Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

conix, conix, Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee

"You support the suppression of Free Speech on college campuses and then you defend the Constitution? Can you spell --irony?"

Nowhere in his did zab say anything about his support for suppression of free
speech on college campuses. Yet again, an unwarranted sledge from you.

Related: Why alt-right trolls shouted down Donald Trump Jr.
"Trump’s Latest Dinner Guest: Nick Fuentes, White Supremacist"
The “Groyper Army” and the war over college campus conservatism, explained.
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[...]

The American right has lost the plot on free speech. The passage of Florida’s House Bill 1557 .. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/er/PDF , which bans “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation and gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade and in a manner that isn’t “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in all grades, K–12, is merely the latest in a string of what the free-speech-advocacy organization PEN America has called “education gag orders .. https://pen.org/report/educational-gag-orders/ ” that have been proposed by Republicans and passed by red-state legislatures from coast to coast.

As the Republican Party evolves from a party focused on individual liberty and limits on government power to a party that more fully embraces government control of the economy and morality, it is reversing many of its previous stances on free speech in public universities, in public education, and in private corporations. Driven by a combination of partisan animosity and public fear, it is embracing the tactics that it once opposed.

To understand the transformation of Republican legal priorities, one need not turn back the clock very far. For more than 20 years, the dominant conservative mantra in education could be summed up in two words: free speech. The reason for the emphasis on free speech was crystal clear—college campuses had enacted speech codes at a breathtaking rate.

In the effort to make campuses more welcoming to historically marginalized communities, colleges promulgated speech regulations that were designed to eliminate hate speech and other communications that members of university communities deemed offensive.

Although the impulse behind these codes was virtuous, their legal application was profoundly problematic. University speech codes tended to possess three salient characteristics. First, they were aimed directly at the suppression of words and ideas. Second, they were usually broad and vague, leaving teachers and students with little guidance as to the law’s true meaning. And third, they typically relied on the subjective feelings of community members .. https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/the-third-rail/622a46c26c90860020506788/campus-free-speech-cant-survive-cultural-change-emma-camp-self-censorship/ .. for enforcement.

To give you a concrete example, here are parts of a speech code I successfully challenged .. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/280/357/2501172/ .. in federal court in 2003: “The expression of one’s beliefs should be communicated in a manner that does not provoke, harass, intimidate, or harm another” and “no person shall participate in acts of intolerance that demonstrate malicious intentions toward others.”

For students of the First Amendment, the problems with this language were obvious. What is an “act of intolerance”? How does one define provocative speech? The speech code did not say. A robust marketplace of ideas simply cannot exist if my free-speech rights end the instant another person feels offended by my words.

A speech code doesn’t have to be illegal to be problematic. Private universities have broad authority to regulate speech (the First Amendment protects citizens only from government censorship, not from private regulation). But speech codes are antithetical to the mission of American education, a mission that the Supreme Court has described as preparing students “for active and effective participation in the pluralistic, often contentious society in which they will soon be adult members.”

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