Daily Archives: March 29, 2024

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As the Israel-Hamas war continues to ignite tensions among Texas college students, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order requiring schools to discipline what he described as the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses.

Higher education institutions are expected to update their free speech policies to include the definition of antisemitism, as well as establish and enforce punishments for violating those policies. Expulsion from the college could be considered an appropriate punishment, Abbott said.

Texas supports free speech, especially on university campuses, but that freedom comes with responsibilities for both students and the institutions themselves, Abbott wrote in the Wednesday executive order.

The Israel-Hamas war has tested free speech policies at universities in Texas and across the country. As pro-Palestine and pro-Israel students engage in protests and heated discussions, school leaders have struggled to strike a balance between their roles as moderators and facilitators of intellectual debate on campus.

In the Wednesday executive order, the governor singled out Palestinian student groups on campuses including the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine who he says have violated free speech policies and should be subject to discipline.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an advocacy group for free speech on college campuses, said Texas colleges can and should go after antisemitic harassment, threats and violence. But Abbotts executive order goes too far and leans on a definition of antisemitism that would involve punishing students for core political speech, including any criticism of Israel, the group said.

State-mandated campus censorship violates the First Amendment and will not effectively answer anti-Semitism, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement. By chilling campus speech, the executive order threatens to sabotage the transformative power of debate and discussion.

Abbott has been unequivocal in his support of Israel, even traveling to Jerusalem in November to offer the states help. And in December, he told Texas colleges they had a responsibility to protect Jewish students.

Abbott has not commented on if and how universities should protect pro-Palestine students, who have also faced threats and harassment since the start of the war.

The governor said in a statement Wednesday that the executive order will mean campuses are safe spaces for the Jewish community. It comes months after the state dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion offices, whose responsibilities included making college more inclusive to students of all cultures and backgrounds.

Per Abbotts order, the chair of the board of regents at each college has 90 days to share documentation verifying revisions were made to free speech policies and evidence that those policies have been enforced.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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As Texas students clash over Israel-Hamas war, Gov. Greg Abbott orders colleges to revise free speech policies - The Texas Tribune

To the Editor:

Re Trump Allies Are Winning War Over Disinformation (front page, March 17):

The U.S. Supreme Court put limits on free speech, saying you cant falsely shout fire in a crowded theater. Fundamental to our democracy is an informed electorate. Yet our courts seem to be OK with a flood of lies and propaganda masquerading as news and aimed at burning down our democracy.

This should concern every American for several reasons, including the surge of social media sites that contain much misinformation, the closure of many local newspapers, a decline in the number of real journalists, and an increase in the amount of misinformation spread by adversaries like Russia and China in an attempt to affect the outcome of our elections.

Richard Dickinson Richmond Hill, Ga.

To the Editor:

In the same way that semiautomatic guns and bump stocks were never foreseen by the founding fathers when establishing the Second Amendment, social media and A.I. escaped their prescience when it came to issues of free speech.

The commerce of ideas as they addressed it consisted primarily of public discourse via the printed or spoken word at social, political and religious gatherings. The idea that citizens would someday own portable electronic devices that facilitated both the easy manufacture and distribution of subjective realities certainly surpassed anything imagined in the Sedition Act.

America must now address two pressing questions that Madison, Hamilton and others were spared. How do we prevent the yelling of fire in a crowded theater when there is neither an actual theater nor an assembled crowd? And how do we stop domestic and foreign profiteers who would embrace the resultant turmoil?

Anthony Nannetti Philadelphia

To the Editor:

There is a difference between supporting the First Amendment and hiding behind it. A presidential campaign that uses disinformation to subvert a fair and legal election is undermining the very democracy for which free speech is a bulwark.

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Opinion | The Debate Over Free Speech, Disinformation and Censorship - The New York Times

This month, the Supreme Court reviewed a trifecta of free speech cases that has government and civil libertarians alike on edge. While each of the cases raises an insular issue, they collectively run across the waterfront of free speech controversies facing this country.

For some of us, what was most chilling from oral arguments were the sentiments voiced by justices on the left of the court, particularly Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The court may now be reflecting the shift among liberal scholars and politicians away from freedom of speech and in favor of greater government speech regulation.

