Free speech promises out of tune: Berklee College of Music indefinitely postpones event featuring Detransition Awareness

Disharmony and discord permeated the Berklee College of Music campus when an event organized by Simon Amaya Price, titled “Born in the Right Body: Desister and Detransitioner Awareness,” was indefinitely postponed due to backlash from the campus community. This topic held personal significance for Amaya Price, a desister — someone who once identified as transgender but later reconnected with their biological sex.

FIRE wrote Berklee on Nov. 1, urging the college to allow the event to go forward. Here’s what happened.

Scheduled for Oct. 20, Amaya Price planned the event as part of his class project for Berklee’s “Songwriting and Social Change” course. He voiced that “Born in the Right Body,” was meant to raise “awareness of trans desisters and detransitioners, the issues [they] face legally, societally, and medically, and foster open dialogue and debate.” 

Amaya Price even went to Berklee’s Office of Diversity & Inclusion for funding for the event. And on Oct. 15, he got it, along with permission to use the office’s logo in marketing materials. But once Amaya Price began advertising, things quickly took a turn for the worse. 

Any discussion of transgender issues is likely to provoke controversy and offend some listeners, but policing offensive speech effectively tells Amaya Price that he is not allowed to share his own life story

Individuals on Instagram said they were going to throw “expired groceries” at him, demanded that he be kicked out of school, and told him he should be “scared” to host the event. 

Students also got 1,998 signatures for an online petition urging the college to cancel the event, claiming it was “expected to harm the mental well-being of individuals in the transgender community.”

On Oct. 17, Amaya Price met with Berklee Vice President and Executive Director Ron Savage, who recommended postponing the event for safety reasons and promised to help Amaya Price find a different venue. But instead, the Office of Diversity & Inclusion posted to its Instagram that the event “will no longer take place as planned on October 20” and will “not be sponsored” by the Office.

On Oct. 21, Savage indefinitely postponed the event.

According to its Standards of Conduct, one of Berklee’s fundamental values is respecting the “creative expression of all.” Berklee also makes clear that it does “not engage in censorship, nor . . . obstruct the free exchange of ideas.” Nevertheless, by placing alleged safety concerns (without even citing or addressing specific threats) over its commitment to free expression, the school did just that. By permitting a contentious event only so long as it does not upset campus members, the administration is allowing a heckler’s veto due to the potential for disturbance.

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Critics of the event argue that offensive speech should be silenced because it could, ironically, undermine their own voices. However, in doing so, they fail to recognize what true silencing looks like. This is what silencing looks like. Any discussion of transgender issues is likely to provoke controversy and offend some listeners, but policing offensive speech effectively tells Amaya Price that he is not allowed to share his own life story—and that others are not permitted to hear and respond to it—simply because some may find it offensive. It means telling Amaya Price he doesn’t have the right to be treated equally because he has the “wrong” things to say.

That’s not a free, liberal, and democratic society. And that’s why the Supreme Court has repeatedly, consistently, and clearly held that free speech principles do and must protect expression that others find offensive or even hateful. 

To honor its commitment to freedom of expression, Berklee must let Amaya Price’s event go on. Only when all the voices join in does the chorus make a harmony.