Category Archives: Free Speech

By Matthew Burns

Raleigh, N.C. Less than a week after a bill to "restore and preserve campus free speech" throughout the University of North Carolina system failed in a House committee, a revised version resurfaced Monday night and sailed through with the approval of UNC officials.

House Bill 527 calls for the UNC Board of Governors to craft a policy on free expression that can be limited only by "narrowly tailored viewpoint- and content-neutral restrictions on time, place, and manner of expression" and includes a range of disciplinary sanctions for anyone who "substantially disrupts the functioning of the constituent institution or substantially interferes with the protected free expression rights of others."

The revised version allows each campus to tailor its restrictions and discipline as needed.

It also did away with a provision that required campuses to remain neutral on "public policy controversies of the day," saying only that the overall policy should prohibit schools from taking an action "in such a way as to require students, faculty, or administrators to publicly express a given view of social policy." And it dropped a new private right to sue over alleged violations of free-speech rights, instead stating the the Board of Governors and campus officials couldn't be held personally liable for actions taken under the law, such as removing protesters who threaten campus operations or individual safety.

Tom Shanahan, general counsel for the UNC system, told members of the House Committee on Education - Universities that the changes addressed the major concerns of UNC officials.

Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange, cast the lone vote against the bill in committee, calling the proposal unnecessary.

"It feels like in loco parentis, that the children can't take care of themselves so we have to step in," Insko said.

The bill next heads to the House Judiciary I Committee.

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UNC officials OK with revised 'free speech' bill :: WRAL.com - WRAL.com

NewsBusters (blog)

New York Times: Thank 'Snowflakes' for Protecting Free Speech NewsBusters (blog) If you want to read something crazy, look no further than the New York Times opinion section. The paper actually published an editorial Monday morning that outright denied free speech applied to anyone who wasn't a liberal. In his appalling article ... NYT Publishes Speech Suppression Advocacy | National ReviewNational Review NYT Op-Ed Call For Broader Understanding Of Free Speech | The ...Daily Caller When the New York Times advocates suppression of speech - Hot AirHot Air all 5 news articles »

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New York Times: Thank 'Snowflakes' for Protecting Free Speech - NewsBusters (blog)

Glenn Harlan Reynolds 1:48 p.m. ET April 24, 2017

Howard Dean(Photo: Thomas P. Costello, Asbury Park Press)

I tell my constitutional law students that there are a couple of statements that indicate that a speaker is a constitutional illiterate who can safely be ignored. One is the claim that the Constitution views black people as the worth of white people (actually, it was all about power in Congress, with slaveowners wanting black people to count 100% toward apportionment so that slaveowners would get more seats in Congress, and abolitionists wanting them not counted at all so that slaveowners would get fewer seats in Congress; the compromise was just that, a compromise).

The other hallmark of constitutional illiteracy is the claim that the First Amendment doesnt protect hate speech. And by making that claim last week, Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and Democratic presidential candidate, revealed himself to be a constitutional illiterate. Then, predictably, he doubled down on his ignorance.

In First Amendment law, the term hate speech is meaningless. All speech is equally protected whether its hateful or cheerful.It doesnt matter if its racist, sexistor in poor taste, unless speech falls into a few very narrow categories like true threats, which have to address a specific individual, or incitement, which must constitute an immediate and intentional encouragement to imminent lawless action its protected.

The term hate speech was invented by people who dont like that freedom, and who want to give thecompletely falseimpression that theres a kind of speech that the First Amendment doesnt protect because its hateful.What they mean by hateful, it seems, is really just that its speech they dont agree with.Some even try to argue that since hearing disagreeable ideas is unpleasant, expressing those ideas is somehow an act of violence.

The suicide of expertise: Glenn Reynolds

France's dark horse from the far left: David Andelman

There are two problems with that argument. The first is that its idiotic: Thats never been the law, nor could it be if we give any value to free expression, because theres no idea that somebody doesnt disagree with.The second is that the argument is usually made by people who spend a lot of time expressing disagreeable ideas themselves, without, apparently, the least thought that if their own rules about disagreeable speech held sway, theyd probably be locked up first. (As Twitter wag IowaHawk has offered: I'll let you ban hate speech when you let me define it. Deal?)

The response to Dean was merciless: First Amendment law expert Eugene Volokh responded, "No, Gov. Dean, there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment.If there were, neither the Westboro Baptist Church whose hateful speech the Supreme Court recently held protected nor the many people referring to Trump supporters as Nazis and deplorables would enjoy free speech.

