Category Archives: Free Speech

Maz Jobrani, comedian, actor, Cal alum and commencement keynote speaker (UC Berkeley photos by Keegan Houser)

Iranian-American stand-up comic and actor Maz Jobrani championed free speech even for conservative provocateurs and took swings at anti-immigrant sentiment in an alternately funny and serious speech to thousands of graduating seniors and their families at UC Berkeleys May Commencement.

Today, I stand in front of you giving the commencement speech at one of the top universities in America, if not the world, said Jobrani, whose family fled Iran during that countrys 1978 revolution. I am the American dream.

Regaling an audience of more than 45,000 at California Memorial Stadium that included native speakers of Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin, Farsi and Hindi, among countless other languages, Jobrani seemed to feel right at home.

This is a beautiful mix of people, said Jobrani, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 1993 with degrees in political science and Italian.

Inside the sun-parched stadium, more than 5,500 UC Berkeley graduating seniors, decked out in black caps, gowns and colorful variations thereof, marched onto the field to Pomp and Circumstance, smartphones in their hands, to celebrate a hard-earned rite of passage.

Amid a sea of visibly relieved-looking parents clutching floral bouquets was Jorge Colonia of San Jose, whose son, David, was graduating, having majored in both legal studies and economics.

Im very proud. He is our only son, Colonia said. Not a lot of people in our family went to college. We had financial challenges, but he worked hard, and it was worth it.

Chancellor Nicholas Dirks

In his welcoming remarks, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks drew applause as he described the graduates soon-to-be alma mater as not only the best university in the world, but also the most important for the values it upholds.

He also lamented the threats the campus faces such as stagnant state funding and reduced federal funding for research.

Were under fire, he said, reminding graduates that as life takes you beyond Sather Gate, Berkeley itself still needs you.

Also addressing the crowd was top graduating senior Grant Schroeder, an integrative biology major and extreme athlete. Using a triathlon as a metaphor, his speech took his peers through the steps of questioning, vulnerability and orientation that he navigated in order to graduate.

Like other speakers, Schroeder, a native of Goleta, in Santa Barbara County, cited the challenges of balancing free speech against public safety, and how the debate may never be resolved.

There is no clear answer to this question, yet our dedication to wrestling with pressing issues is why the rest of the world watches us, he said. Free speech is not dead, and Berkeley is not a bubble.

Jobrani, a founding member of the Axis of Evil comedy tour who is currently starring in the CBS sitcom Superior Donuts, warned of the dangers of censorship, even in the case of provocateurs who skirt the edges of hate speech.

If we limit free speech from the right, then we sound hypocritical when we criticize Trump for trying to delegitimize our free press, Jobrani said. Lets not be the ones attacking free speech, but the ones defending it.

He also touched on another of his signature themes on the comedy circuit: immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment. For one thing, he recounted his shock at the travel ban in January that targeted the citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations, including his native Iran.

That woke me up, he said.

Winding down, Jobrani urged UC Berkeley graduates to travel, not to the usual tourist destinations, but to the Muslim world.

You will see that Muslims are not out to get you. They just want you to buy a rug, Jobrani quipped. Never pay full price for a rug. Always negotiate.

As for his final tip: Kiss your parents every time you see them, especially if theyre immigrants, because you never know when they might be deported, he said to the laughing crowd.

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Commencement speeches celebrate immigrants, free speech ... - UC Berkeley

In campus clashes from California to Vermont, many defenders of the First Amendment say they see signs that free speech, once a bedrock value in academia, is losing ground as a priority at U.S. colleges.

As protests have derailed speeches by controversial figures, including an event with Ann Coulter last month at the University of California, Berkeley, some fear students have come to see the right to free expression less as an enshrined measure of protection for all voices and more as a political weapon used against them by provocateurs.

I think minority groups and those who feel alienated are especially skeptical about free speech these days, said Jeffrey Herbst, leader of the Newseum, a Washington group that defends the First Amendment. But the powerful can get their message across any number of ways. Its those who feel powerless or alienated who really benefit from enshrined rights.

On Wednesday, students at the historically black Bethune-Cookman University in Florida tried to shout down a commencement address by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who said during her speech, Lets choose to hear one another out. Students and alumni had previously petitioned to rescind her invitation, saying she doesnt understand the importance of historically black schools.

