We pledge to all Clemson students-present and future-that we support and will defend your freedom of thought, conscience, inquiry, speech, expression, and communication. It is our moral obligation as faculty to defend our students’ basic rights to free speech and expression, whether we support those views or not.
We would therefore oppose all attempts by Clemson faculty and administrators to silence, suppress, or “prosecute criminally” thought and speech deemed vulgar, controversial, unpopular, insensitive, offensive, inappropriate, subversive, or blasphemous. We would regard any effort by Clemson faculty to censor and punish student thought and speech as especially disgraceful.
All students everywhere have a right to think, learn, and speak in an environment free of faculty or administrative threats, intimidation, harassment, coercion, and indoctrination.
Know this: Clemson students are legally entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment. Any denial of this right is illegal, unconstitutional, and a betrayal of Clemson’s commitment to providing its students with a marketplace of ideas.
In the name of genuine tolerance and diversity, let there be no thought crimes or thought police at Clemson University. Our campus must be a refuge for free thought and speech, which includes ideas that we do not like or that make us feel uncomfortable. That’s what a true university is and does.
Let all Clemson faculty and students unite to fight error and prejudice with rational arguments, critical investigation, and unfettered debate, which requires upholding the principle of free speech uncompromisingly.
We therefore pledge to you that we shall work tirelessly to fight censorship and to keep alive the spirit of open-minded inquiry at Clemson University.
C. Bradley Thompson
Department of Political Science
C. Alan Grubb
Department of History
Bradley S. Meyer
Department of Physics & Astronomy
