Category Archives: Free Speech

As the new Biden-Harris administration assumes power, the most basic American freedom of speech and expression is under unprecedented threat.

For the first time ever, I am concerned about my freedom to do my work, to run a policy institute addressing issues of culture, race and poverty from a conservative perspective.

Technology the internet which was largely nonexistent just 25 years ago, now plays a huge role in our lives as a tool of communication.

In a survey just published by the Pew Research Center, 86% say they often or sometimes get their news from a digital device smartphone, tablet or computer. This compared with 68% who say they often or sometimes get their news from television, 50% who get it from radio and 32% who get it from print publications.

According to Statista.com, the United States has 223 million Facebook users, almost the size of the entire U.S. population over age 18. Per Pew, 22% of U.S. adults use Twitter.

These developments have put enormous power at the disposal of technology firms over what we see and read.

Power alone doesnt worry me. Exclusive power, power to control, does.

The decision by Twitter to kick the president of the United States off of Twitter, disconnecting him from the 89 million who follow him, is mind-boggling.

President Trump has noted, with total legitimacy, that he turned to social media as his platform of preference to communicate with the country because of widespread bias in the mainstream media.

What gives the technology companies so much discretion over communication, the oxygen of our free country?

This comes from a provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that was passed to set the ground rules for the powerful new technologies that were emerging. Technology companies are protected from liability for the content they carry: The liability exists with whomever provided that content. But they were also given discretion over what they choose to carry.

The discretion part comes from logic that the operators of these platforms should be able to refuse truly inflammatory, dangerous content. But what about content that is normally protected by the First Amendment?

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, appointed himself judge and jury, deciding that President Trump incited the assault on the Capitol building and banning the president from Twitter for life.

We know that President Trumps own words were that the demonstration on Capitol Hill should be peaceful. The point is, if Donald Trump broke the law, this should be determined through legal channels, not by the subjective decision of a businessperson with a net worth of some $12 billion accrued because of American freedom.

I produce a weekly television talk show, CURE America with Star Parker. The show was booted off Vimeo because the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center identifies one of our Christian advertisers as a hate group and one pastor said that homosexuality is a sin.

Now quoting the Bible, expressing views of a believing Christian, is out of bounds banned from the nations major media platforms?

We must recognize that our nations most precious commodity, our freedom to speak, to act and to assemble, is seriously being threatened.

Because those controlling these technology companies disproportionately have political sympathies to the left, it is the freedom of conservatives that is most seriously under siege.

Fortunately, many are now concerned.

The argument is made that First Amendment speech protections only pertain to government action, not private companies. But technology has enabled a concentration of private power not previously imagined.

The Communications Decency Act could be amended such that speech on technology platforms receives the same protections as all speech protected by the First Amendment.

Another possibility would be to amend the Civil Rights Act to include those with religious conviction based on teachings of Judaism and Christianity as a protected class.

Conservatives must push for new law and new platforms.

Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the new weekly news talk show CURE America with Star Parker.

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Conservatives worry about threat to free speech - Boston Herald

It seems likely that if and when President Trump is put on trial in the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors, his lawyers will argue that the president was exercising his First Amendment right to free speech in the weeks after the electionand, as a consequence, his words cannot form the basis of an impeachable offense. Senators should not take this argument seriously.

By the time of a Senate trial, it is possible that the House of Representatives will have adopted additional articles of impeachment. But it is notable that the article of impeachment that the House has adopted thus far focuses on things the president has said:

In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements .... Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. There, he reiterated false claims .... He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouragedand foreseeably resulted inlawless action at the Capitol ....

President Trumps conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to find enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.

At least some of the speech included in this article of impeachment would be constitutionally protected under the First Amendment if said by a private citizen. Some scholars have argued that, as a consequence, this speech cannot be a constitutionally valid foundation for a House impeachment or a Senate conviction, and that the president has a reasonable legal defense in his impeachment trial that his alleged actions were protected under the First Amendment. Even if senators are inclined to acquit the president, they should forcefully reject this line of defense.

The House can impeach and the Senate can convict an officer for engaging in lawful conduct. The constitutional impeachment standard of high crimes and misdemeanors is not limited to criminal conduct under ordinary criminal statutesthough many ordinary criminal acts, if committed by a federal officer, may be impeachable. The impeachment power is given to Congress to address myriad cases of noncriminal, political misconduct. The fact that an action is lawful is no defense to impeachment and conviction in the Senate.

It is possible that at least some of the actions alleged in the article of impeachment are also criminal acts punishable in the ordinary courts. The Constitution specifically allows for criminal prosecution for the same underlying acts that were considered in an impeachment trial. Nonetheless, the criminal case is not an easy one, in part because the presidents actions might not meet the statutory conditions for a criminal offense. It is also possible that the president would have a valid free speech defense for some potential criminal charges. The Supreme Court understands the First Amendment to put severe limits on what speech can be prosecuted for inciting a riot or encouraging seditious activity, and with good reason. But the Senate need not question those First Amendment protections against criminal prosecutions in order to convict the president of impeachable offenses.

Assume for the sake of argument that the president has a valid First Amendment defense against criminal prosecution for anything included in the article of impeachment. Does that also mean the president has a valid First Amendment defense against an impeachment?

The First Amendment does not shrink the scope of the impeachment power or alter what conduct would fall within the terms of high and misdemeanors. When drafting the Bill of Rights, James Madison took care to include only provisions that he thought were compatible with the existing body of the Constitution drafted in 1787. The adoption of the First Amendment, from Madisons perspective, would reaffirm what was already true about the Constitution, not carve out new exceptions to it. It is inconceivable that Madison would have thought that his proposed affirmation that the freedom of speech may not be abridged by the new federal government meant that an exception was being carved out of the power of Congress to impeach and remove officers for high crimes and misdemeanors. That which was impeachable before the adoption of the First Amendment was still impeachable after.

