Category Archives: Free Speech

JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: Schools are paying a lot more attention to what students post online, and that can have severe consequences for students and schools.

Harvard University withdrew the admittance of at least 10 incoming freshmen who had reportedly posted violent, racist and sexually explicit content in a private Facebook group.

High schools are cracking down, too, with some hiring outside companies to police social media posts.

But monitoring online behavior is difficult, and civil rights groups are watching.

Special correspondent Lisa Stark with our partner Education Week visited a school district in Arizona.

LISA STARK: Its just before summer break at Dysart High School in Surprise, Arizona, outside Phoenix. Students are eating lunch, signing yearbooks, and theyre immersed in social media.

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube. More than 90 percent of teens say they go online every day, and nearly a quarter are online almost constantly.

Let me ask you, first of all, do you all have phones?

STUDENT: Yes.

STUDENT: Yes, we do.

LISA STARK: Do you ever not have a phone with you?

STUDENT: No.

STUDENT: Its always on.

LISA STARK: We sat down with four Dysart students to talk about how they use social media.

Snapchat, I post every single day, like, every day, all day.

STUDENT: I always like post my thoughts, certain way Im feeling. Depends on how Im feeling that day.

STUDENT: When Im done with all my work, and if I dont have any work from other classes, I just go on my phone and see whats going on.

STUDENT: I dont really care who sees it. Like, Im just posting it because I think its public. Like, Im open about it.

LISA STARK: The problem for schools, what happens on social media doesnt always stay on social media.

ALYSSA WAMSLEY, Student, Dysart High School: I see a lot of bullying on Facebook that it transfers to the school. And then, like, at the beginning of this year, this girl got into an altercation on Facebook, and she ended up fighting the girl at school.

AMY HARTJEN, Principal, Dysart High School: When somethings posted on social media and its being talked about on campus and it disrupts learning, thats when we have to step in and decide if theres something that we need to react to.

LISA STARK: Nationwide, a growing number of districts are watching whats posted online for anything that might impact their schools.

Principal Amy Hartjen says the number one concern is safety.

Whats like, OK, we have to get involved here? Bullying, would that be a red line?

AMY HARTJEN: Absolutely, threats, intimidations.

LISA STARK: What if someone posts something that is offensive language, racist, sexist?

AMY HARTJEN: Absolutely.

LISA STARK: Really? And why would that be a red line?

AMY HARTJEN: Because that is just its against the campus culture.

LISA STARK: Students threatening to harm others or themselves sometimes telegraph that on social media, and districts have been sued for not paying attention to online posts.

These days, the schoolyard has new boundaries.

ZACHERY FOUNTAIN, Communications Director, Dysart USD: The information space is just as important as the physical space anymore, because it has that ability to snowball at a really rapid pace.

LISA STARK: Zachery Fountain is the Dysart District Communications Chief, and point man on social media. He trains staff on how to document troublesome posts.

ZACHERY FOUNTAIN: Thats teaching them things like asking for a screen shot of what has happened, understanding that a message could disappear in five seconds, as soon as its brought to their attention by a student.

LISA STARK: Nationwide, both public and private schools keep tabs on social media in a variety of ways: hiring firms to actively monitor students accounts, encouraging students to report anything worrisome, friending students to gain access to posts that may not be public, and through simple alerts every time the district and its schools are mentioned in any type of media.

Theres anecdotal evidence, but no hard data, to show that early identification of troubling social media posts can help schools head off problems.

School officials here insist they are most concerned about safety. Theyre not trying to pry into students lives. But civil rights and privacy groups say it can be a slippery slope and that some districts have gone too far, that they have violated students constitutional rights.

Students have been disciplined for liking other posts, for private online chats that others made public, for forwarding racist posts, even in order to denounce them.

CHAD MARLOW, American Civil Liberties Union: Schools need to think about, how do we take on these issues in an appropriate way that doesnt have kind of the collateral damage effect of destroying students privacy and free speech rights?

LISA STARK: Chad Marlow is with the American Civil Liberties Union. He says, first and foremost, school shouldnt have open-ended access to students social media accounts.

Youre saying no fishing expeditions?

CHAD MARLOW: No fishing expeditions. And the way to do that is by not allowing passwords to be turned over, what we call shoulder surfing. Log onto your account, and the teacher will stand over the students shoulder and say, scroll, scroll, scroll.

LISA STARK: Are you asking students for passwords?

WENDY KLARKOWSKI, School Resource Officer, Shadow Ridge High School: No.

LISA STARK: Or log-in information or anything?

WENDY KLARKOWSKI: No.

LISA STARK: School resource officer Wendy Klarkowski is assigned to Shadow Ridge High School in the Dysart district. Her morning routine includes searching for school-related posts on social media. Shes uncovered criminal activity.

WENDY KLARKOWSKI: A young man had decided to bring some marijuana-laced brownies to school, and he advertised them on Twitter and, meet me in the cafeteria. We got him with all the brownies still on him.

LISA STARK: And possible campus disruptions.

WENDY KLARKOWSKI: Some kids were going to protest something they thought was unfair, and it was all over Twitter, so we were able to get the kids that were leading it, actually, the night before, so that they put an end to that, so it didnt disrupt the campus.

