Over the past several years, there has been a noticeable increase and protests to speakers with unpopular opinions on college campuses.  College students protesting are nothing new, students were outspoken about the Vietnam War and ripped up draft tickets as an example, but it has become more absurd today than ever before.  Today there has been a notable trend of violent protests going on in order to protest against speakers of dissenting viewpoints, typically conservative voices.  The problem isn’t the students protesting, it’s how they protest.  There has been a noticeable uptick in violent protests that include lighting trash cans on fire, vandalism, punching, kicking, and destruction of public and private property.  This trend has been spurned by people using their first amendment rights to suppress other people’s first amendment rights.  This is not exclusive to students either as many billion dollar companies have been restricting speech as well.  Organizations such the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) have stepped in to try and expose free speech violators but the issue is still rampant throughout.  Universities represent the highest degree in education that a person can achieve and with that exposure to some of incredibly bright people in the world.  The suppression of diversity of thought leaves less exposure to different viewpoints, minimizing exposure to different people’s opinions even if you disagree with them.  If universities continue to allow people with different opinions onto university campuses, then they will become nothing more than an echo chamber for popular talking points.

The issue of freedom of speech has been an issue for nearly 30 years now.  It started in 1988 when the United States Supreme Court decided in the court case Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier that high school students didn’t have the same rights as regular adults in the public setting and because of that, freedom of speech could be restricted on primary and secondary schools.  A ripple effect of this was that universities started to incorporate their own speech codes.  Christine Langford claims that they did this because “they need to balance the rights of the students to free speech with the need to educate students.  They believe that the way to protect diversity is to prohibit certain topics or subject matters” (Langford 95).  This argument, while written in 2006, holds water when looking at the amount of diversity councils on campuses today.  Since incorporating speech codes, universities across the United States have been sued for a variety reasons on universities both large and small.  The University of Texas System was sued for demanding the names on a public forum which violates the first amendment right to remain anonymous on a public forum.  Appalachian State was sued for having one free speech zone on a 340 acre campus and students had to have permission to use it (Langford 96).  The issues haven’t slowed since and have gotten worse.  People are now being booted off of campus for having unpopular opinions.  Waubonsee Community College sued an anti-gay group because they were passing out fliers to students.  The judge later ruled that Illinois College’s anti-bias policies are not a legal jurisdiction (Gettelman, Jaschik, 128).  These examples are that of authoritarianism and universities are abusing their power of authority.  

The issue of freedom of speech on campus applies to students above all else. But the issue has not come exclusively from administrations.  ESPN’s College Gameday is one of the biggest violators of freedom of speech on campus.  In order to keep their program family friendly, they have to enforce strict speech codes when it comes to the signs that the students bring.  While this is nothing new, it is a noticeable infringement on freedom of speech, something that is made even more glaring when ESPN lacks an official policy when it comes to what signs students can bring.  This is monitored by both police and local bouncers that ESPN hires.  As Neil Termes explains in his essay, “guards monitor the entrance to the zone and search all entrants for illicit materials, including signs and any materials that could be used to create signs.  Any sign that does not approved of by the security guards is confiscated, despite the fact that ESPN does not have a published policy on what constitutes appropriate GameDay signage” (Termes 161).  So to maintain the family friendly product, ESPN infringes on other people’s rights.  When this was challenged in court, the Supreme Court ruled that ESPN’s enforcement is “not an infringement on the Equal Protection Clause unless the State in any of its manifestations has been found to have become involved in it” (Termes 162).   So while ESPN under law doesn’t technically break the law because they aren’t deemed the State, they still infringe on others people’s rights.  The issues however do not end with ESPN.

FIRE has been an activist group that has stood up for students in consistent efforts to defend student’s first amendment rights on campus.  This oppression however does not just apply to students though, it also applies to professors.  At Forsyth Technical Community College, Professor Elizabeth Ito was fired for being vocal on her views of the Iraq War.  While discussing the Iraq War was perhaps ill-advised, her reviews by her students were overwhelmingly positive.  Greg Lukianoff, the president of FIRE spoke on the issue and said “FTCC is punishing an instructor for expressing her political views. The administration seems to be arguing that Ito’s speech was not relevant to her writing class, but too narrow a definition of relevance is potentially lethal to debate and discussion. Free speech and academic freedom require breathing space to prosper, and taking away an instructor’s job for one incident in which she expressed her beliefs threatens to suffocate classroom speech” (FIRE https \://www.thefire.org/writing-instructor-loses-job-for-discussing-iraq-war-in-class/).  This not only threatens the first amendment on campus, but also threatens diversity of thought and the freedom of thought.  By punishing people for saying what they believe in, college campuses are becoming more like echo chambers.  They are eliminating voices of dissenting opinion. This is done not only in the classroom, but also when it comes to speakers.  On Wednesday, February 1, 2017, speaker Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at University of California Berkley when protests erupted.  These protests quickly devolved into full-fledged riots and as a result, public property was damaged and several people were injured.  The difference in this situation compared to the Professor Ito incident was that this riot was caused by the students.  The students were in part the one that were protesting and eventually devolved into violence.  The police were ordered not to arrest any of the protestors by Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin.  He wrote on Twitter as the initial protest started that “Hate Speech isn’t welcome in our community”.  The following week, the Berkeley school newspaper, The Daily Californian posted an Op-Ed where students and staff defended what they did with one student saying “I put my safety and my freedom on the line because letting Yiannopoulos speak was more terrifying to me than potential injury or arrest” (Daily Californian).  The actions that the students did were absolutely unacceptable and if anything proved Yiannopoulos’ point when it comes to the overreaction of his detractors.  By vandalizing public property and hurting others in the name of defeating “hate speech”, people are giving him more power.  The students claim that they were protesting against hate speech but this leaves a question unsolved; what is hate speech? 

