Free Speech on Campus Is Meaningless Unless Defended
Free speech may well be the cornerstone of our democracy. Just look around Europe and the rest of the world to see how poorly it is surviving. Everything’s fine so long as you agree with those in power. Hitler and Stalin would have immediately claimed their countries had free speech in this sense.
Most Americans find comfort in the narrow range of liberal ideas and opinion coming from television and other media, privately-held monopolies owned and controlled by a handful of people. Liberal control of government is at an all time high, which some claim is actually irreversible.
The president and vice president become advocates for gay sex, for example. Then the military chain of command is legally enjoined to allow gay sex as “normal” and acceptable. Now America’s premier military academy, West Point, has performed its first gay sex marriage. This “civil right” now takes precedence over the right to free speech.
Even worse is the free speech situation on college campuses, where the contrast between a should-be “life of the mind” and the reality of stark political correctness is dramatic today. Holding the purse strings with its massive student loan program, the federal government is in full fiscal control of state governments and institutional administrators.
Free speech on campuses is as bad anything we would have seen at German universities during the 1930s. Few have the sensibilities or awareness to fight back. Except for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) which is taking up the cause. Their “Challenging Your Colleges Speech Code” is a free downloadable guide to help students and faculty stand up to repressive university speech codes:
Speech codes are university regulations prohibiting expression that would be constitutionally protected in society at large. They do not have to be labeled as a “speech code” in your student handbook—in fact, they almost certainly will not be. Any university regulation restricting speech—whether found in a harassment policy, an Internet usage policy, or elsewhere—might be a speech code.
Freedom of speech has been so marginalized in American society that defending it on college campuses, once considered obvious, now must be defended:
Speech codes are fundamentally at odds with the function of a university as an open marketplace of ideas. After all, how can a university promote open discussion and discourse if students fear punishment for saying the “wrong” thing?
Furthermore, at public universities, speech codes are against the law. Public universities are government actors and, as such, are legally required to uphold the First Amendment rights of their students. In cases going back decades, courts (including the Supreme Court) have consistently held that college students at public universities enjoy full First Amendment rights.
How far have we really come since the “Free Speech Movement” in 1964 Berkeley at the University of California? Or is the shoe now on the other foot?
Wouldn’t Mario Savio be on the right today, now that the left controls colleges, government, and media–in short, the both-parties Establishment? Notice the demonstrators in the picture wearing suits and ties.