While some cast the debate as a political battle, pitting protesters on the left against conservative speakers on the right, First Amendment advocates warn the line marking acceptable speech could slip if more college students adopt less-than-absolute views on free speech.

When UC Berkeley canceled Coulters April 27 speech amid threats of violence, it was only the latest example of a speaker with controversial views being blocked from talking. Since the beginning of 2016, nearly 30 campus speeches have been derailed amid controversy, according to the Foundation For Individual Rights In Education.

In many cases , speakers have been targeted for their views on race and sexual identity.

At Middlebury College in Vermont, author Charles Murray was shouted down by students who accused him of espousing racist views. An event featuring Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley was called off after protests over his views on race and transgender people turned violent.

In the past year, other speeches have been disrupted or canceled amid student protests at the University of Wisconsin, UC Davis, Brown University, New York University and DePaul University, among others.

Todays students have developed a new understanding of free speech that doesnt protect language seen as offensive to minorities or others thought to be disenfranchised, said Herbst, also a former president of Colgate University, a liberal arts school in Hamilton, New York.

He sees it as a generational divide, a notion thats supported by some polling data. A 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center, for example, found that 40 percent of people ages 18 to 34 supported government censorship of statements offensive to minorities. Only 24 percent of people ages 51 to 69 agreed.

The literary group PEN America has also warned free speech is being threatened at colleges.

As students and administrators strive to make campuses more hospitable to diverse student bodies, some have wrongly silenced speech that makes certain students feel uncomfortable, said Suzanne Nossel, the groups director.

The university has dual imperatives. It has to be a place that is welcoming and open to students of all backgrounds, cognizant of the barriers that impede students from marginalized groups, she said. But that cannot and must not come at the expense of being an open environment for speech.

The events at Berkeley and Middlebury have drawn scorn from observers across the political spectrum, including some founders of the free speech movement that took root at Berkeley in the 1960s. Jack Weinberg, who was arrested on campus in 1964 for violating school codes on activism and sparked a wave of protests to change them, said he found the whole thing despicable.

When you suppress ideas, you also increase interest in those ideas, Weinberg said. Its understandable that people want to stop it, but it doesnt work.

Still, some students dont see a problem with disrupting provocative speakers. Some say theyre simply invoking their own First Amendment rights, while others say theyre appealing to higher principles that take priority over free expression.

If your goal is to come onto university campuses and put communities at risk, and your goal is to bash and spew hateful, racist rhetoric, then we dont want that, said Richard Alvarado, a junior at Berkeley who protested both recent speeches. We as a community have a moral obligation to hold you accountable for it.

Colleges need to take a harder stance against students who disrupt speeches, some say. Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin are pushing a bill that would force state universities to suspend or expel students who repeatedly interfere with others free speech. Similar legislation was recently approved in Virginia and Colorado, and is being considered in California, Michigan and North Carolina. The bills are modeled after a proposal by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank in Arizona.

Others are calling for colleges to adopt stronger policies in support of free expression, and for primary schools to bolster lessons on the First Amendment.

We are seeing things on an all-too-regular basis which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, said Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment attorney in New York City. One can only hope that tempers will cool and people will come to accept the virtues of living in a society where even offensive speech is fully protected by the First Amendment.

___

Find Collin Binkley on Twitter at @cbinkley.

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Is free speech fading at colleges? Some defenders think so - NRToday.com

In a time when free speech in places like Portland, Berkeley, and Middlebury exists only by permission of the mob, and in a time when small business owners who dissent from the sexual revolution often find themselves facing financial ruin, its genuinely refreshing to see free speech win. Earlier today, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a small Lexington, Kentucky,t-shirt printer called Hands On Originals (HOO), holding that HOO did not violate the citys fairness ordinance when it refused to print t-shirts celebrating the Lexington Pride Festival.

The case presented thecleanest of legal questions can a small business that has consistently refused to print messages that its owners find immoral (including curse words and blasphemous images) lawfullyextend that moral stance to messages celebrating LGBT identity? In its opinion the courtexhibited a level of judicial common sense so rare that I found myself surprised by almost every paragraph. The courtactually read the relevant law, applied it to the undisputed facts, and reached a decision that was legally (not politically) correct.

