By JOHN MACDONALDThe Harvard Business Review | December 07, 2016 6:03:18The right of an academic to pursue a career is an individual right that many students and faculty members are eager to defend, but they do not have the same rights to freedom of expression, association, and petition.
While universities across the country have fought hard to protect the right to express their political views in public spaces, this has often been met with opposition from those who fear that the right would encourage censorship.
The Harvard Business School (HBS) is the latest institution to come out in support of the right of students to express political views.
“We’re really in the midst of a moment where the right has been challenged by a lot of things,” said Sarah Anderson, a professor of business and economics at the school and an author of the forthcoming book, “The Right to Speech: Free Speech in a Post-Trump Age.”
“The way to address these challenges is not through a blanket rejection of speech, but through careful thought about the way that we think about free speech in a democracy.”
The issue is particularly urgent for HBS, which has been the target of criticism for some of its policies.
For example, in September, it announced a plan to institute a new policy on speech and speech-related matters, which would require universities to report to the university administration any instances of speech they consider harmful to the well-being of students.
This proposal was a response to a student protest against a speech by Harvard University president Jonathan Holloway, which was held on the grounds of the school.
The speech was one of several that HBS is investigating after students were reported to have been injured or arrested by police for disrupting the event.
In a letter sent to faculty and staff on Wednesday, HBS vice president for research and training, Daniel Schmitt, said that the new policy is aimed at responding to the concerns of students who have called for a more robust policy to address the growing incidence of student-on-student violence.
In addition to the new speech policy, HSB has created a new committee to review and review existing policies on speech, which will be led by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.HBS has been working on a new academic speech code, which is set to be finalized this summer, and will be updated in the coming weeks, according to Anderson.
The new code will be designed to give professors the freedom to set their own academic speech guidelines.
“There’s been a lot pressure on our university to adopt a new speech code and it’s a new responsibility, but we are really excited about it because it’s going to be a model that will be replicated across our university,” said Anderson.
In January, HBCS announced a new rule that will make it illegal to engage in any form of student protest on the campus.
This new rule would also prohibit student groups from taking part in activities that violate the school’s student conduct code, as well as from engaging in activities with students that promote the overthrow of the administration or the institution.
The university also announced a ban on students from wearing shirts that support the Islamic State or the Taliban, and said it would be implementing new policies on harassment, discrimination, and hate speech.
The new policy came after students in the school, which historically has been one of the most diverse in the country, were recently subjected to harassment for wearing “Black Lives Matter” shirts.
In the past few months, student groups have held events on campus that have drawn condemnation from administrators, including one group that attempted to march through the campus wearing black-tie attire.
In response to the recent violence, students have also called for more robust security measures at Harvard, including a hiring freeze for all incoming freshman.
HBS has said it will invest $50 million to improve campus security, which it said will include increasing police presence, building more barricades around buildings, and establishing a new “shelter space” for students.
“The right to freedom from discrimination, discrimination on the basis of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and national origin, as enshrined in the United States Constitution, is a basic human right,” said Schmitt in a statement.
“HBS is committed to a campus free of hate and oppression, but is committed also to protecting the freedom of speech and assembly as enshrining a fundamental right.”