As Volokh writes, if people want hate speech to be unprotected, theyre calling for a change to the First Amendment, and its a big one. They should not only admit that, they should explain just what viewpoints the government would be allowed to suppress, what viewpoints would remain protected and how judges, juries and prosecutors are supposed to distinguish the two. And claiming that hate speech is already 'not protected by the First Amendment,'as if one is just restating settled law, does not suffice.

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Dean then doubled down with the constitutional illiterates usual fallback, that you could ban hate speech as fighting words under the 1942 case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which allows a ban on fighting words.(Journalist Dan Gillmor commented: Disappointing, to say the least, to see Dean digging the hole deeper on his flatly incorrect original statement.)

But fighting words arent hate speech.Fighting words are direct, person-to-person invitations to a brawl. Expressing political or social views that people dont like isnt the same thing,even if people might react violently to those views.

And thats good.If, by reacting violently to views they didnt like, people could get the government to censor those views as hate speech or fighting words, then people would have a strong incentive to react violently to views they dont like. Giving the angry and violent the ability to shut down other peoples speech (the term we use for this in constitutional law, Gov. Dean, is hecklers veto) is a bad thing, which would leave us with a society marked by a lot more violence, a lot more censorship, and a lot less speech.

Is that really what you want?Because thats what wed get, if we followed the advice of constitutional illiterates.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, aUniversity of Tennesseelaw professor and the author ofThe New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY'sBoard of Contributors.

You can readdiverse opinions from ourBoard of Contributorsand other writers ontheOpinion front page,on Twitter@USATOpinionand in our dailyOpinion newsletter.To submit a letter, comment or column, check oursubmission guidelines.

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Hate speech is free speech, Gov. Dean: Glenn Reynolds - USA Today - USA TODAY

Chicago Tonight | WTTW

The State of Free Speech on College Campuses Chicago Tonight | WTTW The report also calls for free-speech deans-on-call with special training to monitor events and remove disruptors if necessary. Prior to the report's release, University of Chicago alumnus Matthew Anderrson, who works in the aviation industry, wrote ...

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The State of Free Speech on College Campuses - Chicago Tonight | WTTW

The recent campus rioting against unpopular or conservative political views is awful, but I have discovered the solutionby accident.

We have all seen numerous campuses riven by violence and a refusal to permit speech that does not comport with the current lefty line. This has happened recently at Middlebury, the Claremont Colleges, and of courseand most violentlyBerkeley, which remains mired in a dispute over letting Ann Coulter speak.

Last week I spoke at Berkeleyand there was one protester. Actually he was more of a heckler, of the sort I've often encountered. He marched in the 1960s, his ponytail is now gray, but he still wants to interrupt and shout his views about Salvadoran "death squads" and unfair treatment of everyone from Fidel Castro to the Sandinistas. I would have been surprised, under normal circumstances, to find only one heckler at Berkeley.

Earlier on the day I spoke at Berkeley, I had spent an hour over at Stanford's Hoover Institution with my old boss in the Reagan years, George P. Shultz. Shultz is now 96 but still entirely with it, and he told me "if you don't get rioted at Berkeley today, your reputation is ruined."

But I have seen the future and it works. I spoke at Berkeley on April 20which turns out, unbeknown to me, to be famous as "420." For reasons that are hotly disputed, 420 is now code for marijuana. Each April 20, pot smokers on campuses across the land gather to celebrate. Wikipedia, which is never wrong about such subjects, tells us that "April 20 has become an international counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis."

Weed Day was certainly a big deal at Berkeley. As I walked across the campus to the lecture hall where I was to speak, I crossed a vast field of pot smokers. You could get high just by walking through the crowd, and a smoky haze hung over the happy students. Of course no one showed up to riot!

It wasn't that, as Secretary Shultz was warning me, the commies had forgotten the great battles of the Reagan years, orGod forbidno longer recognized my name. It wasn't that foreign policy is now considered boring, and they only break up meetings when provocateurs like Ann Coulter show up. No, it was that they were Too Stoned to Riot!

This is the solution. There need be no more Claremonts, no more Middleburys, no more Berkeleys where free speech is prevented. Think back to Berkeley's "Free Speech Movement" of the 1960s, and you will recall that it was both actually for free speech on campus, and totally permeated with marijuana smoking. Was there ever a free speech rally in those days that did not have the telltale haze hanging over it?

This is the answer. Pusillanimous administrators and frightened faculty members need not bar controversial speakers nor court campus crises. Just announce a brief celebration of the benefits of cannabis and all will be calm, indeed even joyful. Too Stoned To RiotI can see the T shirt now.