First, rather than treating public accommodation laws as all-powerful instruments of social justice, the court raised proper alarms:

[I]t is not the aim of public accommodation laws, nor the First Amendment, to treat speech as [discriminatory] activity or conduct. This is so for two reasons. First, speech cannot be considered an activity or conduct that is engaged in exclusively or predominantly by a particular class of people. Speech is an activity anyone engages inregardless of religion, sexual orientation, race, gender, age, or even corporate status. Second, the right of free speech does not guarantee to any person the right to use someone elses property, even property owned by the government and dedicated to other purposes, as a stage to express ideas.

Exactly right. Heres more:

In other words, the service HOO offers is the promotion of messages. The conduct HOO chose not to promote was pure speech. There is no contention that HOO is a public forum in addition to a public accommodation. Nothing in the fairness ordinance prohibits HOO, a private business, from engaging in viewpoint or message censorship. Thus, although the menu of services HOO provides to the public is accordingly limited, and censors certain points of view, it is the same limited menu HOO offers to every customer and is not, therefore, prohibited by the fairness ordinance.

A contrary conclusion would result in absurdity under the facts of this case. The Commissions interpretation of the fairness ordinance would allow any individual to claim any variety of protected class discrimination under the guise of the fairness ordinance merely by requesting a t-shirt espousing support for a protected class and then receiving a value-based refusal. A Buddhist who requested t-shirts from HOO stating, I support equal treatment for Muslims, could complain of religious discrimination under the fairness ordinance if HOO opposed equal treatment for Muslims and refused to print the t-shirts on that basis. A 25-year-old who requested t-shirts stating, I support equal treatment for those over forty could complain of age discrimination if HOO refused on the basis of its disagreement with that message. A man who requests t-shirts stating, I support equal treatment for women, could complain of gender discrimination if HOO refused to print the t-shirts because it disagreed with that message. And so forth. Clearly, this is not the intent of the ordinance.

Clearly not, but dont tell that to the Lexington Human Rights Commission. Like their sister social justice warriors in other states, theyve doggedly pursued a Christian small business, determined to stamp out dissent in the name of equality. The only false note in the case was the courts decision to distinguish (rather than disagree with) a Colorado decision holding that it was unlawful discrimination for a baker to refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Otherwise, however, the reasoning stands as a rebuke to efforts to use nondiscrimination ordinances to overcome traditional constitutional prohibitions against compelled speech.

The case will likely go to the Kentucky Supreme Court, but for now HOO and its lawyers (my old colleagues at the Alliance Defending Freedom) deserve congratulations for an excellent result.

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Free Speech Wins a Round - National Review

UC students, along with The Irate 8, join national anti-racial silent protests. The Enquirer/Pat Brennan

Students and community members protest before a speech by nationally syndicated columnist George Will at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio Wednesday October 22, 2014. Groups on campus are protesting Will's comments on trivializing the problem of campus sexual assault and rape in October 2014.(Photo: The Enquirer/Gary Landers)Buy Photo

Politically charged student protests are nothing new. However,as tensions erupt at campuses liketheUniversity of California, Miami University and Middlebury College the right to free speech gets complicated.

Beyond Civility, a localnonprofit organization, is hosting a programon May 30 to discuss campus protests, public safetyand free speech.

Local university leaders and community members will explore the issueof our desire for respectful speechand First Amendment rights on college campuses.

Participants from the University of Cincinnati,Mount St. Joseph Universityand Miami Universitywill also discusshow universities respondand the roles of the peoplein the middle, which includesstudents, faculty and administrators.

Beyond Civility, which was founded in 2012 in Cincinnati, is working to bringcitizens and civic leaders together to reduce divisive communication, so that even when opinions are polarized, a useful conversation continues, rather than being shut down with combative language. Then,reasonable, evidence-basedcompromises can be explored.

Thomas Jefferson famously said of the University of Virginia,"this institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."

Beyond Civility is hosting this program to talk about thesharp contrast between this quote and the political correctness that is commanding attention on college campuses across the country.

When: Tuesday, May 30

Who:The panelists include Verna Williams, interim dean of the UC College of Law; James Williams, president ofMount St. Joseph University;JuanGuardia, UC dean of students;John Paul Wright, a UC professor;and Miami University studentNick Froelich.

Where:St. John's Unitarian Universalist Church,320 Resor Ave., Cincinnati, 45220

RSVP:Online at http://mailchi.mp/c940da9d75eb/campus-protests-public-safety-and-free-speech

Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/2r8kett

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How far should free speech on campus go? - Cincinnati.com

"Excuse me, we have permission for all of this," Fresno State student Bernadette Tasycan be heard saying.

