Lest ye be judged

Toleration on college campuses ought to be par for the course. But the aftermath of a 2010 Supreme Court case, Hastings College of Law v. Martinez, has called into question how far we ought to extend our toleration for the beliefs of others.

In the 2010 case, the Hastings College Christian Legal Society members claimed that their First Amendment right to freedom of expression and association was being limited by the school’s request that they admit gay students. The plaintiffs argued that the school, by forcing the group to accept all comers, compromised the fundamental aim of the group: to unify like-minded individuals.

The court did not agree. It ruled that universities were right to enforce open participation as part of nondiscrimination policies.

This ruling has made itself felt this year at Vanderbilt, San Diego State and Marquette universities, among others. There, university administrators have either revoked or threatened to revoke official recognition of groups in question until they open their membership to all.

At first blush, these rulings seem spot on. Barring those with dissident opinions from group membership seems to undermine fundamental values of incredible gravity: A willingness to engage the arguments of others and seek out the complexity in opposing viewpoints, after all, underpins the democratic process. We ringingly affirm these values. Toleration has a special place in characteristically pluralistic university campuses, and toleration for deeply entrenched character qualities, like race or sexual orientation, rightly trumps the interests of student organizations to preen their membership.

But countervailing arguments quickly eat away at our confidence in this very stringent ruling. Imagine the polemical atheist who joins a religious group. Obnoxious opposition from this dissident could quickly undermine the group’s aims, and respecting his presence seems to fall beyond the pall of tolerance. There is value in a group’s ability to coalesce around shared beliefs, and this value can find expression along side the stringent guidelines advocated by the Supreme Court.

In subordinating the rights of student groups to a broader respect for difference, we can find ways to realize both values. Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at Vanderbilt’s First Amendment Center, has proposed that student groups be allowed to restrict group leadership on the basis of student’s expressed beliefs: An advocate for gay rights could not become the president of the Christian Legal Society. Even this policy seems too exclusive, and we doubt that it has any teeth—raving dissidents are unlikely to be elected leaders in the first place.

But Haynes is right to seek compromise. Perhaps the best way to compromise is not to force groups to take all comers, but to allow groups to discharge members whose undue rabble-rousing disrupts the group’s mission. This gets slippery quickly: We expect the objection that the presence of atheist members disturbs the core mission of Christian groups. As with much, prudence must play a large role in deciding these cases.