It is worth noting, as Jonathan Adler and Ilya Somin have, that government employees and political leaders have limited First Amendment protection for things that they say on the job or that affect how they can function in their job. When job security rather than criminal prosecution is on the table, the Supreme Court has long recognized that government employees can be removed from their positions for engaging in speech that would be lawful and constitutionally protected if uttered by a private citizen. In Pickering v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court held that a public school teacher could not be terminated for writing a letter for newspaper publication so long as the letter did not affect his functioning in the workplace. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court upheld the termination of a deputy district attorney for speech made in pursuance of his duties as a government employee. As the court has long recognized, public employment comes with some restrictions on the exercise of constitutional rights. Government employees and public officials have public responsibilities that dictate that they not behave in the same way as private citizens and that they not exercise the full scope of the liberty that is allowed to the private citizen.

If a civil service employee in the Department of Justice had done the things contained in the article of impeachment, he could be justly terminated from his federal employment despite the First Amendment. If the attorney general had done the things alleged by the House of Representatives, the president could justly fire him despite the First Amendment. There are many things that could get a government employee or a Cabinet secretary fired that would not rise to the level of impeachable offenses, but there is nothing that would otherwise be an impeachable offense for which the First Amendment would shelter an officer from Senate conviction and removal.

There is only one impeachment power and one standard for impeachment. That standard for impeachable offenses applies equally to all the government officials subject to it, whether judges, executive branch officers or presidents. It is best to be careful not to deform the scope of the impeachment power by bending it to account for the specific behavior of a particular individual. Of course, judges and presidents have different job responsibilities and adhere to different standards of behavior, and the House and the Senate have traditionally recognized that distinction by following the principle that impeachable offenses involve charges of misconduct incompatible with the official position of the office holder. If a judge acted like a president, she could and should be impeached. But if a president has a First Amendment defense against impeachment charges, then there is no reason to think that other officers cannot take advantage of the same argument. The relevant question in an impeachment should never be whether the actions under scrutiny are constitutionally protected by the First Amendment but whether they are high crimes and misdemeanors when committed by this individual holding this office in this context.

Imagine that a sitting federal judge told flagrant public lies about the fairness and outcome of a federal election or made false statements that could foreseeably lead to mob violence. Is there any doubt that such a judge could be impeached and removed from office? It would not matter if a judge made such pronouncements from the bench or on social media or at a lectern. Those statements would be grossly incompatible with the judges office. Imagine, for example, a sitting federal judge who said in a television interview that the Republican Party is a seditious conspiracy and deserves to be wiped out and its members jailed or shot. There is no doubt that such a judge could no longer be trusted to faithfully perform his duties in the public trust. Imagine a sitting judge accompanying the incumbent president on the campaign trail and delivering speeches urging voters to reelect the president and to vote against all the members of the opposition party. Such a judge would be subject to impeachment and removal. The fact that such speech is protected by the First Amendment would be no defense. Such actions are impeachable, and the Senate could appropriately conclude that such a judge deserved condemnation and conviction and removal in an impeachment trial.

The Senate could likewise conclude that the constitutionally protected speech of Donald Trump is deeply inconsistent with the nature of his office and the public trust and appropriate grounds for impeachment and removal. It is true that there was not much movement in the House to contemplate a second impeachment of Trump until his words helped spur a deadly mob to storm the Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes. But the House did not need an actual riot to justify taking the presidents words seriously. Violence is not a necessary predicate for impeaching officers for their speech, nor need speech be the proximate cause for violence to be condemnable through the mechanism of impeachment.

As is often the case, impeachment should be a last resort. There might be other political tools available that could effectively counter disturbing presidential speech. But there are also occasions in which impeachment and removal ought to be on the table.

Trump has often operated close to that line. In 2017, I called attention to early speech acts of the president that broke norms of presidential behavior to a greater or lesser extent. Trumps rally speeches comparing immigrants to animals who would slice and dice American teenage girls, or his using his platform at a Boy Scout jamboree to denounce his political predecessors, were surely offensive and inappropriate for a presidentbut probably not the kind of speech for which impeachment would ever be an appropriate response. By contrast, the presidents urging American troops to take political action in support of his policy agenda; his public condemnation of military personnel facing court martial; his questioning whether federal judges of particular ethnicity or background could be trusted to act in good faith; his telling police to get rough with suspects; and his telling border patrol agents that they should defy judicial orders are closer to the lineespecially as these utterances became part of a pattern of behavior and not simply a one-time error in judgment.

It is not hard to imagine examples of speech that would be constitutionally protected if uttered by a private citizen but that could and should be grounds for impeachment and removal if uttered by the president of the United States. Speech that is divisive, intolerant, reckless or dangerous could become the foundation for an impeachment effort even if perfectly lawful. Imagine if Trump were to appear at the White House press briefing room in blackface and perform a minstrel show. Imagine if Trump had responded to the Charlottesville riots not with a series of ambiguous and contradictory statements but with an impassioned speech in defense of white nationalists and the need for street justice against left-wing protestors. Imagine if the president had responded to the video of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger pursued and shot by three white men, with a public statement declaring that the victim deserved his fate and used racial slurs in saying that such people needed to learn to stay in their own neighborhoods. Imagine if the president invited leaders of white nationalist groups to join him on stage at a rally and gave his own version of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephenss cornerstone speech declaring that the American government is founded upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. Imagine if the president told a public audience that it would be fitting and proper if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chief Justice John Roberts got what was coming to them, which was a bullet between the eyes. Imagine if the president had borrowed a page from Socialist leader Eugene Debs and proclaimed to a crowd of supporters that some of them would lack the fiber to endure the revolutionary test but that they should be willing to fight for them; go to jail or to hell for them and shed their heroic blood to lay the foundation of the first real democracy that ever drew the breath of life in the world. Imagine if a president spoke from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office to inform a television audience that the members of the opposition party are vermin and should be eradicated by patriotic citizens and to celebrate the fact that the members of the presidents own party had more rough guys who were well armed and could play it tough.

Such a president should be hastily impeached and removed precisely because such a president would be engaged in behavior fundamentally incompatible with the high office that he held and subversive of the ideals and functioning of the American republic. One would not need to demonstrate that such speech had led to violence to conclude that it would be intolerable for a sitting president to engage in such speech, that such speech is, in the most fundamental possible sense, unpresidential. That such speech is in and of itself an assault on the constitutional order when uttered by a sitting president.

Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman have argued that Americans should not forget the free speech lessons from President Johnsons impeachment trial. Indeed, we should not. As they note, among the articles of impeachment adopted by the House against Andrew Johnson was one that charged him with giving a series of inflammatory speeches that tended to bring Congress into hatred and contempt by denouncing it as despotic and illegitimate. Johnsons defenders argued that the president has the right to make foolish speeches just like anyone else, including members of Congress. Johnson was, by the slimmest of margins, ultimately acquitted in his Senate trial.

I would draw a different lesson from the Johnson experience, as I have argued at some length. It is, of course, true that the impeachment power can be abused and that there are examples of presidential speech that are not very presidential but that should not be impeachable. If Johnson were a modern president, nobody would be particularly surprised by inflammatory rhetoric calling Congress into disrepute. But within the norms of the 19th century, such rhetoric had long been viewed as the kind of tool of a demagogue that could threaten the very survival of a republic. Presidents from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln had taken great care not to give inflammatory public speeches or speeches questioning the authority or wisdom of Congress. Johnson was a dramatic norm-breaker, and Republican politicians at the time thought this was a norm that needed to be protected.

Norms are not always permanent. For better or for worse, the prohibition on foolish speeches is an aspect of the American constitutional order that has not been retained. But the important point is that earlier generations of Americans understood that some forms of constitutionally protected speech by presidents were too transgressive to be tolerated. Americans today might disagree with them about what kinds of speech are intolerable, but we should share with them the view that it is not anything goes when it comes to presidential rhetoric.

Moreover, there is an important context and undertone to Johnsons speech that should not simply be ignored. It might seem quaint that a president might be impeached and nearly convicted for giving speeches that called Congress into disrepute, but for many Republicans it seemed like a matter of life or death at the time. Johnson, of course, assumed office in the aftermath of a presidential assassination and a bloody civil war. Many people feared that Johnson had colluded with the assassins and that he was too sympathetic to the former rebels. Washington, D.C., was aflame with rumors that Johnson might launch a new civil war, declare martial law, disband Congress, and arrest Unionists. When Johnson told audiences that the Republicans were running a rump Congress that was illegitimate and did not represent the nation, he was amplifying the arguments of the former secessionists that helped justify violent resistance to Reconstruction and federal authority in the South. Johnson told audiences that he had stood up to traitors who sought to destroy the government and the Constitution in 1860, and as president he would turn round at the other end of the line and resist the traitors who sought to destroy the government and the Constitution from the halls of Congress in 1866. He told audiences why dont you hang Thad Stevens, the Radical Republican who would later lead the impeachment effort in the House of Representatives. It is no surprise that Congress might think a president should be impeached and removed for such rhetoric, even if mobs had not yet stormed the Capitol chanting hang Thad Stevens. People today might think the same.

Trump liked to assert that he was totally vindicated by the Mueller report and the first impeachment verdict. Few neutral observers would agree with that characterization of those events. Johnson did not have the advantage of Twitter, but he might have said the same after his narrow acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial. But few neutral observers would have thought he was vindicated either. It is certainly true that generations of Southern apologists denounced the Johnson impeachment as misguided, but that judgment has not aged well. More to the point, no one at the time thought that Johnsons conduct had been vindicated. Republican politicians overwhelmingly thought Johnsons speech was unpresidential, inappropriate and dangerous. For more than a generation, subsequent presidents took care not to engage in similar behavior and instead worked to return to the rhetorical norms that had guided the nation since its founding. Johnson was allowed to serve out the final weeks of his term, but the impeachment was successful in its most important task of marking off some presidential behavior as intolerable. Johnson was not a model to be followed. He was a warning of what was to be avoided.

Earlier impeachments had served a similar function of telling government officials that they should watch what they say and how they say it. When the Jeffersonians impeached federal district judge John Pickering and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, Pickerings and Chases speech was front and center. Whether from alcoholism or dementia, the Federalist Pickering had let loose a politically charged tirade from the bench. Chase had more systematically taken the lead in opposing those creatures called democrats and the rise of the mobocracy both before and after the election of 1800. The Jeffersonians likewise charged him with inflammatory rhetoric unbecoming of a sitting judge. Pickering was convicted and Chase was nearly so, but again, judges got the message. No future federal judge thought it proper to follow Chases example of going on the campaign trail to stump for an incumbent president or denouncing a political party from the bench. The impeachment laid down markers of unacceptable speech for a government official, even when that speech was protected by the First Amendment.

The proper lesson of such past impeachment experiences is not that free speech is a perfectly adequate defense to impeachment charges, but that the impeachment process is an effective instrument for identifying and reinforcing fundamental norms of political behavior, including behavioral norms regarding speech. It is certainly true that the Chase and Johnson impeachments were largely partisan affairs. Some Democrats found it acceptable that the president would call Republican congressional leaders traitors, and some Federalists thought it admirable that a Supreme Court justice would campaign for President John Adams. They did not have the better side of that argument. Today, Americans tolerate, and even expect, sitting presidents to engage in fiery partisan rhetoric in a way that our 19th century forebears would have found shocking. We judge modern presidents by our standards, not those of our ancestors.

But some presidential rhetoric remains beyond the pale. It is easy to imagine an impeachment based on inflammatory rhetoric that would be an abuse of the impeachment power. The fact that a power can be abused, though, does not mean that the power does not exist. Legislators should be cautious about impeaching on the basis of speech, but that does not mean they should set aside all judgment in order to recognize a blanket First Amendment defense to inflammatory rhetoric by government officials.

If what the president is alleged to have done in the article of impeachment adopted by the House does not rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor, that would be one thingthough it easily does. But if the Senate finds that the president has committed a high crime and misdemeanor, the fact that his actions might be covered by the First Amendment is not a defense that should prevent his impeachment and removal. When but my free speech is the last line of defense against conviction in an impeachment trial, conviction should be assured.

