The Bid to Stop American Minds from Closing

By Olivia Jaber

The United States is considered “the most speech-protective country in the world.” Promising protection from persecution for thoughts and expression, the constitution limits “the government’s power to punish seditious and subversive speech.” However, this hasn’t always been the case. In 1798, among fears of a war with the French, the Fifth Congress overstepped the First Amendment by passing the Alien and Sedition Act, making it a crime for anyone to publish “false, scandalous and malicious writing against the government.” While this law is written in English, it sounds like a law from China. While we think of the First Amendment as an untouchable doctrine, it has been tampered with in the past. Criminal anarchy and criminal conspiracy laws, implemented throughout the 19th century, aimed to suppress “the speech of abolitionists, religious minorities, suffragists, labor organizers, and pacifists.” The court cases Schenck v U.S. and Abrams v U.S. offer insight into the evolution of protecting dissent against the government. In 1969, with Brandenberg v Ohio, the Supreme Court established “speech can be suppressed only if it is intended, and likely to produce imminent lawless action. Otherwise, even speech that advocates violence is protected.” This is the standard that prevails today. Unless you’re saying something like “fire” in a theater, everything you say is, in theory, protected under the First Amendment— or is it? The First Amendment was created to protect from government obstruction of unpopular opinions and dissent. Yet, some argue that our society is regressing to a less stringent interpretation, and it’s all starting on college campuses.

Today’s college administrations are deciding what can and can’t be said on campuses, is tomorrow’s Congress enacting legislation to alter our First Amendment. Today, people are bartering elements and interpretations of the First Amendment for political expediency. Don’t believe me? Take note of what is happening at arguably the most valued institutions in the U.S — our higher education systems. Because free speech’s value is diminishing, the doors for institutions and industries with power, influence, and bias are wide open to commandeer what people can and cannot say. In turn, our democracy’s livelihood is at stake. Free speech’s value is in its ability to protect unpopular, dangerous opinions just like popular, safe opinions. As “the first target of government repression is never the last,” the first target of liberal repression is also never the last. After all, if “we do not come to the defense of the free speech of the most unpopular among us, even if their views are antithetical to the very freedom the First Amendment stands for, then no one’s liberty will be secure.”

The highly liberal climate on campuses might be partly attributable to college professors, and the lack of conservative voices on campus. This sect of leftism has translated into students advocating for bumpers in their bowling lane, so-to-speak. In Bret Stephens’s article, “The Dying Art of Disagreement,” he observes a “depressing trend on American university campuses” of speakers who were either disinvited or “canceled at the request of students.” Stephens argues that disagreement is “the most vital ingredient of any decent society.” Furthermore, disagreement “gives us our freedom, enjoins our tolerance, enlarges our perspectives, seizes our attention, energizes our progress, makes our democracies real, and gives hope and encouragement to oppressed people everywhere.” However, we cannot begin to disagree if half of the argument isn’t heard in the first place. Thus, Stephens observes that our society is failing the task. In a time when opinions about our President, healthcare, and gender pronouns are polarized, we judge each other “morally depending on where we stand politically.” This attribution of morality to political inclination then sets up a paradox within the politically engaged minds wherein their opponent is suddenly a moral threat— not just a political one. Like all things immoral, political opinion becomes a force to be stopped. The moral crusade that the student body feels is then translated into massive protests and demands for speaker cancellation. In the event that a university has a weak stance on free speech, this then translates to voices being silenced, and the legitimization of said silencing.

On college campuses, the general acceptance of denying free speech is codified in universities’ written policies to protect free speech. A 2019 FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) report analyzed the written policies at 466 of America’s top colleges and universities to protect free speech.” The report found that a stunning “89.7 percent of American colleges maintain policies that restrict — or too easily could restrict — student and faculty expression.” It is overwhelmingly apparent that our higher education system no longer values “exercise[s] in interrogation,” through listening and understanding, and “treat[ing] no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind.” Somewhere along the long journey to academic “enlightenment,” professors, administrators, and most worryingly, students stopped valuing the critical tool of disagreement. Habits that are used to “create liberally educated people” no longer exist. A survey from the Brookings Institution reported that “a plurality of college students today— fully 44 percent— do not believe the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects so-called hate speech.” Additionally, “51 percent think it is acceptable for a student group to shut down a speaker with whom they disagree. An astonishing 20 percent agree that it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking.” Speakers such as Michael Oren and Ben Shapiro are blocked from entry, violently threatened, and require extensive and expensive security measures to appear on campus. By assigning boundaries for certain words, and categorizing what we don’t agree with as either threatening, hateful, or offensive, the Left can limit the thoughts and expressions of others. 

