiring as positive steps. ...

[M]uch like the surprise at discovering that a conservative faculty member is a fan of heavy metal, setting aside our preconceived notions about what individuals are likely to say or believe based on imperfect categories makes free speech and expression on campus important. We might think we know what the “other side” has to say about something, but we can frequently benefit from robust challenges to our stereotypes, even about Ozzy Osbourne.

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