LISA STARK: But why isnt that their free speech right to protest something theyre not happy about?

WENDY KLARKOWSKI: It is their right to protest, but it is not their right to disturb an educational institution.

LISA STARK: The ACLUs Marlow worries about districts stifling free speech.

CHAD MARLOW: It is very important to draw the line between punishing an action that occurs on social media vs. thoughts that are expressed on social media. Once you start policing and punishing thoughts, you are into very, very dangerous territory.

LISA STARK: Two of the Dysart students we spoke with say they tread more carefully online after each posted a disparaging remark about one of their teachers.

ALYSSA WAMSLEY: I made a reference to one of my teachers last year on Facebook, and I almost got a referral for it, for what I said about her. And then me and the teacher ended up talking, and now shes my favorite teacher ever.

HADIN KHAN, Graduate, Dysart High School: It was funny at first. Then I was like, OK, I need to take some precautions for next time, when Im angry about something, not mention names or anything. I could say English teacher, as opposed to saying their name.

LISA STARK: So, you are censoring yourself in a way, right?

HADIN KHAN: Yes, kind of. Yes.

LISA STARK: How do you feel about having to do that?

HADIN KHAN: I dont really have a problem with it, because its not that serious of an issue.

LISA STARK: Superintendent Gail Pletnick insists the district is careful not to violate free speech or privacy rights.

GAIL PLETNICK, Superintendent, Dysart Unified School District: Were not crossing that line. Were not monitoring people 24/7. Were not the social media police. But we are concerned about anything that we feel will be harmful to our students.

LISA STARK: Pletnick says technology changes so quickly that schools can find themselves operating in a gray area.

GAIL PLETNICK: Those laws, those rules, those guidelines that were going to have to use are being developed. So, were really not only flying this plane while we build it, while its being designed.

LISA STARK: It can be a rough ride, so Dysart and other districts are increasingly starting to teach digital citizenship, the responsible use of technology, to impress upon students to think before they click.

STUDENT: I like that. Thats cute.

LISA STARK: For the PBS NewsHour and Education Week, Im Lisa Stark in Surprise, Arizona.

Original post:
Schools are watching students' social media, raising questions ... - PBS NewsHour

If youre a lawyer arguing against free speech at the Supreme Court, be prepared to lose. Today the Court affirmed once again the Constitutions strong protections against governmental viewpoint discrimination, even when the viewpoint discrimination is directed against offensive speech. In Matal v. Tam, the Court considered the U.S. Patent and Trademark Offices refusalto register a trademark for a band called The Slants on the grounds that the name violated provisions of the Lanham Act that prohibited registering trademarks that disparage . . . or bring into contemp[t] or disrepute any persons, living or dead.

Given existing First Amendment jurisprudence, there would have been a constitutional earthquake if SCOTUShadnt ruled for Tam. The Court has long held that the Constitution protects all but the narrowest categories of speech. Yet timeand again, governments (including colleges)have tried to regulate offensive speech. Time and again, SCOTUShas defended free expression. Today was no exception.Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Alito noted that the Patent and Trademark Office was essentially arguing that the Government has an interest in preventing speech expressing ideas that offend. His response was decisive:

[A]s we have explained, that idea strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express the thought that we hate.

Quick, someone alert the snowflakes shouting down speeches on campus or rushing stages in New York. There is no constitutional exception for so-called hate speech. Indeed, governments are under an obligation to protect controversial expression. Every justice agrees.

The ruling is worth celebrating, but when law and culture diverge, culture tends to win. The law protects free speech as strongly as it ever has. The culture, however, is growing increasingly intolerant subjecting dissenters to shout-downs, reprisals, boycotts, shame campaigns, and disruptions. Some of this conductis legal (boycotts and public shaming), some isnt (shout-downs, riots, and disruptions), but all of it adds up to a society that increasingly views free speech as a dangerous threat, and not asone ofour constitutional republics most vital assets. Liberty is winning the important judicial battles, but it may well lose the all-important cultural war.

See the original post here:
Free Speech Wins (Again) at the Supreme Court - National Review

Daily Beast

Trumpkins Cry 'Free Speech' And Stab It in The Back Daily Beast Four Donald Trump supporters who claim to be hardcore free speech fundamentalists revealed themselves as opportunistic hypocrites when they repeatedly disrupted two New York City Shakespeare in the Park performances of Julius Caesar (which features ... Free-Speech Loving Hannity Adores Attacks On Shakespeare's Julius Caesar PlayNewsHounds (blog) all 109 news articles »

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Trumpkins Cry 'Free Speech' And Stab It in The Back - Daily Beast

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Fist of Etiquette|6.19.17 @ 4:30PM|#

The Supreme Court also agreed to hear a case on gerrymandering in Wisconsin.

Gerry's not gonna like this. Neither is the GOP, I assume.

|6.19.17 @ 4:34PM|#

JFree|6.19.17 @ 5:31PM|#

If the SC made the right decision, both parties would be the losers. Since they most likely won't make that decision, only the American people will be the losers.