In my forthcoming book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I explore the evolution of free speech in the United States, including the failure of the Supreme Court to protect free speech during periods of political unrest. Although a new revolutionary view of free speech emerged at the founding of the republic, it was quickly lost due to the regressive views of the federal courts over centuries of conflicted decisions.

We are now living through one of the most anti-free speech periods in our history. On our campuses, law professors are leading a movement to limit free speech under the pretext of combating hate speech or disinformation. A dangerous triumvirate has formed as government, corporate and academic interests have aligned to push limitations of free expression.

That triumvirate is now before the Supreme Court, which is looking at cases where government officials targeted critics, dissenting websites and revenue sources.

What was disconcerting was to hear many of those same voices from our campuses echoed this week on the court itself.

In Murthy v. Missouri, the court is considering a massive censorship system coordinated by federal agencies and social media companies. This effort was ramped up under President Joe Biden, who is arguably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. Biden has accused companies of “killing people” by resisting demands to censor opposing views. Even though the administration was dead wrong on many pandemic-related issues, ranging from the origin of COVID-19 to the efficacy of masks, thousands were banned, throttled or blacklisted for pointing this out.

Biden’s sole nominee on the court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, has long been an enigma on the issue of free speech. That is why these oral arguments had some alarming moments. While her two liberal colleagues suggested that some communications may not be coercive as opposed to persuasive, Jackson would have none of it. She believed that coercion is perfectly fine under the right circumstances, including during periods like a pandemic or other national emergencies claimed by the government. When dangerous information is spotted on social media sites in such periods, she seemed to insist, the government should feel free to “tell them to take it down.”

The sweeping quality of Jackson’s remarks shows that the relativistic views of free speech may now have a new champion on the court.

In a second case, National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, the court considered an effort by a New York regulator to discourage banks and insurers from working with the NRA. Maria Vullo, who ran New York’s Department of Financial Services, allegedly used her office to pressure these businesses to cut off financial support for the nation’s leading gun rights organization.

As with Murthy, the Vullo case captures one of the principal tactics used by the anti-free speech movement in attacking the advertisers and businesses of targeted individuals and groups. One such government grant resulted in a list of the 10 most dangerous sites for advertisers to avoid, a list that happened to consist of popular conservative and libertarian news sites. 

The idea of a Democratic New York regulator targeting a conservative civil rights organization did not appear particularly troubling in oral argument for some of the justices. In fact, the views expressed by some of the justices were appallingly dismissive. Justice Elena Kagan asked, “if reputational risk is a real thing, and if gun companies or gun advocacy groups impose that kind of reputational risk, isn’t it a bank regulator’s job to point that out?” 

In the third case, Gonzalez v. Trevino, the court was considering the arrest of Sylvia Gonzalez, a 72-year-old former councilwoman in Castle Hills, Texas. She earned the ire of the sheriff, mayor and other officials with her criticisms of their conduct. She was subsequently charged with inappropriately removing a government document (a citizen petition) that she had mistakenly put with other papers. The charges were later dropped. The case smacked of retaliation — there is no evidence that anyone else has faced such a charge in similar circumstances. 

The case resonates with many who believe that the legal system is being politically weaponized in this country. Many of us are appalled by the Gonzales case. However, in this case, the support for the government seemed to come from the right of the court, including the author of a prior decision limiting such challenges, Chief Justice John Roberts.

The free speech trifecta, therefore, covers the three areas of greatest concern for the free speech community: censorship, blacklisting and weaponization. The resulting opinions could curtail or magnify such abuses. For example, the social media case (Murthy) seemed to trouble the justices as to where to draw a line on coercion. If the court simply declines to draw such a line and rules for the government, it will likely fuel new censorship efforts by federal agencies.

What is disconcerting about the views expressed by Justices Kagan, Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor in two of the cases is not that they are outliers. The problem is that liberal justices long acted as the bulwark for free speech on the court. They are now viewed as the weakest link, often dismissive or hostile to free speech arguments.