"No, you don't," responds Fresno State assistant professor Greg Thatcher.

It's a phraseTasy will say more than five times in this less than three-minute recording, showing students, then Thatcher, wiping out Tasy's group's pro-life chalk messages on the Fresno State campus.

"You have permission to put it down, I have permission to get rid of it," Thatcher said.

"He indicated that he thought what he was doing was part of his free speech, but what he did was wrong," Tasy said. "The only permit a student needs to speak on campus, is the First Amendment."

University President Dr. Joseph Castro quickly released a statement Thursday, siding with the pro-life student group, saying quote:

"The students who wrote the chalk messages received prior university approval and were well within their rights to express themselves in this manner. Those disagreeing with the students' message have a right to their own speech, but they do not have the right to erase or stifle someone else's speech under the guise of their own right to free speech."

Castro also disputed Thatcher's argument...

"Free speech is free speech in the free speech area, it's a pretty simple concept, OK?" Thatcher can be heard saying to Tasy in the video. "This does not constitute a free speech area, OK?"

Castro says, free speech is not limited to an area.

"University professors should be encouraging free speech on campus, not erasing it from it's existence," Tasy said. "So what professor Thatcher did was wrong."

One of Tasy's attorneys also spoke with us over the phone. He says, incidents like this one, are part of a trend being seen on college campuses.

"That's part of the reason that we brought this lawsuit, to send a message, not just to professor Thatcher, but to professors, officials across the country," Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Travis Barham said. "That if you go out, and you censor student speech, you will be held accountable, and there are consequences."

At just 21-years-old, Tasy's become the face of a lawsuit, but she says, it's not just about her organization or about the pro-life movement.

"You don't have to be pro-life to, to believe that everybody has their right to free speech, and so, my greatest concern is for my club and for other groups on campus, to be able to exercise their free speech," Tasy said. "Because the only permit you need to speak on campus, is the First Amendment."

We also reached out to Thatcher, he says he feels no need to talk, that this has all been quote "blown out of proportion," he even went on to call the lawsuit hilarious.

Tasy and her group are suing Thatcher for allegedly violating their First Amendment rights, they're also seeking an order that would prevent him from interfering with their group again.

Reporting in Fresno, Megan Rupe.

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"What he did was wrong:" Student behind free-speech - yourcentralvalley.com

The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) (blog)

Tennessee Free Speech Bill Signed Into Law - Inside Higher Ed Inside Higher Ed A free speech bill backed by state Republican lawmakers in Tennessee became law there this week. Tennessee Law Is Hailed as Offering Unprecedented Protection of ...The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) (blog) all 2 news articles »

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Tennessee Free Speech Bill Signed Into Law - Inside Higher Ed - Inside Higher Ed

Recent Register-Guard editorials about campus free speech underscored a consequence for radical disregard of that fundamental right: violence. By identifying four recent instances of mayhem and destruction three on campuses, one not the editors waggled a finger at the mostly ... left wing protesters with the unutterable gall to provoke violence.

It was a message I would expect from a local newspaper, and likely from most Americans who cherish the right to convey a message without fear of violence.

The editorials echoed the words of civic leaders 50 years ago who decried the upwelling of race riots and campus protests. The long, hot summer of 1967 sparked 159 race riots, while campuses across the land seethed with war resisters and threats of violence. Free speech clashes at the University of California, Berkeley, back then prompted then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to ask, How far do we go in tolerating these people and this trash under the excuse of academic freedom and freedom of expression?

No matter the public outrage, radical speech escalated, sometimes accompanied by violence, and always the rebukes.

In April three years later, the University of Oregon was rocked by the bombing of the ROTC building, a Students for a Democratic Society riot, and the Johnson Hall sit-in, each event portrayed as an unruly and destructive act. They were. Violence is antithetical to a civil society. Disperse the crowd, jail the perpetrators, and act surprised the next time it happens.

We cherish our right to speak, but what of our responsibility to listen and engage in honest dialogue? Can we even be bothered? The media bristle with stories about a nation divided by religion, global warming and lifestyles. East of here, some folks nail up huge signs proclaiming Trump Country; in Eugene, many refuse to speak his name. Are those folks past the point of talking?

