First Amendment Needs Protecting from Liberals, Say Republican Legislators – Nashville Scene

Unofficial co-sponsors of the bill? Milo Yiannopoulos and Scottie Nell Hughes

Rep. Martin Daniel, left, and Sen. Joey Hensley introduce the "Tennessee Student Free Expression Act," for when the First Amendment just isn't enough.

Sure, the First Amendment is, you know, a constitutional protection and all, but if you're a conservative minority in a sea of big, bad liberals on college campus, sometimes you just need a safe space, you special snowflake you. It can be very hard these days to speak your mind in a country with a Republican president and a Republican majority in Congress and the Senate and a Republican supermajority in both chambers of the Tennessee Legislature and a Republican governor and two Republican senators and seven out of nine Congressional districts represented by Republicans, not counting all the many, many, many, many Republicans in office at the local level across the state of Tennessee. Nope, it is definitely the poor College Republicans and other conservatives on campus who definitely need greater free speech protection than what the First Amendment offers.

At least, that's what state Rep. Martin Daniel (R-Knoxville) and Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) are saying is their justification for filing the "Tennessee Student Free Expression Act," a revamped version of a similar bill Daniel filed last year. However, this year they are nicknaming the bill the "Milo Act," after Breitbart writer/editor and noted white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos, whose recent appearance at the University of California at Berkeley was cancelled after protests turned violent.

Daniel and Hensley who have both been accused of assault in the past, Daniel during a primary debate last summer and Hensley in 2015 after his ex-wife alleged he hit her with his truck, twice are just horrified, horrified, that students in California would try to prevent Yiannopoulos from speaking and are using those protests as justification for their bill. (Never mind that Yiannopoulos spoke at Vanderbilt University without incident last fall.) At the press conference announcing the legislation, they showed clips from Berkeley, and then they showed a video from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville last fall in which a white male student dressed up as Trump had his wig knocked off by an African-American female student walking past him. The video characterized this as an "assault"; however, the woman keeps walking away with no further incident rude, yes, but nothing even close to assault.

The presser proceeded with Daniel and Hensley talking about the bill, followed by Trump surrogate andFox talking head Scottie Nell Hughes who has stated in the past that "riots aren't necessarily a bad thing," at least, if they are in support of Trump. A member of the UTK College Republicans also spoke, as did the student who had portrayed Trump in the aforementioned video. Someone else read a statement from Yiannopoulos, who said he wished he could be here but was, alas, stuck in Florida. Afterwards, legislative staff on both sides of the aisle seemed flummoxed by the lengthy production. ("What the hell was that?" one staffer texted this reporter.)

The bill itself is not nearly as noxious as last year's version, which stated, in part:

The governing boards of the institutions shall prohibit an institution from:

(1) Establishing safe zones;

(2) Requiring or encouraging the issuance of trigger warnings;

(3) Establishing a system for students or other persons to report incidents of mere bias, where no threats or harassment occurred;

(4) Disciplining students for microaggressions

Several UTK professors contacted by the Scene expressed relief that the newer bill is more vaguely worded, but they still have many concerns.

"The opening of the 'free speech' bill sounds like an insult: as if those of us who work at the university are not already advocates of free speech, as if we haven't spent our entire lives embracing and promoting free speech," says UT-Knoxville English professor and poet Marilyn Kallet. "No thinking person would oppose free speech. But isn't that what we are already doing?"

Another UTK English professor, Lisi Schoenbach, says the legislation raises more questions than it answers.

"Why such a bill would be necessary? And why the legislature should be involved in the governance of the university?" asks Schoenbach. "It appears to me that the bill repeats a lot of very standard language that can be found in any number of places regarding the importance of free expression on campus, except with extra emphasis on how important it is to have disagreeable and unpleasant speech on campus. Wouldnt this be an argument in favor of Sex Week, and lots of other campus speech that the legislature finds disagreeable?"

When asked about Sex Week and other such things on campus to which conservatives in the Legislature have taken exception, Hensley said the issue with that was not the free speech but the university spending money on it. When asked if bringing a speaker like Yiannopoulos would not also cost money, he changed the subject.

Pippa Holloway, a history professor at MTSU and president of the MTSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, says the bill is completely unnecessary.

"The legislation's claim that 'state institutions of higher education have abdicated their responsibility to uphold free speech principles' has no basis in fact. I would challenge the representative to visit our campuses; meet with our students, faculty, and administrators; and learn more about how Tennessee colleges and universities operate before wading into territory he obviously knows little about," Holloway comments.

"The legislation would require colleges and universities to modify the content of their freshman orientation and send emails every semester during the first week of classes reminding students of their First Amendment protections. What about the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights? Should we send out emails every semester reminding them of their Second Amendment rights also? And what about the Third Amendment? If students are asked to quarter a solider in their house during a time of peace, shouldn't we remind them every semester that they can say no? If those questions sound ridiculous, they should, because such micromanaging of the daily operations of college campuses through state law IS ridiculous," Holloway adds.

The thing is, state campuses already do have free speech policies in place. When asked if they had read UT's policy, for one, the legislators admitted they had not. It's also unclear that they have any idea as to who Yiannopoulos actually is. When introducing the bill, Hensley commented, "We dont want to allow hate speech or offensive speech, but certainly when it comes to political issues, every student should have their right to expression." When asked if that wasn't exactly what Yiannopoulos often incites hate speech Daniel replied, "Were just asking that university administrators abide by and respect the first amendment, thats all."

But Yiannopoulos is a proponent of hate speech, in addition to misogyny, racism, homophobia (despite being openly gay himself) and general meanness. He thinks women shouldn't learn science or math. It is nearly impossible to be so horrible that Twitter will actually permanently ban you, yet Yiannopoulos managed it. It seems likely that the writer has only glommed onto the legislation as part of his never-ending quest for self-promotion, especially given that he has a book coming out in March why legislators who had a problem with LGBT diversity funding at UT want to help promote a man whose book was originally going to be called The Dangerous Faggot Manifesto is, well, odd.

UT itself has only issued a vague statement on the bill, with spokesperson Gina Stafford saying in an email, The proposed legislation would apply to all public universities in Tennessee, including the University of Tennessee. The constitutional right of free speech is a fundamental principle that underlies the mission of the University of Tennessee, and the University has a long and established record of vigorously defending and upholding all students right to free speech.

The ACLU of Tennessee also says it will be keeping an eye on the bill.

"This legislations goal of promoting free speech on state campuses is certainly laudable, and the bill contains elements that indeed foster free expression. However, in areas of campus that are not considered public fora, a public university has multiple obligations not only to free speech but also to preventing creation of a hostile environment. The devil is in the details and we are still in the process of closely analyzing this measure," says executive director Hedy Weinberg.

Meanwhile, says Schoenbach, if Daniel and Hensley really want to know about free speech on campus, they should take a class.

"If only there were a way for them to learn about the difference between facts and opinions, critical thinking skills, evidence based argumentation. There should be some state-provided access to this sort of information!" says Schoenbach.

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First Amendment Needs Protecting from Liberals, Say Republican Legislators - Nashville Scene