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How To Restore Free Speech on Campus - The Weekly Standard

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Inthis past weekends Wall Street Journal, Heather McDonaldwrites the following about the ongoing problem of American universities shutting down speakers whose views dont match their own:

Campus intolerance is at root not a psychological phenomenon but an ideological one. At its center is a worldview that sees Western culture as endemically racist and sexist. The overriding goal of the educational establishment is to teach young people within the ever-growing list of official victim classifications to view themselves as existentially oppressed.

McDonald is 100% correctI came face-to-face with this fact just two weeks ago when I spoke at Bard College in New York.

First,a bit of background. In October 2015I was invited by Williams Collegethen disinvited, and then re-invited (I declined)to speak on behalf of its Uncomfortable Learning program. After the dis-invitation, Fox News publishedthe speech I had planned to give, and from therenews outlets across the country began to chime in.

Since that time, there has been continual coverage on the insanity that so-called controversial speakers are forced to endure upon agreeing to talk about Things That Are True But Should Never Be Said.

After learning about the Williams College fiasco, a student at Bard College began a similar program to the one at Williams and labeled it Tough Talks. Upon asking me to speak, this student assured me the invitation would not be withdrawn. Bard students are better than that, he wrote in an email.

And hewas right. There was no dis-invitation, and there were no protests. No one was hurt, nor did anyone cause a fuss while I was speaking. It was all very civilized.

I wish that was the end of the story, but it isnt. It cant be. For while I commend Bard College for inviting me to speak and for being civil, that alone isnt worthy of applause. The purpose of having a speaker is for students to learn something, and I dont believe the students learned a thing. Not because I didnt argue a good caseI spoke about the failures of feminismbut because of what McDonald wrote.

The educational establishment and their impressionable lackeys view Western culture as inherently sexist. Thus, everything I said in favor of America, and in particular, of American men, fell on deaf ears.

I suspected from the moment I walked in the room this might be the case, for therewere more students of color than there were white students. And feminism is a white womans game.

In any case, I soldiered on. What else could I do?

My overall message aboutgender equality was that its futile for one reason: it ignores biology. I even quoted the dissident feminist Camille Paglia and showed the students this video of her and Christina Sommers delivering this same message.

Yet somehow, the Q&A morphed into a discussion about race, white privilege and gender fluidity. And rather than redirect the students, I made a snap decision to answer their questions head on.

When Itold them its impossible for ones sex tobe changed, that sex is not a feeling but a biological fact, there was a collective gasp in the audience. After all,its trendy to believe that being male or female is an arbitrary label that forces a person into a box. The students believe this so emphatically it was I who appeared off my rocker.

It was no different when the conversation moved to the trendy concept known as toxic masculinity. This is the theory that young men carry a demon seed within them that only feminists know how to remove, writes Chris Beck in Feminism In Now Toxic.

That is the exactly what the students wanted me to accept. One young woman wasmatter-of-fact in her claim that parents teach their boys not to express their emotions and, as a result, masculinity becomes toxic.

After implying her argument might be better received if she were a parent herself, I told this student that boys and men tend to be stoic by natureand that this trait has benefits since there are times whenit is betternotto be emotional. Fighting our nations wars is but one example, I said.

This was met with even greater shock. It was as though I were an alien from another planet who couldnt understand the way things work on earth. It was the students job to enlighten me, in other words, rather than the other way around.

And so I find myself conflicted about my time at Bard. Yes, the silencing of speech is a huge problem on campuses todayand Bard did indeed rise above the fray. But as McDonald adds, and as my visit to Bard proves, the silencing of speech is just a symptom of a much larger phenomenon on college campuses: a profound distortion of reality.

At the end of the day, then, it doesnt matter whether speakers are silenced or not. Because American universities are so divorced from reality they cant fathom a word of what those speakers would say.

