Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

A recent investigation of eight abortion-rights supporters at American University, in Washington, D.C., offers yet more evidence that college administrators and diversity-and-inclusion bureaucratssome of whom undermine free speech as if their job duties demanded itneed new checks on their power.

This matter began in May, shortly after the Supreme Courts draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization leaked, prompting numerous law students at American to join an online chat about the impending diminution of abortion rights. One student fretted about whether conservatives would overturn other precedents conferring rights to buy contraception, or to marry a partner of the same sex or of a different race. What are they going to go after next? the student wrote. Griswold? Obergefell? Loving?

A classmate replied, As a Republican, I find it insulting that conservatives would be thought of as overturning peoples civil rights. After another classmate interjected, Can we shut the fuck up about personal opinions while people process this? the Republican student responded. I find it interesting how the call to silence our personal opinions happens after I defended my deeply-held religious beliefs and yet nobody has mentioned that same sentiment about the pro-abortion posts. The discussion was deeply offensive to both me and my Greek Orthodox faith, he declared. On a campus that adequately valued students free speech, thats where the matter would have ended, with everyone having expressed their opinion.

Instead, the offended Republican student filed a harassment complaint. Then the Office of Equity and Title IX at American sent a formal letter to eight students alerting them that all were under investigation for allegedly harassing a classmate on the basis of his political affiliation and religious beliefs, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free-speech-advocacy group that took up the accused students cause.

Conor Friedersdorf: Why I cover campus controversies

Cases like this underscore the problem with administrators, often operating within or in conjunction with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies, who investigate speech on behalf of any complaining party no matter how weak their underlying claims. Some of the most easily offended university students in America have become adept at characterizing any speech they dislike as if it creates an unsafe, discriminatory, or hostile climate, or else constitutes harassment or even violence; and many of the accused find that being investigated in such cases is a punishment in itself.

Thats why, last month, I proposed a way to rein in such investigations: Universities should empower their faculty to check administrators and DEI staffers who undermine freedom of speech. If professorsor perhaps representatives chosen by professorscould sanction and, in extreme cases, terminate anyone who violates First Amendment rights or free-expression policies, administrators would have a powerful new incentive to avoid speech-chilling excesses. Administrators and DEI officials can, of course, be disciplined or fired by higher-ranking university bureaucrats, but they are essentially unaccountable to the scholars and students whose expression they are stifling. Faculty members are more likely than bureaucrats to understand that free speech is essential to academic freedom. On many campuses, when administrators have infringed on faculty or student rights, professorsespecially law professors steeped in First Amendment lawhave been unafraid to speak up.

Conor Friedersdorf: Professors need the power to fire diversity bureaucrats

A spokesperson at American argued in an email to me that universities are legally required to review all discririmination complaints and added that during the fact-finding process, no adverse action is taken by the university against any individuals. He went on to say that Americans Office of Equity and Title IX reviews only those matters related to a viable claim of discrimination and does not investigate matters related solely to disagreements based in speech.

But Alex Morey, a FIRE attorney who wrote to the university on the accused students behalf, lambasted Americans approach. This is absurd, he stated. Theres nothing even approaching harassment or discrimination in the chat. American cannot let its process for investigating actual discrimination and harassment be weaponized to investigate students opinions, but thats exactly whats happening. One of the accused students, Daniel Brezina, was similarly incredulous. I cant believe American is investigating us for having a frank discussion about abortion access, he said in a statement released by FIRE. This is going to have a massive chilling effect on honest discussions at the school. What good could possibly come of that? The investigation dragged into July before the students were told that they were not ultimately found responsible and would escape punishment.

Genevieve Lakier: The great free-speech reversal

When students can be investigated on the thinnest of pretexts and risk punishment for poorly defined transgressions, the safe approach is to self-censor rather than engage in exchanges on any sensitive subject. College administrators are seldom, if ever, punished for violating free-speech rights, even as they face significant incentives to expand the size and scope of their bureaucracies and to placate the aggrieved to avoid protests or negative publicity.

In recent weeks, Ive discussed my proposed solution to this problem with a variety of people in higher educationsome of whom, I should note, reject it entirely. I must disagree with the grounding premise that DEI administrators are serving to squash free speech and expression of University faculty members, Maria Dixon Hall, the chief diversity officer at Southern Methodist University, told me by email, noting that more senior administrators are typically calling the shots. She added, Inclusion is challenging to operationalize and enforce. But unfortunately, DEI Officers are made scapegoats by those on each side who feel we have too much power or not enough.

I say that the Princeton professor Robert George has it right. In an email to me, he noted that universities have rules, some of which protect free speech. University officials who violate those rules by trampling others free expression should not be exempt from punishment, he suggested.

George wrote,

Their rule-breaking should be treated no differently than the rule-breaking of faculty members, students, or anyone else in the community. Whats more, freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression are so foundational and central to the mission of universities that violations of peoples rights in this area need to be treated as extremely serious offenses subject to sanctions in line with those typically imposed on students and faculty for plagiarism, for example, or other serious acts of academic dishonesty.

At present, few institutions, if any, recognize overzealous speech investigations as serious transgressionsincluding in instances when courts rule that college administrators violated the legal rights of faculty, students, or members of the public.

Even among college professors who find the status quo unsatisfactory, there are doubts about whether empowering faculty to discipline administrators is a viable or optimal solution. Michael Behrent, a history professor at Appalachian State University, in North Carolina, believes diversity is an important goal, and that diversity officials can be useful, but that their current approach does result in efforts to undermine academic freedom. I think your basic idea is correct, namely, that there should be a mechanism for holding administrators accountable so that they respect academic freedom and free speech rights, he told me in an email. The problem is that what you propose is almost completely unrealistic in the current university environment in the US Its virtually inconceivable to imagine a modern university that would grant faculty the kind of authority you describe. I cant even imagine such a proposal lending itself to discussion. It would be rejected outright. This is not reflective of your proposal, but of the current situation in higher education.

Others feared that if my proposal were put into practice, faculty members might ally with administrators against free speech, or fail to protect free speech. Professors have incentives to avoid antagonizing the university brass. DEI officials, after all, are part of a sprawling administrative bureaucracy that, as Dan Eisenberg, a University of Washington professor, notes, has substantial powers in many different areas of campus, such as deciding where money goes to support raises, new hires, teaching assistants, research, retention, and lab space. If an administrator lies, cheats or steals, I might not want to go after them to the fullest extent the system permits, Eisenberg explains. I might get the particular administrator to have to publicly admit their wrongdoing and face some consequences, but if they or their allies stay in power, I might lose more over the long term. Many academics spend decades at the same institution.

