By Eileen AJ Connelly
Organizers at Utah’s Weber State University canceled a two-day conference on censorship after the administration claimed that they risked running afoul of a state law unless the event itself was censored.
The cancellation earlier this month is among the latest examples of vague state laws wreaking havoc on campuses across the country.
The state law, HB 261, enacted in 2024, bans diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, along with any programs, activities, and required trainings that endorse a specific list of concepts that relate to identity and power.
“We have reached the point where we are censoring discussions of censorship. The campaign to exert ideological control over higher education turns more Kafkaesque by the day,” said Jonathan Friedman, Sy Sims managing director of U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America.
The Weber State University Unity Conference, titled “Redacted: Navigating the Complexities of Censorship,” was to be held Oct. 2 and 3, with the first day featuring a screening of the documentary “Banned Together,” about the current wave of book bans across the country, followed by a panel discussion with students. The second day was to have included a panel discussion featuring faculty, staff and community members, KSL.com reported.
The Unity conference, previously called the Diversity Conference, has been an annual event for 27 years. The university’s publicity for this year’s event explained that it “celebrates a legacy of education and open dialogue on topics related to diversity and inclusion.”
But just two days before the event, Jessica Oyler, Weber’s vice president for Student Access & Success, sent a memo warning participants that because the event was sponsored by her division, and not an academic department, the event would not be exempt from the state’s law and speakers would be subject to the university’s interpretation of its provisions.
“Programming cannot include what the law defines as a prohibited discriminatory practice,” Oyler wrote, providing examples such as “claiming that sociopolitical structures are inherently power struggles between groups, or suggesting that individuals are inherently privileged, oppressed, racist, sexist, or victims based on personal identity characteristics.”
While that passage echoes the language of the law, more troubling to the organizers and participants was that Oyler’s memo went further, adding, “Presentations should not describe legislation or policies in ways that take a side, such as labeling them ‘harmful’ or attributing them to a partisan ‘strategy.’ Even if the intent is to provide context, that language is difficult to reconcile with HB 261 when used in non-academic programming.”
Specifically, there’s no language in HB 261 that prohibits taking sides on a policy, saying that a law is “harmful,” or attributing actions to partisan strategies. These interpretations offered by the administration go beyond its provisions. And though the law is incredibly broad, this is an example of dangerous overcompliance by the University.
The memo prompted political science Professor Richard Price to withdraw as a moderator for the student panel and a participant in a keynote panel.
An expert in censorship, Price said in an open letter to the college administration and posted on their blog that they were told the directive reflected the law’s requirement that the university present “a range of viewpoints.”
And indeed, the law does say, “A university shall … develop strategies, including inviting speakers, to promote viewpoint diversity; and establish policies and procedures to include opportunities for education and research on free speech and civic education.”
But as Price notes, the directive is “the exact opposite of encouraging a range of viewpoints.”
“First, it asserts that I cannot present a ‘side.’ This is absurd because the entire point of my academic expertise is to track the campaign of censors and what influences shape efforts to purge literature from the public sphere,” Price wrote.
PEN America’s Friedman said: “This whole episode illustrates the downstream effects that vague legislation, and a climate of fear, are having on campuses — in this case, leading to the cancellation of a conference that aimed to bring academic expertise to bear on a current political issue in Utah.”
As a result of Oyler’s memo, the organizers canceled the conference the day before it was set to take place. The Wildcat Collective, Weber State’s chapter of the American Federation of Teachers’ Utah College Council — the faculty and staff union — tried to host an outdoor teach-in, titled “Unity Conference: Uncensored Version,” but the weather did not cooperate and the planned programming had to be cut short, KSL reported. Price was among those who didn’t get to speak. Barrett Bonella, a professor of Social Work at Weber State and one of the conference organizers, told PEN America that The Wildcat Collective is “actively planning” a follow-up event, aiming for mid-November.
PEN America strongly encourages Weber State to get on board for that event because, as we well know, censorship is never the answer.
