- Everybody who's paying attention knows
that free speech is no longer
valued on American campuses.
Being politically incorrect
or to be more precise,
daring to disagree with
the progressive agenda
can get you in trouble
whether you're a student or a professor.
Despite this undeniable reality,
university administrators
still portray their schools
as places where free speech is honored,
but this pretense is wearing thin.
Don't take it from me, just
listen to what prominent
left-wing professors say.
Catharine MacKinnon of
the University of Michigan
complains that free speech reinforces
and amplifies injustice.
She said, "Once a
defense of the powerless,
the First Amendment
over the last 100 years
has mainly become a
weapon of the powerful."
Louis Michael Seidman, a
professor at Georgetown,
wrote in the Washington Post,
"What I have come to see
is that it's a mistake
to think of free speech
as an effective means
to accomplish a more just society."
For Seidman and other progressives,
government exists to
correct unjust distributions
produced by the market
and to dismantle power hierarchies
based on traits like race,
nationality, gender, class,
and sexual orientation.
Seidman argues that a
government that exists
to protect individual
liberties is antagonistic
to the goals of redistribution
and identity politics.
"At its core," he said,
"Free speech law entrenches a social view
at war with key progressive objectives."
These professors aren't
some rare exceptions
out of step with the
majority view in academia.
They are becoming the norm
and they pose an immediate threat
to our tradition of free speech,
teaching an entire generation of students
the lie that freedom is
oppressive instead of liberating.
That's why Alliance Defending Freedom
fights for the free speech
rights of all Americans.
It has won over 400 cases
against public universities
that silence people whose
opinions they don't like.
Students at Fresno State University
who received advanced permission
to chalk pro-life messages
on campus sidewalks
had their messages erased by a professor
who said that colleges are
not a place for free speech.
A student in Georgia who shared his faith
in a designated speech zone
was silenced by university police
who said that his speech was disruptive.
Why?
Because others said they felt offended.
Bunker Hill Community College
threatened to arrest students
for passing out literature
that had not been approved in advance.
What was this controversial literature
that got students threatened with arrest?
The U.S. Constitution.
You couldn't make this stuff up.
Let's ask ourselves a serious question.
Do we really believe in
free speech for everyone?
Do we really believe
that people whose views
may differ from ours
still have a right to share those views?
There is an old saying,
"I disapprove of what you say,
but I will defend to the
death your right to say it."
That idea since America's founding
has been central to this country's ideals.
Freedom of speech is the
right of every American.
Free speech rightly practiced
teaches us to think critically,
to vigorously defend our
ideas, and at the same time,
to be considerate of others
whose creeds and convictions
differ from our own.
And the American free speech
tradition is rightly grounded
in the belief that the answer
to speech we disagree with
is never censorship, but more speech.
But on American campuses
and in college classrooms,
all too often, students
are taught something else:
that traditional free speech
is a tool of oppression
and that only those who
agree with progressive views
may speak freely.
If our future leaders are being educated
at places that preach
such a dangerous message,
it's fair to ask, how much
longer can freedom last?
