Those Who Preach Free Speech Need to Practice It

Full article in The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...

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Say you’re a college senior, just a few weeks from graduation.

For as long as you can remember—even back in high school, before you set foot on campus—older people have talked about free speech.

More specifically, older people have talked about free speech and you: whether your generation understands it, whether you believe in it, whether you can handle it.

After watching some of those same people order crackdowns on campus protests over the past few weeks, you might have a few questions for them.

Over the past two weeks, from New York to Texas to California, cops have stormed college campuses clad in riot gear and staged mass arrests of students protesting about the war in Gaza.

As the legal director of FIRE, a First Amendment advocacy nonprofit, I teach students across the country that the government can’t silence speakers because of their beliefs, especially if those beliefs are unpopular or cause offense. That’s a foundational principle of free-speech law.

Students nationwide are watching how the adults who professed to care about free speech are responding under pressure. And they are learning that those adults don’t really mean what they say about the First Amendment. That’s a dangerous lesson.

Our schools and colleges could still teach the country a better one.

Free Speech 101 starts here: The First Amendment protects a vast amount of speech, including speech that some, many, perhaps most Americans would find deeply offensive.

You may not like pro-Palestinian speech; you may not like pro-Israeli speech.

You may think some of it veers into bigotry.

But the answer always is to ignore it, mock it, debate it, even counter-protest it. But don’t call in the SWAT team.

Granted, free speech is not without carefully designated exceptions, and these exceptions are important but narrow.

True threats and intimidation, properly defined, are not protected by the First Amendment. Neither is discriminatory harassment. Violence is never protected.

And public universities can maintain reasonable “time, place, and manner”
restrictions on speech. That means, for example, that for the authorities to place a ban on playing heavily amplified sound right outside the dorms at 2 a.m. likely does not violate the First Amendment.

A prohibition on camping overnight in the quad probably doesn’t either.

But the enforcement of these rules must be even-handed and proportionate. The use of force should be a last resort. Students must be given clear notice about what conduct crosses a line. And any student facing punishment for an alleged infringement should receive a fair hearing.

Consistency counts. Our leaders—in government, in university administration—must demonstrate their commitment to free expression in both word and deed.

Students are protesting on campuses nationwide, and they’re watching the reaction of university presidents and elected officials closely.

The current moment presents a generational challenge: Do older people and people in authority really mean what they say about the First Amendment? Do they believe in free speech—and can they handle it?

Right now, too many leaders are failing the test.