Conor Friedersdorf: The threat to free speech, beyond cancel culture

Any effort to empower scholars against university bureaucrats would need to take account of those potential pitfalls. But all thats required to test out my approach is one institution willing to experiment, probably over the objection of administrators. In California, where I live, reform of the flagship state university system could be achieved by state legislators, the University of California Board of Regents, or a ballot initiative. I would urge the UC system to create an Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech and Expression Commission, which might be composed of, say, 15 First Amendment experts chosen by the law faculties of UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Hastings, UC Irvine, and UC Davis.

Any time administrators wanted to open an investigation into the speech of a faculty member or student based on someone elses complaint, they would need approval from the commission. Members would analyze the speech in question to determine if the speecheven if accurately described by the complainantwould nevertheless be allowed under the First Amendment or university policy. If so, the matter ends there, and administrators are denied permission to act. As Morey told me, When its painfully obvious that the only issue is a matter of students exercising their expressive rights, the only appropriate response is to stop any proceedings lest they chill speech. Even notifying students theyre being investigated for protected speech can chill them from expressing themselves in the future.

If this approach works for the UC system, other universities might well mimic it. The commission could also review complaints from faculty or students who allege that University of California administrators or staff abrogated their freedom of expression or academic-freedom rights, with any faculty member serving on the commission recusing themselves on any matter that originates on their home campus to safeguard against perverse incentives. Administrators would be subject to investigation and sanction for violating the law or policy, enjoying due process and appeals rights as strong as whatever they offer students.

Of course, any public-university system could try a similar approach. And any private college could experiment with variations adapted to its size and needs. I wish several institutions would try different experimental variations, because new threats to intellectual freedom keep emerging.

At the University of Washington, for example, the computer-science professor Stuart Reges is suing administrators, alleging that they violated his constitutional rights by encouraging faculty to include land acknowledgments in course syllabi and then punishing him when they disagreed with the viewpoint that he expressed. (Reges, who views land acknowledgments as empty and performative, wrote, I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.) If a court finds in Regess favor, wouldnt it be better if representatives of the faculty had some way to sanction the relevant administratorsas compared with a system where administrators can violate a persons rights without themselves suffering any professional consequences?

Im not suggesting that sanctioning misbehaving administrators and diversity bureaucrats should be a scholarly communitys only defense against excessive investigations. The academics whom I consulted proposed a range of alternative or complementary measuressuch as faculty unionization and the careful cultivation of ties with the press and First Amendment lawyersby which professors can at least protect their own academic freedom and at best promote a broader culture of free expression.

Do professors want to be newly empowered, or continue ceding control over the university to administrators? That, to me, is the biggest question about the approach I propose: not whether faculty could eventually win a fight to wield some check on free-speech violations by administrators, but rather, whether faculty care enough to claw back power. When it comes to free speech, do enough members of the professoriate care to do the work?

Link:
How to Fix the Bias Against Free Speech on Campus - The Atlantic

Like most rules, free speech rules are better when shorter. The ideal would be one sentence, which says You can say what you like. The University of Oxfords statement on the importance of free speech does not go that far, but what it does say is pretty robust: Recognising the vital importance of free expression for the life of the mind, a university may make rules concerning the conduct of debate but should never prevent speech that is lawful.

But it seems not everyone likes this liberal approach. The Telegraph reports that a group of five Oxford colleges has banded together to create something called the Oxford Free Speech Forum, which is currently trying to rewrite Oxfords free-speech principles. And tellingly, it is doing so at the same time as the government prepares to pass its Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which aims to prohibit censorship on campuses. According to the Telegraph, the forum, which has already held two meetings this year, wants to replace Oxfords commitment to free speech with a framework to effectively and respectfully tackle difficult discussions on issues such as race and gender.

The forum is being led by David Isaac, provost of Worcester College and former chair of LGBT+ charity Stonewall. At the inaugural meeting of the forum in March, a recording of which the Telegraph has obtained, Isaac is alleged to have said that he does not recognise the description of left-leaning universities as places that censor or discourage open discussion. Nor, apparently, does he see the need for freedom of speech to be imposed upon universities, as per the governments Free Speech Bill.

Isaacs alleged denial of a free-speech crisis in universities is reminiscent of that phrase attributed to Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan in the middle of the Winter of Discontent: Crisis? What crisis?

It is virtually impossible to deny with a straight face that there is a free-speech problem at universities. We have seen numerous cancellations of speakers and events; the internal and external regulation of lawful speech on campus; the distortion of the syllabus to respect religious sensitivities; university administrations taking political sides on contentious issues; a university starting disciplinary action against a student for saying that women are born with vaginas; and attempts by activists to intimidate a feminist professor to the point where she needed a bodyguard in lectures. There is so much more where all that came from.

I have attended conferences on the Gender Recognition Act that have had to be held in secret locations on university premises, unadvertised, with a closed guest list. I have met academics who live in daily fear of violence for expressing a widely held scepticism about Stonewall and their universities do nothing to protect them. I know of 18-year-olds being ostracised within weeks of starting at university because someone dug up something they had written questioning this or that orthodoxy. All of this is happening in universities in Britain today.

Isaac argues against the Free Speech Bill on the grounds that universities do not want or need free speech imposed upon them. But the bill is not about imposing free speech on universities it is about protecting the free speech of individual academics and students. This ought to be the job of university authorities, but they are just not stepping up at the moment, hence the government has intervened.

There is a simple way for every vice-chancellor in the country to stop anything from being imposed on their universities by the Free Speech Bill. All they need to do is stop the McCarthyite persecution of people on campus who hold the wrong views for instance, those women who dare to say that biological sex is real, something which seemed obvious to everyone until about 15 minutes ago.

Another speaker at the first meeting of the Free Speech Forum in March is reported to have said that free speech is not always a sincere expression of trying to expand thoughtful consideration about the world weve inherited and can often act to preserve existing power structures.

That is true. Not everyone is engaged in thoughtful consideration about the world weve inherited. Some do indeed say and write shocking things to draw attention to themselves. But this is hardly an argument against free speech. Nor is the argument that free speech can be used to preserve existing power structures. Of course free speech can be used to support, say, the power of the state to enforce lockdown. But free speech is also the principal means by which we can challenge power. As Ira Glasser, the former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, once observed: The real antagonist of speech is power.

