Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed Monday that his department would stand up to and fight the “bullies” in academic institutions around the country that try to silence speech on campus, including speech by conservatives.
“This has gone too far,” Sessions said Monday. “It must end. This country protects noisome assembly, immoderate speech and provocative speech. Whether left or right. Suppression of competing voices is not the American way.”
Sessions listed several lawsuits against universities that the Justice Department has filed statements of interests in, in which students say their free speech was stifled. He noted that the University of California, Berkeley allegedly created a tougher set of rules for inviting public speakers to conservative student groups compares to other groups.
“A group of students filed suit contending that the school effectively discriminated against them and their right to speak,” Sessions said. “The Department got involved and we filed a statement of interest in this case.”
Another case involves Gwinnett College in Georgia, where students were allowed a small “free speech zone” on campus that still required them to get permission from campus officials before they could speak.
“[T]hey could not say things that might ‘disturb the… comfort of person(s).’ In other words, free speech at Gwinnett was a very limited privilege — not a right — even inside the free speech zone,” Sessions said. “If disturbing someone’s comfort is the standard for banning speech, then anybody can stop anybody else from speaking their mind merely by acting offended. This is nowhere close to a legitimate First Amendment standard.”
Sessions also celebrated a victory in a lawsuit against the University of Michigan, which changed its policy earlier this year after students challenged its definition of “bullying” and “harassment.”
A “group of campus bureaucrats and campus police with the Orwellian name of the Bias Response Team” were used to report and investigate claims of “bothersome” speech, Sessions explained.
Though the university changed its policies after the Justice Department filed a statement of interest, Sessions said the “culture” around free speech in America still needs to change.
“We have reached a pivotal, perhaps even an historic, moment. It is time to stand up to the bullies on campus and in our culture,” said Sessions. “There are radicals out there now that have openly and systematically justified actions that would deny Americans the right to speak out against their ideological agenda. We must put an end to this nonsense. It is time to put a stake in its heart.”
The Justice Department will “keep fighting” and “we plan to keep winning,” he said.
Since Sessions took over the Justice Department, it has filed four statements of interests in cases where students say the university blocked their First Amendment right to free speech.
