Its that season again. Inside Higher Education, a higher ed newspaper, dubbed it Disinvitation Season in response to those commencement speakers who find themselves disinvited. Juan Williams, a somewhat controversial conservative journalist, is the latest to find himself out of synch with a schools faculty. Disinvitations often begin with faculty who disagree with a speaker. Odd, eh?

Recently, Del. Steve Landes introduced legislation to ensure colleges protect speech on Virginia public campuses. How can anybody be against free speech and promoting free speech? he said.

I wonder if legislators understand the nature of speakers on campus. Indeed, some now claim Landes proposed legislation is overly broad, allowing anyone to traipse anywhere on campus at any time setting up the proverbial soap box disrupting normal activities. The right to control time and place (but not speech) is a time-tested legal principle.

Landes, in reference to the violence at Cal Berkeley surrounding an ultra-right speaker, said in this newspaper that schools have the discretion to not invite a speaker who might incite violence. In addition to that sounding like prior restraint, a form of censorship, this implies misunderstanding of how campuses work. One will not find a centralized Office of Approved Speakers on Virginias public campuses. When a student or faculty group invites a speaker to campus, they dont first clear it with the presidents office.

Yet, there is the public perception that holds a university administration responsible for the actions and speech of any individual speaking on campus, as if each speaker were first vetted and cleared by the fictitious OAS.

In the mid-1990s, Virginia Tech raised the ire of Virginias timbermen when a speaker from a self-described eco-terrorist group, Earth Liberation Front (ELF), was invited by students and spoke on campus. How could you let him speak on our campus, we heard. It was incredibly difficult for the spokesperson, this author, to defend the ELF speakers right to speak, particularly when the ELF had claimed credit for high profile property destruction, including a $24 million Vail ski resort. Yet students had every right to invite the speaker.

In the controversys wake, one board of visitors member proposed a policy resolution that would require the presidents approval for all speakers invited to campus. Notwithstanding the impracticality of vetting virtually hundreds of speakers invited by hundreds of campus groups each year, the very notion of administrative approval implies some criteria for disapproval. In doing so, an administration clearly enters a censorship role.

Defending free speech in the abstract is easy. Try it when emotions among key constituencies or the very powerful hit alert status. In 2013, a Virginia Tech professor published a column titled No thanks, Stop saying support the troops. Imagine the outcry among Hokie alums, many of whom served in the military or whose families worked in the nations capital. While the article in its own convoluted writing was essentially about questioning authority and inferred support for the troops, it opened floodgates of commentary. The presidents office was inundated with hundreds of hostile phone calls and emails calling for the professors immediate dismissal. This author caught incoming fire on that one too from those who wanted the prof gone, from those who agreed with him and from those who felt like I shouldnt have defended his right of free speech. While highly uncomfortable for the president, he clearly stood behind the professors rights.

It is ironic to find Virginias legislators introducing legislation codifying campus free speech because I doubt there is a Virginia college president who has not heard from legislators about offensive speech from students or faculty. Delegate Bob Marshall, for one, is well known for his harangues. Marshall once demanded that Techs president stop a student TV production, albeit a rather bawdy one.

Legislators call for free speech on campus, yet seem to want university administrators to govern said speech obviously mutually exclusive concepts.

This is not to say that campuses are pristine. Restrictive speech codes are real and many have been struck down by the courts around the country. The very notion of trigger warnings is troubling, particularly when they purport to protect young people from thoughts or ideas that might be upsetting. Free speech and the First Amendment are not intended to protect someone from discomfort. Bart Hinkle, editorialist for the Richmond Times Dispatch, wrote that the right of free speech implies the right to be offended, too. Without some discomforting introspection, ones own ideas will never be tested or reaffirmed.

Campus speech is complicated. So, think twice when you hear calls to promote free speech, restrict speakers on campus, or hold the administration responsible for all campus speech. Have some sympathy for university presidents, many of whom hear about controversial speakers only when the outcries start. Many times Ive heard this presidential retort, They invited WHO to speak on campus!?

Larry Hincker, is a retired public relations executive living in Blacksburg.

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Few understand free speech on college campuses; even fewer can ... - The Daily Progress