When millions of college students return to campus in the fall (barring more anti-scientific roadblocks), they better be prepared for a more hostile environment than they left in 2020.
Just last week, conservative students at Skidmore College were the targets of a “cancel culture campaign,” as the Skidmore Student Government Association prohibited them from starting a Young Americans for Liberty chapter at the school. Why? Due to “concerns of hate speech and making students on campus feel unsafe.”
It doesn’t help that President Joe Biden now aims to strip college students of their due-process rights, reversing Trump-era rules that “afforded greater protections to students accused of assault.” In Biden’s worldview, college students are guilty until proven innocent, whether they’re faced with sexual misconduct allegations (fairly or unfairly) or if they simply wish to exercise their free-speech rights.
For years now, conservative speech has been stifled in American academia, which is dominated by left-wing administrators and professors who cannot tolerate dissent. Since 2011, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has identified more than 70 academic institutions in 31 states that have “shut down student and faculty speech rights.”
Even centrist liberals are being targeted. Jodi Shaw, a Smith College graduate and longtime student support coordinator, was recently forced to resign after daring to question the school’s teachings on critical race theory. After advocating for color blindness, Shaw was essentially harassed into quitting by her peers. In Shaw’s words: “It is an environment in which dissenting from the new critical race orthodoxy — or even failing to swear fealty to it like some kind of McCarthy-era loyalty oath — is grounds for public humiliation and professional retaliation.”
Academic institutions have also embraced speech codes, which are campus policies or regulations that prohibit free expression protected by the First Amendment. According to recent research from FIRE, nearly two-thirds of academic institutions now implement “yellow light” rules that restrict expression and invite administrative abuse. More than 20% of schools impose “red light” rules that clearly and substantially undermine freedom of speech, such as Boston College’s restriction of content that “may be considered objectionable by some.”
Another popular idea is the “free-speech zone,” whereby academic institutions limit free speech to clearly marked, often inconvenient locations on campus. Nearly 10% of colleges and universities maintain free-speech zones, forcing students to assemble in small or out-of-the-way areas on campus (if not both).
This is un-American. Free-speech codes and zones are nothing short of McCarthyism, targeting students on the basis of their political persuasions. Who elected the college professor or the university administrator to police us?
In America, the First Amendment is universal, protecting speech that we may support or oppose. As long as speech does not directly call for violence, there is no justification for an academic institution to restrict free expression, given that the First Amendment makes education and learning possible in the first place. Similarly, there is no “zone” for the First Amendment. It applies everywhere — no exceptions. When free speech is confined to one place, it is no longer free.
Academia is in a state of crisis that predated the COVID-19 pandemic and will, unfortunately, survive it. The only way to fight back against the anti-speech Left is for reasonable people on both sides to defend free expression. In Montana, Republican state Rep. Mike Hopkins has introduced a bill that would ban free-speech zones at public universities, preventing those schools from “taking all the free speech and moving it to a little area.”
No one is immune from the anti-speech Left, which is determined to stifle dissent and cancel the dissenters — from college campuses to forums on Reddit. Although on opposite ends of the spectrum, good-faith Americans such as Hopkins and Shaw are proving that we can find consensus on the fundamental issue of free speech. Wherever we may stand on other issues, we need to stand together against censorship and cancellation.
Dan Backer is a veteran campaign counsel, having served more than 100 candidates, PACs, and political organizations. He is a founding attorney of political.law PPLC, a campaign finance and political law firm in Alexandria, Virginia.
