Viewpoint Neutral Academy Rules of Conduct

A Welcome and a Warning From Our President on Campus Speech

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Dear Current and Future Students,

Welcome to Viewpoint Neutral Academy. Our institution has a long and proud tradition of warning about free speech crises on American college campuses and recommending that students who abuse their free speech rights should seek out cognitive behavioral therapy to correct their ill-gotten ideas.

As a member of our academy, please adhere to the following rules of conduct at all times to ensure that you use your free speech correctly:

Free speech is the reason why Viewpoint Neutral Academy exists. Never use your free speech in ways that disrupt decorum and norms of civility.

Viewpoint diversity is the sine qua non of teaching and learning at Viewpoint Neutral Academy. Embracing viewpoint diversity is what distinguishes our institution from all other colleges and universities. Never adopt, much less act on, viewpoints that encourage sufficient diversity of thought to introduce truly new ideas into the academic affairs of our campus, which may be unfamiliar to its current leaders and financial supporters.

Invited campus speakers who use their free speech to promote new and challenging ideas—particularly those who espouse scientifically disproven beliefs in genetic inferiorities and superiorities among different human beings—should be respected and dutifully listened to at all costs. Student and faculty groups who choose to protest certain discriminatory views and policies in on-campus demonstrations surrender their free speech rights. Our commitment to this principle is so strong that it will apply to students merely suspected of intending to engage in such protests.

Viewpoint Neutral Academy takes a brave stand against programs designed to increase the number of student and faculty members from historically excluded and disenfranchised groups. We resist such quota systems, in other words, because we believe that higher learning is now diverse enough; the token amount of individuals from historically marginalized groups on our campus satisfies minimum expectations for academic heterogeneity.

Viewpoint Neutral Academy opposes political correctness in all forms, especially ideological litmus tests or performative oaths to seemingly progressive social values. Occasionally, our leaders will answer questions during televised congressional hearings to performatively appease officials intent on pressuring our institution to publicly align itself with their political agenda.

Think big. Resist groupthink. Speak in heterodox ways that question prevailing orthodoxies. Use your free speech to disrupt and reinvent. But never do so by questioning the institutional structure, governing policies, traditional intellectual hierarchies, or financial and political networks that sustain Viewpoint Neutral Academy.

Viewpoint Neutral Academy strenuously opposes the assumption that college should be a safe space free from challenging ideas that might trigger psychically fragile students. In an overabundance of caution for community safety, however, we will not hesitate to deploy police or National Guard troops in response to acts of civil disobedience from relatively powerless student groups.

Viewpoint Neutral Academy rejects the intellectually fashionable notion that words are violence. We do not bubble-wrap students to shield them from opposing ideas. Be aware that students or faculty who use violent words—defined as words that either go too far in their advocacy for justice and rights or threaten to damage our institutional reputation—may face repercussions in the form of heavily armed and physically coercive police force.

Above all, Viewpoint Neutral University wishes to unambiguously state that violence is never an acceptable response to the exercise of free speech. But if police forces arrest or assault you on our campus for exercising your First Amendment rights, it’s probably your fault because you’ve been coddled.

Viewpoint Neutral Academy is not simply an institution of teaching and research. We intend our policies to serve as an example of reform in public and private education throughout the nation. We are confident that this example might even spark a new era of Enlightenment. Legal disclaimer: Viewpoint Neutral Academy is not an actual campus; neither does it engage in any actual university-level teaching or research.

Do not construe this code for using free speech on our campus as a free speech code.