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Is There a Free Speech Defense to an Impeachment? - Lawfare

Last week, as Twitter permanently banned Trump from its platform, critics from the right have been quick to blame a leftist culture within tech companies for a crackdown on free speech. That is not without its contradictions many people have expressed concerns about the decision, including Alexei Navalny and Angela Merkel. But it does raise an uncomfortable issue: in recent years, the conversation around free speech and arguments to protect it have been dominated by the right.

So what do experts make of it and should liberals try and reclaim the value for themselves? We asked five defenders of free speech to weigh in.

Is Trump a good example of where free speech should be limited? One of the challenges about free speech is that almost everyone thinks they know what it means; theyre sure it applies to their own speech; and equally sure that it doesnt apply to speech they consider offensive or dangerous. But when we talk about free speech as a regulatory matter, someone has to be the great arbiter. People pointed to the rise of a bigot like Trump as a justification for curtailing free speech, while ignoring the reality that if we did begin to roll back first amendment rights, Trump would be at the top of the enforcement structure.

So you dont think Trump should have been banned from Twitter sooner? If Trump had only communicated to the public through White House press channels that were heavily edited, redacted and managed, we would have known a lot less about who he was. His visceral, impulsive tweets ended up being important evidence in lawsuits that we (the ACLU) and others brought against him. We were able to show courts that the motivations behind his policies were not what his lawyers pretended they were. [Keeping him on Twitter for so long] was really in the public interest.

How do we move forward? Facebook has 2.5bn users. If it had 2m users, I wouldnt care about its moderation policies. If it was just for people who were very interested in yarn, there would be no basis whatsoever for me to tell them what their standards should be. But the fact that it has become the dominant platform for certain kinds of debate means we all have a stake. We need to use the law to prevent companies from consolidating that amount of power over our public discourse. That does not mean regulation of content. It would mean enforcing our anti-trust laws in the US. We should never have allowed a handful of companies to achieve the market dominance they have over such important public spaces.

How do you feel about social media platforms having the right to decide who says what? While I believe the government should not be legislating what can and cant be published on a platform like Twitter, we need far more robust protections for the public in terms of transparency: how these decisions are made, what the rules are, what the basis of adjudication is in an individual instance.

If you have a valid claim that you shouldnt have been kicked off, there really is no recourse; often an appeal can go into a black hole, people cant get answers and dont even know what rule they are accused of violating. There needs to be a robust process accessible to people in real time.

How involved should the government be, exactly? One analogy is financial regulation, where there are elaborate disclosure agreements. These are private companies investment banks, commercial banks but there are meticulous obligations in terms of public accountability. Social media companies should be required to make public how their algorithms are configured, what kinds of content is disappearing and when, what gets amplified and propagated across the network and why.

Do people know what free speech is anymore? I worry that many Americans are confused and under-informed. You see people arguing that Tumps ban from Twitter, or not publishing Josh Hawley, constitutes first amendment violations but thats just completely baseless. People tend to be unfamiliar with what the exceptions and limitations are to the first amendment, and in many ways have lost sight of why we protect free speech.

Which is ? The contention between opposing ideas is a catalyst to get to the truth. If people can call into question your claims and bring to light contrary evidence, that pushes forward debate. Free speech promotes tolerance and civil engagement. It is part of individual autonomy and how each of us expresses our identities. Its an underpinning for artistic achievements, for scientific progress, for economic prosperity.

Whats the leftwing case for free speech? Censorship and any type of oppression, really always begins by targeting particularly unsympathetic people, those who it is uncontroversial to censor. But once you set that precedent, inevitably, the bounds of what is considered acceptable or wrong always ends up expanding.

Those censoring are liable to political pressure. They may want to temper criticism or ingratiate themselves with a new regime. When Facebook started factchecking due to concerns about fake news, some of the fact checkers that got on board were from rightwing news outlets like the Weekly Standard, a long-standing neo-conservative magazine, and the Daily Caller, Tucker Carlsons old media entity.

There were several instances where fact checkers from those outlets factchecked stories where there was strong disagreement [about their conclusions]. And in 2017, when Germany purged some violent far-right websites, it also took off a leftwing website because it was an anti-capitalist website. Thats an attempt to look even handed so it does not look like you are merely prosecuting the right.

So how should we feel abut the Trump twitter ban? Trump didnt really incite the violence via Twitter he tweeted, but people saw that speech on TV. There is so much focus on social media companies, when arguably the media most important for Trumps rise was television and the massive amount of earned media and free media he got in 2015 and 2016. . It was on conservative news outlets that he said the election was being stolen. Even without a Twitter account, the president is going to be able to go on TV. So, if we believe he should be banned from Twitter surely he should be banned from TV too?

How is the curtailment of free speech used against minorities?Look at how hate speech has been used against Palestinians, who are agitating for their rights and freedoms against the Israeli government. That has been very cynically used people have been claiming antisemitism or saying that the speech is violent or out of bounds. In the same way there have been people on Facebook who were taken off social media for expressing they didnt do anything language around the police which came across as violent or threatening. Similar hate speech laws or legislation have been used against people of color if they say something offensive to a police officer.

Is free speech the preserve of the right? No, but the courts have shifted to the right so it seems that way. The first amendment libertarian justices are enthusiastic about is much more concerned with the rights of, for example, corporations and political donors than it is about the rights of political dissidents or whistleblowers.

So the right doesnt support all versions of the first amendment? Many on the left see the first amendment as not protecting them. When it came to the Black Lives Matters protests, the first amendment seemed to do very little to prevent government officials making their lives difficult and even dangerous; it seemed to be absent when journalists were arrested during those protests and yet it is available to neo-Nazis who want to hold a rally in Charlottesville. Thats not an entirely unjustified critique.

What would life look like without the first amendment? As terrible as Trumps administration has been for the first amendment, things would have been immeasurably worse without it. There were lines he couldnt possibly cross lines that dont exist elsewhere. Trump says journalists are enemies of the state; the next step in other countries is they can be rounded up and arrested for their journalism. This cant happen here. When he kicked reporters out of the White House press briefing, the supreme court ruled he violated the first amendment. We take that for granted, and we shouldnt.