When Justice Jackson defends the right of the government to coerce speech, she follows a long legacy of speech relativists on the court, including the earlier Justice Robert Jackson. He had warned that the court needed to approach speech prosecutions with “a little practical wisdom,” so as not to “convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

The current Justice Jackson seemed to channel the same practicalities over principle in stressing that “you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective.”

The view of speech as harm or violence is all the rage on college campuses, and also in many Western countries where free speech is in a free fall. France, Canada and the United Kingdom now regularly arrest people for expressing hateful or controversial viewpoints. Those same anti-free speech arguments are now being heard in our own Congress and colleges in the U.S.

It is not clear how the court will decide these cases. One fear is that it could retreat to blurry lines that leave us all uncertain about what speech is protected. In an area that demands bright lines to prevent the chilling effect on speech, such vague outcomes could be lethal.

The government loves ambiguity when it comes to speech regulation. It now may have found new voices on the left side of the court to join in the ignoble effort of combating free speech. That renewed effort to introduce “a little practical wisdom” could mean a lot less freedom for Americans. 

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School, where he teaches a class on the Constitution and the Supreme Court.

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Free speech hangs in the balance in 3 Supreme Court cases - The Hill

If you think free speech is under attack in the United Statesand it isyou should see its besieged status in the rest of the world. Open contempt for unrestricted debate prevails in even many supposedly "free" countries and finds its expression in laws that threaten harsh penalties for those who dare to speak in ways that offend the powers that be.

The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille. If you care about government overreach and tangible threats to everyday liberty, this is for you.

"When other communications revolutions like the printing press, radio, and television came along, they were still largely controlled by the elites. But when the internet came along, regulatory bodies like Canada's [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] backed off," Lawrence Martin of Canada's The Globe and Mail recently complained while celebrating what he saw as rare U.S. Supreme Court openness to letting government pressure social media companies into suppressing speech. "It was open season for anything that anyone wanted to put out. No license needed. No identity verification."

"The way to reverse the trend is with rigid regulation, but the free speech lobby in the United States is as fierce as the gun lobby," Martin mourned.

Too bad for Martin. But few countries share America's resistance to censorship (and restrictions on self-defense). That's certainly the case in Canada, where the ruling Liberal Party is pushing Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, to regulate speech on the internet.

"Bill C-63 risks censoring a range of expression from journalistic reporting to healthy conversations among youth under 18 about their own sexuality and relationships," warns the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. "The bill imposes draconian penalties for certain types of expression, including life imprisonment for a very broad and vaguely defined offence of 'incitement to genocide', and 5 years of jail time for other broadly defined speech acts."

Ireland is going a step further, with lawmakers working on legislation that would outlaw merely "preparing or possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics."

"One of the fundamental rights protected under the Irish Constitution is the right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions," barrister (lawyer) Grace Sullivan told the Irish Independent. But under the proposed law, it will be an offence to "incite hatred" but "there is no clear definition of what 'inciting hatred' means," she cautioned.

Scotland, for its part, has already enacted a "hate crime" law targeting speech that authorities believe might "stir up hatred against a group of persons based on the group being defined by reference to" a laundry list of characteristics including race, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and age.

"The Hate Crime Bill will come into force on April 1, expanding existing legislation to cover comments made in private settings without the intention to offend," Laura Pollock reported last week for The National. She noted police assurances that comedians and actors won't be targeted for their performances, even though such situations were included in training materials.

"The training material was based on the Scottish Government's explanatory notes which accompany the legislation," Police Scotland soothed. "This included examples of a range of scenarios where offences might take place, but this does not mean officers have been told to target these situations or locations."

Unfortunately, restrictive legislation and hollow assurances by the authorities that they'll use their authoritarian powers wisely are far more the global norm than are American-style protections for speech. We complain about government attempts to muzzle, but open censorship is increasingly common in other countries.

"The global landscape for freedom of expression has faced severe challenges in 2023," according to The Free Speech Recession Hits Home, a report by The Future of Free Speech, Danish think tank Justitia, and Aarhus University's Department of Political Science.* "Even open democracies have implemented restrictive measures."