The communication faculty at Lane Community College say no, we can do better. This Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, the public is invited to LCCs first Speak-Out featuring a free workshop on deliberative dialogue led by University of Washington professor Kara Dillard.

In his essay, Thinking Together: The Power of Deliberative Dialogue, Scott London describes the process as differing from other forms of discourse like debate and negotiation because the objective is not so much to talk together as to think together, not so much to reach a conclusion as to discover where a conclusion might lie. Thinking together involves listening deeply to other points of view, exploring new ideas and perspectives, searching for points of agreement, and bringing unexamined assumptions into the open.

Rather than objectifying the opposition as a way to justify dysfunctional conflict including violence the deliberative dialogue process brings us closer to the reality of how people struggle with issues.

As a contrast (and ironic compliment), the morning workshop is followed by three rounds of fun, lively flash debate over Donald Trump quotes. This extemporaneous exercise simply requires the capacity to see both sides of an issue and the courage to engage in lively, civil discussion. The debates, which run from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. are open to any participant as a speaker or observer.

The Speak-Out concludes at 4 p.m. with a guided demonstration of the deliberative dialogue process involving any interested participants.

Campus violence is neither endemic nor the fault of a single partisan group, but rather a reflection of the pain and isolation that arise from a pervasive sense of hopelessness. Consider the civil alternatives by attending this event at LCC to be held on the fourth floor of Center Building.

Have hope speak out!

Daniel Henry (henryd@lanecc.edu) is an instructor of communication at Lane Community College.

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Flip side of free speech is a willingness to listen - The Register-Guard

Bipartisan Tennessee lawmakers passed a free speech law Tuesday that protects students First Amendment rights on college campuses.

GOP Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed the Campus Free Speech Protection Act after the states House of Representatives passed it in a85-7 vote and the Senate unanimously approved it,Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)reported Wednesday.

The law will ban the establishment of free speech zones, used by administrators to confine controversial speech to specific areas on campus.

It will also force colleges to treat student-on-student harassment in accordance with the United States Supreme Court ruling on Davis vs. Monroe County Board of Education, which defined harassment as conduct so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institutions resources and opportunities.

Universities will also no longer be able to retract invitations to speakers or make it harder for student organizations to express their viewpoints by imposing speaking fees.

Six out of the seven Tennessee universities cataloged by FIRE have either yellow-light or red-light free speech ratings, meaning those schools operate with policies that either moderately or severely impair the free speech rights of their students. While one of the schools catalogued, University of Tennessee Knoxville, has a green-light rating.

[The law] is the most comprehensive state legislation protecting free speech on college campuses that weve seen be passed anywhere in the country, Robert Shibley, executive director for FIRE, said in a statement. It is gratifying to see the Tennessee legislature take decisive action to protect the expressive rights of students and faculty, especially in light of the number ofrestrictive speech codes across the country and the recent controversies over speech on campus.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Haslam and Tennessees two red-light universities for comment, but received none in time for publication.

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Tennessee Passes Bill To Protect Free Speech On Campus - The Daily Caller

Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, spoke before a large, respectful audience at Gettysburg College last Wednesday, at the invitation of the schools Young Americans for Freedom chapter. In the lead-up to the event, students complained and 375 alumni signed a letter calling for his talk to be canceled because, they wrote, Allowing him to visit and speak will be an act of violence against Muslim students at Gettysburg College and will further legitimate his false and hateful message.

Spencer writes and speaks about radical Islam and jihad. His most recent book is The Complete Infidels Guide to Iran (2016). In 2013 he was prohibited from entering the UK to give a scheduled speech, and in 2006, Pakistan banned his book, The Truth About Muhammad. In his talks, he frequently reads passages from the Quran that he says justify human rights abuses in radical Islam, such as sex slavery.

Outrage and protest over Spencer as a campus speaker are not unique to Gettysburg. Most recently, on May 1, students at the University of Buffalo drowned out his presentation, chanting and screaming throughout the event. According to Spencer, the UB administrators did nothing to restore order.

At Gettysburg, President Janet Morgan Riggs answered the alumni letter by declaring that Spencer would still make his presentation on The Political Ramifications of Islamic Fundamentalism, and that another speaker, Luther College professor Todd Green, would give a talk that same week, on Professional Islamophobia. Riggs cited the colleges freedom of expression statement, which quotes Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis: If there be a 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.