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Campus Free Speech Is The Least Of It: What I Learned From My Visit To Bard - Daily Caller

Common Dreams

Prosecution of Assange is Persecution of Free Speech | By Nozomi ... Common Dreams US authorities are reported to have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. and more »

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Prosecution of Assange is Persecution of Free Speech | By Nozomi ... - Common Dreams

New York Post

Berkeley is still appeasing the the anti-free-speech bullies New York Post In the 1960s, students at Berkeley helped change the world by igniting the Free Speech Movement, a seminal moment in the history of 20th-century civil liberties. Fifty years later, Berkeley leftists seem to have decided that free speech was a mistake ... Ann Coulter finds an unlikely ally in her free-speech spat with Berkeley: Bill MaherWashington Post How Berkeley Became a New Battleground For Free SpeechNBCNews.com Bill Maher defends Ann Coulter in Berkeley free-speech fightFox News New York Times -Breitbart News -Berkeley News - University of California, Berkeley all 161 news articles »

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Berkeley is still appeasing the the anti-free-speech bullies - New York Post

There are few prospects in life more appealing than the silence of Ann Coulter. She brings to mind what novelist Mary McCarthy said about playwright and Stalinist Lillian Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" If the world never suffered another emission from Coulter's toxic brain, it would be a better place.

But she said she would speak at the University of California at Berkeley on April 27 even though the school administration had canceled the speech hosted by two student groups. Faced with that challenge, the university changed its mind, sort of, proposing to let her appear May 2. All I can say is something I never thought I would: It will be a great thing for Ann Coulter to speak.

Berkeley is an exceptional institution whose history includes the 1964-1965 protests that gained fame as the Free Speech Movement. Long known as a hotbed of left-wing activism, it has lately gained attention as a place where right-wingers venture at their peril.

In February, the administration abruptly called off a talk by then-Breitbart News troll Milo Yiannopoulos after protesters threw stones and firebombs and smashed windows. In all, they caused $100,000 in property damage and several injuries.

The destruction came not from students intolerant of unwanted opinions, according to the university, but from masked self-styled anarchists bent on wreaking havoc. After Yiannopoulos was invited, the administration had issued a ringing statement condemning his views while defending his right to speak. It affirmed the university's commitment to "the principle of tolerance, even when it means we tolerate that which may appear to us as intolerant."

The event was canceled only after it became clear that the unexpected violence might prove "lethal," as campus police said. Assistant Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof offered a plausible excuse: "We have never seen this on the Berkeley campus. This was an unprecedented invasion."

Whatever turmoil might attend Coulter's appearance, though, would not be unprecedented, and it would not be impossible to contain. With so much advance notice, the university should be able to mobilize an abundance of police resources to prevent and, if need be, suppress another riot.

By deciding to deny her a venue until a time it deems suitable September was its preference the administration gave the strong impression that its devotion to intellectual liberty is negotiable.

Its partial reversal Thursday may have been a way of avoiding the embarrassment of having Coulter show up in defiant glory. Or it may have stemmed from the greater embarrassment of letting feral troublemakers shut down any event they choose. But Coulter, noting that classes will not be in session May 2, has vowed to come April 27.

At other public institutions, the record of tolerance is mixed. When white nationalist Richard Spencer was invited to Texas A&M, the school defended his right to free speech and deployed riot police to handle any violence while sponsoring a well-attended counter-event.

Conservative writer Heather MacDonald's talk at UCLA went off as planned but provoked angry yelling from some in the audience, ending with her being escorted out by cops. When Spencer was invited to Auburn, the university said no only to be overruled by a federal court.

Auburn's excuse was the same one offered by Berkeley: It couldn't permit an event that might jeopardize safety. That policy defers to what lawyers call the "heckler's veto" which gives those inclined to violence the privilege of silencing any speech that might upset them.

State universities, being organs of government, are bound by the First Amendment. That may be why some of the worst episodes, including the one at Middlebury College when conservative writer Charles Murray was shouted down and physically assaulted, have occurred at private institutions, which may ban speech they don't like. But the spirit of free inquiry ought to be upheld at any college or university worthy of the name.

For any school to impede speakers because critics might protest violently is to give the critics control of who may speak. That's why Berkeley's handling of Coulter is so dangerous. At the moment, it's rewarding thugs for being thuggish and thus encouraging more thuggery. It threatens to make the school a hostage to bullies instead of a place where ideas may be heard and answered without fear.

Berkeley faces a dilemma that implicates the most vital part of its mission. And right now, it's making the wrong choice.

Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/chapman.

Download "Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century" in the free Printers Row app at http://www.printersrowapp.com.

schapman@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @SteveChapman13

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Ann Coulter and the un-free speech movement at Berkeley - Chicago Tribune

Kansas City Star

KC Library gets 2 awards for free speech defense; librarian charged with 2 more offenses Kansas City Star The Kansas City Public Library and a librarian who was arrested last year during a public event are receiving two national awards for defense of free speech. But the same week the awards were announced, city prosecutors filed two new charges against ...

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KC Library gets 2 awards for free speech defense; librarian charged with 2 more offenses - Kansas City Star