The Right Must Avoid the Left’s Free Speech Pitfalls Minding The Campus – Minding The Campus

Years ago, after the Bush administration initiated the Deep States surveillance regime via the Patriot Act, I observed that the left and right in this country seemed to be competing to see who could censor the most speech.

Since then, the left has forged far ahead in the censorship race, with the rise of cancel culture, deplatforming of campus speakers, andmore recentlyspurious charges of misinformation leveled at conservatives.

Under Joe Biden, thegovernment has even pressured private companiesto remove social media posts contrary to the regimes preferred narratives on COVID-19, climate change, and election fraud. That is censorship on a large scale.

Indeed, weve gotten to the point where simply expressing support for the First Amendment automatically marks one as rightwingcan you say Elon Musk? This, of course, tells us all we need to know about the authoritarian tendencies of the left.

The dynamic has shifted somewhat, however, since the brutal terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. The rights collective response to that atrocity appears to reveal some cracks in our free speech armor.

While most conservatives are openly pro-IsraelI dont know any who are pro-Hamassome do question the Israeli governments motives and tactics. Others wonder whether the U.S. should be expending its resources in what amounts to, in their view, a regional conflict.

Although I disagree, such opinions are not beyond the pale.

People must be allowed to express them, both because they have a right to and because, in any debate, contrarians serve the useful purpose of forcing the majority to reexamine its own arguments, shore them up as necessary, and perhaps make course corrections.

Yet prominent conservatives have been shouted down, deplatformed, and even fired by other conservatives for the offense of appearing insufficiently pro-Israel.

Then there are those, almost exclusively on the left, who are openly pro-Hamaswhich is to say, pro-terrorism, pro-barbarism, and literally anti-Semitic. Weve seen them protesting practically non-stop on college campuses and elsewhere for the past several months. They are extremely vocal, often disruptive, and occasionally violent.

How should we respond to them?

Texas Governor Greg Abbott believes he has the answer. He recently issued an executive ordercondemning Hamas and anti-Semitic rhetoric on campus and declared that Texas will continue to stand with Israel. He also reaffirmed his administrations commitment to free speech.

So far, so good.

He then directed all Texas colleges and universities to review and update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments.

Do you see the problem?

Abbott puts speech and acts in the same category, essentially equating them and thereby coopting a longstanding leftist talking point: Words are violence. But as conservatives understand, words are not violence. So what is Abbott decrying herespeech or actions?

If the latter, his executive order is unnecessary. Every action he describesprotests escalating into violence, physical intimidation of Jewish students, disruption of classes and campus activitiesis already covered by existing laws and campus policies. As Governor, Abbott could simply direct college presidents to enforce those.

On the other hand, if the order is really about speech, then its clearly unconstitutional. However offensive we may find it, anti-Semitic speech is protected by the First Amendmentexceptions to which are, rightly, very limitedand therefore cannot be punished by state actors.

This should go without saying: if the government can punish speech, it isnt free.

Speech that directly incites a riot or calls for violence against specific individuals or groups is, like violent actions, already illegal. But merely chanting Free Palestine or even From the river to the sea does not meet that high bar.

When conservatives take pages out of the lefts playbook, we essentially accept their premises: in this case, thatwords are inherently violent, and thus, one side has no right to express views the other finds abhorrent. This is not to our advantage. We will be on the losing end of that transaction almost every time.

More importantly, our commitment to free speech is both morally and ethically right. Todays campus anti-Semitism is a test of that commitment, one Abbotts executive orders fails miserably. Whether this represents a broader failure on the right remains to be seen.

Photo by zimmytws Adobe Stock Asset ID#: 301839238

Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English at Georgia State University Perimeter College and a Higher Education Fellow at Campus Reform. He is the author or co-author of six books, including Think Better, Write Better, Welcome to My Classroom, and The 9 Virtues of Exceptional Leaders. In addition to Campus Reform Online, he has written for the Brownstone Institute, Townhall, The Daily Wire, American Thinker, PJ Media, The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. The opinions expressed here are his own.

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The Right Must Avoid the Left's Free Speech Pitfalls Minding The Campus - Minding The Campus