Kurtz's plan includes five parts. The first involves adopting a policy based on Yale's 1974 Woodward Report, which stated the importance of intellectual freedom.
"While the Woodward Report forthrightly acknowledges the importance of solidarity, harmony, civility, and mutual respect to campus life, it unmistakably marks these values as subordinate in priority to freedom of expression," Kurtz wrote. "In accordance with this, the Woodward Report rejects the proposition that members of an academic community are entitled to suppress speech they regard as offensive."
The second part of Kurtz's plan would encourage colleges and universities to "systematically educate members of their community in the principles of free expression." He suggested using freshman orientation as a means to do so.
Third, Kurtz suggests holding students who try to disrupt free speech on campus accountable. He points to recent examples of a Yale student who disrupted a speaker and was dragged out of a lecture hall by police when he refused to leave. Upon being dragged from the lecture he began screaming. His actions violated Yale policy, but since his actions were coming from the "politically correct" side of the current campus revolt, he has faced no punishment.
One can't imagine the same rules applying if the tables had been turned.
"We will not see freedom of speech on our campuses until disruptors face discipline for silencing, or attempting to silence, others," Kurtz wrote.
Kurtz's fourth suggestion is for college administrators to be monitored to ensure they "promote and defend freedom of expression." This feels a little Orwellian to me, but Claremont Institutes chairman of the board Thomas Klingenstein has also made such a suggestion. His proposal would create a committee to oversee campus free expression and "act as a check on the reluctance of college administrators to court student displeasure by enforcing rules against disruption of speech," according to Kurtz.
Finally, Kurtz suggests colleges and universities adopt policies that allow for political neutrality, based on the University of Chicago's Kalven Committee Report from 1967.
"The Kalven Report explains that the ability of a university to foster political dissent and criticism by faculty and students actually depends upon the political neutrality of the institution itself," Kurtz wrote. "The principles of academic freedom and institutional neutrality embodied in the Kalven Report are the surest antidote to demands that universities divest themselves of stock in fossil-fuel providers, Israeli companies, and other political targets."
Kurtz argues: "Advocates who attempt to inject universities into the political process by means of their endowments substantially inhibit the intellectual freedom of faculty and students who wish to explore contrary points of view."
You can read Kurtz's entire plan here.
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