The report surveys speech regulations in 22 democracies since 2015 and finds a grim situation. Besides the examples above, there is Australia's crackdown on alleged disinformation, the UK's Online Safety Bill, the European Union's Digital Services Act, Denmark's revived blasphemy ban, Italy's libel judgments against government critics, France's and Germany's restrictions on pro-Palestinian protests, and more.

Across the countries surveyed, "except for 2015, every year witnessed a majority of developments limiting expression, with a noticeable upsurge in 2022," notes the report. "National security, national cohesion and public safety were the most cited reasons for limiting expression. Intermediary obligations and hate speech laws accounted for 18.3% and 17.8% of restrictions, respectively, with notable implications in countries like Norway, Denmark, and Spain." As defined in the report, "intermediary obligations" are duties imposed on platforms, such as Facebook, to act as proxy censors.

On the plus side were some strengthened protections for press freedom and protest. Of course, the press must operate under all those restrictions on "hate speech," and protests are subject to curbs when governments find their subjects too sensitive or just inconvenient.

The Free Speech Recession Hits Home records attacks on free speech in the U.S., as elsewhere. But this country, importantly, has a strong free speech culture and real constitutional protections. America is third on Justitia's index of public support for free speech (after Norway and Denmark), and restrictive laws and government schemes to suppress speech are often voided on First Amendment grounds.

That's no guarantee that every attempt to muzzle the public will fail or that the courts will diligently apply the First Amendment. But it's enough of an advantage to dishearten the world's would-be censors.

"The genie is already out of the bottle and there is little likelihood of getting it back in," moans The Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin about U.S. speech protections. "The greater likelihood is that extremes of free speech will continue to be tolerated."

Let's hope the unhappy authoritarian columnist is right that the U.S. will remain a bastion of protection for free speech. Because nobody else looks eager to take on that responsibility.

*CORRECTION: The Future of Free Speech, which commissioned the report, is an independent think tank located at Vanderbilt University.

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Free Speech Is Under Attack in the U.S., but It's on the Ropes Elsewhere - Reason

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Its a refrain youve heard us emphasize before: The current U.S. Supreme Court has a remarkable appetite for free-speech controversies, and its difficult to think of a recent term that measures up to this one in either the volume or the significance of the First Amendment questions presented. (Dont just take my word for it: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expressions Robert Corn-Revere, who has previously appeared before the justices himself,describedthis years slate as the most consequential in my 40-year career practicing First Amendment law.) Three of those controversies came before the Court for argument in the last week alone, conversations that underscored the diversity of perspectives the justices stake out when it comes to the freedoms of speech and the press.

Monday kicked off with the most significant of the trio,Murthy v. Missouri, in which a coalition of states and private individuals alleges that the federal government violated the First Amendment by encouraging social media platforms to remove false or misleading posts about, say, the safety of vaccines. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit hadagreed, taking a remarkably broad view of the Constitutions limits on the governments ability to speak to the private sector. In the panels view, facts as banal as the observation that the platforms asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whether certain controversial claims were true or false provided proof of undue entanglement between the government and private speakers.

As we warned in afriend-of-the-court brief, that kind of hair-trigger test for malign government influence could, itself, undermine the freedom of the press. It should go without saying that news organizations speak daily to government sources, whether official or off-the-record, in search of the truth sources who would clam up if interactions as routine as fielding a question about a controversial policy issue were haunted by the prospect of First Amendment liability.

We were relieved to hear a number of justices echo that concern, which emerged as one of the arguments central themes. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan were especially vocal in highlighting that Missouris theory would outlaw routine contacts between the government and the news media. (As former government lawyers, they sounded more protective of public officials right to criticize articles that irk them than they did the free flow of information but both lines of concern point to the same result.) By the close of the argument, it seemed likely that the same six justices who votedto pausethe injunction Missouri had won against the government below would likewise vote to vacate it. Whether the Court will reject Missouris theory of coercion outright or conclude more narrowly that the plaintiffs never proved the government had anything to do with closingtheiraccounts is harder to forecast.