Mithrandir|6.19.17 @ 4:30PM|#

Two important Supreme Court decisions came down today upholding citizens' free speech rights. Good stuff from the USSC today.

Fist of Etiquette|6.19.17 @ 4:31PM|#

...Russia is threatening to target aircraft flown by the U.S. and its allies over Syria.

Hey! The U.S. has dibs on No Fly.

Mithrandir|6.19.17 @ 4:32PM|#

Who's fucking idea were no-fly zones?

Citizen X - #6|6.19.17 @ 4:31PM|#

Two important Supreme Court decisions came down today upholding citizens' free speech rights.

Still bracing myself for the massive nutslap the universe is surely preparing in order that balance may be restored.

Rich|6.19.17 @ 4:41PM|#

Something like "hate" language is legally a separate category from "offensive" language?

Chipper Morning, Now #1|6.19.17 @ 4:43PM|#

Like beaver alarming mate of danger with loud slap, universe smack Citizen X scrotum with police abuse story.

Half-Virtue, Half-Vice|6.19.17 @ 4:43PM|#

What is the Trumpocalypse, chopped liver?

Citizen X - #6|6.19.17 @ 4:46PM|#

That's just some trifling shit that way too many people won't stop whining about.

Crusty Juggler - Elite|6.19.17 @ 4:32PM|#

Lena Dunham's dad taught her how to use a tampon

Citizen X - #6|6.19.17 @ 4:35PM|#

What a dreadful anecdote.

|6.19.17 @ 4:36PM|#

She's all dreary banality this chick.

Half-Virtue, Half-Vice|6.19.17 @ 4:38PM|#

I should have Lena Dunham sign my trash can.

BearOdinson|6.19.17 @ 4:41PM|#

Crusty, you have finally gone too far!!

This cannot stand, man. This aggression cannot stand!

Chipper Morning, Now #1|6.19.17 @ 4:47PM|#

Crusty always offers his penis as a tampon.

Chipper Morning, Now #1|6.19.17 @ 4:46PM|#

Still better than dreaming of being abducted by aliens and then waking up to a blood-soaked bed to the arrival of your menarche. This happened to someone I know.

The Last American Hero|6.19.17 @ 6:31PM|#

The anesthesia used by the Greys often causes people to assume those were dreams.

Fist of Etiquette|6.19.17 @ 4:47PM|#

If this were true, we'd have known about it long before now. Her first period? First anecdote, for sure. Sounds like instead she finally watched Armageddon.

Juice|6.19.17 @ 4:49PM|#

Yeah, she had NO IDEA what was happening.

BearOdinson|6.19.17 @ 4:52PM|#

Every fucking day I thank Freyr (the god of fertility) that I only have sons and no daughters!!

Fucking "misty-eyed"??

More like "Here is a piece of my shirt. Stuff it in there until we get home!"

|6.19.17 @ 5:47PM|#

More like "Here is a piece of my shirt. Stuff it in there until we get home!"

Fuck that! Shirts cost money. Unless you're going to bleed to death, rub dirt on it until it stops bleeding.

BearOdinson|6.19.17 @ 6:03PM|#

Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to?

Unlabelable MJGreen|6.19.17 @ 5:05PM|#

Diane Reynolds (Paul.)|6.19.17 @ 5:12PM|#

Everything Lena believes or has experienced is a social construct.

Meh.|6.19.17 @ 5:17PM|#

So her dad taught her how to use a tampon, she molested her sister... I hate to ask what kind of a messed-up relationship she had with her mom, but I'm sure she'll tell us all soon!

|6.19.17 @ 5:40PM|#

Well, her dad specializes in crude "art" cartoons of naked women, mostly with really prominent hairy vaginas as the focal point.

Her mom could be totally normal, in other words, and all would still be explained.

Half-Virtue, Half-Vice|6.19.17 @ 4:32PM|#

After the United States downed a Syrian warplane, Russia is threatening to target aircraft flown by the U.S. and its allies over Syria.

Wouldn't it just be easier for Putin to call Trump's cell?

WakaWaka|6.19.17 @ 4:32PM|#

"Well, we have all those leaks, though"

Which have mostly blown-up spectacularly

Half-Virtue, Half-Vice|6.19.17 @ 4:33PM|#

A driver crashed into a police vehicle and died in Paris in what authorities believe was an attempted terrorist attack. Nobody else was injured.

No virgins for you!

BearOdinson|6.19.17 @ 4:42PM|#

If I get to Valhalla, I am going to laugh my ass off when I see that all those Islamist terrorsists who thought they were getting 72 virgins are nothing but target practice for the Einherjar!

PurityDiluting|6.19.17 @ 6:47PM|#

Or as Robin Williams once explained, it's a typo ... 72 Virginians are waiting to pummel the terrorists

Chipper Morning, Now #1|6.19.17 @ 4:48PM|#

Haha, imagine if the Soup Nazi is the gatekeeper in Muslim heaven.

Rich|6.19.17 @ 4:33PM|#

The court ruled that the federal government cannot reject trademarks just because they use "offensive" language.

Like "Fuck you!"?

Fist of Etiquette|6.19.17 @ 4:34PM|#

A driver crashed into a police vehicle and died in Paris in what authorities believe was an attempted terrorist attack. Nobody else was injured.