There will always be speech in defence of existing power structures. But speech that opposes these power structures can only exist when and where it is free. That is why academics, perhaps especially those who claim to be standing up to power, must defend free speech at any cost.

Arif Ahmed is a lecturer in philosophy at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

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Universities are in denial over the free-speech crisis - Spiked

As a political liberal and civil liberties crusader since my student days in the 1960s and 70s, I have long defended freedom of speech across the ideological spectrum. I continue to adhere to the longstanding liberal principle that Evelyn Beatrice Hall famously formulated in her 1906 biography of Voltaire, and which the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently enforced since the 1960s as the viewpoint neutrality principle: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Or, as Oscar Wilde spun it: I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make anass of yourself.

Liberals like me have long assumed that political and classical liberalism go hand-in-hand, and that for those of us on the political left, support for free speecheven for the thought that we hate, in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famous phraseis a defining value, or at least a more important value than it is for those on the right. After all, former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, arguably the courts most influential liberal in modern history, hailed the viewpoint neutrality principle as the First Amendments bedrock.

Yet in recent times, as were all well aware by now, this core tenet has come under heavy fire from left-leaning individuals and groups, including student activists, academics, journalists, cultural leaders, and Democratic politicians, many of whom have advanced the argument that words can be a form of violence itself. The question is: What accounts for this shift? Why has the political and cultural left in Americaof which I understand this magazine to see (or have seen) itself as a partappeared to turn so decisively against the First Amendment?

Perhaps its best to begin by considering whether this is such a new phenomenon after all. In 1992, the liberal journalist Nat Hentoff, a longtime Village Voice columnist, wrote the aptly titled book Free Speech for MeBut Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other, demonstrating that the differences between the American left and right concerning free speech were almost never over whether speech should be censored, but only about which speech should be censored. Hentoffs book resonated deeply with me at the time, and has continued to do so, since it reflects my own long-standing experience in various leadership roles at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

In 1977-78, when the ACLU defended the free speech rights of neo-Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, whose population included many Holocaust survivors, our position was opposed in the courts by another organization that had typically been our ally: the Anti-Defamation League. Even a full 15% of ACLU members at the time resigned their membership in protest. Also in the late 1970s, so-called radical feminists began advocating government restrictions on pornography, the term they used for sexual expression that is demeaning or degrading to women.

Starting in the 1980s, many liberals sought to restrict several types of controversial language in popular media, stressing child-protection rationales. Tipper Gore, for examplethen-wife of then-Sen. Al Gore, D-Tenn., and mother to an 11-year-old daughter who had acquired a copy of Princes Purple Rainspearheaded regulation of music lyrics that were deemed violent or sexist, leading to the now-ubiquitous Parental Advisory labels known as Tipper Stickers. Democratic lawmakers around this time also sponsored measures to restrict depictions of violence on television, and soon after access to the internet became widespread, the Clinton administration championed a law that criminalized indecent and patently offensive online expression. In 1997, after the conservative Rehnquist court overturned these key provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act on First Amendment grounds, the prominent First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams wrote a blistering New York Times Magazine article titled Clinton vs. the First Amendment, concluding that it has become the norm, not the exception, for Clinton Administration lawyers to find themselves minimizing First Amendment interests and defending laws or policies that maximize threats to free expression.

Liberal advocacy of wide-ranging restrictions on expression about sex or gender on the rationale that it constitutes sexual harassment is another old story. Likewise, since the 1980s, many liberals have advocated campus hate speech codes that are invariably too broad, punishing and chilling all manner of expression about various categories of personal and group identity. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many liberals in government and civil society have supported restrictions on extremist or terrorist speech, whose inevitably vague contours have actually had negative human rights repercussions, including by making it difficult for human rights activists to accurately document terrorist atrocities.

Nor has it been the case that the more politically liberal an administration is, the more it respects the freedom of the press, as indicated by the Clinton administrations record. In 2013, in response to revelations that the Obama Justice Department had secretly seized the phone records of a large number of journalists for The Associated Press and the chilling effect of the Obama administrations leak investigationsincluding the ramped-up criminal prosecution of those who provide information to the press, then-Public Editor of The New York Times Margaret Sullivan charged the Obama administration with unprecedented attacks on a free press.

Given this historywhich of course is the mirror image of an equally extensive history on the political rightshould we be surprised that todays political left is determined to censor disinformation, extremism, and hate, and to advance the belief that offensive language is the same as not only violent language, but also physical violence ?

Lets examine the words are violence phenomenon a little more closely, as it appears to be increasing in salience and influence on the left, perhaps posing even more of a threat to a robust free speech culture than right-wing attempts to shut down speech that conservatives deem hateful to, for example, American history, traditional values, or certain religious holidays. While these attacks from the right are generally reflected in government policies, which are therefore vulnerable to First Amendment challenges, the cultural pressures that shapeand limitdiscourse in academia, journalism, and other key private sector institutions are not subject to First Amendment constraints.

read more by nadine strossen

In the 1980s, as I said, left-leaning professors and students on U.S. college campuses launched the movement for campus hate speech codes, which sought to punish individually targeted racist slurs. Similarly, in the same time period, radical feminists sought to legally equate the depiction of sexual violencefor example, in works of art and journalismwith real sexual violence in the physical world. In the intervening decades, these initiatives have expanded in both support and scope. Today, accusations of hate speech and violent speech shut down even good-faith discussions of public policy options that are deemed inconsistent with the perceived consensus at that moment, even if such consensus is neither broadly held nor static. Worse yet, individuals who are accused of engaging in such expression have been fired from positions in culturally influential fields such as academia, journalism, and publishing, suppressing their speech across the board with literally incalculable chilling impacts on the speech of countless others.

Even though courts have consistently enforced the cardinal viewpoint neutrality principle to bar official suppression of ideas solely on the ground that any listeners consider them hateful or violent, powerful private sector forcesincluding social media mobshave been increasingly successful in suppressing disfavored ideas by invoking the false and dangerous equation between free expression and physical violence. This strategy has prevailed on many college campuses, where free speech is especially important, given the special truth-seeking and educational missions of universities. Surveys consistently show that substantial majorities of American college students and faculty members now engage in self-censorship across a spectrum of important political topics, both in the classroom and in social settings, to avoid the risk of retaliation.