For the long-run trajectory of the First Amendment, though, perhaps the most interesting dynamic at argument was Justice Ketanji Brown Jacksons questioning. AsProfessors Eugene VolokhandMichael Dorfseparately observed, Justice Jackson in recent cases has floated positions that would shrink the reach of the First Amendment to (in Dorfs words) a truly radical degree. Indeed, in pressing whether the government should prevail inMurthybecause itcouldhave simply ordered the platforms to take down certain kinds of speech, Jackson seemed to suggest perhaps inadvertently that she disagreed with the landmarkPentagon Papersdecision.

Whether those trial balloons reflect a deliberate drive on Justice Jacksons part to weaken the First Amendments safeguards is an issue to watch as the terms opinions start to come down.

WithMurthysubmitted, next came something of a companion case,National Rifle Association v. Vullo, where the justices weighed whether a New York financial regulator went too far in warning companies of the reputational risk of doing business with the NRA. (The Reporters Committee didnt file in this matter, which presents a more run-of-the-mill application of the line between coercion and persuasion; the justices may have granted it to be sure of a chance to clarify that boundary ifMurthyis resolved on other grounds.) There, a majority of the Court seemed inclined to side with the NRA and, in an odd role reversal from the mornings earlier argument, the U.S. solicitor general in finding that New York violated the First Amendment.

But the justices werent done yet. Wednesday broughtGonzalez v. Trevino, the weeks final First Amendment case, which asks what kind of evidence plaintiffs need to provide to demonstrate that they were arrested in retaliation for their speech or newsgathering. The Fifth Circuit we hear a lot about them these days, dont we? had heldthat a plaintiff whose arrest was supported by probable cause needs to point to specific examples of individuals who engaged in the same conduct but werent punished, a task that may be impossible when no comparator is available. As we flagged in afriend-of-the-court brief, the absurd implication of that rule would be that officers who wrongfully arrest the only journalist (or every journalist) covering a protest couldnt be held accountable because no one could highlight a reporter whowasntarrested.

Here, the Court seemed balanced on a knifes edge. Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Kavanaugh all signaled concern that taking too broad a view of the evidence that can prove retaliation would open the floodgates to frivolous claims. To differing degrees, the remaining justices registered concern with the narrowness of the Fifth Circuits view which Justice Kagan called a little bit nutty but how deep those anxieties ran was unclear. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who pressed counsel on both sides, raised the issue of protest cases in particular and won a concession from defendants counsel that the only journalist arrested for assembly is the prototypical plaintiff who should have a strong retaliation claim. Whether defendants persuaded the justices that thats actually true under the Fifth Circuits rule is another question.

We may be waiting some time for these opinions to issue. As these cases underlined, the Court isnt of one mind or even two straightforward blocs when it comes to the freedoms of speech and the press. And while the Court will likely hope to harmonize (as best it can) its answers to the full slate of First Amendment issues raised this term, that task will be a challenging one when there may be as many distinctive camps to reconcile as there are justices.

Stay tuned for June.

The Technology and Press Freedom Project at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press uses integrated advocacy combining the law, policy analysis, and public education to defend and promote press rights on issues at the intersection of technology and press freedom, such as reporter-source confidentiality protections, electronic surveillance law and policy, and content regulation online and in other media. TPFP is directed by Reporters Committee attorney Gabe Rottman. He works with RCFP Staff Attorney Grayson Clary and Technology and Press Freedom Project Fellow Emily Hockett.

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In crowded week for free speech, justices hear 3 First Amendment cases - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

On March 27, the Liberty Justice Center filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear No on E v. Chiu, a case challenging San Franciscos compelled disclosures for political speech.

Under Proposition F, the City of San Francisco requires independent groups who wish to express their views on political issues to fill up most of their ads with disclosuresnot only of their own donors, but also their donors donors, monopolizing the communication with redundant and often misleading disclaimers.

In its amicus brief, the Liberty Justice Center urges the Supreme Court to hear the case, arguing that hijacking political expression with onerous disclosure requirements violates the First Amendmentboth directly, by compelling speech, and indirectly, by chilling speech due to privacy concerns.

These overbearing disclosure requirements force individuals and organizations to censor their speech or convey a message from the governmentboth commandeering and chilling speech in violation of the First Amendment, said Reilly Stephens, Counsel at the Liberty Justice Center.

