Dive Brief:

Administrators and school leaders can often be caught in a difficult and politically fraught position, as campus issues about controversial speakers can quickly become political battles playing out on a national level. College freshmen are reportedly more politicized than in previous decades, reflecting the public at large. Administrators must be cautious of how lawmakers wield political power, as their suggestions could provoke unintended consequences.

State legislatures across the country have considered bills purportedly promoting free speech, but it becomes difficult in determining when an individual is no longer protesting a speaker they deem to be offensive or inflammatory, and when that protestor is encroaching on the free expression of that speaker and the free assembly of their audience. Most of the legislation touts the right to assemble and the right to protest, but political remarks have been leaning in the defense of the former. College presidents and administrators must also be cautious, as the audience they must satisfy is not only the general public, but students on campus many of whom might be among the crowds that would protest a speaker seen as inflammatory. The partisan lines drawn between typically conservative speakers and liberal protesters make it an even more difficult needle to thread for administrators, as the external nastiness of the nations partisan debates increasingly encroaches on these questions.

Top image credit: Getty Images

Read this article:

Campus 'free speech' bill rejected by Louisiana governor ... - Education Dive