Yes, There is a Case for Using Offensive Words in Classrooms — in Certain Situations

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on May 18, 2021

Such disputes tend to boil down to a clash between the First Amendment free speech rights of students and faculty vs. the eternal question of how a law school, as a statement from Rutgers officials put it, can best “create classroom environments in which all of our students feel seen, heard, valued and respected.”

I would suggest, for starters, that the arc of justice and fairness should bend toward freedom of expression, clarity and open, honest debate, particularly in a law school, which as an institution is supposedly grounded in such principles.

That doesn’t apply only to law schools, though. Timothy Boudreau, a tenured professor at Central Michigan University, was fired for repeating the slur in a journalism law class as he read from a court opinion that was all about how First Amendment law treats that epithet.

Maybe he used the offensive words too much or with too little sensitivity. I won’t even try to judge that case from a distance. But, as a former J-school major myself, I think journalism professors and students should aim for accuracy and clarity without “sugarcoating,” as one of my old journalism profs used to say, yet also without rubbing new salt into old wounds.

Sometimes the old editorial slogan, “When in doubt, leave it out,” should be deployed.

But neither should we sugarcoat — in ways that, as John McWhorter, author of the new “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” puts it, treats his fellow African Americans — like me — as being too “fragile” to deal with honest language.

With that, I am reminded of the Marshall law student who reportedly said that the words on Kilborn’s exam gave her “heart palpitations.” Perhaps she should consider changing her career choice.

After all, if anyone should be prepared to deal unflinchingly with the world’s brutal realities and often brutal language, it is lawyers and journalists. Words are our business.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)