Moreover, “any argument that can be cast as insensitive or offensive to a given group of people isn’t treated as being merely wrong. Instead, it is seen as immoral, and therefore unworthy of discussion or rebuttal.” If there is a place where underrepresented, often designated uncomfortable ideas should be present, it’s in the college setting. It’s no wonder that as free speech has become increasingly throttled over the years on college campuses, the discourse between students has gotten worse. The First Amendment on Campus 2020 Report: College Students’ Views of Free Expression explains that “78% of college students favor colleges providing safe spaces or areas of campus”, designed “to be free from threatening actions, ideas or conversations.” The study also found that “sixty-three percent of students agree that the climate on their campus deters students from expressing themselves openly.” Even self-censorship is a result of the political climate on college campuses. Self-censoring halts disagreements, while it also threatens society’s ability to check “against government excess and corruption.” Allowing educational settings to restrict speech and expression is a breeding ground for threatening one of the most fundamental liberties we have as Americans. The Supreme Court has recognized where exceptions to the First Amendment are necessary. However, stretching these exceptions to cover ideas and concepts that aren’t fighting words, or don’t constitute actual malice, is dangerous. We cannot protect free speech until it isn’t convenient for our political agendas. We have to support it all the time— that’s the only way it works. 

I wish we lived in a time that aired on the side of too much information— that wanted to protect students from violence and not words— but we don’t. Now, when we do hear things we do not like, we cannot handle them, because we have never learned to engage in the right ways. We live in a time where words deemed hateful are justifications for violence that ensure we aren’t adept at reacting to the opposition. Maybe if we gave ourselves chances to interact with our fears, we would develop a thicker skin. Limiting free speech signifies that there are specific ideas not worthy of conversation— certain ideas that are harmful to even talk about— it gives people a right of passage in disavowing people they disagree with and silencing them because of it. If you don’t agree with someone, you should give them the biggest platform to speak—those are the people we should be protecting the most. What happens when one of these lines we’ve drawn subverts our freedoms in ways we hadn’t imagined? Shouldn’t we teach ourselves and the rest of our community to buck up instead of bear down on the things we don’t wish to hear? As a culture, we should not be calling to dethrone people we disagree with; instead, we should welcome dissenting ideas to the stage. Drowning out and heckling voices we disagree with is hypocritical— it’s the most exclusive action of all, as it tries to hide behind an “inclusive” and “comfortable” cloak. Our society no longer values the importance and power of speaking freely without constraints. We’ve stopped appreciating a fundamental bedrock of our nation and have begun to see it as a detriment. Instead of celebrating the rescind invitation of a speaker from campus, we should be fighting to preserve their right to speak. 

While academia pushes the youth further and further to the Left, the acceptance of limitations on “hate speech” has an almost cynical and entirely political implication. The Left is priming the pump for the dismantling of free speech. While it may be done under the auspices of protecting people, changing the first amendment allows anyone, of any political motivation to do the same. The limitation of free speech is a slippery and very steep slope to the revocation of additional rights and freedoms. Speech limitations in college settings are detrimental to a productive learning environment, hinder our abilities to engage and disagree, and foster sentiments of hostility towards conservatives. But the limitation of free speech at the state, or federal level, opens the door to tyranny that is much harder to close than open. It is in everyone’s interest, regardless of political affiliation, race, sex, or class, to ensure that free speech is protected for everyone. In universality, there is stability, and there is equality. When the government gives itself the right to determine what can and cannot be said, we open ourselves to a tyranny far greater than any mean comment, or defamatory opinion. 

The moral of the story is this — “the disagreements we need to have— and to have vigorously— are banished from the public square before they’re settled... for fear of offending, they forego the opportunity to be persuaded.” While disagreement is at the apex of a thriving society, “we in the U.S. are raising a younger generation who have never been taught either the how or the why of disagreement, and who seem to think that free speech is a one-way right: Namely, their right to disinvite, shout down or abuse anyone they dislike, lest they run the risk of listening to that person— or even allowing someone else to listen. The results are evident in the parlous state of our universities and the frayed edges of our democracies.” When people are incredibly polarized, Left or Right, we cannot see our opponents with the opportunity of any middle ground. The closing of the American mind is real, and I think that embracing free speech is a start to opening it up again— but only if we want to.

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