Because many campus communities skew overwhelmingly liberal or progressive, and because progressive views tend to disproportionately dominate fields that favor workers with academic degrees, self-censorship is particularly acute among nonprogressives: conservatives, libertarians, moderates, the politically indifferent, and even old-style liberals. Empirical evidence confirms, moreover, that fears of retaliation are rational, given numerous documented instances of retaliatory measures ranging from social ostracism, to online and in-person bullying, to the denial of extracurricular leadership positions, recommendation letters, and career opportunities. Many left-leaning members of campus communities explicitly admit (or boast) that they would deny employment and other professional opportunities to academics with conservative views about public policy issues.

Beyond encouraging self-censorship, much of the political left has also embraced more coercive modes of censorship. Contrary to important free speech principles, the hecklers veto has become a favored tool for suppressing disfavored ideas or expression in many campus contexts, ranging from student newspapers to guest speaker presentations.

When a speaker conveys ideas that some audience members find offensive, no rights have been violated. Nor have any rights been violated when some audience members nondisruptively protest by conveying ideas that are offensive to the speaker and to other audience members. But disruptive protests, which effectively veto the event, violate both the speakers right to convey information and ideas and the listeners right to receive them.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), on whose Advisory Board I serve, recently published a compilation of reported campus cancellation incidents targeting faculty members between 2015 and 2021. FIRE documented a total of 563 attempts to sanction faculty members for expression that was constitutionally protected but controversial in the campus community. In a full two-thirds of these cases, the faculty member was subject to some form of punishment; in one-fifth of cases the faculty member was fired; and most alarmingly, 30 tenured professors were fired for constitutionally protected speech. Of the total number of documented incidents, FIRE reports that 345 (61%) involved the expression of views that were suppressed by individuals and groups to the left of the targeted faculty member. Notably, the evidence indicated that a significant number of these 345 incidents may well have targeted liberal views espoused by liberal professors, which were attacked by campus factions even further to the left. As the FIRE report stated: [W]e think a significant number of these incidents involve a scholar who identifies as somewhat or slightly liberal being targeted by those who identify as very or extremely liberal. Furthermore, a substantial number of the total documented incidents202, or 35%targeted the expression of views that were suppressed by those to the right of the targeted faculty member.

People concerned about such developments are frequently told that cancel culture isnt real, or at least that it is grossly exaggerated. The FIRE numbers refute these claims while helpfully underscoring that the political left has far less of a monopoly on cancel culture than is typically understood. This evidence demonstrates that the viewpoint neutrality principle continues to serve as an essential safeguard for all people and persuasions, including those on the left. Contrary to prevalent left-leaning rhetoric, free speech is far more than a right-wing fig leaf for hate or violence, even if in certain cases it might be opportunistically exploited as such.

Every movement now considered progressiveabolition, womens suffrage, gender equality, reproductive freedom, labor rights, social democracy, civil rights, opposition to war, LGBTQ+ rightswas at one time supported only by a minority, and viewed as dangerous or worse. Unsurprisingly, many of these movements only began to flourish and progress toward the previously unattainable goal of majority consensus after the Supreme Court started to strongly enforce the free speech guarantee (including the core viewpoint neutrality principle) in the second half of the 20th century. The lesson many on the left seem to have forgotten is that in a democracy, there is a constant danger that minority groupswhether defined by identity, ideology, or otherwisewill be subject to the tyranny of the majority. The specific purpose of the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendments free speech guarantee, is to ensure that the majority cannot deny basic rights to any minority, no matter how small or unpopular. Powerful people and popular ideas dont need First Amendment protections; marginalized people and unpopular ideas do. The resulting beneficiaries are not only the exponents of ideas that are unpopular in their time and place, but also our overall society. As George Bernard Shaw observed more generally, All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Leaders of every equal rights movement in U.S. history have testified to the essential role that free speech played in advancing their cause. In 1860, Frederick Douglass famously declared that Slavery cannot abide free speech. Five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South. The great civil rights champion and longtime Georgia Congressman John Lewis memorably commented that Without freedom of speech, the Civil Rights Movement would have been a bird without wings. In 2019, law professor Dale Carpenter, a prominent champion of LGBTQ+ rights, wrote that [T]he First Amendment created gay America [G]ay cultural and political institutions ... would have been swept away in the absence of a strong and particularly libertarian First Amendment. No other [constitutional right] helped us more.

Powerful people and popular ideas dont need First Amendment protections; marginalized people and unpopular ideas do.

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To this day, advocates for equal rights and social justice are subject to censorial measures that seek to stifle their free expression. Government officials in the United States and other Western democracies have been enforcing many measures to curb the free association rights of peaceful protesters, and police have deployed speech-suppressive tactics, including unjustified force and arrests. Multiple U.S. states have imposed restrictions on K-12 and campus curricula concerning race and gender, and public schools and libraries have been subject to record levels of book bansin many cases targeting books by and about Black and LGBTQ+ Americans. Fortunately, free speech advocates have been mounting strong legal challenges to these repressive measures, but this is only thanks to the same robust free speech principles that also protect the expressive rights of people with opposing views.

It should therefore go without saying that any argument in favor of censorship, in addition to being questionable on the basis of principle, is strategically unwise. Every pro-censorship argument currently being made by the left and the right can and will be coopted by the other side once it has or regains sufficient power. In the 1980s, right-wing crusaders against sexual expression they viewed as inconsistent with traditional family valuesincluding speech in favor of feminism, reproductive freedom, and LGBTQ+ rightsopportunistically parroted the rhetoric of the radical anti-pornography feminists who were also active at that time; the Meese Pornography Commission under President Ronald Reagan bolstered its calls to censor sexual expression by invoking the radical feminists claims that certain sexual expression leads to discrimination and violence against women. Today, conservative Republican school boards, state legislatures, and governors are enacting laws that ban teaching about such vital topics as race and gender on the grounds that it might be divisive or make students uncomfortable. What progressive in good conscience could not recognize that this censorial rhetoric and rationale has deep roots in their own movement?

Cherian George, a fellow free speech scholar and advocate who was born in Singapore and teaches in Hong Kong, has discussed with me what he considers the bizarre phenomenon of the American lefts eagerness to suppress or punish speech. In 2018, after he spent three months teaching a seminar on censorship to Ph.D. students at the University of Pennsylvania, Georges conclusion was that members of the American left ... take the countrys freedoms for granted. As he commented:

Given the assaults against free speech that progressives suffer even in America, this is a risk they cant afford to take either.

Continued here:
Who Really Benefits From the First Amendment? - Tablet Magazine

The regulating of social media after the future Chief Justice of India Surya Kant was criticised for indicting former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma for her blasphemous statements of the holy Prophet of Islam is a direct outcome of vituperative speech. The apex court bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and J B Pardiwala refused to club all the FIRs registered against Nupur Sharma and told her to approach the high courts, observing she did not even respect the magistrates by directly approaching the Supreme Court.