Vous avez eu un seul travail!

Illocust|6.19.17 @ 4:34PM|#

Wait, does this mean the redskins are no longer in danger of losing their trademark?

Rich|6.19.17 @ 4:35PM|#

The Last American Hero|6.19.17 @ 6:32PM|#

Half-Virtue, Half-Vice|6.19.17 @ 4:34PM|#

Seattle Police shot and killed a 30-year-old pregnant woman who had called police to report a robbery. Police said she drew a knife on them. Family members say she was struggling with mental health issues

Medals of courage incoming.

Zeb|6.19.17 @ 4:41PM|#

Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.

B.P.|6.19.17 @ 4:48PM|#

I think the gunfight traveled to the woman in this instance.

Crusty Juggler - Elite|6.19.17 @ 4:35PM|#

Tripping Up Trump

Ken White with a good read.

Fist of Etiquette|6.19.17 @ 4:35PM|#

Outgoing Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) says he doesn't think President Donald Trump's administration is going to be any more transparent than Barack Obama's, and he's disappointed.

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Free Speech Wins Big at Supreme Court, Russia Threatens US over Syria, Possible Failed Terror Attack in Paris: PM ... - Reason (blog)

By Dan Jackson, Campus Reform

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber both recently decried the intolerance toward free speech exhibited by liberal college students.

In a letter published in the latest edition of Princeton Alumni Weekly, Eisgruber begins by declaring that he emphatically endorses a 2015 faculty statement affirming Princetons institutional commitment to the broadest possible construction of free expression, but notes that the actual state of affairs on many campuses, including Princetons, is often hostile to that bedrock principle.

Many people worry about the state of campus speech today, and understandably so, he writes. Higher education has been embarrassed by appalling incidents such as the one at Middlebury College, where protesters shouted down Charles Murray and some physically assaulted him and his host, Professor Allison Stanger.

Princetons own Professor Peter Singer was interrupted repeatedly when he tried to speak with an audience at the University of Victoria in Canada, Eisgruber continues, but points out that instances of civility receive much less attention.

When Rick Santorum spoke at Princeton in April, for instance, he notes that students asked sharp, tough questions, and Santorum defended his position vigorously, rather than attempting to prevent the former senator and presidential candidate from speaking.

When the event ended, Eisgruber recounts, Santorum thanked Princetons students for being very polite and respectful, adding, This is what should happen on college campuses.

Go here to read the rest:
Princeton Prez 'Embarrassed' By Students' Hatred Of Free Speech - Fox News

CommentaryAs mentioned here Saturday and Sunday, Commentary magazine recently published a big symposium on the question "Is Free Speech Under Threat in the United States?" I contributed a brief essay, as did a whole bunch of people who have written for Reason over the years. Here are links to their archives around these parts, in addition to some choice quotes from their Commentary commentaries:

Jonathan Rauch ("Free speech is always under threat, because it is not only the single most successful social idea in all of human history, it is also the single most counterintuitive"), Harvey Silverglate ("today's most potent attacks on speech are coming, ironically, from liberal-arts colleges"), Laura Kipnis ("Here I am, a left-wing feminist professor invited onto the pages of Commentary"), John Stossel ("On campus, the worst is over"), Richard A. Epstein, Cathy Young, Christina Hoff Sommers ("Silencing speech and forbidding debate is not an unfortunate by-product of intersectionalityit is a primary goal"), Jonah Goldberg ("God may have endowed us with a right to liberty, but he didn't give us all a taste for it"), and John McWhorter.

Additionally, many of these and other contributors to the symposium have been subject to Reason interviews, including Epstein, Silverglate, Stossel, Sommers, Goldberg, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Kipnis, and Rauch, the latter two of which are embedded at the bottom of this post.

The symposium repeats many of the same themes, as the campus-centric excerpts above indicate. Many contributors noted the paradox between our widening legal speech freedoms (unanimously reinforced by the Supreme Court twice just today) and the shrinking intellectual support for the stuff. I for one was predictably inspired by Jonathan Rauch ("Every new generation of free-speech advocates will need to get up every morning and re-explain the case for free speech and open inquirytoday, tomorrow, and forever. That is our lot in life, and we just need to be cheerful about it"), and repulsed by Islam critic Pamela Geller ("The real question isn't whether free speech is under threat in the United States, but rather, whether it's irretrievably lost. Can we get it back? Not without war, I suspect").

But the biggest surprise argument I don't recall encountering before came from mega-bestselling author Michael J. Lewis, who argued that even a pro-First Amendment Supreme Court unwittingly harms the culture of free speech by taking too many issues out of the scrum of consequential public debate. Excerpt:

If free speech today is in headlong retreateverywhere threatened by regulation, organized harassment, and even violenceit is in part because our political culture allowed the practice of persuasive oratory to atrophy. The process began in 1973, an unforeseen side effect of Roe v. Wade. Legislators were delighted to learn that by relegating this divisive matter of public policy to the Supreme Court and adopting a merely symbolic position, they could sit all the more safely in their safe seats.