These restrictions are especially offensive to the First Amendment because they interfere with core political speech, such as discussion of elections, by removing the focus of a communication from the issue actually being discussed and redirecting it to a groups donorsand to its donors donors, continued Stephens.

The Liberty Justice also filed an amicus brief in No on E v. Chiu when the case was at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The Liberty Justice Centers amicus brief with the Supreme Court is available here.

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The Liberty Justice Center Urges the U.S. Supreme Court to Uphold Protections for Free Speech in Donor Disclosure ... - Liberty Justice Center

Gov. Greg Abbott issued Executive Order GA44 on March 27, obligating higher education institutions in Texas including UTD to punish what he described as increasing antisemitism on college campuses linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

To comply with the order, UTD must revise its free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on college campuses and establish and enforce punishments for students, staff and faculty violating the policy, including expulsion from the university. UTDs updated free speech policy must also include Texas definition of antisemitism, adopted in 2016, which follows the definition established by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. According to the universitys current free speech policy, UTDSP5001(B)(7.4), UTD prohibits both religious and race-based harassment, which are subject to investigation and the disciplinary process. GA44 targets pro-Palestine student organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine as a group eligible for punishment.

GA44 requires the chair of the board of regents for all Texas public university systems to report to the Office of the Governor with documentation verifying compliance with the changes within 90 days of the orders release, June 25.

Texas supports free speech, especially on university campuses, but that freedom comes with responsibilities for both students and the institutions themselves, Abbott said in GA44.

Abbott said one of the reasons for the executive order is the increase of antisemitic vandalism on Texas campuses. For example, the Austin American-Statesman reported March 18 that the University of Texas center of Jewish student life, which is affiliated with Hillel International, had been vandalized with the words Free Palestine.

GA44 requires Texas universities adopt Government Code 448.001s definition of antisemitism, which uses examples of antisemitism provided by IHRA. Examples include denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor and drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, alongside nine others cited in the code. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit civil liberties group focusing on college campuses, said antisemitism is a legitimate issue that Texas institutions must take legal action against only if the speech has exceeded First Amendment protections. FIRE said that GA44 stifles free speech, in stark contrast to constitutional protections of political speech, and ultimately fails to address the cause of antisemitism.

State-mandated campus censorship violates the First Amendment and will not effectively answer anti-Semitism, FIRE said. By chilling campus speech, the executive order threatens to sabotage the transformative power of debate and discussion. Thats in sharp contrast to Texas state law, which wisely recognizes freedom of speech and assembly as central to the mission of institutions of higher education.

Abbotts order also emphasized that phrases such as from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, which he said has been used in multiple university protests, is an antisemitic phrase. This view reflects the opinion of groups like the ADL and the AJC, who argue the phrase is antisemitic because of its use by Hamas, who call for the destruction of the state of Israel. Organizations at UTD such as SJP have used this phrase while speaking out against Israels military actions in Gaza.

Abbott has previously passed similar laws in support of Israel that affect activism on college campuses, such as Senate Bill 15 17, passed June 2023, which prohibits universities from certain academic boycotts in higher education. Student Government has passed two resolutions regarding UTD and Israel: a resolution demanding UTD divest from arms manufacturers aiding Israel passed in spring 2023 and a resolution demanding immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza passed in spring 2024.

Combat Antisemitism Movement, a nonprofit organization dedicated to curbing modern antisemitism through policymaking, praised the order in their press release.

We thank Governor Abbott for his leadership in taking this crucial step to ensure a safe learning environment for Jewish students in Texas, CAM said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations vehemently condemns GA44 as a flagrant attack against freedom of speech in their March 27 press release. Mustafa Carroll, executive chair of DFWs CAIR chapter, said that advocacy for Palestinian rights alongside criticism of Israel cannot be considered inherently antisemitic acts, and doing so only deters students from engaging in geopolitical discourses on campus because of the threat of disciplinary action.

This order not only undermines the principles of free speech and academic freedom, Caroll said. But also perpetuates a harmful narrative that equates criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism.