Advocates and activists who support Nupur Sharma have committed contempt of the Supreme Court by attributing motives to Justice Surya Kant and approaching the Chief Justice of India N V Ramana to have Justice Surya Kants oral remarks expunged without realising that judges have absolute freedom to say what they want within their courtrooms.

The first amendment of the US Constitution is the exact opposite of the first amendment to the Indian Constitution, because it guarantees absolute free speech to all citizens and the media whereas in India, Jawaharlal Nehru added public order, incitement to an offence and friendly relations with foreign states to the then existing five restrictions of defamation, contempt of court, security of the state, sovereignty and integrity of India and decency and morality.

This further curtailed free speech, which is necessary because unbridled freedom can be abused by the likes of Nupur Sharma and Canada-based filmmaker Leena Mahamekalai who has depicted the Goddess Kali with a cigarette. Articles 19 (1) (a) which guarantees free speech and Article 25 which guarantees the right to practice, profess and propagate any religion supplement each other because you cannot propagate any religion without exercising freedom of speech and expression. Our founding fathers borrowed the idea of the right to free speech from the Irish Constitution and the rest of the fundamental rights from constitutions such as the U.S. and French Constitutions.

Justice Surya Kants indictment of Nupur Sharma for creating turmoil in India is justified because 12 countries belonging to the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) have blasted India for alleged Islamophobia. Kuwait immediately removed Indian goods from its shelves in its supermarkets, whereas a tailor, Kanhaiya Lal was beheaded at Udaipur in Rajasthan on June 28 and a chemist, Umesh Kolhe, was earlier stabbed to death at Amravati in Maharashtra for forwarding posts about Nupur Sharma.

To go back to 1950, two weeks after the Constitution came into force, two magazines, Cross Roads and the RSS-backed Organiser published inflammatory articles and were banned from being circulated in Madras and Delhi respectively. The Supreme Court struck down these bans. In 1950, the founder of the Jan Sangh, Syama Prasad Mookherjee had reportedly delivered a speech that Pakistan wanted war with India and to reunify the two partitioned countries into an Akhand Bharat (reunified India), war was necessary.

The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru asked Lokmanya Tilak what action could be taken to which Tilak replied that Mookherjee enjoyed freedom of speech which could not be curtailed under the existing restrictions. A Patna high court judge, Justice Sarjoo Prasad, declared in his judgment in 1950 known as the Shaila Bala Devi case that even incitement to murder was protected by Article 19 (1) (a). But the Supreme Court later reversed this ominous verdict, stating Justice Sarjoo Prasad showed a lack of understanding of the law.

These were the reasons for Nehru to introduce the irrational head of friendly relations with foreign states with two other headsincitement to an offence and public orderbecause Pakistan had protested against Mookherjees speech of an Akhand Bharat. The irrational head of friendly relations with foreign states does not find place in any other Constitution of the world. When Nehru criticised Justice Vivian Bose as lacking in intelligence during a press conference in 1951 for a judgment which he (Nehru) found repugnant, he later wrote to the then CJI apologising for it. The CJI wrote back accepting the apology and asking if Nehrus letter could be released to the media. Nehru acquiesced.

The point here is that freedom of speech can be abused by the likes of Nupur Sharma and film-maker Leena Manimekalai in Canada. Sharma denigrated the holy Prophet whereas Leena showed Kali smoking a cigarette. What is astounding is that an advocate of the apex court wrote to the CJI asking for Justice Surya Kants remarks against Nupur Sharma to be expunged because what she said was based on the hadith; ipso facto, her statements were truthful.

Religion and reason are incompatible because there is something irrational in every religion but if any religion is denigrated, it will give rise to unrest and fragmentation of the country. Judges do not deliver judgments based upon public opinion or vox populi, meaning the voice of the people, which is quite often unreasonable and fuelled by media debates. Judges have to strictly uphold the Constitution whereas the legislature enacts laws based upon public sentiment. The judiciary is charged with striking down laws which violate the fundamental rights.

We demand freedom of speech to compensate for freedom of thought, which we seldom use while abusing free speech.

Dr Olav Albuquerque holds a PhD in media law and is a senior journalist-cum-advocate of the Bombay High Court

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Legal Eagle: Is free speech abused to flout others rights? - Free Press Journal

Freedom of speech is at risk of being stifled on campuses after a record number of speakers and events were rejected last year, the universities watchdog has warned.

The Office for Students found that nearly 200 requests for events and speakers were rejected by English universities and colleges in 2020-21, up from 94 in the previous academic year.

Susan Lapworth, the watchdogs interim chief executive, said she was concerned about the possibility that lawful views are being stifled.

She warned universities that they would face regulatory intervention if they failed to meet their obligations on freedom of speech.

Topics that some may find offensive or controversial must be open to free debate on campuses and across research communities, she said.

The vice-chancellor of the University of Essex apologised last year after a seminar on trans rights and the criminal justice system was cancelled following complaints that the speaker was a transphobe who was likely to engage in hate speech.

The university was also criticised after Prof Rosa Freedman, an expert in international human rights law at the University of Reading, was not invited to speak at a seminar on anti-Semitism after concerns were raised about her gender-critical views.

Andrea Jenkyns, the higher education minister, said the watchdogs findings were very concerning.

She said: Universities and colleges must be places that champion debate and diversity of thought, and this government has warned of the chilling effect of censorship on our campuses.

Under proposals in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill currently going through Parliament, universities will have a legal duty to actively promote free speech. University governing bodies are currently required to take reasonable steps to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is maintained.

The Office for Students, which has the power to fine or deregister education providers, said it could not confirm whether it has previously penalised any universities over their handling of freedom of speech because it would risk prejudicing ongoing enquiries.

The regulator found that 193 events were rejected out of a total of 19,407 reported to it last year, the highest number recorded since it started collecting data in 2017.

Toby Young, of the Free Speech Union, said: This is a deeply worrying trend, but its just the tip of the iceberg.

In the past 12 months, the Free Speech Union has helped hundreds of students and academics whove got into trouble for pushing back against ideological orthodoxy on campus, whether its refusing to do unconscious bias training, criticising their universitys links with Stonewall, objecting to the decolonisation of the curriculum, or daring to point out that George Floyd had a criminal record.

Undergraduates are significantly less supportive of free expression than they were six years ago, according to research by the Higher Education Policy Institute.