Since then, one crucial question of public policy after another has been punted out of the realm of politics and into the judicial. Issues that might have been debated with all the rhetorical agility of a Lincoln and a Douglas, and then subjected to a process of negotiation, compromise, and voting, have instead been settled by decree: e.g., Chevron, Kelo, Obergefell. The consequences for speech have been pernicious.[A] legislature that relegates its authority to judges and regulators will awaken to discover its oratorical culture has been stunted. When politicians, rather than seeking to convince and win over, prefer to project a studied and pleasant vagueness, debate withers into tedious defensive performance.

I suspect Lewis is exaggerating here, but his argument is intriguing.

After the jump, some relevant Reason interviews on free speech:

Laura Kipnis, from May 2017:

And Jonathan Rauch, from November 2013:

Read more from the original source:
Michael Lewis: The Supreme Court Has Harmed the Culture of Free Speech by Deciding Too Much Stuff - Reason (blog)

Isaac Smith. (Photo: Lori Cook, Athens News)

The debate over free speech on campus is no longer just part of the college and national conversation now its a federal matter.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hold a hearing on free speech on college campuses Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. The hearing, entitled Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses, will host seven witnesses. The lineup includes businessmen, lawyers, college administrators and two students.

Zachary R. Wood and Isaac Smith are the two students who will be taking the floor to talk to the committee about free speech on their college campuses. Both students, active free speech advocates, can be expected to tell the Senate about their respective campus battles with free speech.

Zachary Wood is a rising senior at Williams College in Massachusetts. He is the current co-president of Uncomfortable Learning, a student group. According to the Williams College website, Uncomfortable Learning aims to increase the campus conversation around important political issues and especially to navigate unfamiliar viewpoints and perspectives. The group has brought speakers with a wide range of viewpoints to campus with the goal of exposing the student body to different ideas.

When the group invited Suzanne Venker, an anti-feminist, in 2015, the event was canceled for security concerns after Wood and other members started to receive an overwhelmingly negative backlash by other members of the student body.

When we say that a speaker should not come because of their views, were denying ourselves an opportunity to strengthen our own arguments, Wood wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Post. He also argued that students were missing out on the opportunity to engage in a discussion with Venker.

The other student witness is Isaac Smith, a student at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, also experienced free speech challenges an undergraduate student at the Ohio University.

On his Facebook profile, Smith describes himself as a rising third-year student passionate about the First Amendment.

In 2014,Smith sued the University of Ohio after administrators at the university ordered him and his colleagues at Students Defending Students to stop wearing T-shirts with the slogan We get you off for free. Students Defending Students is a student organization that helps students with disciplinary infractions for free, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where Smith is currently an intern.

Listen for Wood and Smith to discuss these incidents in their testimonies to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The other witnesses are: Frederick Lawrence, Secretary and CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society Fanta Aw, interim president of campus life at American University Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA School of Law Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer with at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP.

One of the most interesting testimonies may come from Aw, as American University has been the center of numerous protests regarding race this year. The most recent protest occurred when students found bananas hanging around the campus with string wrapped around the bananas to represent a noose just after the first black student body president took office.

The hearing will be streamed live Tuesday, June 20 at 10:00 am EST on the Judiciary Committees website.

Kellie Bancalari is a student at George Washington University and a USA TODAY College digital producer.

Go here to read the rest:
2 students are testifying to the Senate about free speech on campus - USA TODAY

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (WWLP) Harvard has revoked acceptance letters from 10 incoming freshmen after discovering they used offensive speech online.

After finding the offensive posts on Facebook, Harvard said they will not tolerate racist remarks from their students. The university rescinded their acceptance offers in April, after discovering the students traded messages in a private Facebook group for incoming freshmen. The posts were often sexually explicit, and mocked Mexicans, the Holocaust, and child abuse.

Harvard students ouster over offensive posts stirs debate

While some argue that it is a matter of free speech, Northampton Attorney James Winston said that it could be categorized as hate speech if they used threatening terminology.

The more specific the speech is of an intended target, the more its going to be looked at as a serious threat and not be protected under free speech, Winston said.

Admissions experts say that the general rule of thumb for prospective college students is to not post anything- publicly or privately that they wouldnt want their grandmother to see.

Harvard said that they will rescind any acceptance letters if a student shows questionable moral behavior.

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Free speech or hate speech? 10 students kicked out of Harvard for postings - wwlp.com

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down two notable victories for free-speech advocates on Monday as it nears the end of its current term. The two First Amendment cases came to the Court from starkly different circumstances, but the justices emphasized a similar theme in both rulings: Beware what the free-speech restrictions of today could be used to justify tomorrow.

In the first case, Matal v. Tam, the Court sided with an Asian-American rock band in Oregon named The Slants in a dispute with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The PTO had denied band member Simon Tams application to register the groups name as a trademark, citing a provision in federal law that prohibits the office from recognizing those that disparage or bring into contempt or disrepute any persons, living or dead.

What an NYU Administrator Got Wrong About Campus Speech

Tam said his band was trying to reclaim and subvert the term slants, a racist and denigrating slur for Asians, in a method similar to how the LGBT community re-appropriated queer. When the PTO said the disparagement clause barred it from approving Tams application, he filed a lawsuit in federal court and claimed its refusal violated his right to free speech and expression. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals sided with him and struck down the clause as a violation of the First Amendment.