Does Trump being banned from Twitter have anything to do with free speech?

Its a different question than free speech. Any hesitation from platform companies realizing what it is that they have built and the years of focusing on growth over community protection and safety has led us here. Any attempts to disrupt the infrastructure that this Maga movement has built is so they cannot mount a second attack during the inauguration this is big, this is different. This moment is going to be one of the most important moments in internet history because it only happened through years of inaction.

Its about prosecuting crimes? Yes. Alongside the imagery of guns and talk of this being our 1776, [the attack on the Capitol] was a direct threat to journalists and Congress members.

Many years ago, I was part of a punk rock message board where someone said they wanted to kill George Bush. The FBI showed up to his little apartment. That was the reality back then. If you threatened somebody online and the FBI found out about it, you got a personal visit. So there is reason for alarm when platforms consider [threats of violence] to be within the realm of free speech. Fantasizing that Mike Pence would be arrested and executed that should have consequences.

How do you balance the rights of people over the need to hear from the president?Trump is the sitting president, so hes not some private individual who is using social media to say we need to hold these corrupt governors and politicians to account. He is a politician and there are many avenues through which he can seek legal recourse for the allegations [that the election was fraudulent] and he did all of that, and lost. Platform companies provide anyone and everyone with the infrastructure to reach potentially millions all at once. When that power is utilized by people with enormous political importance [to overturn an election], it is oppression.

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Should we celebrate Trump's Twitter ban? Five free speech experts weigh in - The Guardian

That dismays Republicans who cheered Reagans move and say the current GOP proposals look a lot like a Fairness Doctrine for the internet.

I am a big Trump supporter, but I totally disagree with the approach here, said Mark Fowler, a Reagan appointee who led the charge for rolling back the doctrine as chair of the Federal Communications Commission. I think its a blunderbuss, kind of a Panzer, heavy-handed approach to trying to control the press.

Then-FCC Republican Mike ORielly expressed similar misgivings last summer after the president proposed a wide-ranging regulatory and legislative crackdown against bias in social media. I shudder to think of a day in which the Fairness Doctrine could be reincarnated for the internet, especially at the ironic behest of so-called free speech defenders, ORielly said in a speech in July. (Days later, Trump rescinded his nomination for a new term on the commission, forcing him to leave in December.)

Retired Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), a former chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told POLITICO last month that he too wants to keep government agencies away from social media speech. That puts him at odds with both Trump and Washington state Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who's now the top Republican on the panel.

"Go back to the Fairness Doctrine how did that work out?" Walden said. "It was a disaster for free speech and, actually, stifled speech on broadcast airwaves. And it wasn't until it was repealed, that like it or not, we saw more vigorous speech on the publics airwaves."

A generation after Ronald Reagans regulators killed the Fairness Doctrine, the Trump-era Republican Party is fired up over what it sees as anti-conservative bias in companies like Twitter. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Supporters of Trumps efforts reject any comparison between their proposals and the doctrine that Reagans FCC vanquished. But the shift toward favoring government action against ideological bias by private companies is a notable trend among several of the most outspoken GOP voices in Congress, including potential presidential contenders like Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas.

The main focus of the Republicans efforts has been to pare back or repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that gives online companies broad legal immunity for how they police their users content. Those calls escalated last week, after Twitter shuttered Trumps account following the deadly Jan. 6 rampage at the Capitol.

Im more determined than ever to strip Section 230 protections from Big Tech, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) vowed last Friday on Twitter.

The Fairness Doctrine, a set of FCC regulations dating to 1949, stemmed from concerns that echo todays debates about Silicon Valleys stranglehold on the public discourse.

In the mid-20th century, a handful of powerful broadcasters controlled much of that discourse, inspiring fears that they could use their slices of the scarce, publicly owned airwaves to bombard Americans with one-sided content. To counter that, the FCC policies required radio and television stations to treat controversial subjects in a balanced and equitable way, which broadcasters said infringed on their ability to cover the news.

Critics of big tech companies say titans like Facebook, Twitter and Google pose a similar danger. Those companies don't have government-issued broadcasting licenses, but critics say they enjoy undeserved federal protections thanks to Section 230.

"In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet," Trump said in a May executive order that called on several agencies and Congress to crack down on biased social media companies. He added, "Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see."

At a postelection hearing on alleged censorship by big tech companies, Cruz asked congressional Democrats: "Do you really want to submit total control of the public debate to a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires, modern day oligarchs? With money and power and no accountability?"

Back in the 1980s, Fowler recalled, even many Reagan supporters needed convincing about leaving decisions about fairness and balance up to the free market.

A host of top conservatives advocates, from Phyllis Schlafly to Pat Buchanan to Reagans White House advisers, feared that wiping out the Fairness Doctrine could unleash radio and television stations to criticize the president. But Fowler, who viewed the issue as one of First Amendment freedoms, convinced Reagan that repealing it would unleash a broader array of voices.

Fowlers views won the day, the rollback was completed in 1987, and stations freedom to air ideologically pointed programming led to the rise of conservative broadcasting stars like Rush Limbaugh who has repeatedly warned against any hint that Democrats were plotting to revive the doctrine or extend it to the internet. (When the Fairness Doctrine existed, there wasnt any controversial programming at all, Limbaugh said on his show in 2007.)

Over the decades, Reagans approach to broadcasting became the GOP orthodoxy. But Republicans views on social media have shifted in recent years, in response to conservative accusations that platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube systematically censor, block and filter right-leaning messages while letting liberals run free. (The companies deny the accusations, and Democrats including President-elect Joe Biden blasted the same platforms for giving Trump a megaphone to broadcast false and threatening messages.)

The result has been a series of bills that would make it easier for consumers to sue the companies either by repealing Section 230 entirely, as Trump has demanded, or by limiting the companies ability to qualify for legal immunity.