The think tank surveyed 1,000 undergraduates and found that 61 per cent say when in doubt, their own university should ensure all students are protected from discrimination rather than allow unlimited free speech up from 37 per cent in 2016.

A spokesman for Universities UK said: Institutions do all they can to ensure a culture which encourages free speech and academic freedom so diverse groups and individuals can participate in debate and discussion, with mutual dignity and respect.

Vice-chancellors support universities playing a more active and visible role in promoting free speech and encouraging debate, and these latest figures show that universities and student unions continue to host tens of thousands of events each year, with less than one per cent not going ahead, often for logistical reasons such as late booking requests.

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Free speech 'stifled' as universities cancel record number of speakers - The Telegraph

Following Boris Johnsons resignation, the Conservative Party stands at a crossroad.

We have serious decisions to make about the future of our Party and our country. This will be one of the most important leadership elections in modern times. And it presents huge opportunities for a return to our values, including the protection of individual freedoms that are so often threatened by the excessive growth of the state. We have to make sure we take those chances.

The Commons is this afternoon debating a Bill, the Online Safety Bill, that is in parts wholly out of step with our tradition of protecting and promoting freedom of speech. I have long said, this Bill is a censors charter. Among the main reasons for this are the provisions in the Bill regarding so called legal but harmful expression.

Under the legislation, the Secretary of State will be granted the power to designate categories of speech as harmful, which social media companies will then have to deal with on their sites.

The Government insists this will not put us on a path to censorship. In fact, it claims that the Bill will actually strengthen free speech. But when legal speech is designated as harmful by the state, we all know what social-media firms will do. They will err on the side of censorship, not least because the Government could slap them with huge fines or even prison sentences if they do not.

As Conservatives, we should wholeheartedly oppose a two-tier speech system, where the public may be prohibited from saying things online that are lawful to say offline. The authoritarian and arbitrary distinction of legal but harmful speech is an attack on freedom and is as unConservative as it is unBritish.

Like many politicians and commentators, I know what it is like to be on the receiving end of online censorship.

Last year, I made a speech at Conservative Party Conference. My speech, which focused on the potential impact of vaccine passports on peoples rights, actively praised the COVID-19 vaccine. Yet despite this, the video was censored on YouTube, which claimed - bizarrely - that it went against expert consensus, whatever that meant.

I pored over my speech and found nothing inaccurate in my remarks, which almost solely focused on public-policy issues. YouTube relented and let the video go back up. But the episode served as yet another example as if any more were needed - of social-media companies attitude to free speech.

The current trajectory of the Bill threatens to compound the situation by bringing the state in as the enforcer of online censorship. It grants an enormous amount of executive power to the state in an entirely undemocratic way.

There will nothing to stop future Secretaries of State from using their powers to lean on intermediaries to remove speech they dislike. Indeed, the only scrutiny any Secretary of State will face when designating content harmful will come from a heavily whipped Delegated Legislation Committee.

Think about it: a future Secretary of State it could even be a Labour MP - with the power to effectively ban political content they do not want online. What would it have been like to go through the Brexit debates with that kind of infrastructure in place? It does not bear thinking about.

The Bill needs serious improvement in order to protect the civil liberties we hold so dear. Most importantly, it should not grant powers to the state to designate categories of free speech as legal but harmful.

Additionally, the Bill should not allow for the compromising of privacy on encrypted platforms like WhatsApp. We have the right to communicate without the Government spying on our every interaction.

Online safety is important to all of us. That is why I think we should make it a criminal offence to post content that encourages suicide or self-harm. We should do that under primary legislation, properly debated and challenged by the whole House of Commons.

But we must not compromise liberty under the guise of protection. Right now, the balance of the Bill is all wrong and it could end up being the biggest accidental curtailment of free speech in modern history.

The cut and thrust of a leadership contest will allow us to debate these issues and at least one of the leadership candidates has identified the Bill as being in need of reform. So as the Online Safety Bill returns to Parliament today, let us take the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to protecting freedom of speech and radically reform the legislation.

We may not get another chance.

Rt Hon David Davis MP served as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and was previously Shadow Home Secretary

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The Online Safety Bill could lead to the biggest curtailment of free speech in modern history - The Telegraph

Jessica Cruz, Twinkle Dont Blink

by FIRE

SEATTLE, July 13, 2022 When Professor Stuart Reges challenged the University of Washingtons position on land acknowledgements, administrators punished him, undermining his academic freedom. Today, backed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Reges sued the university to vindicate his First Amendment right to express his opinion even if it differs from the party line.

Colleges increasingly promote land acknowledgment statements that recognize indigenous ties to the land on which a college sits. On a list of syllabus best practices, UWs computer science department encourages professors to include such a statement and suggests using language developed by the universitys diversity office to acknowledge that our campus sits on occupied land. The fact that the statement could be adapted seemed clear until Reges wrote one that administrators did not like.

University administrators turned me into a pariah on campus because I included a land acknowledgment that wasnt sufficiently progressive for them, said Reges. Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted, even if it lands you in court. I am pleased that FIRE joined with me to fight back against University of Washingtons illegal viewpoint discrimination.

COURTESY PHOTOS FOR MEDIA USE

On Dec. 8, 2021, Reges criticized land acknowledgment statements in an email to faculty, and on Jan. 3, he included a modified version of UWs example statement in his syllabus: I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington. Regess statement was a nod to John Lockes philosophical theory that property rights are established by labor.

On Jan. 4, the director of the computer science department, Magdalena Balazinska, ordered Reges to immediately remove his modified statement from his syllabus, labeling it inappropriate and offensive, and declaring that it created a toxic environment in the course. Reges refused because Balazinskas demand was viewpoint discriminatory other computer science professors included their own land acknowledgments on their syllabi. But UW did not investigate or punish them because those statements, unlike Regess, were consistent with the universitys viewpoint.

The university launched an official investigation into Reges for allegedly violating UWs unconstitutionally overbroad harassment policy. This investigation has now dragged on for over four months. Balazinska also created a competing section of Regess course (featuring pre-recorded lectures by another professor) so students wouldnt have to take a computer science class from someone who didnt parrot the universitys preferred opinions.

Its ironic that a university whose motto is let there be light would shepherd students into a shadow course to shield them from a professors opinion, said FIRE attorney Katlyn Patton. If UW encourages professors to take a political stance on their syllabi, it cannot punish those professors who diverge from the schools pre-approved stance. At UW, the message to faculty is clear: Toe the party line or say goodbye to your students.