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Gov. Abbott orders Texas universities to revise free speech policies to combat antisemitism - The UTD Mercury

Republicans are pushing anti-free speech legislation as they try to restrict antisemitism in their states.

Free speech, particularly at college campuses, has been a primarily conservative issue in the US for well over a decade. But in response to anti-Israel activism from Left-wing student groups, Republicans have made exceptions to their commitment to free speech both in law and spirit.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott published an executive order on Wednesday urging universities to change their free speech rules in order to punish antisemitism. Review and update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the institution, the order read, explicitly singling out the campus groups Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine.

In a press release, the Governor said he wanted universities to be safe spaces for Jewish students, a phrase that has been widely mocked by conservatives in recent years. Abbott himself signed legislation bolstering campus free speech in 2019.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has said the Texas order is a form of state-mandated campus censorship which suggests particular organisations should be punished for their views in violation of the First Amendment.

The move was also met with criticism from some on the Right. How is such a policy different from DEI programs promising to prohibit anti-black speech? asked activist Christopher Rufo. The problem, to me, seems to be conduct, rather than speech: shutting down speakers, threatening students, mobilizing mobs, calling for violence all of which can be regulated as prohibited conduct, with a universal, rather than particular, policy.

Texas is just the latest example of a broader Republican push against free speech. A few months earlier, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered Students for Justice in Palestines University of Florida chapter to be disbanded for allegedly supporting terrorists after its national organisation said Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement. Providing material support for terrorist organisations is illegal under Florida law, but some free speech advocates have argued that the groups support for Hamas was rhetorical, not material, and thus the crackdown violated the groups free speech rights.

Other efforts to restrict antisemitism similarly hover near the line of free speech violations: a number of states, led by both Republicans and Democrats, have adopted official definitions of antisemitism aligned with that of the IRHA, which includes the act of denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor as a form of discrimination.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argues that this definition penalises constitutionally protected criticism of the state of Israel. About half of states, including Democratic strongholds such as New York and Colorado, have adopted definitions along these lines, but the latest to join in have been Republican-led: South Dakota, Florida and Indiana have all recently passed such measures.

Months before the 7 October attacks, House Republicans, joined by a sole Democratic cosponsor, introduced legislation that would have barred universities from authorising, facilitating or funding events promoting antisemitism under the IHRA definition, meaning the federal government would have required schools to restrict certain forms of anti-Israel speech.

Some of these restrictions on speech will do doubt end up in court, as DeSantiss rules already have. But regardless of the constitutionality of these measures, they demonstrate that some conservatives are moving away from free speech as a cultural value.

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GOP pushes anti-free speech bills to fight antisemitism - UnHerd

A proposal floated during ongoing contract negotiations between management at the freedom of expression nonprofit PEN America and its staff union, PEN America United (PAU), has led to charges by the union that the organizations leadership is trying to stifle union members free speech rightsan assertion PEN management firmly disputes.

According to a PAU release, the controversy stems from a proposal made during a March 14 bargaining session, at which, PAU contends, management proposed what the union categorizes as vague and broad language under which PAU members could be disciplined for engaging in any political activity that impacts the ability of PEN America to engage in its mission. The threat of discipline could extend to activity, conducted off-hours, that management determines could bring negative attention to PEN America, the union continued.

Under the suggested language, union members could be subject to discipline for activity such as signing onto an open letter criticizing PEN or attending a protest," the union contends. Union members may also be subject "to discipline for activity conducted off-duty, off-premises, and on their own equipment.

In a statement, the PAU executive board wrote: PEN America Managements language chills free expression while asking union members to surrender their rights as workers and renounce a safeguard from retaliation. Sweeping restrictions like these coming from a leading free-expression organization would set a very dangerous precedent for employees everywhere."

It added: Given current events, the need for robust protections to employees rights to political activity and speech in their personal time is of increased importance. It is incredibly disappointing to see Management does not respect this internally, despite PENs guidance to other organizations.

In its own statement, PEN America management said that the language in question is from a proposal relating to political activity that was intended to ensure compliance with our legal obligations as a 501(c)(3) non-partisan organization and the avoidance of conflicts of interest for the organization that could result from an employee playing a public role in a political campaign or running for office.