The office tried to defend the disparagement clause on multiple grounds, including the argument that registering trademarks amounted to government speecha classification that isnt regulated by the First Amendment. The Court narrowly reached a similar conclusion two years ago in Walker v. Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans when it sided with the states Department of Motor Vehicles against a neo-Confederate group that sought license plates bearing Confederate insignia. But the justices rejected that argument Monday as nonsensical on its face.

If the federal registration of a trademark makes the mark government speech, the federal government is babbling prodigiously and incoherently, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion for the Court. It is saying many unseemly things. It is expressing contradictory views. It is unashamedly endorsing a vast array of commercial products and services. And it is providing Delphic advice to the consuming public.

The Courts ruling is likely to resolve a parallel legal battle over the Washington Redskins trademark in the teams favor. A PTO appeals board revoked six of the teams trademarks in 2014 for violating the disparagement clause in response to a petition filed by a group of young Native American activists, who told the board that the trademarks were racial slurs. The team filed a lawsuit shortly thereafter, but a federal district court upheld the boards decision.

With the clause struck down, the team will almost certainly win its challenge of that ruling in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Dan Snyder, the teams owner, told the Washingtonian he was thrilled by the Tam ruling. He had filed a brief with the court urging it to back The Slants position, while a group of Native American organizations and tribes had urged the Court to view the offensive trademarks as commercial speech, a category in which courts have given state and federal governments broader deference to regulate.

The justices strongly rejected that stance, citing its potential for abuse if applied to the disparagement clause. It is not an anti-discrimination clause; it is a happy-talk clause, Alito quipped. In one example, he argued that with leeway so expansive, the provision could one day be used to target trademarks that disparage sexists, racists, and homophobes instead of trademarks issued by those people themselves.

The commercial market is well stocked with merchandise that disparages prominent figures and groups, and the line between commercial and non-commercial speech is not always clear, as this case illustrates, he explained. If affixing the commercial label permits the suppression of any speech that may lead to political or social volatility, free speech would be endangered.

Anthony Kennedy echoed those themes in a concurring opinion in which he was joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all, he wrote. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the governments benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society. Accordingly, the justices sided with Tam and his band.

The plaintiff in the other free-speech case, Packingham v. North Carolina, was far less sympathetic. When he was a 21-year-old college student in 2002, Lester Packingham pled guilty to a sexual crime involving a 13-year-old girl. North Carolina law automatically required him to register in the states sex-offender database. Six years later, the state passed a law making it a felony for registered sex offenders to access a commercial social-networking site. The statute defined what falls under that definition with incredible breadth: Alito wrote in his concurring opinion that accessing Amazon, Walmart, and WebMD could violate the law.

In Packinghams case, the accessed website was closer to what the laws drafters seemed to have in mind. After winning a traffic-court dispute in 2010, he posted a celebratory remark on Facebook. Man God is Good! Packingham wrote. How about I got so much favor they dismissed the ticket before court even started? No fine, no court cost, no nothing spent. . . . . .Praise be to GOD, WOW! Thanks JESUS! A police officer saw the statement and arrested him for it; Packinghams lawyers say more than 1,000 other registrants have been charged and tried under the same provision.

The eight justices who heard his caseNeil Gorsuch didnt join the Court in time to participate in Packingham or Tamunanimously ruled in his favor and struck down the North Carolina statute in question. But they sharply differed in their style and approach to the underlying issues. Kennedy, for example, adopted the contemplative, nebulous tone he typically reserves for landmark decisions on abortion or LGBT rights.

While we now may be coming to the realization that the cyber age is a revolution of historic proportions, we cannot appreciate yet its full dimensions and vast potential to alter how we think, express ourselves, and define who we want to be, he wrote for the Court. The forces and directions of the internet are so new, so protean, and so far reaching that courts must be conscious that what they say today might be obsolete tomorrow.

From Kennedys perspective, this meant the Court should exercise extreme caution before limiting the First Amendments application to the internet, even when the restrictions target one of societys most universally loathed groups. It is unsettling to suggest that only a limited set of websites can be used even by persons who have completed their sentences, he explained. Even convicted criminalsand in some instances especially convicted criminalsmight receive legitimate benefits from these means for access to the world of ideas, in particular if they seek to reform and to pursue lawful and rewarding lives.

Kennedys opinion drew some criticism from Alito, who concurred with the overall result but wrote separately because of his dissatisfaction with Kennedys undisciplined dicta, the formal term for the extraneous parts of a judges opinion that dont directly affect the case itself. The Court is unable to resist musings that seem to equate the entirety of the internet with public streets and parks, Alito wrote, metonymously referring to Kennedy and his majority opinions sweeping language. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas joined him.

But Alitos prodding appeared not to deter Kennedy from warning in broad terms about the inherent dangers of a censorious impulse, especially if it could one day be turned against even those with noble intentions to fight bigotry and crime. The nature of a revolution in thought can be that, in its early stages, even its participants may be unaware of it, he wrote, referring to the internets reshaping of human society. And when awareness comes, they still may be unable to know or foresee where its changes lead.