As a public institution bound by the First Amendment, UW must uphold its professors right to free speech and cannot discriminate against them based on viewpoint. UW is free to encourage its faculty to include land acknowledgment statements in their syllabi, and even to suggest examples, but it may not mandate that they either use only approved statements or remain silent on the issue under threat of discipline.

UW ignored FIREs demands that the university protect the expressive freedoms of its faculty members.

UW accused Reges of creating a toxic environment, but the university is poisoning the free exchange of ideas, said FIRE attorney Josh Bleisch. Were taking UW to court so that Reges and other faculty can share their views on important issues without fear of reprisal.

Robert A. Bouvatte, Jr. of Robert A. Bouvatte, PLLC is serving as local counsel for the lawsuit.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on our nations campuses, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.

CONTACT:

Katie Kortepeter, Media Relations Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; media@thefire.org

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LAWSUIT: Professor sues University of Washington after admins punish him for 'inappropriate' opinion - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 14, 2022 A student expelled from Kansas City Art Institute for retweeting sexual art won their appeal Tuesday, notching a victory for free expression. KCAI reversed the expulsion decision against student Ash Mikkelsen after a demand from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

When we have an art school investigating and punishing students for their artistic expression, we have a real problem, said FIRE program officer Sabrina Conza. Ash should have never had their academic future threatened because an art school didnt like the type of art they shared on their personal social media account.

Mikkelsen retweeted sexually explicit Japanese-style cartoons, known as hentai, on their personal, pseudonymous Twitter account. Allegedly, the art institute investigated Mikkelsen for sexual harassment in response to the complaint of another student, who found the account and told administrators about the images. Though Mikkelsen did not tag anyone from the university community in their Twitter posts or send messages related to the account to anyone , KCAI expelled Mikkelsen for their artistic expression and banned them from ever re-enrolling.

Im relieved that the school has recognized its mistake and rectified its actions, Mikkelsen said. Knowing that standing up for free expression will now allow other students to consume fictitious content without fearing punishment is icing on the cake.

KCAI attempted to justify investigating and then expelling Mikkelsen for non-Title IX hostile environment sexual harassment under its Student Code of Conduct. However, KCAI does not define sexual harassment under that code. Its patently unfair and unlawful to punish students under indefinite disciplinary standards. Moreover, Mikkelsens retweets dont come anywhere close to meeting the legal definition of sexual harassment.

As a private university, KCAI is not bound by the First Amendments protections for free speech. But KCAIs policies, which the college is morally and contractually required to uphold, state that the school is committed to freedom of expression, supports the rights of the campus community to engage in free speech and open assembly, and values intellectual and artistic curiosity together with critical and creative inquiry.

The school first notified Mikkelsen of the investigation into their Twitter account on June 15 and met with Mikkelsen the same day to discuss the investigation. On June 29, Mikkelsen again met with Assistant Dean of Students Joe Timson, who told Mikkelsen that they would be expelled for violating the Student Code of Conduct. Mikkelsen was not given an adequate chance to contest the allegations prior to the university imposing the most severe penalty possible.

KCAI gave Mikkelsen five business days to appeal the finding, which they did on July 6, with the assistance of FIRE Legal Network attorney Ted Green.

Im glad telling KCAI to van Gogh to hell resulted in Ash being cleared, Conza said. While KCAIs decision to overturn Ashs expulsion was correct, it should not have taken FIREs advocacy and an attorney to reach that conclusion. Unfortunately, the schools actions will have a chilling effect far past Ash to other students who fear punishment due to the nature of the art they create or share.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on our nations campuses, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.

CONTACT:

Katie Kortepeter, Media Relations Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; media@thefire.org

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VICTORY: Art institute reverses expulsion for student who retweeted sexual art - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

Andrew Napolitano, syndicated columnist

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

When James Madison authored the language that would become the First Amendment, he and his colleagues feared that the new federal government might enact legislation that would interfere with personal liberty. That fear was shared by many in the 13 states that had just ratified the Constitution. Indeed, five of the states conditioned their ratification on the addition of a Bill of Rights.

Madison who had been the scrivener of the Constitution in 1787, was, by 1791, a member of the House of Representatives and the Houses resident expert on the Constitution was designated by his colleagues as the drafter of the Bill of Rights.

Madisons language in the First Amendments is clear; it only restrains Congress. Yet, recognizing the natural origins of the freedom of speech and aware of the universal governmental animosity to free speech, and taking account of the 14th Amendments imposition of due process upon the states, the courts expanded the scope of the First Amendment so as to impose its restraints upon all government including the president, the judiciary, the states and their subdivisions.

During the Civil War and World War I, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson incarcerated folks for their speech and argued that the First Amendment only restrained Congress, not the president. Today, such an argument would be dismissed out of hand in any court.

Today, the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech from all government.

But the First Amendment only restrains the government. It does not restrain private persons, whom lawyers call nongovernmental actors.

The old counterpoint that the First Amendment does not permit shouting fire in a crowded theater is inaccurate. If the theater is owned by nongovernmental actors, the First Amendment plays no role whatsoever in regulating or permitting the shouting; the property owner does. There are sound reasons why shouting fire in a crowded theater is actionable under the law, but the First Amendment is not among them unless the government owns the theater.

I offer this brief background as a prelude to addressing the latest turn of events concerning social media platforms that suppress speech of which they dont approve. Because the social media companies are nongovernmental actors, they are free to infringe upon the speech of their clients and customers for any reason they choose that does not violate public policy, such as infringement based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or place of origin.

Yet, a nongovernmental actor that enters into a symbiotic relationship with the government may lose its freedom to suppress speech and be subjected to the same restraints as the government.

Thus, Twitter, for example, is free to suppress any speech and any speaker because of the content of the speech, unless it is doing the governments bidding. If it is, if Twitter is doing for the government what the government cannot do on its own suppress speech because of its content and if sufficient evidence of this is properly before a court, the court may very well invoke the state action doctrine, which will impose the restraints of the First Amendment upon Twitter.

I use Twitter as an example because last week two U.S. senators obtained and revealed emails between officials of the Department of Homeland Security and Twitter executives contemplating how Twitter can suppress speech that the DHS believes constitutes mis- or dis- or mal-information. This is dangerous for personal liberty and, frankly, dangerous for Twitter.

The courts have ruled that when a governmental actor here the DHS and a nongovernmental actor here Twitter are so intertwined for their mutual benefit, and someone here those whose speech Twitter has suppressed because of its content is harmed thereby, the courts will impose First Amendment restraints upon the nongovernmental actor.

Lets say you are in Yankee Stadium at a Yankees/Boston Red Sox game and you go to buy a hot dog from a vendor in the stadium and he refuses to sell to you because you are wearing a Red Sox baseball cap. (In New York, this happens!) Who has punished you for your speech, the private vendor, which is not restrained by the First Amendment, or New York City, which owns the stadium and hired the vendor and which clearly is restrained by the First Amendment?

Since the city provides customers for the vendor and the vendor provides products for the customers and your presence at the game benefits both, and because you dont know whose rule no Red Sox caps allowe is being enforced, there is obviously a symbiotic relationship between the vendor and the city, and thus the First Amendment will restrain the vendor from punishing your speech as if it were the city.

The same may very well be the case for Twitter. The emails released last week revealed the contemplation of a symbiotic DHS/Twitter relationship that, if proven, will harm Twitter severely and expose the government for its attacks on the freedom of speech.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government entirely out of the business of interfering with speech directly or indirectly. Moreover, if Twitter does the governments bidding, and the First Amendment is applied to Twitter, it will lose its private property-generated ability to suppress speech.

The interesting question is not what does the government gain; governments always want to suppress the speech they hate and fear. The real question is why a social media entity would do the governments dirty work for it. The probable answer is to retain its statutory immunity from liability for what its clients post.

This is what happens when you get in bed with the feds. You wake up with a constitutional headache as well as fleas.

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Twitter and Freedom of Speech | News, Sports, Jobs - The Mining Gazette - Daily Mining Gazette

Because of the social media circus surrounding the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial, it was easy to overlook one of the principalyet least likelyactors in the courtroom drama: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which ghostwrote and placed the 2018 Washington Post op-ed by Heard about surviving domestic abuse that was the basis of the trial.

It's only the latest example of how the group has in recent years strayed from its original mission of defending speech, no matter how vile.Awash with money after former President Donald Trump was elected, the ACLU transformed into an organization that championed progressive causes, undermining the principled neutrality that helped make it a powerful advocate for the rights of clients ranging from Nazis to socialists.

It questioned the due process rights of college students accused of sexual assault and harassment under Title IX rules. It ran partisan ads against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a move that current Executive Director Anthony Romero told The New York Times was a mistake. The ACLU also called for the federal government to forgive $50,000 per borrower in student loans.

As the ACLU recedes from its mission, enter another free speech organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE. Founded in 1999 to combat speech codes on college campuses, FIRE is expanding to go well beyond the university and changing its name to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The group has raised $29 million toward a three-year "litigation, opinion research and public education campaign aimed at boosting and solidifying support for free-speech values."

"I think there have been better moments for freedom of speech when it comes to the culture," says FIRE's president, Greg Lukianoff. "When it comes to the law, the law is about as good as it's ever been. But when it comes to the culture, our argument is that it's gotten a lot worse and that we don't have to accept it."

Lukianoff tells Reason that FIRE's new initiatives have been in the works for years, but gained urgency during the COVID lockdowns. "Pretty much from day one, people have been asking us to take our advocacy off campus to an extent nationally," he says. "But 2020 was such a scarily bad year for freedom of speech on campus and off, we decided to accelerate that process." Despite 80 percent of campuses being closed and doing instruction remotely, Lukianoff says that FIRE received 50 percent more requests for help from college students and faculty. He also points to The New York Times' editorial page editor, James Bennet, getting squeezed out after running an article by Sen. Tom Cotton (RArk.) and high-profile journalists such as Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, and Matt Yglesias "stepping away from [their publications], saying that the environment was too intolerant."

FIRE is also expanding its efforts beyond legal advocacy and into promoting what Lukianoff calls "the culture of free speech." As Politico reports, it will spend $10 million "in planned national cable and billboard advertising featuring activists on both ends of the political spectrum extolling the virtues of free speech."

He says that people in their 40s and 50s grew up in a country where the culture of free speech was embedded in colloquial sayings and common attitudes. "Things like everyone's entitled to their opinion, which is something you heard all the time when we were kids. It's a free country, to each their own, statements of deep pluralism, like the idea that [you should] walk a mile in a man's shoes," he explains. "All of these things are great principles for taking advantage of pluralism, but they've largely sort of fallen out of usage due to a growing skepticism about freedom of speech, particularly on campus, that's been about 40 years in the making."

Lukianoff has nothing negative to say about the ACLU (in fact, he used to work there) and stresses that FIRE has worked with the organization since "day one" and continues to do so. But unlike the ACLU, FIRE isn't at risk of turning into a progressive advocacy organization, partly because its staff is truly bipartisan.

"This is the first nonprofit I ever worked for where you had people who actually voted for different major-party candidates. When I worked at the ACLU in 1999, people voted for the Democrats or the Green Party," he says, noting that he is himself a liberal. But at FIRE, he continues, "My executive director is a Republican and an evangelical, a fact of which I am extremely proud."

That pluralistic pride extends to the groups funding FIRE, too. He says that critics, especially on Twitter, point to support his organization receives from "conservative and libertarian foundations" as if that invalidates its work. Yes, they give FIRE money, he says. "And you should be very proud of them, because we routinely defend people who hate their guts and we never get any foundation saying that they're taking back our funding."

Lukianoff thinks that despite the rise of cancel culture, most Americans still understand the value of free speech, but they need to be encouraged to stand up for it. FIRE's polling, he says, reveals that "it's really a pretty small minority, particularly pronounced on Twitter, that is anti-free-speech philosophically and thinks that people should shut up and conform."

For that reason, he's upbeat that FIRE will succeed in helping to restore belief in the value and function of free speech. "I think that once you start giving people permission to believe in small d democratic norms again, a lot of people are going to reveal their actual preferences. You know: 'I don't want you to fire Larry for who he voted for or a dumb joke [he] made on Twitter,'" he says. "Part of our job isreminding younger people about some of these principles because they haven't heard them before. But for most Americans, I think reminding them and giving them permission to believe what most Americans believeis a reason to be optimistic about it."

This video is based on a longer conversation I had with Lukianoff for The Reason Interview podcast. Listen to that here.

Photo Credits: Tim Evanson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; tedeytan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Ludwig von Mises Institute, via Wikimedia Commons; LvMI, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Stefani Reynolds/CNP / Polaris/Newscom.

Music Credits: "End To End," by Jonny Hughes via Artlist.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Regan Taylor.

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Amber Heard, the ACLU, and the Future of Free Speech - Reason