The proposed language, PEN management continued, was informed by prior experience with a staff member who had launched a campaign for local political office as a partisan candidate while employed at PEN Americaan activity that would have involved working hours, raising compliance. and conflict of interest concerns, for the organization.

Stressing that it does not interfere with the free expression of its employees, PEN management added that the proposed contractual language has been under discussion with the union in recent weeks, and we have reiterated our position that the organization does not seek to curtail the political activities of staff, except insofar as they may compromise PEN Americas legal compliance with non-profit law, and thus our mission as well.

PEN management also provided its counterproposal, which reads, in full: PEN America believes in the free expression of employees personal religious, political, social, or economic beliefs. Employees shall not be disciplined for the expression of such beliefs while off-duty, except where such conduct impacts the ability of PEN America to engage in its mission. Notwithstanding the foregoing, PEN Americas policies prohibiting discrimination, harassment, and retaliation shall continue to apply.

According to PEN management, during the March 14 negotiations, they suggested removing the paragraph on political activity entirely so that the collective bargaining agreement would include no language at all on the subject. At that meeting, management said, the union indicated that it did not wish to delete the provision and that it would counter the proposal with language that management says it is now awaiting.

In response to PEN management's assertion, PAU explained that it understands that the organization is prohibited by law from engaging in partisan political activity and has no desire to interfere with such legal obligations, insisting that the conversation that has taken place during 'recent weeks' has not revolved around nonprofit administration or partisan activity, but around whether it is appropriate to discipline union members for political activity, expression, and association. It added: PEN America has repeatedly rejected attempts from PAU to include language that would explicitly protect union members from retaliation, such as Employees will not be penalized or terminated for any political activity or speech engaged in while off-duty, solely in their personal capacity.

On March 14, PAU continued, management suggested removing the clause altogether and relying solely on the grievance and arbitration process to protect unit members rights to express themselves in the event of discipline or termination following off-hour political activity. Removing explicit protections would allow management to proceed with discipline in these cases, and this is why we have rejected their suggestion to remove the clause.

Internal and External Turmoil

The controversy comes as negotiations between PAU and PEN management continue to drag on. Employees first formed a union, which PEN America recognized, in June 2022, and began bargaining with the organization that October. In March 2023, PAU voted to affiliate with United Auto Workers Local 2320, Region 9A. According to the union, PAU and PEN America have only reached six tentative agreements out of 25 total proposals to date.

The internal spat over conflicting definitions of protected free expression also comes as PEN America faces increasing public criticism from some of its membership and others in the literary world over its handling of issues relating to Palestine. (While criticism of PEN has reached new heights since the latest war in Gaza began, such critiques have dogged the organization at least since 2013, when former New York Times editor Middle East and Balkan bureau chief Chris Hedges resigned from the organization's board.)

On January 31, six protesters from the group Writers Against the War on Gaza disrupted a PEN America event in Los Angeles featuring a conversation between comedian Moshe Kasher and actor Mayim Bialik, the latter of whom is an outspoken supporter of Israel. One of the protesters, author Randa Jarrar, was physically removed from the scene by security.

In the weeks leading up to the January 31 event, novelists Angela Flournoy and Kathleen Alcott withdrew their participation from PEN's New Year, New Books event, slated to take place in Los Angeles on January 25, over the organization's involvement with Bialik, which Flournoy called "unconscionable."

On February 3, an open letter that has since been signed by more than 1,200 writers demanding that "PEN America release an official statement about the 225 poets, playwrights, journalists, scholars and novelists killed in Gaza and name their murderer." The letter continued: "As this letter circulates, the death toll among Palestinian writers and reporters will likely grow," adding: "If PEN continues to remain silent, it will become absolutely clear to the public whose lives and voices matter to it and whose dont."

By March 15, more than a dozen authors had withdrawn from this years PEN World Voices Festival, also citing PENs response to the war in Gaza. Those authors include this year's winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, Lorrie Moore, as well as Michelle Alexander, Isabella Hammad, and Naomi Klein, among others.

Read more:
PEN Union Cries Foul in Contract Talks as Criticism of PEN America Intensifies - Publishers Weekly