Repealing the law could subject every company with an online presence to lawsuits for just about anything their users post, making it difficult for Facebook and Twitter to stay in the social media business at all. (Twitter may be a private company, but without the governments gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long, Trump said in a Jan. 8 tweetstorm that the company immediately pulled down.)

Other legislative proposals would condition the legal protections on the companies ability to show good behavior, including in some cases ideological even-handedness.

One bill by Hawley, the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act would deny the protections to companies that cant prove to federal regulators that their content decisions are politically neutral. Trump similarly asked the FCC to weigh in on stripping the immunity from companies that dont make such decisions in good faith.

Trumps ideas about reining in social media won't be departing D.C. anytime soon, especially amid conservative anger over Silicon Valleys shuttering of his online accounts and the GOP-friendly platform Parler.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), the new chair of the Republican Study Committee, has said he plans to make the debate around overhauling the liability shield the key centerpiece of our work in the new Congress. He suggests that one GOP-backed bill to narrow the protections the Stop the Censorship Act would be a good start.

Banks said he sees a party that has never been more unified on these issues.

Its less to do with President Trump and more to do with the Republican base, Banks said in an interview. The Republican base is too familiar with Big Tech censorship and they expect the Republican members of Congress to be on the side of reforming Section 230. ... This is what the Republican Party base is demanding."

He said hes also watching the courts, noting a recent set of written comments in which Justice Clarence Thomas urged the Supreme Court to look for an opportunity to weigh in on Section 230. Thomas noted that many courts have construed the law broadly to confer sweeping immunity on some of the largest companies in the world.

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That trend shows no signs of fading even as the president leaves office.

I definitely think this is going to persist beyond Trump, said Rachel Bovard, a senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute whom the White House had considered last year when looking to fill a slot in the FCC. These companies in particular have crossed the Rubicon on so many different issues.

But the GOP bias complaints face a hard sell with congressional Democrats, who have their own changes in mind for Section 230 and say their main concerns about social media involve hate speech and misinformation ills demanding more moderation, not less. Democrats derided Trump's attempted crackdown, saying the president was just lashing out at companies that fact-checked him during his reelection campaign.

Banks acknowledged that Republicans thinking on the issue has evolved. But he said the current GOP efforts dont aim to impose any regulations instead, theyd be removing a special liability carve-out that only online companies enjoy.

Weve all come full circle on this subject, moving from seeing this as a free market issue to seeing this more as a deregulatory effort to take away the sweetheart deal that Section 230 gives to Big Tech, the GOP lawmaker said. What was a fringe issue four years ago is now, I believe, a widely accepted part of the Republican Party platform at the moment in support of Section 230 reforms.

That would be a mistake, said Fowler, the former FCC chair, even though hes no fan of the way social media titans like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wield their power.

We may not like it as Republicans I dont, said Fowler, whos now retired and living in Florida. But I like more the idea of free markets, with free marketplaces of ideas. And that really is the higher value. That is really what Republicans are missing in all this.

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How Trumps fights with tech transformed Republicans beliefs on free speech - Politico

By Mackubin Owens| The Providence Journal

Before last years election, I posted something on Facebook in support of an action by President Trump for which a complete stranger berated me. While I had no problem with his disagreement, I was appalled by something that he wrote in conclusion: that my Facebook posts had revealed my true colors and that I would be held accountable for them in the future.

I didnt serve in the Trump administration, although I supported Trump when I thought he was right. But according to this individuals barely concealed threat, I should expect my views to be scrutinized in the future to determine ... what?

Since the election, we are beginning to understand what such a threat entails: the possibility that those of us who hold certain views may be denied certain benefits of citizenship. Do I exaggerate? Ask those who have served in the Trump administration and are now being advised that their prospects for future employment are in jeopardy. Ask those whose Twitter and Facebook accounts have been suspended. Ask those whose online fundraising sites have been closed.

Free speech has long been understood to be a cornerstone of free government. Freedom of speech is not a right granted by the Constitution. It is a natural right that the Constitution protects, transcending the First Amendment, which only prohibits Congress from passing laws that limit free speech.

But what about truth? Did not Trump and many of those who worked for him lie to the American people? Are we not obligated to suppress falsehood? In hisAreopagitica, John Milton provided the best rejoinder to this argument:Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.

Of course, the very concept of free speech has been under assault for some time. It began in the universities but has spread to corporate America and popular culture. The concept of political correctness, the very negation of free speech, which has long infected academia, can be traced to the late Marxist philosopher,Herbert Marcuse, who among other things advocated something called repressive tolerance.

In classic Orwellian double-speak, Marcuse, a German migr who is seen as the godfather of the 1960s counterculture, argued that tolerating all ideas the essence of reasonable discourse that traditionally has defined the mission of the university was in fact repressive, since it did not privilege the correct ideas. True tolerance, Marcuse argued, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.

When Marcuse penned these words, most Americans, even those who had actually heard of him, would have dismissed them as the work of a crank. But thanks to what the 1960s German radicalRudi Dutschke called the long march through the institutions, Marcuses vision has come to pass in America. We see it in everything from university speech codes to calls for truth and reconciliation commissions to deal with those who served in the Trump administration or even citizens who may have committed the crime of supporting his policies.

As Michael Walsh, a prolific writer on culture and politics, has explained: Dissenters from the new orthodoxy will not only be kicked off social media, theyll be branded as ideological lepers and denied further employment. Anyone so much as associated with or supportive of the Trump administration will henceforth be deemed an outcast, and headed for the re-education camps or worse.

If anyone wants a sense of the dystopia that such actions portend, they should watch the great film, "The Lives of Others." Or they might examine Chinas emerging social credit system, which grades the behavior of Chinese citizens or more properly subjects. Imagine what its like to have ones very ability to earn a living, open a bank account, or travel, depend on whether one behaves in the approved manner or in accordance with accepted ideas. You may believe that those who supported Trump deserve this sort of treatment, but someday the powers that be will be coming for you.