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The Supreme Court Offers a Warning on Free Speech - The Atlantic

Middlebury Colleges decision to discipline 67 students who participated in a raucous and violent demonstration against conservative author Charles Murray brings closure to one of several disturbing incidents that took place on college campuses this semester. But larger disputes about the state of free speech on campusand in public liferemain unresolved.

Many critics have used the incident at Middlebury, as well as violent protests at the University of California Berkeley, to argue that free speech is under assault. To these critics, liberal activists who respond aggressively to ideas they dislike are hypocrites who care little about the liberal values of tolerance and free speech.

The left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down, Milo Yiannopoulos posted on Facebook after protesters stormed a building at Berkeley where he was scheduled to speak in February.

Such criticism has not come solely from the right. Nor is it new. Over the past few years, a steady stream of commentary has deplored the state of free speech and intellectual inquiry on campus. The Atlantic has published a series of articles with titles such as The New Intolerance of Student Activism and The Glaring Evidence that Free Speech is Threatened on Campus. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has argued that free speech in academia is at greater risk now than at any time in recent history. And the eminent First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams went so far as to claim (prior to the election of Donald Trump) that the single greatest threat facing free speech today comes from a minority of students, who strenuously, and I think it is fair to say, contemptuously, disapprove of the views of speakers whose view of the world is different from theirs and who seek to prevent those views from being heard.

The violence at Middlebury and Berkeley was troubling and should be condemned by both liberals and conservatives. But the truth is that violent demonstrations on campus are rare, and are not what the critics have primarily been railing against. Instead, they have been complaining about an atmosphere of intense pushback and protest that has made some speakers hesitant to express their views and has subjected others to a range of social pressure and backlash, from shaming and ostracism to boycotts and economic reprisal.

Are these forms of social pressure inconsistent with the values of free speech?

That is a more complicated question than many observers seem willing to acknowledge.

A simplistic answer would be that such pressure does not conflict with free speech because the First Amendment applies only to government censorship, not to restrictions imposed by individuals. But most of us care about free speech not just as a matter of constitutional law but as a matter of principle, so the absence of government sanction hardly offers much comfort.

Many of the reasons why Americans object to official censorship also apply to the suppression of speech by private means. If we conceive of free speech as promoting the search for truthas the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas suggestswe should be troubled whether that search is hindered by public officials or private citizens. The same is true of democratic justifications for free speech. If the point of free speech is to facilitate the open debate that is essential for self-rule, any measure that impairs that debate should give us pause, regardless of its source.

But although social restraints on speech raise many of the same concerns as government censorship, they differ in important ways.

First, much of the social pressure that critics complain about is itself speech. When activists denounce Yiannopoulos as a racist or Murray as a white nationalist, they are exercising their own right to free expression. Likewise when students hold protests or marches, launch social media campaigns, circulate petitions, boycott lectures, demand the resignation of professors and administrators, or object to the invitation of controversial speakers. Even heckling, though rude and annoying, is a form of expression.

More crucially, the existence of such social pushback helps protects Americans from the even more frightening prospect of official censorship. Heres why. Speech is a powerful weapon that can cause grave harms, and the First Amendment does not entirely prohibit the government from suppressing speech to prevent those harms. But one of the central tenets of modern First Amendment law is that the government cannot suppress speech if those harms can be thwarted by alternative means. And the alternative that judges and scholars invoke most frequently is the mechanism of counter-speech.

As Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in his celebrated 1927 opinion in Whitney v. California, If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Counter-speech can take many forms. It can be an assertion of fact designed to rebut a speakers claim. It can be an expression of opinion that the speakers view is misguided, ignorant, offensive, or insulting. It can even be an accusation that the speaker is racist or sexist, or that the speakers expression constitutes an act of harassment, discrimination, or aggression.

In other words, much of the social pushback that critics complain about on campus and in public lifeindeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctnesscan plausibly be described as counter-speech. And because counter-speech is one of the mechanisms Americans rely on as an alternative to government censorship, such pushback is not only a legitimate part of our free speech system; it is indispensable.

Yet many people continue to believe that pressuring speakers to change their views or modify their language constitutes a threat to free speech.

Kirsten Powers makes this argument in her 2015 book, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech. Discussing the case of author Wendy Kaminer, who elicited angry responses from students when she used the n-word as part of a campus forum on free speech, Powers writes that rather than arguing with her on the merits, her opponents set about the process of delegitimizing her by tarring her as a racist. Powers also complains that many liberals instead of using persuasion and rhetoric to make a positive case for their causes and views, work to delegitimize the person making the argument through character assassination, demonization, and dehumanizing tactics. These efforts, she concludes, are a chilling attempt to silence free speech.

Its worth asking, though, why expression that shames or demonizes a speaker is not a legitimate form of counter-speech.

One possibility, as Powers implies, is that such tactics do not address the merits of the debate. But that reflects a rather narrow view of what counts as the merits. To argue that a speakers position is racist or sexist is to say something about the merits of her position, given that most people think racism and sexism are bad. Even arguing that the speaker herself is racist goes to the merits, since it gives the public context for judging her motives and the consequences of her position.

