School will soon begin again for many students.
One of the most pressing battlegrounds today is the health of higher education. Increasingly, college and university campuses have become hotbeds of woke progressivism, petri dishes of social justice experiments, and flagship propagandists for socialism. An October 2020 poll showed support for socialism jumped “nearly 10% among U.S. youth among pandemic depression.”
One way to combat the swell of progressive ideology is for students to return to school confident in their inalienable rights of free speech, free assembly, and other constitutional principles. A recent federal court ruling demonstrates this point. The federal court for the 8th Circuit told University of Iowa officials who had discriminated against students of faith that it was “hard-pressed to find a clearer example of viewpoint discrimination” than the case brought before it in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship v. University of Iowa.
The court continued, “What the University did here was clearly unconstitutional. It targeted religious groups for differential treatment under the Human Rights Policy — while carving out exemptions and ignoring other violative groups with missions they presumably supported. The University and individual defendants turned a blind eye to decades of First Amendment jurisprudence or they proceeded full speed ahead knowing they were violating the law.”
I have covered this case since 2018. To borrow from George Will, this is another “teachable moment” for higher education officials. But not just for them, it is a teachable moment for students as well. Students of faith should not enter a college campus as freshmen or returning students in fear that they will be targeted for practicing their beliefs and told they are violating anti-discrimination laws. The law is on the side of free speech.
Let’s be clear about something else. Anti-discrimination laws were put in place to quell true bigotry. They were not designed to see people of belief gaslit into believing they are bigots. Even in 2018, when this University of Iowa lawsuit originally began, it was hard to believe any court took seriously the claim that a faith-based club requiring its leaders to be religious was discriminatory. Undoubtedly, a university or college campus might be an alienating or frightening place for a political conservative or person of faith to thrive.
Still, students should walk onto campuses proud of their beliefs, unafraid to practice them, and sure that in an era in which socialism is popular and people of faith are seen as bigots, the First Amendment protects them too.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
