Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is quickly trickling down to college campuses. Mudslinging will occur as students accuse each other of violating the human rights of women and the unborn.
Whether students are pro-life or pro-choice, both groups should respect free speech on college campuses.
The delicate principle of free speech is being threatened where I currently study. Eight pro-choice students are being investigated by American University after a pro-life student accused them of harassment due to his political and religious beliefs. The alleged incident occurred in a GroupMe chat on May 2 shortly after the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft of Dobbs.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression stepped in to protect the pro-choice students throughout the investigation. “This is absurd. There’s nothing even approaching harassment or discrimination in the chat,” said FIRE attorney Alex Morey in a press release from June 24. FIRE also obtained and published a transcript of the GroupMe conversation on its website. Morey provided a comment to the Washington Examiner about FIRE’s stance on the investigation.
“Any time there’s controversy about anything, the censorship threat rises on college campuses,” Morey said. “With a controversy as big as Roe v. Wade being overturned, it’s not surprising that an American law student allegedly tried to get administrators to censor his classmates’ speech about the case because it offended him.”
AU is ranked as the most liberal university in the country, which makes its investigation of eight pro-choice students extremely perplexing. “The case is also a bit unusual because we normally see unpopular views being censored first,” Morey said. “Here the investigated students were expressing arguably the more popular, pro-choice view about abortion care on many college campuses today.”
The students involved in the investigation attend the university’s school of law, and part of the discussion involved the legal implications of overturning Roe v. Wade. “Regardless of the views expressed, law students in particular should not have to fear investigations or harassment charges simply for having an honest discussion about the legal issue of the day or disagreeing with a classmate,” Morey said. “Providing a place to have those discussions is the entire point of law school.”
“As for the policies involved, American is a private school but promises students free speech, although they also maintain other policies that conflict with those promises — like the one being employed here suggesting that speech that offends others is discrimination or harassment,” Morey told the Washington Examiner. The policy she references is the University’s Discrimination and Non-Title IX Sexual Misconduct Policy, which states that “displaying offensive, denigrating or demeaning posters, emails, text messages or cell phone pictures” constitutes as harassment.
Being offended by someone’s text message does not mean you are being harassed. Freedom of speech should not be discarded because someone disagrees with the content of the message. AU’s definition of harassment allows students to get a warped view of civil discourse that would not stand in the real world. “Discrimination and harassment have very specific legal requirements, and simply saying something a classmate dislikes wouldn’t qualify,” Morey said.
FIRE lists American’s policies as a “yellow light” because they contain “at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application.” Morey recommends an update to the school’s policies to ensure students’ opinions are respected on campus. “FIRE has model speech policies and a list of examples of speech-protective policies from other schools they can reference to fix them up,” she said. “We’re always available to help.”
American did not respond to requests for a comment on the current state of the investigation.
Despite being a pro-life student, I recognize the need for various opinions to flourish on campus. Should American’s investigation result in punitive action for the eight pro-choice students, a precedent will be established on campus that threatens all students of varying backgrounds. Other universities are also facing possible threats to freedom of speech after the ruling in Dobbs. “We’ve already taken notice of, for example, professors being criticized for their public stance on abortion law,” Morey said.
FIRE’s involvement in the investigation will hopefully prevent the eight students from being punished, but it can happen again if the policies involved are not changed to protect free speech. Labeling controversial and opposing opinions in group chats is not anti-discriminatory; it’s anti-free speech. American University is launching a war on diversity of thought by pursuing an investigation into the legitimacy of someone’s opinions.
James Sweet is a summer 2022 Washington Examiner fellow.