Besides, what principle of free speech limits discussion to the merits? Political discourse often strays from the merits of issues to personal or tangential matters. But the courts have never suggested that such discourse is outside the realm of free speech.

On the contrary, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that speech is valued both for the contribution it makes to rational discourse and for its emotional impact. As Justice John M. Harlan wrote in the 1971 case of Cohen v. California, We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated.

Fine, the critics might say. But much of the social pressure on campus does not just demonize; it is designed to, and often does, chill unpopular speech. And given that courts frequently invoke the potential chilling effect of government action to invalidate it under the First Amendment, social pressure that has a potential chilling effect is also inconsistent with free speech.

The problem with this argument is that all counter-speech has a potential chilling effect. Any time people refute an assertion of fact by pointing to evidence that contradicts it, speakers may be hesitant to repeat that assertion. Whenever opponents challenge an opinion by showing that it is poorly reasoned, leads to undesirable results, or is motivated by bigotry or ignorance, speakers may feel less comfortable expressing that opinion in the future.

Put bluntly, the implicit goal of all argument is, ultimately, to quash the opposing view. We dont dispute a proposition in the hope that others will continue to hold and express that belief. Unless we are playing devils advocate, we dispute it to establish that we are right and the other side is wrong. If we are successful enough, the opposing view will become so discredited that it is effectively, although not officially, silenced.

Such has been the fate of many ideas over the centuries, from claims that the earth is flat to declarations that slavery is Gods will to assertions that women should not be allowed to vote or own property. Each of these positions can still be asserted without fear of government punishment. But those who make them in earnest are deemed so discreditable that the claims themselves have mostly been removed from public debate.

This highlights a paradox of free speech, and of our relationship to it. On the one hand, Americans are encouraged to be tolerant of opposing ideas in the belief that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it in his landmark 1919 opinion in Abrams v. United States.

On the other hand, unlike the government, Americans are not expected to remain neutral observers of that market. Instead, we are participants in it; the market works only if we take that participation seriously, if we exercise our own right of expression to combat ideas we disagree with, to refute false claims, to discredit dangerous beliefs. This does not mean we are required to be vicious or uncivil. But viciousness and incivility are legitimate features of Americas free speech tradition. Life is not a debating exercise or a seminar room, and it would be nave to insist that individuals adhere to some prim, idealized vision of public discourse.

This, one suspects, is what bothers many critics of political correctness: the fact that so much of the social pressure and pushback takes on a nasty, vindictive tone that is painful to observe. But free speech often is painful. It was painful to envision neo-Nazis marching through Skokie, Illinois, home to thousands of holocaust survivors, in 1977. It was painful to watch the Westboro Baptist Church picket a military funeral in 2006 with signs reading Fag troops and Thank God for Dead Soldiers. In both cases, the speech was deeply offensive to our sense of decorum, decency, and tolerance. But the courts rightly concluded that this offense was irrelevant to whether the speech was worthy of protection.

Many critics, particularly on the left, seem to forget this. Although they claim to be promoting an expansive view of free speech, they are doing something quite different. They are promoting a vision of liberalism, of respect, courtesy, and broadmindedness. That is a worthy vision to promote, but it should not be confused with the dictates of free speech, which allows for a messier, more ill-mannered form of public discourse. Free speech is not the same as liberalism. Equating the two reflects a narrow, rather than expansive, view of the former.

Does this mean any form of social pressure targeted at speakers is acceptable? Not at all. One of the reasons government censorship is prohibited is that the coercive power of the state is nearly impossible to resist. Social pressure that crosses the line from persuasion to coercion is also inconsistent with the values of free speech.

This explains why violence and threats of violence are not legitimate mechanisms for countering ideas one disagrees with. Physical assaultin addition to not traditionally being regarded as a form of expression too closely resembles the use of force by the government.

What about other forms of social pressure? If Americans are concerned about the risk of coercion, the question is whether the pressures are such that it is reasonable to expect speakers to endure them. Framed this way, we should accept the legitimacy of insults, shaming, demonizing, and even social ostracism, since it is not unreasonable for speakers to bear these consequences. This is not to minimize the distress such tactics can cause. But a system that relies on counter-speech as the primary alternative to government censorship should not unduly restrict the forms counter-speech can take.

Heckling raises trickier questions. Occasional boos or interruptions are acceptable since they dont prevent speakers from communicating their ideas. But heckling that is so loud and continuous a speaker literally cannot be heard is little different from putting a hand over a speakers mouth and should be viewed as antithetical to the values free speech.

Because social restraints on speech do not violate the Constitution, Americans cannot rely on courts to develop a comprehensive framework for deciding which types of pressure are too coercive. Instead, Americans must determine what degree of pressure we think is acceptable.

In that respect, the critics are well within their right to push for a more elevated, civil form of public discourse. They are perfectly justified in arguing that a college campus, of all places, should be a model of rational debate. But they are not justified in claiming the free speech high ground. For under our free speech tradition, the crudest and least reasonable forms of expression are just as legitimate as the most eloquent and thoughtful.

This article was written for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

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Who's Afraid of Free Speech? - The Atlantic