Mackubin Owens of Newport, a monthly contributor, is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

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Opinion/Owens: The end of free speech and the coming dystopia - The Providence Journal

My fi

My first year at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government hasnt been what I expected and Im not just talking about all the restrictions to guard against the spread of COVID-19. I couldnt have predicted that Id be delivering a speech to my peers urging them to uphold free speech at one of Americas most prestigious centers of learning.

Unfortunately, I recently found myself on Zoom urging members of the Harvard Kennedy School Student Government to reject astudent-led effortto restrictTrump administration officials from speaking at Harvard.

While I am relieved that the student government ultimately rejected the restrictions, I remain disturbed that my peers would propose this action and that it actually could have passed. An education underpinned by conditions of censorship is not a real education. And those who seek an education should never demand protection from ideas.

SOME HARVARD STUDENTS SAY NOT SO FAST ON TRUMP BAN

I came to Harvard to learn. But institutions of higher education that allow for restrictions on information and dialogue whether imposed by students or administrators forfeit the title of educational institution in exchange for the title indoctrination center. The latter is not what I signed up for. I want Harvard to deliver the education it claims to offer.

I am shocked and disappointed that some of my fellow graduate students who surely came to one of the worlds top government affairs graduate programsto grow intellectually and professionallywould make these demands. The authors of the letter calling for banning Trump officials from campus said the reason for the ban was to, ironically, stop the subversion of democratic principles by the Trump administration. But free speechisa democratic principle.

The authors of this letter seek to cancel debate and silence political opposition. They are terrified of having their world views challenged. But thats exactly why earnest minds have traditionally come to Harvard.

The Kennedy School has hosted many controversial figures,including members of the Clinton and Nixon administrations, former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, and the late secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saeb Erekat.

We students are adults and we are fully capable of hearing uncomfortable and offensive information and arguments. It will only make us better.

I am a conservative. Harvard is an overwhelmingly liberal institution. I have only benefitted by having my ideas and values challenged while studying here. But more than that, Harvard owes it to students like me to be honest about what it claims to offer a rigorous intellectual environment and access to top leaders.

Whether you agree with Trump policies or not, those who served in Trump administration have firsthand knowledge and experience in the highest levels of domestic andforeign policy. These players have impacted the world and we students can decide if their marks were good or bad, and conclude the missteps for ourselves.

But the onus is on universities to uphold their missions. They need to teach their students that cancel culture has no place in rigorous academic circles.

Unfortunately, we have seen the opposite on campuses across the United States. Speakers includingCharles Murray, Ben Shapiro, andChristina Hoff Sommershave been shouted down and violently protested in an effort to silence them.

And just this fall, Duke University Law School students penned aletterto bar Professor Helen Alvare from speaking at an on-campus event because she holds pro-traditional marriage views.

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But its not just those with a platform that leftist students want to eradicate from campuses. A student-led effort atthe University of Texas-Austinaimed to dox students who join the Young Conservatives of Texas club.

Given that universities have yielded to cancel culture, its not surprising that one of the youngest members of Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., felt comfortable supporting a blacklist of anyone who supported the Trump administration.

When the institutions charged with shaping the next generation of leaders fail to uphold democratic principles on campus, we shouldnt be surprised that our elected leaders fail to understand and protect our constitutional rights.

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The Kennedy School is named after President John F. Kennedy, who was once a Harvard student himself. In advocating for a free exchange of ideas, he said shortly before the presidential election in 1960: If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.

I pray that not only my beloved school, but colleges and universities across the country, live up to this message. The future of our republic depends on it.

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Carter Estes: Effort to ban Trump officials from Harvard is a dangerous attack on free speech and education - Fox News

No journalist is more relentlessly iconoclastic than Glenn Greenwald, who shared a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Edward Snowden revelations.

Though unapologetically progressive, the 53-year-old former lawyer never shrinks from fighting with the left. A week before the 2020 election, he quit The Intercept, the online news organization he co-founded in 2014, because, by his own account, it refused to run a story unless he "remove[d] all sections critical of" Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Denouncing what he called "the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality" that led him to be "censored" by his own media outlet, Greenwald railed that "these are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom."

Like a growing number of refugees from more-traditional news organizations, Greenwald took his talents to Substack, a platform for independent content creators to earn revenue directly from their audiences. He wasted no time lobbing grenades, posting stories and videos with titles like "No Matter the Liberal Metric Chosen, the Bush/Cheney Administration Was Far Worse Than Trump" and "The Three Greatest Dangers of Biden/Harris: Militarism, Corporatism and Censorship, All Fueled by Indifference."

Nick Gillespie spoke with Greenwald via Zoom at Greenwald's house in Brazil, where he lives with his husband, two children, and numerous dogs. Among other topics, they discussed what Greenwald sees as a generational fight playing out in newsrooms, the challenge identity politics poses to free expression, and whether a coalition of libertarians and progressives can effectively push non-interventionist foreign policy, lifestyle liberation, and an end to corporate subsidies during the Biden presidency.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Photo: Marcelo Chello/ZUMA Press/Newscom

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Glenn Greenwald on Biden, Free Speech, and Leaving The Intercept - Reason

Law360 (November 24, 2020, 7:35 PM EST) -- A 12-foot-high inflatable rat with red eyes and fangs is to unions "what the American flag is to United States citizens," three Illinois-based labor federations told the National Labor Relations Board, claiming a member union's display outside an RV trade show was protected by the Constitution.

In an amicus brief filed on Monday, the Illinois branch of the AFL-CIO, along with the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Chicago and Cook County Building & Construction Trades Council, said the International Union of Operating Engineers was allowed to display "Scabby the Rat" outside the trade show, even though the company targeted by...

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Unions Tell NLRB That Inflatable Rat Display Is Free Speech - Law360

No one has a right not to be offended

Nov 5th 2020

SAMUEL PATY told his pupils to look away if they might be offended. He knew that caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad are deemed blasphemous by Muslims. But since the images in question were published by Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine whose staff were massacred by jihadists in 2015, they were also relevant to a class about free speech. The teacher thought his pupils old enough to decide for themselves. For this, he was beheaded.