In these days of campus speaker shout-downs and dis-invitations, Riggs stands out for her principled defense of intellectual freedom. At least, so it might seem. Riggs is not quite a shining example of free speech protection. Her response to the situation sent conflicting messages.

Selective on Second Speakers

Riggss choice to bring in another speaker appears to be a helpful gesture toward ideological balance. Debates and panels that offer competing points of view are sadly rare on college campuses now. Students deserve to hear more than one perspective on controversial ideas. But here the additional speaker concept is applied selectively. For example, in March the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Gettysburg hosted transgender activist Aren Aizura, who promotes queer theory and gender reassignment surgery. The college did not bring in a speaker to present the counter view that accommodating gender dysphoria is destructive in a manner similar to accommodating anorexia.

The more speech policy appears to apply only in cases where the point of view does not conform to progressive ideology.

Clash of Values

Riggs wrotethe following in her letter to the community:

Thisissueisdifficultbecauseitpitstwocoreinstitutional valuesagainstoneanother:

Taken literally, these values are really not in conflict. A diverse and inclusive learning environment ought to mean a college where students and faculty members of differing backgrounds and views can come together to participate in a marketplace of ideas, and no idea is excluded without due consideration. But diverse and inclusive has come to be a euphemism for its opposite: homogenous and exclusionary.

In that sense, Riggs is right to recognize a clash of values. This is the reason so many campus speakers are prevented from talking: when the free exchange of ideas is confronted by the notion that a certain view is hateful to a preferred identity group, free speech usually loses. This time, Gettysburg College did the right thing by ensuring that Spencer could speak. But Riggs noticed something real, the incompatibility of diverse and inclusive (as the notion is practically applied) with intellectual freedom. Colleges and universities should reconsider their institutional values and drop the language of diverse and inclusive in order to protect intellectual freedom.

Taking Sides

As is sometimes the case with college administrators who countenance controversial speakers, Riggs couldnt resist showing her own biases. At the Todd Green event, when a student challenged her decision to allow Spencer to speak, she replied, My fantasy is that we will have four or five people sitting in a room with Robert Spencer, and the other 2,500 members with Jerome at his rally. I think thats what we can do to counter the fear that a speaker like this can bring to this community.

Riggss call for students to boycott Spencers talk to attend a simultaneous Muslim solidarity rally and her assertion that Spencer could bring fear to campus compromised her defense of his right to speak. This declaration was essentially an act of self-justification to students and alumni who might accuse her of not being on the right side. Getting steamrolled by angry students is a legitimate concern for college presidents these days, but it is up to presidents to show students how to listen to views they disagree with and to model what openness to different ideas looks like.

Imperfect Virtue

Gettysburg College did the right thing by ensuring an invited speakers right to be heard. Riggs is to be commended for not surrendering to the many who pressured her to turn Spencer away. But her declaration of her hope that no one would attend considerably weakened her position. Students need to see examples of gutsy defenses of intellectual freedom. Riggs falls short of that.

It is possible that Riggss statement actually served as an impetus for more students to attend Spencers talk. The room was filled with nearly 400 people, including many who disagreed with what he had to say but nevertheless came to listen.

Controversy can help pique curiosity. Ultimately, however, it should be a normal, even mundane occurrence to have views across the spectrum aired and debated on a college campus. That is the mark of a diverse and inclusive learning environment in the best sense.

Ashley Thorne is theExecutive Director of the National Association of Scholars.

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How Not to Defend Free Speech - RealClearEducation

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and state Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, introduced a bill they named the Campus Free Speech Act. For those who value free speech, a more accurate name for this bill is the Suppression of Free Speech Act."

Reps. Vos and Kremer contend their motivation in introducing this bill was to ensure that University of Wisconsin System schools facilitate free speech. For those of us reading between the lines, Reps. Vos and Kremer are saying they dont trust UW System schools to facilitate their kind of free speech -- the kind that halts it.

The bill requires the UW Board of Regents to form a free speech committee that meets annually with the governor. Reading between the lines one more time, Vos and Kremer are saying they don't trust the Regents to share their desire to squelch protest.

UW System has policies that protect free speech and ensure discipline for students who violate free speech. The Vos and Kremer legislation demeans one of the greatest institutions of higher learning in the country.

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UW already has rules for free speech -- Mary Hoeft - Madison.com