    Hate speech is a term that is being used more and more in today’s society.  According to Sandra Braman, a professor at Texas A&M, hate speech as of 2006 is “defined as attacks groups on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or sexual orientation” (Bossaller and Budd 28).  This definition appears to have become more broadened as the past decade has gone on.  The biggest problem with hate speech is that there is no definition to hate speech.  People associate hate speech with political views that they disagree with, with world views, or just with certain individuals as was the case with Yiannopoulos.  Countries have gone so far as to implement hate speech laws.  According to section 319 of the Criminal Code of Canada, hate speech is defined as “Everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, willfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group” or “willful promotion of hatred” (CBC http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/what-is-a-hate-crime-1.1011612) The problem with this is that what defines hatred against a group?  Hate speech is a subjective issue and people can feel like someone inciting hate speech based solely on being uncomfortable.  This is why people like Milo get huge protests, because they feel what he says is hateful while others don’t feel that he is inciting hate on others and that he is just speaking his opinion.  With a hate speech being something that is subjective, it highly problematic when it comes to enforcing such laws because something may not be hate speech to a person.  So with hate speech being banned from many colleges and outright against the law in other countries, people now have to really think about what they are saying before they say at the risk of offending someone.  Every month there is a new case of outrage because of how someone worded a sentence.  Whether it be a person being upset about “assuming someone’s gender” or just chalking the name Donald Trump, causing students to need therapy, the institution that is the university is crumbling.  Hate speech is causing people to be trapped in there echo chambers because they are hearing what they want to hear and nothing else.  An example of this happened in September of 2015 when Bryan Stascavage, a 30 year old sophomore at Wesleyan University and Iraq War veteran wrote an article in the Wesleyan Argus, the school newspaper, criticizing the tactics of Black Lives Matter.  What resulted was a women screaming at him through tears, the newspaper issuing an apology, and the president of the university issuing a statement saying that free speech mattered, as does Black Lives Matter.  But that statement resulted in chaos too and the student government then voted to halve the budget of the school newspaper (Rampell, Washington Post).  This all caused by one person disagreeing with the tactics of a certain group.  But the real question is how do students feel about this?

In February of 2015, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor invested 16,000 dollars toward the “Inclusive Language Campaign”.  This campaign encouraged students to not use words such as crazy, retarded, insane, gay, tranny, illegal alien, fag, ghetto, and raghead.  Students at the school were even asked to sign a pledge to use more inclusive language.  In response to this, Steven Crowder who is a conservative commentator and comedian went to the school and talked to students and a professor to discuss some of the words that were deemed “unacceptable” and to see if the people found them to be offensive.  What he found was that there was no unanimous opinion on what was considered offensive as several of the words listed were seen as offensive by some but not others.  The professor even said that he calls himself a Negro and not an African American.  Crowder also pointed out that of all the words that were banned, the word “nigger” was not banned (Crowder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwF9SFaKy6U).  This is why hate speech and inclusive language policy is so difficult to manage and enforce.  These people that want to curb hate speech have good intentions; in an ideal world, no one should have to go anywhere and hear things that might offend them or make them feel insecure, but everyone has a different level of sensitivity to words and if you want to make everyone feel safe, then a huge portion of the English language would have to be outlawed because it might offend someone.  This transition that people are trying to promote is being called the promotion of diversity while ruining diversity of thought, something that universities are known for.  Banning speakers and shunning ideas that people tend to disagree with is an extremely dangerous position that is and will continue to destroy the learning environment.  If people aren’t exposed to different world views ideas, then people won’t be able to compromise and come up with something that is beneficial to all.  This is something that everyone takes responsible for; parents, teachers, administrations, culture, politics, and entertainment.  Creating laws to curb speech for the sake of making people feel secure is a purely regressive ideology that must be stopped as it will just narrow the minds of the people.  

So how do people save free speech on campus and break up the echo chamber?  It starts with protest to eliminate speech codes and free speech zones.  Especially on public universities, there should be no reason as to why people shouldn’t be allowed to speak their minds, no matter what their view of the world is, a public university should be no different than a public park; rights shouldn’t be curbed because a person is at a college.  Continuing to invite speakers with diverse opinions is also vital as it can reveal new positions on issues to people and open their minds and if nothing else, make people understand another person’s position even if the person disagrees with you.  The final part step is to voice your opinion.  People shouldn’t feel intimidated to voice their opinion in a hostile environment, and that’s exactly what has happened not only on universities, but in the workplace, and society in general.  Calling people racists or Nazis doesn’t achieve anything and only serves to divide the nation even more than it already is.

Freedom of speech is absolutely vital in America and the founding fathers knew that when they made the first amendment about freedom of speech.  By curbing freedom of speech, intellectual thought will continue to dwindle and narrow until there is only one opinion that is deemed valid.  Being able to say what we want is one of the many reasons as to why the United States became the greatest country in the world.  When other countries curbed speech such as the Soviet Union and progress stalled, the United States persisted and stuck with what worked and continued on that way.  It is what has made the United States the greatest country in the history of the world and is what made it so attractive for immigrants across the globe as well.  People escape persecution due to their beliefs and come to America because they knew that they can believe what they want without worrying about being punished.  Universities should be no exception to this rule and it shouldn’t be a rule because people feel insecure.  Caving to the vocal mob will just implement a toxic environment ironically enough and will make universities nothing more than an increasingly expensive echo chamber where everyone continues to confirm their own bias because people can’t hear other opinions.  Freedom of Speech is vital and it defines what America is, a melting pot of cultures, ideas, and beliefs, and nothing universities have no right to curb that due to people being insecure or sensitive about different opinions, ideas, or ideologies.