In the age of social media, outrage can swiftly go global. The parent who denounced Mr Paty was not in the classroom, and lied when he said his daughter had been. The jihadist who killed the teacher did so after watching a Facebook video posted by that parent. And when Emmanuel Macron, Frances president, decried the murder and defended free speech, the leaders of several Muslim countries accused him of Islamophobia. Among them were Turkeys president, who locks up thousands of Muslims for belonging to the wrong religious group, and Pakistans prime minister, who seems more upset by events in a classroom in France than in next-door Chinas million-Muslim gulag.

Unscrupulous politicians have always stirred up racial or sectarian outrage to unite their supporters and distract attention from their own flaws. But some critics seem sincerely to believe that France is the cause, rather than victim, of jihadist attacks on its soil. They often point to its tradition of lacit, or secularism. This was entrenched by law in 1905, after a long struggle with the Catholic church. It protects the right to believe, or not to believe, and separates religion from public life. No French president could be sworn in on a holy book. No French state school could stage a nativity play. Some feel that such rules discriminate against Muslims. A ban on conspicuous religious symbols in state schools includes the crucifix, but some Muslims still resent the fact that they (or their daughters) must remove their headscarves at the school gate. When Mr Macron recently announced a crackdown on signs of Islamist separatism, such as home schooling, which he sees as a pretext for radicalised teaching, he was accused of weaponising secularism against Muslims.

Most controversial of all for some Muslims, French law protects the right to blaspheme and to insult any religionalthough not to discriminate against an individual on the basis of religious belief. Some see this, wrongly, as a French campaign to insult Islam. Boycotts of French goods and anti-Macron protests have taken place from Istanbul to Islamabad.

Discrimination against Muslims is a real problem in France, as Mr Macron implicitly concedes. Employers are more likely to bin their job applications. Mr Macron has vowed to fight racism, and improve opportunities for people in deprived neighbourhoods, of whatever skin colour, origin, religion. He will have his work cut out, even without his own ministers undermining him by griping absurdly about the existence of separate shelves for halal food in supermarkets.

Yet it is important not to lose sight of two points of context. First, more than 250 people have been killed in Islamist terrorist attacks in France since 2015. Last year more suspects of jihadist terrorism were arrested in France than in any other EU country. French intelligence services warn that radicals are waging a war for the minds of the young, especially online, to win recruits to violence. France is right to be more concerned than most, and to seek to respond firmly (see article).

Second, France is also right to defend free speech. A religion is a set of ideas, and therefore open to debate and even mockery. Considerate speakers will try not to give gratuitous offence. But governments should not compel them to be inoffensive. If they did, everyone would have to censor themselves, for fear of offending the most easily offended person in the audience. And as Mr Paty discovered, an audience can include anyone on Earth with a phone.

The French state should never give the impression that it endorses blasphemy, but it is right to protect blasphemers, just as it is right to protect those who complain about them, so long as they do not advocate violence. As many thoughtful Muslims in France and elsewhere have pointed out, no matter how offended you feel, the answer to speech is not knives: it is more speech.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Voltaires heirs"

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France is right to defend free speech - The Economist

As the new president of The University of Texas at Austin, I know that our great institution can live up to its highest ideals only by creating a space where open discourse, discovery and debate can flourish.

I also know that during these challenging and divisive times, the notion of free speech has become somewhat controversial and politicized. This is a mistake. The freedom to speak and debate is not only outlined in the First Amendment of the Constitution it is at the heart of the scientific method and all of the scholarship, creative work and research that defines a world-class university.

Free speech is perhaps the greatest right we have as Americans. And now is the perfect time to take a hard look at how colleges and universities across Texas and the country can work together to reinforce our commitment to free speech among students, faculty members, staffers, administrators and alumni. Difficult and deeply uncomfortable conversations are sometimes necessary for us to make progress.

Longhorn Nation and our great state must remember that supporting peoples freedom to speak and express is not an endorsement of the content of their speech or what they say. It does not endorse its truth, its value or its morality. It does, however, stand on the premise that the only way to figure out what is true, valuable and morally right is through thought and discussion. Freedom of speech is the path, not the problem. And it is vital that our institutions of higher learning understand that and make it known to all those whom we serve. It is only through discourse that we can truly move forward and make breakthroughs.

This understanding starts by recognizing that, to a large degree, the right of free speech is a uniting issue, not a dividing issue. Faculty members of all stripes across disciplines and specialties in public and private universities across our state want the freedom to teach their students and present their academic discoveries transparently. This, too, is true of the students who populate our great Texas colleges and universities. Whether it be the presence of a speaker on campus or the reading of a particular text, there will be times when our community members disagree on whether something is appropriate.

This happened at UT during the summer, when I listened closely to the concerns on both sides of the debate surrounding our alma mater The Eyes of Texas and ultimately decided that we would continue performing and embracing our song while teaching its history. This happens when we bring together opposing viewpoints on key issues, like hosting both Alex Epstein, the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and Richard Heinberg, the author of Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels for UT events in recent years. And it happens every time our community shows support for the candidates and causes that are on the ballot in our elections.

I believe the goal of a public research university, as an educational institution, is to open the minds of our students, expose them to different perspectives and beliefs, and prepare them to lead extraordinary lives after graduation. That doesnt happen in an echo chamber. That doesnt happen when everyone agrees. It happens when beliefs and preconceptions are tested. Thats how we teach and thats how we learn.

As Texans, we must remember to not let our disagreements limit the scope of the knowledge and experiences we provide on a college campus. The fundamental commitment to open expression is one of our core values and must always be treated as such if we are to be true to our mission.

Without the freedom to express new ideas, Martin Luther King Jr. never would have shared his dream in front of the Lincoln Memorial to help create a more just and equitable America. Without the freedom to challenge important ideas, scientists would not be working today to find harmony between Albert Einsteins theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics to more accurately explain our universe.

We need to agree to disagree on occasion if we are to make progress in every area of society especially on our Texas campuses.

Jay Hartzell is the president of The University of Texas at Austin.

A version of this op-ed appeared in the Dallas Morning News.

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There Is No Higher Education Without Free Speech - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin