Joseph Jacobson’s recent Letter to the Editor, published in the Oct. 2 issue of The Campus and written on behalf of the Middlebury College Republicans, claims to defend free speech. Responding to an editorial that urged dialogue and safety in campus discourse, the letter accused the Editorial Board of “paradoxically tak[ing] a position leaning in favor of censorship and intolerance rather than any legitimate form of free speech.”
“College is not a safe space,” it declared. “Real safety is freedom from physical harm, not from disagreeable ideas.” It is an argument that first sounds principled, the brave defender of the unalienable rights given to us by the Founding Fathers. The letter treats free speech as an act of defiance, a way to assert one’s thoughts without fear. But what it misses is that speech has never been merely an act of assertion. It is also an act of relationship, a way of inhabiting community.
The letter’s version of freedom imagines the individual alone at a podium, untouched by the presence or pain of others. But that is not what a campus, or a democracy, actually is. We live, study and argue in proximity. What we say lands somewhere. To treat speech as something detached from the reality of space and time is to misunderstand the very conditions that make it possible.
I will be clear: I do not believe Middlebury should ban controversial speakers. Disagreement is not dangerous. Exposure to ideas we find uncomfortable or even offensive can be essential to understanding why we believe what we do. I share part of Joseph Jacobson’s concern that shielding students from that entirely is unjust, but what his letter misses is that the presence of a controversial speaker is not the same thing as dialogue. It is not enough to simply open the door and call it free speech.
Free speech on college campuses does not mean removing all structure, but rather designing the structure well. It means making sure people who feel threatened or unseen by a speaker’s message still have space to respond, to question, to challenge. And that is where I part ways with Jacobson. His version of freedom is defined by endurance, who can withstand the discomfort of being offended. Mine is defined by relationships, how we create conditions where people can face difficult ideas without being erased by them. The question at hand should not be “Should someone be allowed to speak?” but “What are we doing to make sure the event actually teaches something?”
Jacobson’s letter leans heavily on courage, the idea that confronting uncomfortable ideas is the essence of college. But real courage is not the absence of safety. It is what grows out of safety. Students take intellectual risks when they feel they belong. They ask harder questions when they are not bracing for ridicule or erasure.
The letter’s claim that “college is not a safe space” is audacious. It treats vulnerability as weakness because vulnerability would require reflection, and reflection is what ideological certainty fears most. When a campus invites someone whose views are harmful or extreme, the real test is not whether students can sit quietly and tolerate it. The test is whether we can design spaces where everyone, even those who feel targeted or disagree, can still take part in the conversation that follows. That is what it means to steward free speech — when vulnerability is celebrated.
Jacobson also writes that the forum format already allows for engagement. He notes that some students, including members of his club, met with the speakers before and after the event, and some even had dinner with them. He presents this as proof that dialogue on campus is alive and well. But those dinners were by invitation. Not every student, certainly not every student who felt directly implicated by the speakers’ message, was welcome at that table. Personally, I did not receive the fancy email invitation. What Jacobson describes as “discussion” was not a public conversation but a curated one. Access to dialogue should not depend on proximity to power or belonging to the right network. The fact that a few students could meet privately with speakers does not prove that dialogue is thriving. It proves how easily it can be fenced off.
A moderated panel or a private dinner can look like engagement, but if participation is limited to a select few, the rest of the campus is left to watch. And that is the distinction I believe the Editorial Board was trying to make, between the appearance of open discourse and the practice of it.
The deeper misunderstanding in Jacobson’s letter is the idea that freedom and care are opposites, that one must shrink for the other to expand. In reality, they sustain each other. The task is to hold both: defending speech while demanding empathy. Challenging each other without assuming dominance. Building spaces where disagreement is not feared but also is not used as a weapon.
That is what I believe the Editorial Board meant by “start listening.” That is what a genuine culture of free speech requires. Not louder voices, but deeper ones. Because in the end, listening is the hardest part of free speech, and maybe the most radical.
